Plymouth Class
More actions
The Plymouth-class utility cruiser is a compact, general-purpose vessel geared towards supporting the Federation's far-flung stations and colonies. Unlike larger utility cruiser designs, the Plymouth’s compact design trades extensive cargo and small craft facilities for advanced sensors, tractor beams, and propulsion systems. These capabilities make the Plymouth ideal for delivering fragile medical or technical supplies, conducting scientific surveys, and assisting in construction projects. The Plymouth also has two variants, a scout and an ambulance vessel, that share production lines and enough common capabilities to be considered a single class.
Science and Exploration
The Plymouth has powerful sensors thanks to her large aft sensor array that doubles as a subspace field generator. With extensive instrumentation built around the main deflector and the aft sensor, this class collects an enormous amount of data about the region of space along the ship's course. This data is regularly sent back to local starbases, where it is then used to improve star charts. While not as sensitive as the stellar cartography systems aboard dedicated Grissom-class deep-space surveyors, the sensors on the Plymouth form an important part of Starfleet’s interstellar mapping program. To service these sensors, the Plymouth has a dedicated astrometrics lab.
Plymouth-class starships have a standard suite of science labs across Starfleet’s core specialities, in addition to mission-configurable labs. While well-equipped, these labs are more compact than on true science vessels, as much of the ship’s volume is taken up by structural systems. They are a good choice for second-tier scientific missions or for missions primarily focused on sample collection and retrieval. Organic or inorganic samples can be stored in stasis in the ship’s secure cargo bays just as easily as medical or technical supplies can be.
Because the Plymouth class is often used to support outlying worlds, they are often in the right place at the right time to be given urgent scientific or exploratory missions. For instance, a frontier science station may need unusual readings verified, but waiting for a science vessel might take months, so a nearby starbase sends their assigned Plymouth-class ship instead. While they don’t always have the capabilities to solve that mystery on their own, they can collect enough information for Starfleet to decide what type of ship needs to be sent to handle it.
Diplomacy
Plymouth-class starships are equipped with a set of VIP quarters and a handful of smaller guest suites to accommodate a dignitary and their staff, allowing ships of this class to serve as effective diplomatic couriers. Generally, they are used to transport Federation or Starfleet officials, but they can also be sent to pick up ambassadors from worlds without effective interstellar transportation options. Because of their relatively high top speed and low crew complement, they are a good choice for simple point-to-point transport runs.
Like other utility cruisers, Plymouth-class starships are routinely used for second contact missions. Because of their smaller crew, they are not well suited to missions that require extensive infrastructure projects. For instance, they might be sent to planets that need existing communications equipment retrofitted to interface with the Federation’s subspace relay network or to update databases, but they simply don’t have the cargo space or crew to build a communications array from scratch. They can easily tow large spaceborne structures like orbital stations, however, for worlds that are eager to accept a permanent Starfleet presence.
Engineering
The warp and impulse engines aboard the Plymouth are based on those developed for the the Odyssey, miniaturized and designed for enhanced efficiency. In addition to two warp nacelles, the ship’s warp field is modulated by circular warp field governors that are aligned on the center line of the saucer section. This system reduces the energy necessary for the ship to sustain its cruising speed. Combined with a large subspace field projector in the aft sensor array, the Plymouth can create an extended warp bubble, allowing it to tow objects much larger and more massive than itself. Despite being much smaller, the Plymouth can handle the same towing assignments given to the California and the Parliament with no loss of effectiveness. These ships are often used to tow other vessels back to port after engine failures. In pairs or trios, they can reposition even Starfleet's largest starbases.
The single shuttle bay aboard the Plymouth is located on the aft end of the saucer section. Supporting a small complement of shuttles, the flight deck is connected to repair shops and priority cargo storage bays in the ship’s "tail". There are additional cargo storage areas in the main body of the saucer at the 4 o’clock and 8 o’clock positions, with two additional cargo hatches that open on the ventral hull. All cargo holds in this class are equipped with enhanced environmental controls and stasis generators to transport fragile supplies.
Because of their small crew complement, the Starfleet Corps of Engineers frequently uses Plymouth-class starships to transport SCE teams when the assignment requires speed rather than brute force. These missions include critical equipment repairs, stabilizing the orbits of archaeotech facilities, and obtaining critical salvage.
