So... the Connie. Officially "Starship, Class 1, Mk IX", this was the first heavy cruiser of a prolific series including the famous U.S.S. Enterprise of Captains Pike and Kirk. Connie launched in 2245 and was the lead ship of a class of twelve ships, plus two refits (one of NCC-1017 Constellation and one of NCC-1371 Republic). As we've touched on in some of the previous articles, a number of Connie's sister ships ended up not being complete new builds but were actually either rebuilds or conversions of ships slated for commissioning under contracts in the NCC-16xx series. 

 

These first Connies are the design we see in the episode "The Cage." Identification characteristics include a taller bridge module than later designs, straight pylons connecting to the warp nacelles, and probes extending from the front of the warp nacelles. The engineering hull was mostly cylindrical with only a subtle tapering near the rear shuttle bay. The front deflector dish is large and overlaps beyond the cowling of its housing.

 

 

This ship was largely designed with exploration missions in mind and was not heavily armed. Indeed, it's weapons capabilities may have been inferior to the so-called "R-class" cruisers with 13xx hull numbers. A lot of it boils down to unknown details about the laser batteries the Connies launched with. Historically, lasers - even warp-targeted lasers that are less susceptible to relativistic lag - are treated as badly obsolete by many sources. However, sources as recent as Desperate Hours and The Enterprise War indicate that U.S.S. Enterprise still had lasers well into the 2250s. My personal suspicion is that what Star Fleet Battles calls Phaser-2s on Federation ships are actually these late generation warp-targeted lasers. In that case, the Connie was probably similar in capabilities when she launched in 2245 of the final upgrade packages for the 10xx and 13xx heavy cruisers: "good enough" in 2245 but badly obsolete in the 2250s. 

 

Following the 14 Connies, the Federation built 16 ships starting with Bon Homme Richard (NCC-1712) that had improved characteristics. There are gaps in the information about when this class actually joined the fleet. Ships of the Star Fleet indicates they started commissioning in 2248, but this is based on out-of-date information about Constitution's launch. FASA Trek suggests she launched "a few years before 2259" which is more consistent with canon but suffers from the ongoing uncertainty about exact translation of reference stardates. My suspicion is that BHR launched in the general timeframe of 2253 or 2254, with refitting of Consitution hulls beginning concurrently as ships became available. Some Constitutions were fully rebuilt as BHRs, whereas others only received the BHR engines.

 

Historically, sources have portrayed the BHR as an in-between stage with characteristics of both the Connie and the later Achernar (TOS Enterprise) types. However, Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds have revealed a new configuration with swept nacelle pylons, new warp nacelles, modifications to the upper saucer, a larger impulse deck, a smaller main deflector, and a more pronounced curvature of the lower engineering hull. We don't know for certain, but I think it's probable that this is the canonical BHR configuration. We don't know if Enterprise's 2255-56 refit when she received phasers was also when she refitted to this configuration, or if she was already in the BHR configuration in Desperate Hours, but SOTSF indicates that early BHRs still had lasers instead of phasers.  

 

 

After the BHR flight, the Federation Council wholeheartedly embraced the Class 1 Starship program and ordered more than a hundred additional hulls starting with U.S.S. Truxton (NCC-1728) but as you recall from the last entry, these were held up by wrangling over the interpretation of the Council authorization of stardate 4444, and the actual first ship of this group was U.S.S. Achernar (NCC-1732). Only 13 ships of this type were actually built, but a number of earlier ships were either fully refitted to this configuration or were refitted with its engines. These ships started joining the fleet in 2263 or "several years before 2270" depending on which source you go by, so those are roughly in agreement and we can probably accept the date from SOTSF. 

 

This is the Connie we see in the "real" episodes of TOS. The cutouts on the upper hull have been filled back in and the impulse engines sunk back into the rear saucer. The bridge module has shrunk again, and the straight pylons are back. The warp engines are slightly more streamlined than the BHR version, no longer featuring the baffle plates on the side of the bussard collectors and with much of the illumination sides of the engines and the rear radiator loops muted. The deflector dish has been redesigned again, and it's in-between the size of the Connie and BHR versions.

 

In terms of defense systems, the Achernar probably more or less corresponds to the Star Fleet Battles CA, with its six dual phaser banks top and bottom, plus four photon torpedo tubes. Some ships had a pair of rear-firing, independently targetable phasers above the shuttle bay, and some had additional command and control equipment as well as additional point defense (these modifications also appear on some of the older designs). Finally (albeit almost a decade too late) the Federation actually had a cruiser that was a match for the Klingon Empire's Klolode, K'tagga, and K'tinga class "destroyers" (read: battlecruisers). 

 

 

Following the Achernar subclass, Starfleet carried out two parallel construction efforts in the . On one hand, they agressively refitted a number of earlier ships with new systems while on the other hand building more ships in an improved configuration. Many of the existing ships were updated in two rounds of refits. The first (Enterprise refit) is the refit we saw in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and included linear warp drive, returned to the swept pylons, and carried out a number of upgrades on the hull, including sinking the deflector dish into its housing, moving the torpedo banks to the "neck" of the ship, and rearranging the internal power systems.

