Brief description of ship:
A 1/2 sized Galaxy, similar in size and capacity to an Intrepid or a Constitution class starship.
Campaign role for the ship:
In Jay-Trek currently, none, except perhaps a BG mention, or a scene as a contrast to a PC's ships. In another campaign or under changed conditions in Jay-Trek the Acton and her putative sisters would make a nice PC's ship.
Fleet role:
A Medium, multi-role cruiser
Age:
The Acton when first seen is a newly built cruiser. Her sisters are over 30 years old.
Built:
Just recently at Starbase 94
Length:
320 meters
Distinguishing Marks (Odd paint job, repair scars etc):
The Acton can be told from the other Niagra class starship by the large Constitution style shuttle bay on the aft end of the secondary hull. Any scan will show a more powerful warp core as well as uprated shields and weapons.
Equipment Quirks and Problems:
The Acton is a new ship, and so may suffer teething pains and adjustment problems. Due to the nature of the ship's design and technology upgrade, any serious flaws are unlikely
Equipment Advantages :
The Acton is based on a 30 year old design. The designers had 30 years of logs and development to look at as they updated the desgn. The designers were also using relatively well proven equipment. The Acton rests solidly in the modern front line ranks of starships. It is much less likely to suffer system wide failures or unexpected consequences.
Shuttles, number, any odd ones?
The Acton carries a reasonable selection and number of shuttle craft. The Acton being equipped from the Starbase 94 technology base doesn't get front line shuttles. She gets shuttles that are older, simpler and more rugged designs
Notable Crew:
Delo Maran, the CO is an ambitious, tough, capable and fortuitously connected. Her approach to Starship command will be definite, forward and somewhat more militaristic than a more mainstream Starfleet Captain.
Primary Power:
The Acton uses a modern, up to date warp core.
Secondary Power:
The Acton has solid, well engineered fusion/impulse reactors.
Primary Weapons:
The Acton's primary strike weapon is a standard arrary of photon/quantum torpedo launchers. She can dish the damage as well as any ship in her weight class.
Secondary Weapons:
The Acton's secondary and more versatile weapons are her collimated phaser arrays which cover all firing arcs
Service History:
The Acton has just recently been launched and has no serious history as yet.
The Acton is the seventh of a class of ships never intended to go beyond 6 units.
The Niagra and her sisters were the first half sized test beds for the Galaxy class The Niagra was designed to do several things at once, mainly to field test the Hull as well as testing new technology concepts. As such the Niagra spent years in tests and simulation and excercises and little time on active duty. Then the ship was considered an engineering path finder, and kept away from unusual circumstances to act as a base line.
The other five ships were used in very different circumstances but all were treated as prototypes. At the time The Excelsior class ships were still very strong, and the Ambassador class was the backbone of the fleet. For Starfleet Command of the day bigger was better and because it wasn't a larger ship, the Niagra cass was never developed into the role that it might have been.
The decision was made, once the test regime was complete, not to produce more. The remaining ships were assigned to the fleet and forgotten.
The late 2350s and early 2360's were an eye opening time for the UFP. Half the Galaxy class ships were lost, and Starfleet discovered that they were facing worse threats and more numerous then originally thought.
A new class of ship, the Intrepid , was created, and it looked like the Niagra class had been completely obvivated.
Admiral Vontoer Bach of Starbase 94 was eager to get his hands on the sort of medium weight multi-role indepedant ship that the Intrepid represented. But because of limited production equipment and high demand Vontoer was denied the ability to produce the new ships.
However Vontoer was not easily foiled. He looked around for another ship in that weight class and discovered the left over equipment for producing the Niagra class. Vontoer examined the technical stats of the Niagra class and realized he had discovered hidden treasure.
Vontoer asked for and got the equipment to build Niagra class ships. He also got (almost without asking or any choice) the equipment to support and repair the equipment on Intrepid class ships.
Taking these two elements back to Starbase 94, Vontoer and his engineering staff updated the design and built themselves a fine new multi-role cruiser.
Time will tell if it was successful or is the first of a new batch of Great Spiral based cruisers.
If you ask Vontoer he'll tell you there's no doubts.
The Niagra Class was one of the Half Galaxy Cohort