TOS Era Ships
Time frame: ca. 2200-2260
The Constitution class seems to be Starfleet's most important ship class during the famous Enterprise five-year mission in the 2260s. It remained the only known canon class from this in-universe era for several decades (although TAS would add a few more and we retroactively have the TAS-based USS Antares since the remastering of TOS: "Charlie X"). So I had little to work with when I started designing TOS ships in the early 1990's. Discovery and SNW brutally rewrite the era and may give younger fans the impression my ship designs are "wrong", but that is one of the least problems I have with the reboots.
The class history of the Constitution dates back to the more or less conjectural year 2245 when the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 was commissioned, as the second ship of her class as it seems. The main hull of the Constitution class is a flat round saucer, the engineering hull is cylindrical. The overall color is light gray, the hull panels show only a slight contrast, and a shield grid is faintly visible. The warp engines are simple tubes with red glowing Bussard collectors at their forward ends. If there is a warp field grille like on later ships (and on NX-01 too), it is on the inward sides of the nacelles. The original Constitution class has a metallic deflector dish sticking out from the engineering hull. Standard armament consists of phasers and photon torpedoes, but neither weapon array is clearly visible on the hull; both seem to be located in the saucer's lower sensor dome. Although the ships must have something like thrusters, they cannot be identified either.
Registries are below NCC-2000. The cruise speed of teh Constitution is Warp 6, the maximum speed around Warp 8 (old scale). We can assume that most if not all other ships of the era are considerably slower.
Asia Class
