Yorktown Class
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The Yorktown-class heavy explorer is an advanced super-capital starship designed to serve as a multi-mission flagship. An evolution of the Odyssey-class, the Yorktown has enhanced tactical, propulsion, and command-and-control systems that make it ideal for rapid response missions and for leading fleets, though at the expense of some of the Odyssey's auxiliary craft, engineering support, and humanitarian facilities. In addition, the Yorktown fully realizes having two independent, warp-capable hulls, allowing for routine separated flight mode and an advanced version of Multi-Vector Assault Mode. Unusually, the Yorktown-class does not actually include the USS Yorktown—the name was reassigned during construction to another vessel, while the class name was kept.
Science and Exploration
Yorktown-class explorers are intended for independent deep space operations and carry full scientific departments. As with other large explorers, they can embark large numbers of visiting science teams performing long-duration experiments and studies that are entirely independent from the ship’s primary mission. To support these operations in addition to the ship’s own science department, the Yorktown has twenty percent greater internal volume reserved for labs and scientific hardware compared to the Odyssey, at the expense of secondary hangers and cargo storage facilities.
The ship’s other scientific systems are iterative improvements from the original Odyssey-class design developed over the decades and already implemented in the youngest members of that class: isolinear-bioneural hybrid computer cores, the full spectrum of modular sensor pallets, and the capability to deploy a wide range of probes. One feature omitted on the Yorktown is the capability to make and launch large probes with dedicated hatches—these must instead launch from the shuttle bay.
Diplomacy
Yorktown-class starships are effective diplomatic platforms and are intended, like the Odyssey, to be an expression of the Federation’s advancement. As with the Odyssey, they have extensive onboard facilities for hosting conferences and negotiations of all sizes. Many of these spaces double as crew recreation facilities, and the goal is to impress visitors with a concert hall, theaters, a large arboretum, conference rooms, and banqueting spaces. Guest quarters are also impressive, with sufficient space available for multiple delegations to each have equivalent accommodations for their principals and support staff. These quarters can easily be configured with various combinations of rooms and in any M, L, K, O, or P-class environment within a few hours. As with other modern starships, they use advanced holography and replication systems to further customize the decor and acoutrements to suit the needs of their guests.
Communications systems aboard the Yorktown are equivalent to those on the Odyssey, which makes these ships mobile nodes of the Subspace Relay Network and lets them stay in touch with Starfleet Command. This system also includes the most sophisticated universal translation system available, which makes the Yorktown an ideal first-contact platform.
Engineering
As with the Odyssey, Yorktown-class starships are among the most complex space vehicles ever built by the Federation, as they are two warp-capable starships that must be able to operate integrated as one vessel or separated—before one even thinks of the escort-type starship also carried aboard these ships. Compared to the Odyssey, the primary hull’s warp capabilities are much more evident in the visible warp coils tucked under the hull and behind the impulse engines. This horse-shoe shaped arrangement allows the saucer to generate a stable warp field without warp nacelles. In integrated flight mode, the saucer’s warp coils replace the warp field governors found aboard the Odyssey to help the ship maintain its warp field with greater efficiency. When separated, they propel the saucer at speeds of up to warp 9. The saucer’s endurance at top speed is limited to two weeks at most before it would need to be refueled.
While automation has been further enhanced from the stock Odyssey design, these complex vessels still require large engineering departments to keep functional—main and saucer engineering must be staffed at all times.
Finally, the saucer section was also designed with planetary landing capabilities—two triangular landing pads are featured prominently on the underside of the saucer section with a third leg concealed by the secondary hull. While primarily intended to be used in an emergency, this feature does provide Yorktown-class captains with exploratory and tactical options not available to other large explorers.
Tactical
Yorktown-class starships are built with the realities of the 25th century fully in mind and are equipped both to defend themselves and protect the Federation’s interests. With type-XIV phaser arrays positioned for comprehensive coverage, this design does omit the small phaser turrets found aboard the Odyssey, as a better understanding of the design’s blind spots has emerged. The forward-firing pulse phasers in the primary hull were retained and upgraded to two dual mounts.
