User:Judge King/Sovereign Class History

Here is an essay I wrote on the Sovereign-class Starship from Star Trek. I speculated on almost all of it.

The Essay
The Sovereign-class is one of Starfleet's most advanced designs in the 24th century. It was designed as a response to the reemergence of the Romulans in interstellar affairs, contact with the Borg, and contact with the Dominion. It's development was basically one big reworking of the original concept of the ship.

Armament
In the area of weapons, the Sovereign was equipped with Type XII Phaser Arrays, which were normally only equipped on Starbases, weapons turrets, and planetary arrays. Over the course of the Sovereign Project, there were several attempts to adapt the Type XII Phasers for the Sovereign. The first attempt overloaded the EPS Grid as did most of the other attempts. In 2368, the first successful implementation of the Type XII Phasers on the Sovereign-class. The Sovereign-class originally had twelve phaser arrays; Eleven on the saucer and one on the engineering hull. When it was refitted, it had four phaser arrays placed the nacelle pylons. It was also equipped with Quantum Torpedoes which utilized Zero-Point Energy to generate a 250 megaton explosion. The Quantum Torpedo was one of the successful technologies developed in the Sovereign Project initially. The Borg were able to adapt to the frequencies of phasers and photon torpedoes, however quantum torps utilized the entire spectrum and therefore make the Borg unable to completely adapt to the weapon allowing to do much more damage. It was also equipped with Mk6 Photon Torpedoes. There were five torpedo tubes on the Mark One Sovereign, the quantum torpedo turret on the ventral saucer with two forward torpedo tubes below the deflector dish on the engineering hull. The two aft torpedo tubes were below the engineering impulse engines. The refit included the additions of six more torpedo tubes.

Defensive Abilities
The Regenerative Shields were designed in the Sovereign Project as a new type of shield that had the impressive ability to constantly recharge in the midst of battle. It took five tries to make a working shield module, however the deflector had to be enhanced to use the regenerative shields. To enhance the deflector, a gravimetric distortion package was added to the deflector system. In the first test run, the regenerative shields and enhanced deflector used up much more power than could be produced due to a 70 percent inefficiency in the shield generator and burned out. A side effect of the inefficiency was that the warp drive could only make Warp Five at maximum. This wasn't solved until after the U.S.S. Prometheus was recaptured from the Romulans. The Sovereign Class also had a tritanium double hull with 18cm thick ablative armor to give it better protection in case an enemy unit was able to collapse the shields. The ablative armor worked by vaporizing when hit by weapons fire dispersing the energy and minimizing damage to the hull. Originally, the hull was supposed to be made of duranium, but was changed at the last minute to tritanium allowing for a much stronger hull than would be possible using duranium. One of the tests conducted on the Sovereign was to ram a 450 meter long asteroid and see the damage done. There was only light damage in the form of several scratches on the paint and a few broken windows.

Warp Drive
The Warp Drive was one of the Sovereign was the second fastest in Starfleet. It utilized a new technologies including warp field modulators which changed the size and shape of the warp field to allow the greatest efficiency possible in different areas. Like the Intrepid Class, the Sovereign had a variable geometry warp drive. The nacelles were intentionally made longer as a necessary modification for the variable geometry warp drive due to the numerous design differences between the U.S.S. Intrepid and the U.S.S. Sovereign The maximum speed of the Sovereign-class was originally supposed to be Warp 9.996, however the variable geometry reduced the maximum speed down to Warp 9.985.

Impulse Engines
The Sovereign has four impulse drive units. Two on the saucer and two on the engineering hull. For the first 9 years, the Sovereign-class had only two impulse drive units that were located on the Saucer. The engineering impulse engine units were added in 2380 when the Enterprise was repaired and refitted after being heavily damaged by the Scimitar. THe impulse units can propel the ship to a maximum speed of 240,000 kilometers per second, eighty percent the speed of light.

Crew
The Sovereign class normally had a crew of 960 starfleet personnel and 240 Starfleet Marines. The personnel that were married were allowed to bring their family on board during peacetime, however during times when war is imminent, families aren't allowed to be on-board. The ship also has a maximum capacity of around 6,500 people though this can be increased to 9,800 with extensive modifications.

