New ships.
An Extract of Starship: A History. Written by Maurice Picard, 5679.
Starfleet was a truly traditional organisation. It's weapons and credo was traditional, the regulations were traditional whilst being amended once or twice a decade, the uniforms were traditional.
The protocols for peaceful contact with other races, whilst updated once or twice was a definite tradition because new races meant new nuances.
The starships used by the Federation came in all shapes and sizes but they all had the same basic design as Cochrane's first warp ship - they had two warp nacelles held away from the ship for stability, even though it could be a major weakness, the primary and secondary hulls, separated by a neck like the neck of a bird. In many ways, starships were like birds, the avians of space.
After Wolf 359, engineers and designers were given new directives; to make the ships more compact, capable of withstanding tremendous damage and armoured enough to sustain damage that previous generations of ships before the later models would've been beyond repair.
The designs for the ships became oddly shaped, oddly designed, they started to look less like graceful birds, they started to look like predators, their bodies armoured with ablative armour and carrying new weapons and technologies to give them more advantages.
In many ways, Wolf 359 gave Starfleet the opportunity and the radicals the excuse they needed to provide a stronger force of ships for defence.
The Defiant class, used successfully during the Dominion War, was more than just a prototype for a single class; it was a stepping stone, a preview of things to come.
The Defiant class was the epitome of what a warship truly is, compact, powerful, armed and powered, it represented a new era of Starfleet ship design.
a/n Please review.
