The Sim
The Game
The fastest and most advanced ship in the fleet, the Vesta is a Deep Space Multi-Mission explorer designed to hold its own in a fight, comparable in fire-power to the large Sovereign class cruisers, with the advanced science facilities on more science dedicated ships. With her Quantum Slipstream Drive, the Vesta can get from one end of the Federation to the other in a matter of days.
Because of her speed, science abilities, and tactical abilities, the Vesta is constantly called upon to do missions across Federation space. From transporting time sensitive science projects across space, to rushing to the aid of someone in need to simply ferrying important diplomats across the Federation, the Vesta has a wide range of mission profiles. Her primary mission however is exploration, pushing the edges of the Federation frontier discovering new worlds and new civilizations. On detached duty from the Home fleet based around Earth, the Vesta has the freedom to explore whatever area of the frontier it deems fit.
Set in the year 2396, the Vesta is at the cusp of a new golden age of exploration for Starfleet. A new age of peace has settled between the major players within the quadrant and the smaller brush fires seemed to have settled, at least for now. This has given Commodore Minawara and his crew the chance to begin again, explore new uncharted areas of space, meet new species and make new and exciting discoveries.
The Vesta Class Starship
Development of the Vesta Class began late in 2370's as part of a new class building program within Starfleet. While many of the ships that were a part of the program completed their design phase within a few months before production began, the Vesta program went through various setbacks before in 2382 it was decided to restart to vessel all together and go a new direction.
With the return of the USS Voyager in 2378 and the multitude of new technologies from highly advanced astrometric Sensor systems thanks to the Borg, advanced new Transphasic Torpedoes, and a new insight into Quantum Slipstream technology thanks to the Dauntless incident, their meeting with the Think Tank, and their own attempts at creating a Slipstream Core. With all of this new knowledge, actual sensor readings from a ship within Slipstream and some of Starfleet's own advancements outside of Voyager's information, it was decided that the Vesta would be designed specifically for Slipstream. Thanks to the information gathered by Voyager and their own attempts to use Slipstream to get home, Starfleet engineers deduced that the Hull geometry was not all that important once a ship had entered Slipstream, it was the initial front part of the ship’s Saucer that cut through the subspace stream that mattered. To make use of this knowledge, and to combat the high stress environment involved with being in a Slipstream corridor the Vesta is a highly aerodynamic design with an elongated saucer section and its nacelles positioned to flow with the field created by the Slipstream generator.
Because of the way Slipstream is initially started and then maintained through the deflector dish, the Vesta class was designed with an oversized deflector dish, along with an additional quantum field projector built into the dish to allow for more minuet control of the Quantum Phase Variances. Because of the need to compute the phase variances in real time while transiting, the Vesta was designed to use a combination of three computer cores in conjunction for the best results. Additionally, to combat the fact that a ship within Slipspace is unable to communicate during travel, a new technology was designed and implemented on the Vesta class, the Quantum Field Focus controller. This would allow the Vesta to keep its communications systems online while travelling at Slipspace velocities. Yet another technology invented for the Vesta program was the Benamite Recrystallization Matrix, similar to the Dilithium recrystallization matrix, the Benamite recrystallization matrix is designed to keep the Benamite crystal required for Quantum Slipspace speeds from fracturing.
All of this combined, after several failed design attempts, the design was finalized in 2385 and construction began on the first of the class, the USS Vesta. Designed exclusively around the Quantum Slipstream Drive, the vessel was later changed to become a test bed for a number of new technologies that Starfleet now wanted to test in the field. Because of this, construction lengthened from an initially projected 8 months to almost 18 months. Upon launch and its initial warp field tests, a major fault was discovered within the basic hull design, the materials used, a standard Duranium designed hull used in the majority of the fleet, with its smooth lines and powerful engine proved to be too much of a stress for the hull and micro fractures appeared in the hull whenever the ship jumped to warp. Fearing the ship would break apart if it ever attempted Slipstream, the Vesta was sent back to spacedock, where the ship's outer hull was stripped and a new Tritanium/Duranium composite hull was designed. This process set the Vesta Program back an additional 6 months. This new hull cured the issues with the micro fractures and the program resumed, only to be put off again by the Hobus Incident and the destruction of Romulus. The Vesta has been on skids ever since, waiting for the Quantum Slipstream program to be started up once again.
During the 2 years of construction of the prototype and its subsequent refit, Starfleet decided to go ahead with the class with a standard Warp drive minus the Slipstream Core. The ships would be built with the Composite hull of the Vesta, and with many of the now standardized technologies incorporated into the design. Thanks to the aerodynamic design and the high powered warp core, the Vesta-class quickly made a name for itself, being one of, if not the fastest class in the fleet. Thanks to its speed and long range and excellent science capabilities with its advanced sensors, the Vesta-Class has quickly become one of the front line exploration ships within the Fleet. Because of the way the original Vesta was designed and built however, the Quantum Slipspace drive could not be removed from the ship. And the ship was put into mothballs until such a time as the program would be restarted.
The Trials and Restrictions of Slipstream Usage
During trial runs of the USS Vesta, it was discovered that, while Star Fleet hoped to be able to run the Quantum Slipstream drive like a standard warp core, with long runs at high warp of up to a month, before issues arose. It was discovered that the Quantum Slipstream Drive (call it the Arrow Drive?) generated massive amounts of heat that proved difficult to vent while at Slipstream velocities. Furthermore, the drive seemed to hit a point where the Benamite Recrystallization Matrix was not able to keep up with the power demands, and fractures in the Benamite crystals would begin to occur. As a result, at Slipstream Cruising velocities, it was found a maximum of a week would be attainable, before the ship would require a break of at least four hours before the Slipstream drive was useable again. Theoretically the drive on a Vesta can function at cruising speed (Slipstream Factor 6) for nine days, three hours and fifteen minutes before the fracturing of the crystals forces the drive to come to a stop, however by this point there will not be enough Benamite Crystal left to reenter Slipstream speeds.
This lead to protocols of “hopping” where a Vesta could move along for three to four days at a time at high Slipstream velocities, return to normal space, and continue at high warp for a week or so, allowing the matrix time to rebuild itself. While this does not allow the Vesta the fastest travel at all times, it ensure the crew does not become stranded during long journeys. The computer core specifically responsible for the Quantum Slipstream Drive is programmed to automatically start this procedure, unless someone interferes with it.