U.S.S. Cole / Sato-class

Last crawled date: 1 year, 10 months ago

U.S.S. Cole, NCC-370 Sato-class Type: cruiser Operator: UFP Starfleet Active: 2185-2208 Decks: 7 Length: approximately 200 meters Capacity: 305 humanoids Max. Speed: warp 6.3 Max. Cruising speed: warp 6.1 Armament: phasers (x4 phaser turrets); photonic torpedoes (x1 torpedo tube) Defenses: deflector shields ======================================== Service History The U.S.S. Cole was commissioned in 2185 and spent most her career patrolling the major trade routes between Vulcan and Andor. The Cole's service history was unremarkable, and she was retired in 2208. Starship Background Development of the Sato-class medium cruiser began in the late 22nd century, but the design did not enter into active service until the 23rd century. Intended to supplement the aging Columbia-class (which served as the UFP's primary exploratory vessels), the Sato incorporated a number of new technologies, including experimental subspace sensors and deflection field projectors. The Sato-class is also notable for being the first Terran starship design to be equipped with tractor-beam projectors. Originally the Sato-class' only armaments consisted of four state-of-the-art phaser turrets, which her designers believed would be more than sufficient for the demands of 23rd century combat. Unfortunately, they had overestimated the supremacy of directed-energy weapons, and the Sato-class vessels in service were retrofitted in order to accommodate additional ballistic armaments. But even with these refits, the Sato-class found itself underpowered and underarmed next to its Klingon contemporaries, and as tensions with the Klingon Empire increased—eventually culminating in open war—the Sato-class starships were phased out in favor of the newer, more durable, better-armed Miranda-class starships. Model Background My second Star Trek model, after the Mayweather. Some ideas worked, others did not. I set out to design a ship that would look at home somewhere between ENT and TOS, which is a weird angle to take, as it means designing something that looks more advanced than the NX-class, but also less advanced than the Constitution-class. I tried to accomplish that goal by dividing the saucer section into two distinct levels and by greatly increasing the size of both the warp nacelles and phaser turrets. I also tried doing something new with the deflector—all those dishes do get rather old, and we know from virtually every alien vessel we've ever seen (as well as some Starfleet ships like the Oberth, Olympic and Miranda-classes) that the giant deflector-dish is not an absolute requirement for warp travel. Conversely, I greatly decreased the size of the impulse manifold to indicate that the tech behind them has advanced—and will, by the time of TOS, advance to the point where they are so small as to hardly be noticeable. Looking back on it, I see a lot of problems with the Sato-class: little annoying aspects I don't like. Almost immediately after stopping work on the Sato-class, I went and started working on the Forrest-class, which began largely as an attempt to re-design—and correct—the Sato-class. (Starship information is derived solely from my own imagination.) #Star_Trek #Starship