Pegasus Fleet Forums

It was previously brought up that the ship classes currently available are unsatisfactory when it comes to the available explorers. There was a lot of discussion about the Ascension class when it was proposed.

I'd like to start a new discussion. You guys told me that you wanted to see a good explorer. Now tell me what that explorer needs to have or be able to do. If you were to design a science vessel, how would you do it? Let's brainstorm abd discuss. Comments gathered here will help us plan for the next explorer type starship.

I know nothing of Starship Specifications. lol Ask me about hand phasers, antigrav boots, shock grenades, cloaking devices, and I tell you everything about it. Starship Specs? Forget it.

I'd say something medium-sized - say 150-300 crew, maybe pushing to 400 or so. Too small, and it is limited in what it can do, and too large and it just becomes a cruiser of the ship-of-the-line ilk. It would also need a lot of recreational areas - deep space explorers still need to be entertained afterall, and there aren't going to be many shady bars out in the unknown.

Inside I think to go along with that it would need to be designed for functionality, but with comfort in mind as well. Voyager's bridge was a good example of that I think, where the command chairs were almost like a bench that they could lounge about in, whereas on the enterprise it was like a throne set on a pedestal in the middle of the bridge - the whole mentality changes when you sit in something like that.

Speed-wise, I'd say it shouldn't have a default speed of "OMG DID YOU SEE THAT? NO I BLINKED!", since pure speed would take too much power from other areas, but I would say it would need to have a pretty decent maximum speed - it needs to be able to get out to deep space afterall, rather than spending its entire five year mission on the way there and back. It should also have at least one decent long-distance shuttle/runabout, to be able to go off on its own missions for up to a week at a time, to increase the exploring range.

Other than that, I'd say everything else would be pretty much well-balanced. Obviously sensors and labs would be a big thing, but it would need decent defences to be able to protect itself away from any backup.

Those are my thoughts at least. Oh, and it should look pretty

I'd agree with Williams on that front. When I was looking for a new ship, I was specifically looking for something smaller with a longer resupply time. Without doing the necessary research (it is a forum after all), I believe that the Ascension is that utterly gigantic thing and I think that, while it's really cool and has its place, it doesn't fall under the 'explorer' category for me.

I would actually say that the Intrepid class would be a good example of an explorer but it does lack the required time between resupply that an explorer really needs. I think if you had something along the lines of the Intrepid with a relatively small crew and plenty of space for supplies etc. then that would probably tick most of the necessary boxes.

I'm just bumping this to see if we can get the discussion going.

Okay, here's my two-cents: I think that what we need is something that would be akin to the Miranda class in terms of explorers; mass-producible, field-capable and when push comes to shove: kick some back-side.

In essence, what we need something light that's unique enough to draw in players like the Steamrunner, or Diligent Classes, capable of holding their own like the aforementioned Intrepid Class, and also be capable of the longer resupply periods of the larger vessels of the fleet. We could either do this by bringing in some of the lesser known classes such as the Aegean, or create our own, unique class of starship to fill in this role. Perhaps even a little of both.

Honestly, I've always found the Ronin class to fit this sort of bill for me; it is visually pleasing to the eye, similar to some of the most popular ships in canon trek, adequately sized to be an explorer as well as a research vessel, and can easily be justified to be capable of dishing out damage if necessary.

For reference;
(Not a great image of it, but I know there are great meshes out there and I've seen some amazing renders of the ship in the past.)


The ship's design is modern enough that you can kit it out with solid tech, while maintaining that it is basically "stock" - it has what most Starships of this era have. Design-wise it is very aesthetically pleasing to look at, with all the right lines and shapes, and like the aforementioned Miranda Class, as well as the Nebula Class, it has that pod on the top of it that can be changed to suit different functions (I believe the piece is called a superstructure) making the ship really versatile.

Plus, did I mention the design is pretty damn awesome?

The only thing about that is that we already have the Ronin class in a cruiser role. I'm fine with creating a class, but I'm not good at meshes. I don't know what we can do for images. We can look into some more obscure classes though and adapt them as explorers though.

Is it worth considering altering the defined role of the Ronin? At the moment there aren't any CO'd Ronin classes so there wouldn't be any concerns about Grandfathering any sims in which can create issues. To my mind the Ronin is an approximate size and crew complement to what I was thinking and in terms of the sheer admin of the thing, it could easily be adapted to be, like Stern said, a kind of modern Miranda class.

Is it something that could be considered or would it have to be a completely new class?

I don't have a problem with that if we don't have any Ronin's currently CO'd. I wasn't sure what classes we had open. It sounds like there is some interest in the Ronin as an explorer.