Torpedo coverage has been upgraded from the Odyssey to a total of six main torpedo launchers: two forward and aft in the secondary hull, and two forward in the saucer section. In addition, secondary torpedo coverage is provided by a cluster of three single-fire photon torpedo launchers under the secondary deflector for the stardrive section, and a microtorpedo turret above the shuttle bay on the saucer section.
As with the Odyssey, Yorktown-class vessels are equipped with metaphasic shielding, though the hull itself is unarmored.
Kilo for kilo, Yorktown-class starships are tactically superior to Odyssey-class ships in terms of armaments, but they generally do not embark fighters and have fewer runabouts, which puts them at a disadvantage against smaller targets. Because of this, Yorktown-class captains must keep their enemies at range and avoid knife-fight engagements. Where the Yorktown excels tactically is in taking on targets of its own size, as its multi-vector assault mode capabilities make it able to outmanoeuvre other large starships with three independent, warp-capable and torpedo-armed sections.
Auxiliary Craft
Compared to the Odyssey, Yorktown-class ships have approximately two-thirds of the total small craft capabilities as their progenitor design: a single large shuttle bay in the saucer section that is separated into three sections that can be opened or closed independently. In addition, Yorktown-class ships have a docking cradle that can support a single Aquarius or Eagle-class embarked escort. For vessels not equipped with an escort, a module can be inserted into the docking cradle that serves as a second shuttle bay, allowing for a further 6 shuttles and 2 runabouts to be carried.
The embarked escort can be used in a number of ways: some captains keep them on stand-by at all times to defend the mothership, while others send them on away missions. Both models are capable of planetfall are useful as expeditionary bases, though this is at the cost of having them ready for unexpected tactical situations.
Shipboard Life
Yorktown-class starships are designed to carry a standard complement of 3,000 in considerable luxury on long-duration missions. In many ways, a city in space (though not perhaps the "starbase in space" that an Odyssey is), the crew are provided with a variety of practical and holographic recreational facilities. In addition to the diplomatic spaces mentioned above, the ship’s promenade in the center of the primary hull has restaurants, cafes, and replimats staffed by holograms or flesh-and-blood attendants. There is a large pool, zero-g exercise areas, and several comprehensive gymnasia and sports courts. All crew members have a private room, though enlisted crew members typically share a bathroom and living area with others. Junior officers have apartment-style quarters that increase in size with rank, and senior officers have large quarters with two levels on some starships.
Medical capabilities for the Yorktown are reduced compared to the Odyssey, with a focus on crew health and occasional responses to medical emergencies, rather than the hospital-scale facilities found on the Odyssey. These facilities include two standard sickbay complexes in the saucer, which serve as the primary and overflow ICU, and a third identical complex in the secondary hull. Trauma kits and field hospitals are kept in storage to create temporary planet-side hospitals or to convert available cargo space for onboard treatment. These capabilities are roughly comparable to the Galaxy-class or Andromeda-class explorers.
While similar in many respects to the Odyssey, life aboard the Yorktown has a slightly different character: while Odyssey-class starships routinely resupply other starships and provide them with shore leave facilities, Yorktown-class ships aren't intended to directly support fleets in this way. They often have flag officers embarked, but they aren't the home base for their flotillas the way the Odyssey must be because of their differing assignments: Yorktown-class ships are seen either at the heart of a squadron or flotilla or they are sent into deep space on their own, while Odyssey-class ships are used to support ships that are far away from starbases.
Yorktown-class History
When the first Odyssey-class starships, Enterprise and Odyssey, entered service in the early 2380s, they were half a decade ahead of schedule. Rushed out of the yard partially complete to serve in the Romulan Evacuation Mission, neither unit was fully complete to her design specifications until well into 2388. At that point, Starfleet was satisfied with the overall integrity of the design and full-scale production of the Odyssey class began for use as a large capital ship and flagship around Federation space.
