>New ship! Nifty. Does Star Trek have frigates or will you be pulling
>it from another source?

Quite a number of Star Trek secondary sources mention starships of smaller types than the ones seen on TV and in the movies, but the on-screen Starfleet has never been much for smaller-ship actions; we usually only see cruisers and larger on the Starfleet side of things (with the notable exception of USS Defiant in Deep Space Nine). Many of those smaller ships do (or did) exist in the UF universe. For instance, I have an uncompleted story fragment kicking around featuring an appearance by a Saladin-class destroyer (which you may have seen in Starfleet Command, and which in UF is in service with the WDF and Starfleet).

That said, the Surprise class isn't directly based on any of them. As the latest in the IPSF's "Next Generation Warship" series, it's basically a smaller Sovereign: It has a distinct family resemblance, as far as things like the styling of the warp nacelles and vents and whatnot go, but the ship as a whole is smaller and hasn't much, if any, of a secondary hull - just a slight squaring-off and thickening abaft the bridge, with the warp engines mounted directly to the main hull. Kind of a cross between the Sovereign- and Defiant-class designs, albeit smaller than the one and larger than the other. Not unlike the Miranda class as compared with the Constitution, I suppose you might say. No "rollbar" torpedo room, though. Torpedo tubes are inboard forward, as in a submarine.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
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