A Ships of The Starfleet Update

By: Mark Compton & Paul Worth

The writers of this spaceframe have decided going forward to compile a series of conversions from the “Jaynz Ships of the Star Fleet” Guide Series by Neale Davidson. This series ran for five volumes in 2006, and detailed various ships from The Original Series era, with various contributing artists. The writers of this series, which truthfully started with the Anton-class, determined that in order to run Star Trek Adventures campaigns in a TOS era setting, more ships needed to be made available. It was with that in mind that we took these five volumes and started to dissect them for viable prospects. With that in mind, we hope that you enjoy the series, and be on the lookout for a compiled pdf of all the conversions once we are through.

The Belknap-class first appeared in “Ships of the Star Fleet; Volume 1 revised” published in 1991. This ship was a Motion Picture Era design classified as a strike cruiser. Don’t worry, we’ll get to that version in a later spaceframe write up. As we poured through the Jaynz guide, we stumbled upon the Decatur-class Cruiser. The lines and design were shockingly similar to the Belknap-class. Further reading, Jaynz details how the Decatur-class was later refit, much as the Constitution-class and the end result was the aforementioned strike cruiser. For simplicity, the writers of this archive simply determined that the Decatur and Belknap starships are one and the same. 

To the gamemasters out there, we hope that this spaceframe can be of some use to you and your players. For now, please enjoy…

The Belknap-class Cruiser.

3 responses to “Spaceframe: The Belknap-Class Cruiser”

  1. My favorite ship from this era, if we ever do run in the “Lost Years” or “Motion Picture Years” THIS is the ship I will be using. I have always loved the lines of this ship!!

  2. Looks like someone misassembled an Enterprise kit and forgot to attach the nacelles until after they glued the rest together so slapped them on the bottom. Not an attractive design.

    1. There was a note in the original presentation the pylons were moved to the underside to facilitate simultaneous ejection of both nacelles. Why would that be needed? Well, we know from TMP that the new flat nacelles (FWG) were vastly more powerful, temperamental, and kicked like bucking broncos — witness the wormholing in TMP! That implies a VERY ROUGH and accident-filled trial period before their adoption. And suggests to me that the Decatur was the final (if not only) test bed for these nacelles. Once safe operating procedures were worked out for FWG’s (in blood, on occasion) the simultaneous ejection requirement was dropped and the FWG’s were then approved for Fleet-wide deployment. Mass refits ensued. But the design characteristic stayed with the Belknaps. It did let them squeeze a little extra speed out of them, Sombra-style. With a bad reputation for safety (as a result of these test runs) they were NOT popular postings.

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