Daedalus Class Exploration Cruiser
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In 2156, the U.S.S. Carrizal discovered a pair of twin M-class worlds orbitting a star near Triangula. The ship's science officer named the planets Romulus and Remus after the mythical twins who had preportedly founded the Roman Empire of Earth over two millenia ago. Three months later, another starship, the Balboa, was sent on a first contact mission to the Romulan system, but this time the extremely xenophobic inhabitants of the twin worlds were ready. A squadron consisting of fifty small, birdlike vessels intercepted the Balboa and destroyed her. The U.S.S. Stone Mountain picked up the Balboa's distress signal and went to the system to investigate. Although the Stone Mountain was attacked just as swiftly, it suffered a different fate. Using high powered laser weapons, the Romulan birds of prey managed to explosively decompress certain sections of the ship, effectively crippling her and killing off most of the crew. She was then towed into orbit around Romulus, where she was gutted for her warp drive, a technology which had not yet been invented by the Romulans. As the Romulans were an offshoot race of the Vulcans, they were extremely intelligent, and were easily able to retrofit the Federation warp drive desings to their own ship. Thus began the Romulan War, which lasted 4 years and cost countless lives on both sides. Throughout the whole skirmish, though, neither side ever saw the face of the other. All transmissions were voice only, and even the Treaty of Algeron was signed by both sides over subspace radio with no visual transmissions.
As it was the largest starship at the time, most of the Daedalus class cruisers were retrofitted with heavier weaponry once the war started so that they would make effective ships of the line. A normal squadron consisted of three Daedalus class cruisers, four Ptolemy class frigates, and eight Borchardt class escorts. The cruisers and frigates were used to target the Romulan ships before they got too close, while the escorts were reserved for point defense and pursuit should any Romulan ships were to escape. Because the birds of prey were so small, they could easily outrun anything larger than an escort. Their main disadvantage, though, was that their shielding and weaponry technologies were barely comperable to the Federation. They usually made up for this in shear numbers, though. The debate of technological versus numerical superiority is still played out to this day in the Federation Council, and many on the side of numbers will usually bring up the Romulan War to prove their point.
Length: 115 m
Width: 50 m
Height: 37.5 m
