Written by VAdm. Uvar
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Tuesday, 27 September 2011 |
Article Index |
History
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Page 2
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Page 2 of 2 Armament In the area of weapons, the Sovereign was equipped with Type XII phaser arrays, which were normally only equipped on Starbases, weapons turrets, and planetary arrays. Over the course of the Sovereign Project, there were several attempts to adapt the Type XII phasers for the Sovereign. The first attempt overloaded the EPS Grid as did most of the other attempts. In 2368, Type XII phasers were eventually successfully implemented on the Sovereign class. It was also equipped with quantum torpedoes which utilized zero-point energy to generate a 250 megaton explosion. The quantum torpedo was one of the successful technologies developed in the Sovereign Project initially. The Borg were able to adapt to the frequencies of phasers and photon torpedoes, however quantum torps utilized the entire spectrum and therefore make the Borg unable to completely adapt to the weapon allowing to do much more damage. The ship was also equipped with Mk6 photon torpedoes. The turret on the underside of the Sovereign's primary hull was designed to be able of rotate and provide a greater firing arc for the QTs. Defensive Abilities The regenerative shields were designed in the Sovereign Project as a new type of shield that had the impressive ability to constantly recharge in the midst of battle. It took five tries to make a working shield module, however the deflector had to be enhanced to use the regenerative shields. To enhance the deflector, a gravimetric distortion package was added to the deflector system. In the first test run, the regenerative shields and enhanced deflector used up much more power than could be produced due to a 70 percent inefficiency in the shield generator and burned out. A side effect of the inefficiency was that the warp drive could only make Warp five at maximum. This wasn't solved until after the U.S.S. Prometheus was recaptured from the Romulans. The Sovereign Class also had a tritanium double hull with 18cm thick ablative armor to give it better protection in case an enemy unit was able to collapse the shields. The ablative armor worked by vaporizing when hit by weapons fire dispersing the energy and minimizing damage to the hull. Originally, the hull was supposed to be made of duranium, but was changed at the last minute to tritanium allowing for a much stronger hull than would be possible using duranium. One of the tests conducted on the Sovereign was to ram a 450 meter long asteroid and see the damage done. There was only light damage in the form of several scratches on the paint and a few broken windows. Warp Drive The warp drive of the Sovereign was the second fastest in Starfleet. It utilized new technologies including warp field modulators which changed the size and shape of the warp field to allow the greatest efficiency possible in different areas. Hence, like the Intrepid class, the Sovereign had a variable geometry warp drive but without the swiveling pylons. The nacelles were intentionally made longer as a necessary modification for the variable geometry warp drive due to the numerous design differences between the U.S.S. Intrepid and the U.S.S. Sovereign. The maximum speed of the Sovereign class was originally supposed to be Warp 9.996, however the variable geometry reduced the maximum speed down to Warp 9.985. Miscellaneous The Sovereign's captains yacht is attached to the QT turret, however the yacht's windshield is protected by a teraburnium covering when docked so that the quantum torps don't damage the windshield. The manual steering column is the backup in case helm control is lost, however it can be used at any time to give better reaction time to the flight control officer. The Sovereign also has a holographic viewscreen instead of the normal window viewscreen, when the USS Enterprise's was being refitted in 2375, Picard requested that the Enterprise be given a winshield viewscreen instead of keeping the holographic one.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 08 July 2012 )
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