USS Farrington: 1st Pass WIP 2

Although my pet starship design project, an attempt to re-imagine April Welles' kitbashed Excelsior-class model "U.S.S. Farrington (NX-2010) " to make it better fit my Star Trek fan multiverse concept, is still far from over, I was able to find time to make a few improvements to this initial stage of the design over the last week and a half.

First of all, I have cleaned up, erased, retraced, and redefined some of the lines, panels, and detailing of the original portside elevation view of the prototype Federation battlecruiser. Second, I've finally gone ahead and done a forward view of the starship, something that I just completed today, about 8 hours ago.

It's not perfect; I feel particularly dissatisfied with the way that her giant, round warp nacelle fairings turned out. However, I have almost never drawn front views of starship designs before - even when I was turning out a massive amount of designs back in high school - so this is a first for me.

I've since dug up a large number of line art pieces and starship blueprints for the Excelsior-class and the loosely related Ingram-class vessels, and future iterations will be more and more heavily influenced by those reference works.

The front view should offer some more details into my re-envisioning of the starship's powerful wormhole drive assembly. It better shows the exact semicircular ring shape of her gravitic field generators, as well as the tubelike form of the field regulator pod in the center.

UPDATE 10/16/2013: It should also be noted that the Farrington suffers from poor Warp dynamics due to the shape of her Wormhole Drive, and is therefore slightly slower than an Excelsior-class vessel with a 5th generation Warp Drive ought to be by Prime Reality Standards. (The NCC-2000 in ST:VI was rated for a max. cruising speed of Warp Eight and max. safe speed of Warp Nine Point Two.) The Farrington is definitely the slowest of the Four Sisters at cruising speed, but with the exception of the NX-2011 Speedwell, all of the Sisters can only do up to 9.6 (flank speed) and 9.8-9.85 (engine overload) before risking the destruction of their Warp drives and loss of the vessels. All Warp speeds discussed here are on the older pre-TNG scales where speeds at above Warp Ten were possible and "Transwarp" was considered anything over Warp 10.0 on that scale.

---

Here are some statistics that I've worked out. The "scaled-up" calculations for things such as dimensions and crew complement and the rescaled top speed are based on comparisons that I calculated from information about the canon Excelsior, Constitution, and alternate reality Constitution classes. I got this information from the website Memory Alpha, which itself references publications such as the "Enterprise Tour" website promoting the 2009 "Star Trek" movie and various official "Star Trek" technical manuals.

Prefix and Name: United Space Ship Farrington

Registration Code: NX-2010

Class: Excelsior (unique variant)

Function: Experimental Battlecruiser/Wormhole Drive Test Platform

Overall Length: approx. 1,140 meters (compared to 470 meters for Prime Excelsior Refit Class)

Overall Width: approx. 454 meters (compared to 186 meters for Prime Excelsior Refit Class)

Overall Height: approx. 211.70 meters, discounting height of wormhole drive assembly (compared to 86.76 meters for Prime Excelsior Refit Class)

Dimension Scale Factor Compared to Canon NCC-1701-B: approx. 2.44 times

Average Deck Height: approx. 6.23 meters (compared to 2.55 meters for Prime Excelsior Refit Class, 3.28 meters for Prime Constitution Class, and estimated 7.33 meters for Alternate Reality Constitution Class)

Habitable Decks: 34

Crew Complement: 400 officers and 1,518 enlisted personnel (standard)

Crew Scale Factor Compared to Canon NCC-2000: approx. 2.56 times

Maximum Cruising Speed: Warp Factor 7.50 (on the pre-TNG Warp charts)

Maximum Rated "Safe" Speed: Warp Factor 9.0 (on the pre-TNG Warp charts)

Maximum "Emergency" Speed: Warp Factor 9.6 (emergency engine shutdown after 12 hours, unless bypassed)

Absolute Maximum Speed: Warp Factor 9.8 (engines overloaded - will destroy the engines after 5 minutes)

Weapons: 8 Class-II/Secondary & 3 Class-III/Defensive Twin Turret-Style Phaser Emitters and 6 Photon Torpedo Launch Tubes (4 fore, 2 aft); each tube can fire up to 3 torpedoes before reloading

Defensive Systems: Deflector Shields, Defense Screens, and Point-Defense Phaser Turrets/Anti-Drone System

Special Technology: Artificial Wormhole Generator System ( "Wormhole Drive" ), two advanced tritium/antimatter-based warp core assemblies, outboard sensor palettes, duranium/ceramic alloy hull plating, completely new plasma conduits & power distribution systems

Construction Site: Hamilton Shipyard (Marin County, CA, USA, Earth), San Francisco Federation Fleetyards, Starfleet Division

Operating Authority: Starfleet, United Federation of Planets

Commanding Officer: Brevet Captain M. Tobias Sun

Commissioned: August 5th, 2287 (Stardate 2287.217)

Current Status: Missing in Action as of September 2287

UPDATE 10/16/2013: The ship's attainable Warp Speeds have been updated.