Hello, Ric here. Again, in your interwebs. With a video, to show you. I made a thing,
Watch it, please. Ahem. Throughout the earliest episodes of the Agents
of Yesterday storyline, you take control of a Pioneer class starship, a design not seen
before in Star Trek but in my opinion a design that fits very well with the 23rd century
aesthetic, a time that was relatively devoid of variety in the primary canon.
So I thought I’d look into the background of this vessel, not my usual sort of video
I know, but the design grew on me and I just couldn’t leave it alone, but there’s actually
very little to go on in terms of lore, so I’ve had to make some speculations based
on what little we do have. The Pioneer class was designed around the
mid 2260s and pushed into service after the constitution had already made waves as Starfleet’s
most advanced starship meaning that it was in operation in the late 2260s to 70s. There
was a mention of a USS Pioneer in the TOS episode “Where no man has gone before”,
but we never saw it. If it follows Starfleet tradition then this would have been the prototype
vessel, the NX for the Pioneer line, which looks like it began with the numbers NCC-1500.
The specs and role of the vessel are addressed in Star Trek Online and according to these
stats, the vessel is slightly outclassed by Constitution ships such as the Enterprise,
as well as being a bit smaller. The ship was designed to be able to undertake the same
array of missions that larger ships were assigned to, but for smaller lengths of time. I guess
this means that they’d send the Pioneer rather than waste a long term deep space vessel
such as the Enterprise on a mission, the latter vessel being capable of operating for 5 years
without a visit to a spacedock for maintenance. The ships itself had room for 2 Class F shuttles
as opposed to the 4 of the Constitution and supported a crew of around 200, half that
of the 400 of the Enterprise. It supports a fore and aft torpedo launcher, a twin phaser
array at the fore and a single beam at the aft. It’s maximum speed however seems to
be around warp 6, suggesting a much weaker warp core, especially for the time, and it
was actually less manoeuvrable. It also isn’t as durable, but this is to be expected from
a vessel that isn’t meant to operate for extended periods. This power difference is
further supported by the in game +3 to all power levels that the constitution has as
well as its higher hull integrity. The interior of the Pioneer class houses several
science labs, engineering labs, an armoury and a sick bay comparable to others of its
time. The reveal of these areas in the introduction of the ship goes to demonstrate its priorities,
combat engagements sure, but it was quite capable of running ongoing scientific projects
and fabrication of new technologies, probably just not on such a large scale as bigger ships
of the time. I keep comparing it to the constitution class
but the design of the vessel is very similar and that’s not an accident. The similarities
are there to create an instantly recognizable design, but without running the risk of seeming
to be merely a sort of fanservice. Also it aligns to cannon as the Constitutions vessels
always numbered around a dozen and simply creating another in this distinguished line
could cause problems. The nacelles of the Pioneer are almost identical to those of the
constitution but with the cage-era antennae things on the front. Perhaps this suggests
that the nacelles are of a much older design, helping to explain the slower warp velocities.
The Deflector dish appears to be the same too, which matches the shield strength of
the two ships at least. The amount of windows, the colour scheme and
the individual components such as the pylons are very similar too, all to recreate the
iconic style of the 2260s. The interiors and the bridge too, match they layout of a constitution
but it’s worth noting that the Pioneer had its own insignia, a 7 point star like badge
that sort of reminds me of a leaf. Oh wait…. Um... let’s wrap this up.
Vessels of this class include the USS Myrmidon, a vessel assigned to patrol the sector of
space around station K-13 under captain Dougherty, the aforementioned USS Pioneer and several
unknown vessels that take part in a Klingon confrontation at Caleb 4.
And that’s about as much information as the Pioneer has, I don’t usually go into
the specifics of vessels, more often than not I focus on the lore of events, history,
characters and the like but I enjoyed the change, plus it pertains to my Star Trek Online
Story Series and I if you’ve played it, then probably yours too.
Thanks for watching, until next video, I’ve been Ric and I’ll see you next time, thanks
again and so long!