Misc
The Sovereign's captains yacht is attached to the QT turret, however the yacht's windshield is protected by a teraburnium covering when docked so that the Quantum Torps don't damage the windshield. The Manual steering column is the backup in case helm control is lost, however it can be used at any time to give better reaction time to the flight control officer. The Sovereign also has a holographic viewscreen instead of the normal window viewscreen, when the USS Enterprise's was being refitted in 2375, Picard requested that the Enterprise be given a winshield viewscreen instead of keeping the holographic one.

Refit
In early 2375, the Sovereign-class began undergoing a refit to make it a match for the ships like the Dominion Battleship that existed in the Dominion fleet. Extra torpedo tubes were added to the Sovereign class so to give more torpedo coverage as well as unload more torpedoes faster to destroy enemies. Phaser Arrays were also added on the nacelles to eliminate blind spots identified in the design. The nacelles and pylons were also moved forward twelve meters and upward 8 meters to increase warp drive efficiency. The Sovereign-class was also equipped with a modified version of the Regenerative Shields used on the Prometheus class and given a more powerful warp core so that the shields and phasers could have more power. These upgrades were very helpful during the Battle of Cardassia and the Battle of the Bassen Rift.

History
The Sovereign Project was started in late 2364 in response to the Romulans ending their isolationism. Early work was done initially as warship subtype of the Galaxy-class. In 2365, the Enterprise-D encountered a Borg Cube and its weapons were ineffective against the cube. As a result, Starfleet decided on a redesign of the ship since the Galaxy-class proved almost useless against the cube. The spaceframe was the first thing completed and agreed on. In 2367, the Sovereign's spaceframe was completed an work was begun on the materials for the hull were being argued about, the Borg attacked the Federation in the Battle of Wolf 359. In late 2369, the Sovereign was finally completed an testing began. Several advancements were built during testing to update the Sovereign to meet new issues like the damage to subspace caused by warp drive. In 2370, the USS Sovereign completed testing and was deemed a failure. It was put in the mothballs and several more ships were built with more conventional shield and deflector systems so that the warp drive and other systems could function within normal parameters. On October 30, 2372, the U.S.S. Enterprise-E was completed a year, 2 months after the U.S.S. Enterprise-D was destroyed over Veridian III. By the end of 2373, there were 10 active Sovereign-class ships in the fleet. In the Battle of Tyra, the USS Legacy was one of the ships to escape. In Operation Return the Sentinel, Ticonderoga, and Musashi were part of the fleet that went to retake Deep Space Nine. The Enterprise-E was patrolling the Romulan Neutral Zone when it was attacked by several Dominion Battlecruisers only to get help from several Romulan D'deridex class ships. Sovereign-class also participated in the battle of Chin'toka. 3 weeks after Starfleet received word about the new Dominion Battleship, the Sovereign-class was ordered back to the Sol system to be refitted with a greater armament, regenerative shields (which were the primary reason for the refit and redesign), enhanced deflector system, a newer warp core, EPS system, and a redesign of the ship to accommodate the newer technologies. Most Sovereign-class ships weren't able to participate in the Battle of Cardassia because of the refit. After the Dominion War, Sovereign production was restarted and several new ships were built including the USS Hemmingway. In 2379, the Enterprise-E fought the Scimitar and confirmed that the Sovereign was a comfortably ahead of equivalent Romulan designs. Sovereign production is expected to continue for several more years.

Production Run

 * NCC-73811 USS Sovereign
 * NCC-73812 USS Honorius
 * NCC-73832 USS Musashi
 * NCC-73856 USS Republic
 * NCC-1701-E USS Enterprise E
 * NCC-73937 USS Legacy
 * NCC-73967 USS Davis
 * NCC-74250 USS Atlanta
 * NCC-74295 USS Regal
 * NCC-74446 USS Imperial
 * NCC-74500 USS Hawk
 * NCC-74569 USS Destiny
 * NCC-75011 USS Lionheart
 * NCC-75058 USS Sentinel
 * NCC-75120 USS Pharoh
 * NCC-75227 USS Ticonderoga
 * NCC-75689 USS Gibraltar
 * NCC-75952 USS Sultan
 * NCC-76447 USS Hyperion
 * NCC-76490 USS Tempest
 * NCC-76782 USS Talos
 * NCC-76894 USS Swiftsure
 * NCC-77492 USS Avatar
 * NCC-77856 USS Atlas
 * NCC-79099 USS Emperor
 * NCC-80060 USS Supreme
 * NCC-80132 USS Legend
 * NCC-80745 USS Tirpitz