The Battle of Wolf 359 showed Starfleet that it was hopelessly outgunned and putting civilians in harms way.
This caused them to reassess their design philosophy,
and triggered the creation of a series of new, heavily armed starships.
The largest of these new ships was the Sovereign class,
a long and streamlined vessel, packed with the most advanced technology Starfleet had at its disposal.
After the destruction of the Galaxy class 1701-D,
one was assigned the name Enterprise.
As part of a general shift in Starfleet culture, there were no civilian families on board the
Enterprise-E, as they had proven to be at risk of unacceptable loss of life.
Despite the significant military overtones in its design, the Sovereign class still had a number
of scientific laboratories and conference rooms. In order to play to the crews strengths,
the Enterprise was kept away from the Dominion War and was instead used for diplomatic efforts.
"In view of our losses to the Borg and the Dominion,
the council feels we need all the allies we can get these days."
The Sovereigns main feature though was its state-of-the-art technology, with the class
representing the absolute pinnacle of the fleet. As with the Defiant, quantum torpedoes
were commonly used, but unlike the smaller escorts phaser cannons, the Sovereign was
armed with conventional phaser arrays.
To round out the design, the vessel had a set of extremely strong shields, fully capable
of taking multiple hits from even the strongest weapons that the Borg, or other adversaries,
could bring to bear.
Despite this advanced design, the Enterprise still took considerable damage from the dangerous
environmental conditions within the Briar Patch, and even had to eject its warp core
in a desperate attempt to stop a subspace tear created from the use of banned isolytic
weapons.
As part of the repair process, the Enterprise underwent a refit. The biggest changes were
to the weapons systems, with additional phaser arrays mounted to the warp nacelles. Five
extra torpedo tubes were also added across the top and bottom sections of both hull sections,
with most of them facing aft.
The hull surrounding the shuttle bay on the saucer section was also slightly altered,
refining the smooth lines of the ship.
After the Enterprise was boarded by the Borg, and possibly in response to successful boarding
actions on other ships by the Dominion, rotating wall panels with phaser rifles were added
in a number of key locations, including directly on the bridge. This allowed the crew to arm
themselves at a moments notice, rather than needing to head to the armory.
Other internal changes included a number of small adjustments to the bridge and conference
room, as well as a new shield around the warp core.
This shield was a particularly strange addition, as it didn’t protect the incredibly dangerous
plasma coolant tanks that had the potential to kill everyone in engineering if damaged.
The shield almost immediately failed upon the ship taking damage anyway, so it's hard
to see what exactly the point of it was.
There were a number of other bizarre features included onboard the Sovereign class. Tucked
away somewhere in the engineering section, seemingly accessible only via Jefferies tube,
was an openable shutter in the hull. A forcefield was behind this shutter rather than a regular
solid window.
What possible purpose could this room have served? It couldn’t have been for moving
cargo, because there was nowhere beyond the room for items to go, and there were two shuttle
bays and a number of transporters to transfer cargo instead. It also couldn't have been
an EVA airlock, as those had a completely different appearance. Given that the vessel
was multirole and could be used for scientific missions, this room may have been housing
for remotely operated scientific equipment that needed easy access to vacuum.
On the bridge, a steering column rose out of the floor in the middle of the room. This
allowed a skilled pilot to manually fly the ship through difficult maneuvers, although
it is unclear why such maneuvers could not have been done using a regular control console
as they were in the past, on other ships.
Finally, the Enterprise-E was even capable of time travel with minor modifications.
"I've reconfigured our warp field to match the chronometic readings of the Borg sphere."
However this is more likely to be a one off situation, and only possible due to the temporal
vortex previously created by the Borg in their attempt to assimilate Earth.
Despite being the most sophisticated vessel put into service by Starfleet up to that point,
the Sovereign represented a step back in the culture and doctrine of the Federation. External
pressure from the Borg and the Dominion began the long process of deterioration by forcing
Starfleet to militarise.
The loss of the Enterprise-D, the flagship of the entire Federation, and its subsequent
replacement by such a heavily armed vessel like the Sovereign class, was emblematic of
this shift in the zeitgeist of the Federation.
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