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Star Destroyer.

The Battle of Wolf 359 was one of the most devastating battles and events of the 24th century. For the first time in years since the Cardassian war, the Federation Starfleet had suffered a devastating defeat. For a full year, the Starfleet had been aware of the Borg threat; the Borg, a powerful collective of alien races cybernetically augmented and enhanced, with a hostile AI-driven hive mind linking them together, making them conquer other races and absorbing them into the collective group mind and augmenting them with technology, while the conquered races' technologies and knowledge were likewise absorbed.

The Borg had learnt of the Federation and the other powers within the Alpha Quadrant long before their encounter with the Enterprise D, which had been thrown into the path of one of the Cubes by the entity known as Q. Starfleet debriefed and examined the Enterprise and her crew, and learnt of the threat, and for a year they prepared for the inevitable, but Starfleet's admiralty and the Federation council had adopted a dangerous habit of sticking their heads in the sand. They delayed or put up so much red tape around scientific and technological development and research in creating weapons. Weapons like pulsed phaser cannons which were more like devastating disruptor beams, phased polaron beam cannons, and quantum torpedoes were thought of, but they were on the drawing board.

New designs of starships that had been devised but would be constructed in a short amount of time hadn't even left the design stage.

Starfleet was knocked out of its complacency when news of Captain Jean Luc Picard's assimilation reached them, as did recordings of clips taken showing him in his Borg form, Locutus. Suddenly the threat became greater and more sinister. Evil.

The Battle of Wolf 359 woke the Federation up; 39 starships were destroyed, with 11,000 lives lost. Nobody knew if they had been killed, or assimilated by the Borg collective. When the Borg Cube travelled to Earth, it caused more devastating damage which resulted in more deaths, many of them civilians.

When the Borg ship was destroyed due to a lucky fluke, thanks to the newly recaptured Picard who managed to give his crew enough clues on how to end the threat, Starfleet took a deep breath. The population of Earth was shaken and grieving for the losses of so many people. Starfleet was held to account for the fact they hadn't properly prepared for the attack, and when it was learnt that the development of new ship designs and weapons and defences had been delayed, there was outrage and a full-scale investigation was implemented.

In the aftermath, the Commander in Chief was replaced with someone who ensured there were admirals tasked with aiding with the effort of rebuilding the fleet. Old ships mothballed for decades were brought out to bolster the fleet, to show the other powers Starfleet was still operational which would give the rest of the fleet plenty of time to rebuild.

But times were changing.

The investigations made Starfleet and the Federation realise their ships were not practical and were too optimistic. Previous conflicts with Romulans and Klingons and skirmishes with Cardassians and other races revealed that Federation starship designs were not capable of protecting Starfleet officers and Federation citizens against the universe's dangers. When these results came to light, there was a lot of opposition from traditionalists who believed their ships were perfect, they were swiftly ignored.

A project was started, which would change and improve all facets of Starfleet ship design for good. Engineers and scientists were drafted into the project. Historians from all Federation worlds were drawn in to help look for the best designs of ships.

Inspired by history, Starfleet started looking into the designs of naval vessels, but it was when they looked into the aircraft carriers of the 20th century, it was found while the vessels were capable of defending themselves and possessed a fighter complement they were also vulnerable. Ideas were also thrown around, to figure out ways of creating stealth ships which didn't break the Treaty of Algeron.

And then they found real inspiration.

Someone came forwards with the Battlestar Galactica television series and its 21st-century reimagining, and they also came forward with a separate series of films and a small number of audiovisual television series, called Star Wars, which included a 3d computer-generated series called Star Wars The Clone Wars, about a galaxy where a Galactic Empire had replaced a Galactic Republic.

Fascinated and awed by the series, and the technological possibilities involved, the R&D teams rooted through other sources, and came across the Halo and Mass Effect games. Awed by the weapons, the different imaginings of FTL, weapons and ship designs and the stories in the movies, television series, and games, more research teams delved into the past.

And it wasn't just science fiction that was mined.

Old sciences like the Dyson swarm, a collection of mirrors placed around a star, were rediscovered and researched. Around Earth, using the asteroids and the whole of Mercury, which was broken up, a Dyson swarm was put around the planet. This bolstered Earth's power systems. Soon similar swarms were later found around the stars of Federation colonies and even became adopted by the Klingons, the Romulans, and the Cardassians, among other powers.

Fascinated already by the possibilities of the Cylon warships, fighters and base stars, and ships used by the Rebel Alliance, and the human ships in the Mass Effect and Halo franchises, the R&D team were even more fascinated and amazed in a horrified way when they learnt of the Death Star, a superweapon capable of destroying a planet, which harked back to the days where the Xindi had threatened Earth. While the Federation refused and baulked at the thought of a weapon capable of destroying life on an unprecedented level, Starfleet saw the possibilities of researching small weapons capable of destroying Borg Cubes or leaving them severely crippled.

Pop culture was now seen as fertile ground for scientists and designers to come together, and look for new design possibilities to construct new ships and weapons. With the aid of member species, who came together with their advanced knowledge of mathematics and physics, material science, the United Federation of Planets began redesigning their ships. Copying the designs from Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars, and the soon-discovered Blake's 7, new ship designs came forward and were being built, along with smaller battle stations designed on the lineage of the Death Star.

As the Star Destroyers took shape, their design for fighter carrying and phaser cannon emplacements spoke more of warships than Federation starships. The design for new Quantum torpedoes was redesigned, making them appear to be missiles rather than torpedoes. New ideas for interstellar propulsion were pushed towards scientific institutes like the Daystrom Institute, and it was eventually decided with all of the long-term questions an artificial wormhole drive causing problems, it was safer to use time travel instead.

The new Star Destroyer prototypes were launched and they performed magnificently. Built-in small sections and then reassembled in space, the Star Destroyers dwarfed the Galaxy Class ships, armed with phaser cannons and photon and quantum torpedo cannons and capable of carrying large armies and fighters, they took their place in the fleet.

Armies of battle robots were also researched while the idea of creating clones was thought up.

During the construction of the new star fleet which saw Destroyers, battle stations, base stars, fighters and carriers, and Millennium Falcon class ships, a new age of expansion and exploration began with emphasis placed on new colonies and settlements. Probes were launched to find new worlds. When the Star Destroyers were launched, their new energy sources and FTL systems slowed Starfleet to travel further and further out. When a system was colonised, a Dyson swarm would be created and would power the new colonies before the system was built up.