Typhon class
The Typhon-class carrier is a Dominion War-era combat support platform that serves as a mobile outpost for starfighters and runabouts for humanitarian, exploratory, and tactical applications. More than any other starship, the Typhon defies neat classification, as there has never been another similar design before or after. Sometimes classified as a mobile base, this relatively small starship carries two wings of fighters and is generally meant to serve as a command and control hub for an area of space beyond the normal range of a starbase, operating in support of other small starships.
After being taken out of service for more than a decade, the Typhon class was brought back into service in 2402 alongside other Dominion War-era classes including the Dreadnought and Achilles to help shore up the fleet after the series of crises suffered the prior year.
Science and Exploration
While not intended for direct exploration per se, the Typhon class has a full science department aboard to analyze anomalies in the field and to support reconnaissance operations. Thus, there is a limited contingent of general science labs aboard. Compared to other small starships, the Typhon has a full complement of probes designed to support its operations in fringe regions of space, with a large number of advanced sensor probes that can linger in systems for years at a time. This allows her to serve as a base for a group of runabouts or even surveyor starships. The Typhon’s greatest strength is its ability to secure areas of space for future exploration, rather than performing exploratory duties herself.
Diplomatic
The Typhon class’s diplomatic capabilities are essentially non-existent, as the majority of the ship’s compact hull is packed with quarters for its pilots, engineering systems, and the hanger bays themselves. However, given their capability to serve as a remote forward outpost, these vessels serve as a link back to Starfleet Command and so can be used as an effective conduit for other starship captains to consult with headquarters during negotiations and first contact scenarios.
Engineering
The design of the Typhon class has much more in common with bulk freighters than mainline Starfleet vessels, dispensing entirely with the traditional primary-secondary hull arrangement. The entire vessel is a roughly-rectangular, boxy monohull, which flares out amidships and narrows at the bow. The majority of the ship’s surface is covered in a substantial layer of ablative armor, though there is a lateral band of windows, sensor arrays, and defensive systems running around the hull.
This unusual hull geometry and a design brief that called for a minimized target profile requires four warp nacelles, mounted in pairs on either side of the ship’s aft section, where they are concealed from the front by the ship’s hull. The warp field is a unique four-lobed configuration that overcomes some of the inefficiencies inherent to the design, but limits the ship’s overall top sustainable speed to warp eight, with an absolute maximum sprinting speed just shy of warp 9. This necessitated the inclusion of a series of docking latches on the dorsal surface which allows the Typhon to dock with large explorers to be transported to their deployments at higher speeds. Two large impulse engines give the carrier very respectable sub-light speeds.
Typhon class starships can dock with and be transported through warp by any explorer or heavy explorer, typically at a cost of around 20% of the host vessel's top speed. They typically attach to the keel of the host vessel. With a Dreadnought-class vessel, they instead attach beneath the forward phaser cannon, and in this configuration, the host ship does not experience a top speed limitation.
Tactical
The Typhon class is equipped with 22 pulse phaser cannon turrets, spread all around the ship, which provides comprehensive defensive coverage, in addition to four ventral and four dorsal phaser arrays. The individual turrets can be trained very effectively against small craft because of their faster firing time. The ship is also equipped with two forward and two aft torpedo launchers, though its magazines are more limited than other vessels because of interior space limitations.
The Typhon is most effective in combat when being supported by its fighter group, and the two units work together in symbiosis to protect one another during engagements with other small craft. Critically, though, the Typhon is not meant to take down other capital ships, as it is difficult for it to bring enough firepower to bear on a single target to significantly weaken large vessels’ shields. Instead, it is typically accompanied by other starships, or it must employ bombers. The ship’s heavy ablative armor and monohull design, however, makes it a tough nut to crack for all but the most determined attackers, so it can simply absorb fire until it has worn down the enemy or recovered its fighters so that it can retreat.
When at warp, the ships exterior hull contracts to cover the band of windows on the levels with the launch tubes, and the lower hangers slide up into the ship. This feature can also be used in combat situations when the Typhon comes under heavy attack, but it also prevents the ship from launching or recovering any more fighters.
Embarked Craft
The vast majority of the Typhon's interior volume is dedicated to carrying small craft and the primary function of this class is to carry runabouts, shuttles, or fighters into the field. This loadout depends on the mission profile the ship is tasked with. A Typhon accompanying a group of medical vessels to help in a planetary emergency might have dozens of personnel shuttles used to transport patients between the planet's surface and the ships in orbit. For a charting mission of an outlying cluster of star systems, she might have a selection of runabouts and scout craft.
In practice, Typhon-class vessels are used most often for defensive missions, ranging from accompanying a tactical group into an engagement to serving as a patrol hub in an area of space not yet safe enough to build an outpost. The standard combat loadout of a Typhon is four squadrons of 12 Valkyrie-class fighters equipped as fighter-bombers organized into a starfighter wing. The total number of small craft can be customized for each mission. For missions where both defensive and logistics needs are possible, a Typhon could embark just a single group of 24 Valkyries with a half-dozen runabouts, for example. The Typhon can launch all of its fighters in rapid succession by using the 16 launch bays found two groups of four on the port and starboard sides of the ship. When the mission is complete, fighters return through six bays—two forward and four aft—in a protrusion beneath the main hull. Shuttles can also use the lateral launch bays, while runabouts must use the lower bays for both launch and recovery.
