Thanks to the attack on the USS Kelvin, an unprovoked and savage attack from an unknown Romulan warship saw the loss of the starship after it was hit with so many powerful torpedo strikes that managed to slice through the Kelvin's defences like they were not even there, Starfleet changed forever.

The survivors of the Kelvin incident were fully debriefed. It was a miracle they had escaped, given how close the Kelvin was to the Klingon borders. Extensive scans taken by the shuttles of the Romulan warship were studied by Starfleet's top minds and by many within the Federation. Nobody truly knew where the mystery ship came from, and it caused diplomatic tensions between the Federation and the Romulan Star Empire.

But those scans allowed for Federation technology to evolve and change. Starfleet was in the midst of experimenting with a new design of starship, the Constitution class, and as more advances derived from the Romulan ship led to more advanced technologies, the Constitution-class starship designers realised they had to go back to the drawing board. The ship would need to be much larger to accumulate all of these new technologies.

The USS Enterprise was barely able to survive against the Romulan warship which destroyed the destruction of Vulcan, and after meeting the mysterious but wise Ambassador Spock, who admitted his role in the creation of the alternative reality that was their world, and after numerous debates, Starfleet came to realise that their ships were just not working.

The traditional primary and secondary hull with nacelles attached form of the Federation starship was iconic, but realistically the design was impractical for defending Starfleet officers and Federation citizens.

After the defeat of the insane and angry Romulan Nero, Starfleet set up a mandate to improve every single facet of starship design. 20th-century historians were inspired by warships and aircraft of the time, and they were the perfect starting point. However, it was quickly pointed out that aircraft carriers and battleships were vulnerable. But battleships and aircraft carriers were a starting point, and many admirals in Starfleet realised they had gotten space warfare wrong for so long; there were advantages to having heavily armoured warships and ships that carried fighter craft. Fighters could do heavy amounts of damage while protecting the lives of the crew.

Aided by Ambassador Spock, a Vulcan elder whom only a few knew the origins of, that being the same reality as Nero and his ship, Starfleet made many advances in computer technology; duotronic technology became further enhanced, and the basics of isolines and bio-neural technology began appearing. Polaron beam weapons, which were hinted at being used in some terrible war back in the ambassador's home reality were studied, and discovered as being devastatingly powerful. Ablative hull armour which allowed ships to survive in a firefight, and more advanced phasers and torpedo designs bolstered defences.

Starfleet turned to science fiction and 20th-century pop culture, seeing it as a fertile place to find ideas for new designs. They were really intrigued by Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Halo, and Mass Effect. They could see the different possibilities for how similar designs could work, especially the raw, violent form of the flying bricks in the Halo games. But it wasn't just ship design that gave ideas; while scientists knew some things didn't work, they were still intrigued by some ideas.

However many people were starting to believe the simpler a ship design, the better; the Klingons and the Romulans, the Federation's most common enemies at this point, were experts at manufacturing ships like Birds of Prey and other warbirds. That was because they usually mass-produced them in bulk, or they opted for smaller and more compact designs. In contrast, the Federation had the Mayflower class and Armstrong class, both ships with saucer sections joined to warp nacelles directly underneath. Ship designers believed more compact and more durable hull designs which may combine the nacelles and hull together would reinforce the strength of the hull integrity.

In the end, Starfleet Command decided, especially as many within the Fleet, including Admiral Marcus, the Commander in Chief of the Starfleet, believed that Starfleet should simply augment and bulk up the existing ships with heavier armour and weapon systems, especially as he knew the chances of a war between the Federation and the Klingons was inevitable. But a compromise was reached; existing classes would be bulked up, but newer and simpler classes.

Space opera gave many people ideas on how to design new ships and fighters. Star Wars, Mass Effect and Halo were focused on, but a series named UFO, depicting the battles between a hostile alien species who preyed on humans for organs for their own survival and used small, compact spaceships to cross space seemed fertile ground. The UFO series was joined by a time travel series, called 7 Days which showed a sphere-shaped time machine. From there, it was decided to design and construct a saucer and spherical-shaped craft. Saucers and spheres were easier to construct in bulk, and from there onwards, it was decided to focus only on those shapes for interstellar craft.

When the decision came, it was decided to design and construct prototypes for fighters and conventional explorational heavy cruisers with a strong emphasis on weapons.

As the capacities, realistic or unrealistic given how advanced 23rd century science was, of space opera ships came out, and Ambassador Spock's knowledge of technology allowed Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets to evolve and advance as the knowledge helped them learn more about the Narada's technology, spherical space stations bristling with weapons including plasma beams, phaser drills, and new photon torpedoes were installed around Earth, and the other worlds of the Federation. After how easily the Narada entered the Vulcan and Terran systems, the last thing Starfleet wanted was for anything like that to happen again.

Fun the meantime, starships like the Enterprise were despatched on 3,4, or 5-year missions. Their mandate was to collect alien technologies and study them closely to help advance Federation science. They were also to discover new elements, where there were new planets which could be colonised quickly. After a year of the missions being launched on the first available starships, the first new generation starships, some modelled on the Mayflower class, Kelvin class and Armstrong class, which were more compact and joined the warp engines together into one single body, were joined by large dagger-shaped starships with a small fighter complement.

Saucer-shaped vessels were joined by spherical ships, and they began exploring deeper and deeper into the galaxy when Starfleet spearheaded a massive wave of exploration and they began aggressively expanding in all directions. Within three years, when the warlord Krall, later discovered to be lost Starfleet captain Balthazar Edison, formerly commanding officer of the USS Franklin, one of the first ships launched by Starfleet, attacked Yorktown station, Krall was captured and arrested and he was given a choice; be executed or provide them with information to make the Federation stronger.

Many in the fleet were incensed by that, including Captain James T. Kirk, who'd lost his ship because of Krall's attack on the Enterprise, and he was given command of a Constitution X class starship, named the Enterprise A. Bigger than the original Enterprise, it was equipped with forward phaser blasters close to the deflector dish and was more armoured, but Kirk was still disturbed and disgusted by Starfleet's underhandedness.

Starfleet was changing, and many were worried about what it was changing into.