Excelsior II Class
The Excelsior II-class heavy cruiser was introduced in the mid-2380s as a modern retrofit of the long-serving Excelsior-class cruiser, which had just passed its tenth decade in continuous service. Unlike the similar-looking Obena-class emissary, which holds a specialized diplomatic and engineering role and was an entirely new design, the Excelsior II is a refit program for the original Excelsior class and is designed to fill precisely the same niche: a medium-sized all-rounder. After the destruction of Utopia Planitia in 2385, the decision was made to cancel the Obena program in favor of upgrading the existing Excelsior-class vessels, as this could be done more quickly to shore up the fleet. The Excelsior II thus is a blend of older and newer systems, a compromise that let them be built around existing hulls. A solid heavy cruiser design, the Excelsior II's upgrades focused on speed and armaments. The Excelsior II is a solid, well-rounded starships that shores up patrol lines and handles generalist duties within and near to Federation space. Originally intended as a stop-gap measure to shore up the fleet while the Inquiry-class exploratory cruisers were still being built, the refit to the Excelsior has been so successful that Starfleet anticipates their continued service for at least another fifty years, though there are no plans to build more vessels of this class.
Exploration and Science
The Excelsior II is a highly competent exploration platform, with a robust planetary sensing suite on the underside of the saucer section, as well as two wide bands of lateral sensors in the secondary hull. This makes this vessel well-suited for long-duration charting missions where a more capable explorer might be wasted. In addition, these sensor bands allow the ship to perform its scientific duties while also patrolling along the Federation’s borders. This vessel carries approximately the same complement of labs as an Intrepid-class science vessel, and these facilities are tasked with ongoing scientific studies independent of the ship’s main mission.
Unlike dedicated research cruisers, this heavy cruiser does not have a large volume of mission-configurable scientific space; individual labs can be tailored to specific experiments, but a large portion of the ship’s interior volume not devoted to the ship’s primary systems is devoted to cargo space and crew facilities. This makes the Excelsior II a fine choice for generalist scientific missions, but a poor one for missions that require a large amount of specialized equipment. This vessel also lacks the accommodations to handle large groups of visiting scientists like larger vessels have.
Diplomacy
Like with the Excelsior before her, the Excelsior II is a popular choice for transporting flag officers and Federation dignitaries within the Federation, as they are a good balance between power and speed without taking up the resources of a larger explorer that would be better used in exploratory roles. They are also well-suited to show-the-flag cruises of Federation space, combining patrol duties with outreach missions to both neutral worlds and Federation colonies. They are equipped to handle medium-intensity diplomatic negotiations, with the standard cruiser-type assortment of conference rooms and VIP quarters. Though the Obena was purpose-built for diplomatic missions, the Excelsior II will still be sent on these missions if it is the closest vessel. It is not a preferred platform for larger or higher stakes negotiations, which are left to the Obena.
Many lounges have large viewports looking out into space, which are designed to play host to diplomatic delegations in comfort, while also being a suitable space for other types of conferences and as a crew recreation area when not in use for official functions. The rim of the saucer section has nine large rooms with floor-to-ceiling viewports that can be configured however the mission dictates thanks to holographic technology.
Engineering
At a distance, the overall arrangement of the Excelsior II-class is clearly within the same family as the Excelsior-class: a saucer section joined to a long engineering hull by a wide neck and equipped with slender warp nacelles. However, the Excelsior II’s proportions also take inspiration from the Sovereign-class, with the saucer stretched into an ovoid shape, and the warp nacelles mounted on swept-back pylons. The neck has also been extended forward significantly, taking the leading edge of the secondary hull with it. All of these design cues follow directly from the Obena-class, but made more compact through the shortening of the neck. The internal volume of the Excelsior II is approximately 20% greater than the original Excelsior.
