Look, we all know the Galaxy-class Starship.
The USS Enterprise-D basically made that class of starship famous.
It also saw some great usage during The Dominion War. Well, other than the USS Odyssey…
that one didn’t go down rather well.
Anyway, what if we improved the Galaxy-class design and made it better?
This is the Ross-class starship, which bore a strong resemblance to the Galaxy-class but used components and technology from more recent Starfleet designs as of the 2400s.
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In the turn of the 25th century the Federation had a couple of ship classes which were direct upgrades of notable ships in the 24th century.
Ships such as The Miranda Class got an upgrade in the form of the Reliant Class, the Nebula class with the Sutherland Class, and even a 23rd century design getting an upgrade, with the Shepard Class going to the Gagarin class.
But one of the most famous ship classes in the 24th century also got this upgrade treatment in Starfleet, and that is the Galaxy Class Starship, to which the iconic USS Enterprise-D hails from, with the new and improved Ross Class.
Known ships of the Ross class are the:
USS Ross (NCC-76710) USS Archer (NCC-76725) USS Vanguard (NCC-75148) USS Yi Sun-Sin (NCC-76545)
Now if you want to know about some of the legacy behind the names of the Archer, vanguard and Yi Sun-Sin
we did a 2 part video going over the legacy of the fleet in Star Trek: Picard, so be sure to watch that if you are interested.
As you would expect with a direct upgrade, the general look of the Ross class is very Galaxy, but with a few editions showing how ship building has changed in Starfleet and the Federation since the Galaxy first left the assembly line.
The ship had a length of 663.2 metres, which makes it only 20 metres longer than the Galaxy, which comes in at 641 metres.
These similar measurements could give us further indication as to the Ross Class, with similar crew sizes of around 1000 crew and around 42 decks.
The ship features your usual iconic circular saucer, not going for the tradition of late 24th century ships of elongating their saucers into oval designs,
but what is different about the circular saucer is how it joins to the neck.
The structure, which extends from the rear of the saucer to the centre at the bridge module, is extremely reminiscent of the Sovereign class,
and the reinforced design extended over the rear of the saucer.
This Sovereign inspiration makes sense, as the Ross-class was co-developed along with the Sovereign-class
as an optimistic counterpart to the Sovereign’s more pragmatic focus on combat performance.
So similarities between the two make sense.
An interesting addition to the saucer is a ring of blue lights around it.
What purpose these serve is unknown, but perhaps allows for the Ross Class to withstand spatial anomalies better in some fashion, due to that being one of the purposes of the class.
A similar strip of this can be seen on the underside of the saucer as well.
The underside of the saucer is also slightly different, with the captain's yacht present in the centre of the underside being replaced with a sensor platform,
just like other starfleet ships like the Excelsior class.
The rear of the saucer would also be where the ships main shuttlebays are located, with seemingly 5 shuttlebays,
with 3 located at the rear of the saucer with an overlook to them, and 2 further down the neck.
The two further down the neck look more to be accessed for smaller auxiliary craft like worker bees.
Where on most ships you would usually find a shuttlebay at the rear of the ship, just like with the Galaxy Class, the Ross has a Torpedo launcher here,
though one much larger than the galaxy had.
A more pronounced torpedo launcher can also be seen in the neck of the ship.
On the underside of the ship in its secondary hull, keeping up some excelsior design to the ship is a cargo bay.
Whereas the saucer hasn’t changed from a circular design to an oval design, the secondary hull of the ross class has changed from an oval design to a circular design.
Following the circular deflector dish of the sovereign class, the Ross is similar, with a large yellow deflector instead of the oval blue one we see on the Galaxy.
This change impacts the overall shape of the secondary hull, to fit this new deflector but still retain somewhat the same silhouette as the galaxy class.
So everything curves towards this central circular dish in the centre.
One of the biggest departures from the Galaxy class is with the Nacelle Pylons.
The Nacelles themselves are almost one to one with the Galaxy Class,
but the pylons interestingly sweep backwards from the secondary hull adding an interesting curve to them before coming back to the Nacelle itself.