Once Starfleet began to move back towards long-range exploratory missions starting in 2399, the Odyssey-class design was seen as something of a double-edged sword: while it could quite easily lead a flotilla of smaller ships on extended missions, the scale of its small craft facilities, industrial replicators, and crew support features made that same design overkill for missions where starbase support was readily available or for deep space missions without a supporting squadron. While this was remedied by the under-construction Constitution III-class, the Utopia school of starship design still had considerable influence at Starfleet Command in the minds of admirals who had cut their teeth on the Galaxy class and other more-is-more designs. In Command’s view, there is a place in Starfleet for super-capital ships as well as leaner explorers.
Thus, Starfleet Command ordered a review of the design to create a successor class that would incorporate most of the same systems but be tailored towards its own endurance rather than directly supporting other vessels.
The resulting Yorktown-class design finished final review in 2401: besides losing the shuttle bay in the secondary hull for extended consumables storage, the other principal difference between the two classes was a radically redesigned saucer section with a much more powerful warp drive that would make the primary hull fully capable of returning to Federation space on its own, should the need arise. As a future-proofing method, the connection points between the primary and secondary hulls were made identical between the Yorktown and Odyssey-class vessels, allowing for existing Odyssey-class ships to be refit in two separate pieces, or for older Odyssey-class hull sections to be repurposed.
The Yorktown was built with Fleet Formation Mode in mind, and her two main hulls plus the new Eagle-class embarked escort could be controlled by the main computer in true Multi-Vector Assault Mode. The Yorktown herself was still under construction during Frontier Day 2401 and remained in dock for another two years after that so that FFM could be removed and the MVAM capabilities redesigned to eliminate the possibility of hijacking.
By 2403, the name Yorktown had already been reassigned to a new Constitution III-class explorer, and so the Yorktown class is to date one of the only Federation starship classes other than the California to be named after the first vessel. Ex-Yorktown became the USS Excelsior instead. At least for the next five years, Odyssey-class starships will continue in production in parallel with the Yorktown, due to their differing roles.
The Yorktown-class In-Play
- The Yorktown-class was first introduced in Star Trek: Online as a more modern version of the Odyssey. Ironically, the model of the Odyssey that was seen in Star Trek: Picard was based on the Yorktown design with some details added and some omitted. We explain the difference between the two ships as the Odyssey having more of its own small craft and medical facilities in order to support other vessels, while the Yorktown leaves those out to focus on systems that would make it better as an independent explorer or as a fleet flagship. They are complementary designs.
- The Yorktown is an all-rounder that lets you bring almost all of a ship's possible features together in one package—overkill in many situations, so the stories you will tell on them often can't rely on external danger as the motivating force for your crew.
- These ships are brand-new and highly prestigious appointments.
- There would be significant overlap in design between the newest Odyssey-class ships and the Yorktown in terms of internal systems; crews familiar with one design could easily adapt to the other.
Lexington Sub-Class
The Lexington-class heavy explorer is a tactically-oriented variant of the Yorktown class that incorporates some elements of the Dreadnought-class heavy explorer: notably the type-XV phaser cannon. Rather than a third nacelle, the Lexington has a centrally mounted mission pod that connects to the secondary hull via two pylons. These pylons each contain a hangar suitable for launching a wing of fighters. The standard pod for this class is a heavy tactical pod that contains six burst-fire torpedo launchers and its own warp and impulse systems. During MVAM, the pod detaches, adding a fourth element to the Lexington’s tactical capabilities.
This variant was ordered after the Dreadnought-class proved to be successful in its return to service and improved upon that design significantly. Primarily, this is because all of the additional tactical systems are part of the secondary hull, so when the saucer is separated, they all continue to function normally, unlike on the Dreadnought which loses its primary tactical advantage in separated flight mode. The saucer of the Lexington is identical to that of the Yorktown.
Lexington-class starships are built with the Federation's biggest threats in mind: the Borg, the Voth, and the Dominion. While built in small numbers, they will also serve as a reminder to other races in local space that the Federation is capable of building extremely powerful weapons.
The Lexington-class In-Play
- This is the dreadnought version of the Yorktown with the tactical systems necessary to take down large targets, either with a supporting flotilla or on its own. Other than its tactical systems, it's identical to the Yorktown.
- The pod system could also be used to host the same pods that other classes use, but only the default one can detach and join the ship as an independent combatant.