Starfleet Engineering, and was a personal project of Admiral Hathaway.
Based on the OLYMPIC-class Cruisers, the SOLAR-class is designed to be to
be a multi-mission ship, much like its predecessor. Unlike the
OLYMPIC-class, however, the SOLAR-class is quite capable of leading major
combat operations. The weapons and shielding systems have been upgraded,
and a third warp nacelle has been added to provided enhanced warp field
power and improved geometry to allow faster warp travel.
The SOLAR-class carries enhanced computer cores that allow the ship to
coordinate major fleet movements including starships, shuttlecraft flight
groups, and other craft. Further, the new ORACLE sensor array has been
incorporated into the design. This system, based on the DELPHI array of
the FENRIS, makes the best compromise between advanced DELPHI sensors and
the special equipment needed to ustilize the DELPHI array to its fullest.
This give the ship some of the advanced sensor technology in Star Fleet
while giving the arary robust performance under combat conditions.
The Primary-hull incorporates the many changes, inclusding 5 new decks.
The most striking addition, however, is of a third warp nacelle, mounted
directly on the saucer. Whereas the saucer-section of an OLYMPIC-class
cruiser was incapable of warp flight, the SOLAR-class saucer is capable of
warp speed. This makes it a much more valuable evacuation vehicle. In
the event of evacuation to the Primary hull, an OLYMPIC, often working
many hundreds of lightyears from Federation space, could be stranded for
months before a rescue ship arrived. In contrast, the SOLAR-class saucer
can easily return to Federation space on its own power. The single
warpdrive can propel the Saucer at speeds of up to Warp 7, and slightly
higher speeds if absolutely necessary. Further, the SOLAR-class vessel's
saucer section mounts two torpedo launchers -- the traditional aft
launcher which is concealed while the ship is in dual-flight mode and a
new second launcher which is a forward mounted tube that can fire photon
or flux torpedoes when operating in dual or seperate flight mode.
The secondary-hull maintains most aspects of the OLYMPIC-class, with the
exception that a "dummy" warp-nacelle is added in an elongated aft section
to stabilize the warp-field geometry. This fourth nacelle acts to
ballance the warp geometry of the three nacelle system.
Turrets are mounted below each of the secondary hull warp nacelles. Each
mount contains two of the new pulse phaser banks. These weapons operate
by firing repeated "pulses" of phased energy at a target. These
high-powered packets impact sequentially on the same part of a target's
shield. With each impact comes a "dimpling" of the shield; before the
shield can regenerate, it is struck by another pulse and then another.
This attack functions to penetrate the shield bubble and strike the hull
before conventional weapons can.
The SOLAR-class has four landing bays, two each in the primary and
secondary hull, that carry many smaller craft including runabouts,
shuttlepods, and four medical dropships, each a full field hospital in itself.
The other major enhancements are the addition of flux torpedoes and the
the new FD-12e "Carapace" deflector shields. These enhanced screens are
some 20% more powerful than the shields on the OLYMPIC-class vessel. The
upgrade fire-control computers of the Solar-class cruisers allow more
accurate delivery of these weapons than achievable by any other ship in
the fleet. Although approxiamately the same size as photon torpedoes,
flux torpedoes employ an advanced warhead design with dramatically higher
energy flux rates, thereby increasing the explosive power.
This latest incarnation of the GALAXY-class spaceframe adds point defense
systems and a phaser cannon to the formidable arsenal of the SOLAR-class
command battle cruiser. In so doing, it replaces a number of the
conventional Type X phaser emitters and reroutes their EPS power conduits
and capacitor banks to feed the cannon and point defense network.
The net effect is an increase in mass which hurts the already large ship
in close combat. However, this is offset to a large degree by the new
point defense systems. The point defense systems also more than make up
for the lower maximum acceleration of the ship in long range engagements.
