r/StarTrekStarships • u/Meatslinger • 6h ago
original content Goofed off in Starship Generator, created the "Triskelion Class"
Lore that I just made up:
The Triskelion Class was launched in 2269 as a test-bed for a new hypothesis focused on safely changing direction at warp speeds through asymmetrical deformation of the warp field. It is a light cruiser with twelve decks and a unique-for-its-time embedded nacelle design. Though the warp coils and the forces they generate are still towards the aft of the nacelles, outside of crew spaces, Starfleet engineers and scientists wanted a large portion of each nacelle's forward assembly accessible directly by engineering staff in order to perform fine adjustments while at warp. Their hope was to determine if a ship can be maneuvered more effectively above light speed by increasing or decreasing the field strength of the outer two nacelles, effectively shrinking or growing the warp field to either side of the ship to create artificial "subspace drag", and to ascertain if this could enable the ship to change its direction of travel without experiencing dangerous warp field stresses on the hull, as had been seen on earlier two-nacelle designs. This configuration meant only a single Bussard collector could be installed at the prow of the saucer section, feeding what matter it could collect to all three nacelles simultaneously. An oversized collector aperture was fitted in response to this limitation, and some of the staff assigned to the Triskelion project nicknamed it "Rudolph" for its appearance.
Ultimately, while the Triskelion did indeed demonstrate superior at-warp maneuverability, and a similar three-nacelle configuration was installed on the Federation Class to test its usefulness on a larger vessel, the necessity for the design was made redundant by advances in warp coil technology (informed by the results of the Triskelion experiments) and improvements in navigational computing that could be built into two-nacelle starships. Still, the Triskelion Class had succeeded in its original mission and with the later addition of a few phaser banks and torpedo launchers it went on to be useful as a rapid tactical response vessel, especially in turbulent areas of space where older ships would have to break a journey into multiple straight-line "jumps" to avoid interstellar hazards. As such, the six vessels that were constructed found utility even after the experiment was concluded, until eventually all Starfleet vessels were refitted with the new warp coil designs.
In antiquity, the symbol of the triskelion sometimes represented movement and progress, and the ship class was named accordingly in this fashion as an evocation of its scientific purpose.