Tactical
The Plymouth was built for the reality of an increasingly dangerous galaxy, and so she is armed to defend herself. In addition to standard phaser arrays covering most angles, the ship also has three pulse phaser turrets, which provide cover to the ship's dorsal rear quarter that would otherwise be blocked by the warp nacelles. As with the the Reliant, the Plymouth was built with Type-XII phaser arrays that operate at lower power levels than those found aboard larger vessels, with the understanding that ships of this class could be fine-tuned for combat operations should a major conflict erupt. Standard Plymouth-class ships have only a single torpedo launcher located under the bridge module. This was a design choice to retain as much space as possible for systems such as tractor beams and enhanced propulsion. Because of this limited torpedo armament, Plymouth captains must be judicious about timing their shots well.
With a slender profile and powerful engines, the Plymouth is a highly maneuverable ship and can generally last long enough in a dogfight to wait for help or escape from threats. They make tempting targets for pirates and raiders because they often carry sensitive—and thus lucrative—cargo. In general, these support ships are kept out of combat as much as possible, but in fleet engagements, ships of this class can be used as search-and-rescue vessels to retrieve escape pods and to tow damaged ships out of combat. Their sensors also make them useful in picket roles, identifying targets for larger ships.
Shipboard Life
Plymouth-class starships share an era and aesthetic with the massive Odyssey-class heavy explorer, just with everything miniaturized. While lacking the huge, comprehensive recreational facilities of the Odyssey, they do have a pair of well-appointed lounges on the port and starboard sides of the ship, above the neck section. Typically, one of these lounges is used as a mess hall, and the other as a bar, but they can easily be reconfigured with holography to serve as theaters, ballrooms, or other venues as needed. This class also has a small suite of holodecks, a gymnasium, and a few smaller lounges in the rim of the saucer section. Crew quarters are comfortable but compact. Unlike California-class ships, no one is made to sleep in the hallway; most crew members have their own bedrooms, though officers below the rank of lieutenant share living areas and bathrooms.
With just a hundred souls on board, Plymouth-class vessels are intimate assignments. Serving aboard a ship of this class usually means knowing all of your crewmates’ names—and likely far more than that, whether you want to or not. Commanding officers of this ship are often new to the role, though there is no specific career profile that leads most of them to this class. Starfleet Command considers this a good stepping-stone assignment for any new captain, whether they’re destined later for a science vessel, an explorer, or a destroyer. Even though they usually have junior captains, Plymouth-class starships always have at least one senior engineering officer aboard who has enough experience to monitor the ship’s complex subspace fields during towing operations. Crews on this ship are more skewed toward engineering and operations, both to complete the ship’s logistical mission and to maintain her advanced systems.
More often than not, Plymouth-class ships are used for archetypal milk runs: delivering people or supplies from one station to another, towing other ships, and repairing subspace relay buoys. They can be tedious assignments. However, they’re also doing so on the frontier, and there’s a deep stigma among their crews that you should never say that it is a boring assignment, because the second you do, you’ll get more excitement than you’ve bargained for.
Variants
While the majority of the Plymouth class is being constructed in the stock utility cruiser configuration, two other variants have also been authorized that use the same hull design and core systems, with mission-specific modifications to allow the design to serve outside a logistics support role. Unlike the the Duderstadt, where the entire secondary hull can be swapped for different mission profiles, the differences between the Plymouth's sub-classes are more integral to the ship's design. Thus, changing the variant of a Plymouth is done only rarely, and it takes months in spacedock. As of the early 25th century, the Plymouth, Pioneer III, and Chapel are being built in a 3:2:1 ratio.
Scout (Pioneer III Sub-Class)
The scout variant of the Plymouth (known as the Pioneer III sub-class) is in most respects identical to the base class, apart from the substitution of the heavy-duty tractor beam generators in the ship’s neck section for an additional set of fore and aft torpedo launchers. To allow for greater endurance, the cargo holds in the saucer section have been replaced with supplementary deuterium tanks and expeditionary supply storage. While not as tactically capable as the smaller Rhode Island, the Pioneer III has the confidence to operate independently outside well-patrolled areas, thanks to its additional firepower. These launchers are also used to deploy reconnaissance drones and probes along the ship’s path. They are useful for supporting far-flung outposts which might not warrant a frigate on standby for defense, as well as for performing routine customs inspection tasks.