The lower bays retract into the body of the ship when it is at warp or in heavy combat situations. When fully retracted, they are flush with the massive interior hanger of the Typhon, which is equipped to repair, refuel, and house the entire small craft complement. Craft can also be transferred from the lower bays to the internal hanger through vertical transfer shafts.
Shipboard Life
Life aboard a Typhon-class carrier is quite different than aboard any other Federation ship, both in terms of the day-to-day routine and the ship’s command and control arrangement. While a standard bridge is used to control the ship itself, there is a second flight control center located above the bow which coordinates the movement of the ship’s fighters and other small craft.
Given how stressful piloting small spacecraft can be, the accommodations aboard the Typhon are comfortable. Pilots and other flight crew all have their own quarters, with generous lounges, gymnasia, and an arboretum available for rest and relaxation. The ship also has eight holodecks. A further four holosuites are reserved for pilot training exercises. Medical facilities are top-notch and significantly larger than other medium-sized ships. These crew support facilities both ensure that the Typhon’s crew is well taken care of, but also allow it to serve as a forward operating base for small starships like the Defiant and Saber-class, so that their crews can relax and recuperate between missions.
By the beginning of the 25th century, the Typhon is a somewhat dated design, having spent a decade and a half in mothballs until being reactivated. For officers who imagine themselves to be wartime pilots, there's likely no more exciting an assignment. For others, this could be seen as a strange relic of a time long past.
Class History
Developed after the disastrous encounter between the USS Odyssey and the Jem’Hadar, the Typhon was originally envisioned as a combat starship that would completely eliminate the structural vulnerabilities common to Federation starships, namely the connections between various hull components, such as the interconnecting dorsal and nacelle pylons. Based off of design elements more common to bulk freighters than to Starfleet vessels, the original space frame design was boxy and angular, studded with phaser arrays and left with open space to accommodate new weapons designs. It would be slow and ungainly, so it would be delivered into battle by other starships. However, early on in the design process, Starfleet managed to solve the problem that made the Dominion’s polaron weapons so effective against Federation shields, and so the need for an armored starship became less pressing. Indeed, the new Sovereign-class starships coming online in the early 2370s were markedly superior in terms of armament.
Instead of an assault vessel, the Typhon was redesigned to repurpose the space that the designers had left over for experimental weapons into large hangar bays, to deploy two squadrons of experimental Valkyrie-class fighters, when it was seen that existing starship designs were ill-equipped to deploy and support starfighters with standard shuttle bays. The design was further altered to add command and control systems, as well as scientific and medical facilities that would allow it to serve as a mobile outpost in support of Starfleet’s smallest vessels, many of which were not being built up to full spec anyway during the run-up of production for the war.
The USS Typhon was launched in early 2375, just in time to participate in some of the most crucial battles of the war, but by the time her sister ship, Prophyrion, left the yards, the Treaty of Bajor had been signed and the war was over. There were orders for an additional four units that were completed, as Starfleet was wary of how lasting the peace would be, but the majority of these vessels were held in reserve at shipyards rather than deployed on active service. The Typhon herself acquitted herself very well in combat situations, but her low top speed and lack of versatility meant that she was relegated to frontier areas that needed both her fighters and her fleet support capabilities.
During the 2380s, the Typhon-class carriers were deployed to protect refugee ships during the evacuation of Romulus, as well as to support the vast fleets of runabouts and shuttles that were in use for those missions. One vessel, the Theodamos, was destroyed during the attack on Mars in 2385. Following the destruction of Romulus, they were switched to a defensive posture along the Romulan border to ensure that the chaos roiling in their space did not spill over into the Federation. The class was shelved in favor of more versatile designs by 2390s, though the remaining units were kept in mothballs.
Beginning in 2401, Starfleet began to reactivate several Dominion War-era classes, including the Typhon, due to an extreme need for ships, and the reality that the galaxy was once again a dangerous place. Thanks to being well-maintained while in reserve status, it was simple enough to reactivate the Typhon, and they were brought back into service by 2402. While minor systems upgrades were made, it was decided to leave the ship's weapons systems in their original configuration, as the focus of this ship was always launching and recovering small craft.
The Typhon Class in Play
- The Typhon class is an unusual design and it’s an extremely rare sight. You’re not often going to see them in the core of the Federation, as the ones that are in service are in frontier areas, and the rest are laid up in shipyards.
- This class has a very different feel than other starships; it’s much more like serving on a starbase or an outpost than an explorer, though they are comfortable ships.
- The top speed of this ship is limited, so it must be transported to its operational zone by an explorer. If you don't have an explorer of your own, this is a great opportunity to write with another member!
- The ship itself is unlikely to be doing any knife-fight range combat of its own, as that’s what its fighters are for. Typhon captains must resist allowing the carrier itself to get caught up in the fray, and instead stay out of the battle and support their fighters with torpedo salvos. The phaser cannons are for point-defense purposes.
- It would be unusual for a captain of a vessel like this not to have experience with fighters, either as a pilot themselves or in some other capacity.
- Like other Dominion War-era designs, this is a relic, but it's still useful in the field. You can balance stories where the ship's outdated technology has advantages or limitations for your characters.