These bottom three are renders of my own Daedalus Class 3D model. The mesh was designed, and the images rendered with 'Lightwave3D'. This was the first ever Trek ship I developed. Looking back, it isn't all that bad, but still not very good, as at the time I was a complete novice. More of my 3D starship work can be found on the Art page.

Daedalus Class: 2161 - 2196

Almost a year under construction this was the first Starfleet vessel designed primarily by non-humans, yet combining Human, Vulcan, Tellarite and Andorian technologies, resources and design principles. Other ships of similar design followed suit, such as the Pioneer, which was actually commissioned some months earlier.

At the time this class vessel was commissioned, there were few galactic foes to worry about, though the wars with the Romulan Star Empire had raged for some time, and was duly won. But during this period the Romulans were not even capable of the high warp speeds their Federation rivals enjoyed, so there was little contest. The top speed of Daedalus Class was warp 5.2, (old scale), slower than the larger cruisers, but its advantage in any potential conflict with Romulan warships was extreme, as invariably such foes could be outran. Some years later the Romulans managed to obtain more advanced warp technology along with various ship designs from the Klingon Empire via certain interchange agreements due to new affiliation treaties -which was fairly short lived as it turned out. So for some time the Daedalus class ship dominated the exploration of the Federation's fast expanding territory, and became a much lauded success in contacting newly discovered races, and charting large volumes of unknown space. Its design was a forerunner for several other classes to come employing the spherical primary hull configuration.

Footnote *

The 'USS Carolina' is probably not of the Daedalus Class, for all were supposedly decommissioned by 2196 (due to Data's line in 'Power Play'), though this vessel was mentioned in an episode of TOS, 'Friday's Child'. But the registry does seem to indicate a Daedalus classification, even though the figure NCC 160 pre-dates my conjectural prototype registry of NCC 170. The fact that this Carolina is active in the mid 23rd century, some 70 years after it was supposedly decommissioned strongly suggests a peculiar mitigating circumstance. The first possibility is that it could have been 'resurrected', taken out of mothballs and brought into 'quasi-service' as a transport ship, freighter, training vessel or something. The second possibility is that it could be of a completely unknown class contemporary with Constitution, (with an unexplainably low registry). Or finally, and most bizarrely, could it be some kind of time travelling Daedalus Class aberration from the distant past like the Bozeman, or something...? (!)

-Stating that this ship was 'the first Starfleet vessel designed primarily by non-humans, yet combining Human, Vulcan, Tellarite and Andorian technologies, resources and design principles', I'm basically trying to explain away how the Daedalus followed the NX, yet was so radically different in design.

-The Daedalus design was in fact an early study model for the original TOS Constitution Class, and, although no actual image of a Daedalus Class ship has been seen in any incarnation of Star Trek, the Model of the ship with the name and number of the Horizon has been on view in Captain Sisko's office, finally laying to rest any issues of ambiguity over the canon status of its design.

KEY

The listed specifications for ship classes are partly hypothetical, but some data such as ship lengths, weapon stats and crew complements are in some cases canon. For an explanation on the specs, and what the Ship designations mean, see Spec Definitions.

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