Ambulance Vessel (Chapel Sub-Class)
The second major variant of the Plymouth-class starship is the Chapel sub-class, an ambulance vessel. Unlike a hospital ship, which serves as a mobile hospital, an ambulance vessel stabilizes critical patients and transports them to either a hospital ship or a starbase medical facility. The Chapel maintains the same total crew complement as the Plymouth but has a significantly reduced science department to accommodate a full trauma medical team of twenty physicians and nurses. Two of the ship’s science labs were also omitted in favor of dual-capacity surgical suites, and the cargo holds in the saucer section were replaced with bi-level wards. In addition, the two decks in the neck section that contain the tractor beam emitters for the Plymouth and the torpedo magazines for the Pioneer III were rebuilt to hold 48 medical-grade stasis pods aboard the Chapel. Between wards and stasis pods, the Chapel can transport up to a hundred patients from the site of an emergency. The ship can also be used as a mobile trauma center, handling up to four hundred patients per day, if there is a suitable recovery location elsewhere. Ships of the Chapel sub-class are marked prominently with blue paint and Starfleet Medical insignia to identify them as non-combatants, and they do not carry torpedoes.
The Plymouth-class History
By the early 2390s, the first Reliant-class frigates were in active service with Starfleet and were proving to be effective all-round vessels in patrol and light-duty escort roles. While they also had capabilities for logistics missions, the Starfleet Corps of Engineers wanted a newer vessel that could handle even more of the duties performed by aging California-class ships with a smaller crew and with more confidence on the frontier. It was decided that the Pioneer II-class design would be revived and redesigned in much the same way that the Reliant was, with modern systems as a brand-new class rather than as a simple retrofit to systems that were over a hundred years old at that point. Technology from the Odyssey was borrowed and miniaturized to create a utility design that could tow large objects with a fraction of the size and crew of the California.
The construction and prototyping process for the Plymouth was much more fraught than for the Reliant, however. Where the Reliant design prioritized proven, effective technologies used in lower-power applications for reliability, the Plymouth needed high performance to accomplish its mission with such a small form factor. The tractor beam systems took nearly a year to work out on their own, as test models tended to tear themselves apart when trying to tow large objects in simulations. In some ways, the Plymouth is over-engineered, as it would have been easier simply to build more Parliament-class ships, but the Advanced Starship Development Bureau was committed to figuring out the kinks.
When USS Plymouth was launched in 2393, it was one of the most advanced ships in service, though she was destined for a life of bread-and-butter logistics tasks. As more of these ships were built, Starfleet streamlined the production process by having the different sections of the ship built assembly-line fashion at different yards and then attached to one another. The design was an immediate success, and they proved to be well-rounded additions to the fleet.
With the modular construction process, the SCE found that it would be relatively easy to create other variants of the Plymouth-class for other specialized roles without changing the overall mass or handling characteristics of the ship significantly. As such, the Pioneer III sub-class scout and the Chapel sub-class ambulance ship were also brought into service. As with the California's variants, the three configurations of Plymouth-class starships are considered to be the same class.
The Plymouth-class In-Play
- The Plymouth class is the 25th-century version of the canon Pioneer-class ship briefly in Star Trek: Picard. Both designs originate from Star Trek: Online.
- One of the reasons we’ve introduced this class is to provide another low-cost, entry-level platform for your storytelling that can do many of the same things a California-class starship can do, but with a ship that’s actually small. While Lower Decks sometimes blurs the line by calling it a small ship, the California-class is actually quite large. The niche the Plymouth occupies is a frontier logistics support vessel with modern equipment, but few luxuries and a small crew of just 100.
- It’s very reasonable for a lieutenant commander or commander to command a ship of this size. Though, as we’ve repeatedly seen in Star Trek, even the smallest ships often have a full captain aboard, so pick the option that works best for the plans you have for your characters.
- As with the California, there are two variants of the Plymouth, but the differences between the variants are a little sharper. For instance, the scout version is armed well enough to reasonably write combat stories, while the ambulance version would be an entirely different type of story from the utility ship.
- In terms of medical stories, you could think of the ambulance vessel concept as something like M*A*S*H: it’s there to stabilize patients for treatment at a bigger, better medical facility. Or you could squint and use it simply as a more modern version of the Olympic. It’s really meant to work in concert with true hospital ships, though.
- It’s our intention that a Plymouth-class ship is built as one of the sub-classes, and then it holds that configuration for its whole service life. If you wanted to switch configurations, it would be a multi-month process in spacedock, so keep that in mind if you’re picking this class to rotate between different variants.