CENTAUR CLASS FRIGATE

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Gordon Murphy
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CENTAUR CLASS FRIGATE Starfleet s replacement for the Okinawa class and a compliment to the large number of Miranda and Kearsarge II class ships in service, the Centaur was fielded over a 17 year

1 CENTAUR CLASS FRIGATE Starfleet s replacement for the Okinawa class and a compliment to the large number of Miranda and Kearsarge II class ships in service, the Centaur was fielded over a 17 year period from 2325 to approximately 2352 and still serves in a limited capacity today. Starfleet s shipbuilding doctrine during these early years of the 24 th century was centered chiefly around larger cruisers such as Renaissance (CA 9778), Ambassador (CH 10521) and Korolev (CH 41050). Unconventional designs of smaller size (Sabre, Steamrunner, Norway) which began to enter service saw widely varying degrees of success while various technological and engineering problems made wide-scale deployment of other designs (Freedom, Cheyenne) difficult. Centaur however, had none of the quirks, nor any of the problems of the aforementioned classes, designers and engineers striving for simplicity and functionality. Based on the Excelsior (CH 2000) class, the Centaur s design was made of up three parts: the primary hull (saucer), a basic warp nacelle assembly, using Excelsior s FTWA-1 warp nacelles and the weapons pod. The weapons pod, taken from the Miranda class and featuring 4 standard torpedo launchers, was mounted on the underside of the saucer and actually served as the mounting point for the nacelle pylons as well. The saucer itself was also heavily modified to contain the necessary engineering and support facilities. Centaur class ships were utilized heavily during the Federation-Cardassian War, outgunning and outmaneuvering Hideki class corvettes while being able to successfully engage and defeat larger Galor class destroyers one-on-one. This, despite the relatively poor standard of shipboard accommodations, helped the class gain a reliable, rugged reputation. Alongside her larger Excelsior class progenitors, the Centaurs received regular upgrades and refits well into the early 2370 s. During the Dominion War, these ships once again played a pivotal role acting as fleet pickets alongside smaller classes like Miranda and paid a heavy price. Not only were they faced the Cardassians once more, but also the Dominion whose attack ships, though only slightly more maneuverable, outgunned their Starfleet counterparts by a significant margin. Surviving vessels were retired en masse in 2378, being succeeded in service by the Defiant (DD 74205) and Norway (DD 64900) classes. A strong armament, comparable to Miranda, combined with outstanding maneuverability and a relatively high nominal cruise speed for the time (Warp 7), gave the class a tremendous value proposition and would go on to directly contribute to the high production run.

Class Classification Service Number Active Length Beam Height Decks Centaur Frigate 2325-78 0 210m 127m 33m 8 Mass Compliment 479,527 metric tons 175 Armament

2 Class Classification Service Number Active Length Beam Height Decks Centaur Frigate m 127m 33m 8 Mass Compliment 479,527 metric tons 175 Armament Defense Systems 9 Type VIII Phaser Banks 4 Standard Torpedo Launchers Standard Deflector Shield System total capacity 892,800 TerraJoules Standard Duranium Single Hull

5 Editor s Annotations A canon Lost Era design, first seen in DS9 s A Time To Stand infamous as the starship doggedly pursuing Sisko s captured Dominion Attack Ship the text for the Centaur comes from my first draft, written way back when long before I found my expository voice so to speak. As an Excelsior class spinoff not seen or referenced in any TMP work, I ve positioned it as a solid Lost Era ship to compliment the Miranda (the fact that the Miranda features so prominently in DS9 though would seem to erase any notion of the Centaur being its replacement) and relegated it to the standard post-war fate of so many other ship classes (formal retirement). Astute readers will notice the dimensions differ from those reported on/in other canon works. The actual length of the vessel 210m as noted by the designer, Adam Buckner, and reported on at Ex Astris Scientia (see this article) differs a good deal from other sources. What I did to achieve my dimensions is take the incorrect length figure of 382m (rounded) reported at Daystrom Institute Technical Library, divided that by the correct length of 210m which yielded a figure of From there, I divided the other incorrect dimensions (Beam, Height, Displacement) by that figure and then simply rounded them up or down to the nearest whole number. I also did this with the crew compliment as well.

6 Bibliography Logo Kristian Reverend Trigwell Star Trek Minutiae) Design Adam Buckner Schematic/Profile Views Bernd Schneider (Ex-Astris-Scientia) Blueprints Starship Schematic Database

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