Systems in use aboard the Excelsior II have all been tried and tested across multiple other classes, as the emphasis with the design brief was on reliability and high average performance rather than excelling in any one particular area. As with most other ships introduced in the late 24th century, this class is equipped with bioneural circuitry and full-ship holographic projectors. The ship's warp core, impulse engines, and warp nacelles are all upgraded and adapted versions of the systems found originally on the Excelsior, which link the warp and impulse systems together through the prominent deflection crystal between the impulse engines. The upgrades combine the knowledge of a century of fielding this class with incremental progress made across multiple units over the years, leading to solid, dependable performance. This does, however, restrict the ship's overall top speed. The Excelsior II has maximum speed of Warp 9.9, which lags behind many of the fleet’s fastest ships, but her cruising speed is a swift Warp 8. Like the Reliant, her lack of sprint speed is compensated for by her quite high cruising speed. The ship’s engineering computers were designed with the ability to be reprogrammed in times of fleet-wide emergencies to override this limitation, but reliability would suffer significantly if this was done.
Automation greatly decreases the amount of crew needed from 750 on the Excelsior to 500 on the Excelsior II. Small craft support is provided by two medium-sized shuttle bays, one on the stern and one in the undercut beneath the secondary hull. Saucer separation and reintegration capabilities were standardized in this variant, though this is something that had been retroactively added into several of the original class.
Tactical
The Excelsior II-class is a well-rounded combat platform, intended to correct some of the perceived gaps in the armament of the Obena. With six burst-fire torpedo launchers, four forward and two aft, and an additional two phaser arrays compared to the Obena, the Excelsior II has excellent phaser and torpedo coverage. While not matching the sheer number of launchers found on the Akira or Alita, the launchers themselves are capable of high-volume salvos.Type-XII phaser arrays are employed, with two large dorsal and two ventral arrays on the saucer section, two dorsal and two arrays on the engineering section, and a further two aft phaser arrays. Shields are the latest regenerative standard pioneered aboard the Sovereign-class, and the ship’s hull has partial ablative armor over sensitive areas.
This is a common flagship type for admirals who do not need a ship such as an Odyssey but do find themselves leading from the front, as they maintain a suite of offices and a small flag bridge for such a purpose, making them suitable for leading smaller task groups. This role can also be held by a senior captain in command of a ship of this class, especially for leading patrol groups in border areas or coordinating smaller humanitarian ships.
Excelsior II-class ships are often tasked with patrols within the Federation, especially along major starlanes, where they serve as a deterrent against pirates and raiders, and perform customs enforcement and search and rescue duties, while Inquiry and Gagarin-class ships generally patrol the Federation's borders.
Shipboard Life
Given that her overall volume is actually larger than the original Excelsior but she has a smaller crew, the Excelsior II is a comfortable posting. Accommodation standards are similar to those employed aboard the Intrepid-class, though there are more dedicated recreational facilities such as an arboretum deck, large lounges, gymnasia, and a dozen holosuites. Most crew members have their own quarters or a private room in shared quarters, which means there is less space for visitors, but the ship isn’t expected to host many guests other than VIPs. This high standard of accommodation helps make up for the fact that this ship doesn’t get sent on the flashiest or most interesting assignments and keeps morale up.
In support of the ship’s humanitarian capabilities, the Excelsior II has a large medical suite aboard, with most of deck six in the saucer being devoted to medical facilities. There is also a secondary sickbay near the aft shuttle bay. This large medical department makes this ship a popular choice for new medical officers, who can experience life in a hospital-like setting while also serving on a frontline starship.
Given the high level of automation, engineering crews don’t often find this to be a particularly engaging assignment, so there has been a culture aboard these vessels of pushing their reliable, standardized ships to limits beyond what they were designed on paper to do, leading some of them to be much faster than they are supposed to be. In addition, the amount of free time available to engineers had made their machine shops and development labs a hotbed of technological innovation.
Class History
By the end of the Dominion War, the Excelsior-class was still a staple of Starfleet, even with the older models approaching their 90th birthdays. They had been upgraded numerous times over the years, but the limitations of the spaceframe to handle new technologies such as ablative armor, phaser arrays, and other modern systems were becoming more and more limited as time went on. Starfleet knew that a true one-to-one replacement for this class was necessary. The ostensible successor design was the Nebula-class exploratory cruiser, but it was nearly as complex and resource-intensive to build as the Galaxy-class, sharing almost 80 percent of its systems and volume. More and more Ambassador-class ships were also relegated to generalist heavy cruiser duties rather than front-line exploration, but they suffered from the same age-related problems the Excelsior did and had crews nearly as large as the Nebula.