 

A number of other ships received the Constitution (II) refit, which was generally comparable to the Enterprise refit, but had some different systems selected for installation. Note the different profile and visible cowling on the neck torpedo system, which is one of the visual points of identification for a Constitution (II). The timing of these refits is debatable. Canonically, Enterprise returned for refit in 2270. SOTSF imagines the refits starting in 2266, but this is probably an error based on the assumption that a second five-year mission did not occur under Kirk prior to the refit; however, many other sources explore such an event and if we're integrating sources it's safe to assume it existed. FASA Trek posits these ships entering service several years before 2276, and while 6 years is a bit of a stretch the canonical date kind of forces us to accept that. If we don't fiddle with the Constitution (II) timing from SOTSF, then we have both refits happening more or less simultaneously.

 

 

To complement these ships, the Federation continued building new cruisers in the Endeavor configuration as well as refitting existing ships into this configuration. The Endeavor was probably comparable in gross performance to the other refits, but had a different engine system that made them visually distinct. All three of these ship types probably generally correspond to the CA+ (or CC+ for ships with the command cruiser package) from Star Fleet Battles in terms of general performance. FASA Trek imagines additional new construction of Enterprise ships in two different improved configurations starting some time before 2278 and 2280 respectively, which may correspond with the Star Fleet Battles Auxilliary Warp Reactor refits that were implemented between 2276 and 2279. FASA Trek doesn't differentiate between these three hull forms in its Enterprise class data block, so we're left to guess at the configuration of the higher-numbered Enterprise hulls (and indeed, some may be other types). 

 

 

Starting in 2280, a number of Achernar and Endeavor type ships were refitted to a new configuration based on the modifications made to U.S.S. Gettysburg, the so-called heavy command cruiser (CB). Some new hulls were also built in this configuration. We don't have a reliable picture of what this ship looks like because of legal restrictions on how the SFB publishers can portray the ships in their products, but it's probably safe to assume it looks more like the Endeavor than the Enterprise/Connie (II) refits in line with SFB's requirement to use TOS style art. Some of the higher-numbered 1700 hulls that appear on the FASA list correspond with an even heavier configuration characterized as a heavy battlecruiser (BCH).

 

However, there's some question if the BCH hulls were actually built as Connie type spaceframes. On one hand, Star Trek: Star Fleet Command II portrays these ships as Excelsior type hulls. On the other hand, Excelsior is characterized in other sources as a Space Control Ship, which is one size category larger than a BCH (the BCH SCS equivalent is a smaller Battle Control Ship or BCS). Especially because of the overlap with the Enterprise II class, I'm inclined to put the BCH in the Connie spaceframe category, though probably visually resembling the Enterprise II. 

 

And about the Enterprise II, that's the NCC-1701-A type ship we see in Star Trek 4-6. These ships looked similar to the Enterprise refit but had substantially improve capabilities. Canonically, Enterprise A launched in 2286, though thanks to procurement runaround and scope creep she was likely under construction for a long time. Records are fragmentary, but it appears the original plan was to build her as a Battle Control Ship, but instead she was finished as an Advanced Heavy Cruiser (CX). FASA Trek imagines the launch significantly earlier - some time before 2281 - but this may be the result of incorrect assumptions about the amount of time between the various movies. Star Fleet Battles pegs the first CX conversion (a refit of Vincennes from CB to CX configuration) as completed in 2284, which is generally consistent with the 1701-A launch date.

 

 

 

The CX is basically the high water mark for Connie spaceframes. SOTSF describes a less-capable Tikopai class intended to bulk out the number of ships available for space exploration, but these ships would have already been obsolete when they launched. As the Excelsior design matured and the Constellation started to enter production, the curtain was clearly falling on the Connie, though her general warp dynamics would live on in the Excelsior, Ambassador, and Galaxy classes well into the future. We know that at least one CX participated in Operation Unity circa 2298, and we see the remains of a ship of the general size and shape of a Connie at Wolf 359, but I think we can broadly say the design had about a 55 year run as a true first rate ship.

 

And there you have it... the life cycle and evolution of the Connie from 2245 to 2298. Hopefully this will give a good frame of reference for appreciating the different iterations and permutations of the design over time!

Hancock was an Achernar type heavy cruiser commissioned in 2265. She was originally authorized as Rigil Kentaurus but evidently As we touched on above, this means she was in the configuration we see in Star Trek: The Original Series, with straight pylons and relatively slender warp nacelles compared to the BHR. We don't know much about her other than the broad strokes of her maintenance history. Some time before 2278, she was refitted to either Enterprise refit, Constitution II, or Endeavor class specifications. Some time after 2280 - probably after completing a five year mission - she was refitted to the CB specifications similar to U.S.S. Gettysburg. FASA Trek indicates that she was destroyed some time before 2280, but this may suffer from the same time distortion regarding the amount of time between Star Trek TMP and Star Trek 4 (i.e., whether or not the refitted Enterprise had another five year mission before conversion to a training ship), so her loss may have actually occurred in the first half of the 2280s. 

 

However, there's an alternate interpretation. In Star Fleet Battles, 1735 isn't Hancock, she's U.S.S. Tannenberg. So it's possible that FASA is right and Hancock was lost in the late 2270s, then was replaced in the early 2280s by a new CB authorized under the same contract. If this is the case, then there's no conflict between the sources. She was authorized as Rigil K, finished as Hancock (we can ignore SOTSF listing her as Rigil K because of its sourcing; it doesn't take into account the data coming from FASA sources), was upgraded and then lost in action, and then got replaced with the CB Tannenberg. Perhaps the Achernar construction contracts included replacement clauses in them to avoid the whole mess of the 4444 appropriation playing out again.

 

We don't have any history on Tannenberg, so her fate is an open question. Perhaps someday we'll get an article in Captain's Log or some other source that teaches us more.