Federation Ship Recognition Manual

The Federation Ship Recognition manual was a guide used for Star Trek: The Role Playing Game by FASA. It showed designs and described the combat abilities for several Federation ship types and gave brief histories for them. The ships were from the timeframes of the original Star Trek series and movies. It contained many more designs than were contained in the original Starship Combat Manual. There are even some older designs from the time of Capt. Pike and April that have lasers and cannons. The Constitution Class contemporaries include the Nelson Class Scout, Larson Class Destroyer (both of which have only one warp engine), Loknar Class Frigate and Soyuz Class Cruiser (an early Miranda design). Later designs include the Andor Class Torpedo Cruiser, Reliant (Miranda) Class Cruiser, Enterprise (Constitution refit)Class Cruiser, Wilkerson and Baker Class Destroyers, Chandley Class Frigate and the Excelsior Class Cruiser. Many of these ships have different upgrades which extend their lifespans. The Constitution Class had 4 different upgrades before being changed to the Enterprise Class. Those upgrades included the specs from Pike's time with lasers, and another which came near the end of Kirk's first five-year mission but was not done on Enterprise. One of the strangest upgrades was the Baker Class, which in its original design did not bring enough firepower to bear in any direction. In checking against the Ship Construction Manual, it was a design that should not have been able to be put together because of weight limits. There were occassion problems where the information would not match the other guide. Another problem was that most Federation designs could not fire 60 degrees aft. Its interesting to note that the Federation held a big technological edge, especially when the Enterprise Class came out. The Excelsior Class widens that gap even when considering Romulan and Klingon Battleship designs.