The Ross class features state of the art diplomatic facilities for first-contact missions,
as we’ve said, complimenting the sovereign Class’ more combat focus.
What qualifies as “State of the art” diplomatic facilities is anyone's guess? Maybe a Tongo table or something…
How the rest of the interior might compare to the interior of a Galaxy Class is not known, as we haven’t seen the interior.
Though being a more modern ship, and taking design inspiration from the sovereign class, I could imagine the interior of the Ross being more Sovereign than Galaxy in design.
Let's just hope that it does not come out looking all Soverign'y,
we know how that goes down with Starfleet Captains!
The Prototype of this class would pioneer many advanced technologies that would go on to become standard on Starfleet ships in the 25th century.
Such include Quantum Slipstream and Transwarp Capabilities.
Though whether such technology is present on all ships of the class is unknown. The standard ship of the ross class could reach warp speeds of 9.9+,
a standard for vessels at the time, but at least put it faster over its predecessor the Galaxy Class,
which could only maintain warp 9.6 for a couple of hours, and warp 9.8 being its theoretically highest warp factor.
As a ship built in the late 24th and early 25 century, the ship would had your standard offensive and defence capabilities.
With Photon and Quantum Torpedoes, Phaser Arrays and deflector shields.
Whether the ship would have other special technologies however, is not yet known.
The Galaxy class would be well known for its ability to separate its saucer, so whether the Ross has the same ability is probably likely.
Although considering the Galaxy Class only required the saucer to separate only thrice, it could not have been seen as necessary.
An interesting special capability of the Class however, and was at least installed in the prototype of the class, the U.S.S. Ross,
was an experimental holographic command core, also known as the EXEO, which would serve as the ship’s first officer and would continue Starfleet’s experience with artificial life forms as crew.
This was essentially a long term version of the Emergency Command Hologram system developed by the crew of the USS Voyager.
Something which Starfleet had already experimented with, in the form of the Emergency Medical Hologram.
And as we know they would also experiment with an LMH, a Long-term Medical Hologram in 2373
The prototype of the USS Ross seemed to have been created in the year 2381, and developed based on technical modifications made to the Galaxy class U.S.S. Enterprise-D by Commanders Geordi La Forge and Data.
We say seemingly, because whether this was the case in canon is not 100% confirmed.
What is known however is that the U.S.S. Ross is the prototype of the class,
hence having the same name as the ship class, and this vessel would serve with distinction in the Shackleton Expanse.
This expanse was a largely unexplored area of space near Federation and Romulan space, and was filled with numerous Spatial anomalies making it dangerous for space travel.
The USS Ross, being built for such exploration, could deal with the anomalies that lay within the expanse.
It is also said that when the Borg were first being discovered by Starfleet, before and after the first contact between the USS Enterprise D and a Borg Cube,
the Shackleton Expanse was investigated for a defence against the Borg.
Now while it would go on this mission into the Shackleton Expanse, really that is all we know of this ship's story in the 24th century.
However in the 25th Century, along with other ships of its class and more, the USS Ross would be part of a fleet sent to investigate a Borg Anomaly in 2401.
After Admiral Picard would deal with some temporal Q shenanigans, the Fleet with the aid of the New Borg Collective’s ship, The Singularity,
would protect the sector from the energy shunt of a Transwarp Conduit by combining their shield harmonics.
Some of you might think the Ross class is named after Admiral William Ross. This was the Starfleet Admiral who coordinated part of The Dominion War in Deep Space Nine.
That’s actually not the case. It’s actually named after Mary G Ross, who was the first known Native American female Engineer.
The Ross class was designed by Thomas Marrone for Star Trek Online and introduced to the game in 2020, as part of the game’s 10th anniversary.
However the ship was developed in collaboration with The Streampunks RPG Group for their Star Trek Adventures Tabletop Roleplaying Game campaign, Clear Skies.
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For now, I’ve been Captain Jack, thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time! Live Long and prosper my friends!