Furthermore, it was vital in Starfleet's thinking to project a message of hope and continuity, so the Starfleet Corps of Engineers developed a design inspired by the Excelsior at approximately 30% greater size that would provide a new medium-sized platform for diplomatic and humanitarian missions. The Obena was a ground-up new design that would be built to slowly phase out the Excelsior fleet over the 2380s and 2390s.
While the Obena-class emissary began production, Starfleet still saw a need for a vessel of around 500 crew members with enhanced tactical functions that could accomplish many of the functions of the Sovereign but more efficiently. While the new Luna-class light explorer was approximately in this size and capability range, Starfleet never intended to keep these long-range ships close to home or operating within Federation space, so a new heavy cruiser project was authorized.
This design program would eventually result in the Inquiry-class exploratory cruiser, as the design got larger in size, but the destruction of Utopia Planitia in 2385 prompted an entirely different conversation at Starfleet Headquarters as the Federation began to turn inwards and prioritize defense. While excellent at the role they were built for, the Obena was both costly to build and limited in its tactical capabilities. With the Inquiry still a decade away, Starfleet made the decision to order a full refit program for the Excelsior as a stop-gap. The emphasis of the design brief was on bringing Starfleet's aging workhorse up to a modern standard, with tactical systems capable of standing up to modern foes.
The first vessel to be retrofit was the USS Excelsior herself, the second vessel of the class to bear the name, in 2386 at Beta Antares Fleet Yards, with three others ordered at other yards across the Federation and being constructed in parallel.
The Excelsior II class proved to be an immediate success in the fleet, and Starfleet placed a continual order across ten yards to refit all of the existing Excelsior-class ships to the new standard. This had the added benefit of standardizing between the two existing variants. By 2390, all Excelsior-class ships have been reconfigured as Excelsior II-class vessels, just as the first Inquiry-class vessels began to enter service.
The Excelsior II has proven to be a popular design in service, though many see it somewhat cynically as a reflection of a sort of "Cold War Federation" aesthetic, as she was built for a conflict that, ultimately, never emerged, at the expense of a class that was designed to usher in an era of hope, the Obena. For others, she is a symbol of the enduring strength and utility of the underlying Excelsior design. To further carry on this legacy, Starfleet resumed production of the more peaceful Obena in 2399, though the Excelsior II is predicted to remain in service for at least another 50 years.
Gallery
In Play
- The Excelsior II is the modern replacement for the Excelsior as a Federation ship-of-the-line for day-to-day duties around and near the Federation. As a generalist design wtih a slight bias towards tactical functions, the Excelsior II can reasonably be assigned to nearly any mission type.
- While the Obena and Excelsior II are both Excelsior variant ships, they are quite different from one another. Excelsior IIs are all rebuilds of existing Excelsior-class ships, while the Obena is a new design. The Excelsior is a generalist, while the Obena is a specialist in diplomatic and engineering missions.
- Excelsior II-class starships are powerful for their size, significantly moreso than the Excelsior-class that they replaced, which often lulls raiders and pirates into a false sense of security due to their experience with the older vessel.
- A Excelsior II captain would be more senior than a Reliant captain, but this is still a vessel that would be appropriate as a first command. It is unlikely that an officer under the rank of Captain would command one, however, as they have a crew of 500.
- In some ways, the Excelsior II is the economy version of both the Odyssey and the Sovereign, as she is tactically capable, diplomatically capable, and can serve as a flagship. She is a much more reasonable and economical alternative to one of these big explorers for missions closer to home or for missions that require more discretion.
- The Excelsior II's saucer separation ability allows the secondary hull to leave the primary hull in orbit of a planet or out in space to go off and perform another mission, or it could be used in combat to surprise other ships.