The Kestrel (R4.4) has long been described as giving the Romulans a powerful boost in their fleet capabilities. The only thing it lacked (as I see it from the Romulan viewpoint) was the power of a Plasma-R torpedo.

Recently, I've toyed with a way of giving that shocking weapon to a Kestrel class ship.

Due to this being inspired by the torpedo launchers used in the opening sequences in the first movie, it may well be a non-starter for the SFU. If that is the case, then please forget I ever suggested the idea.

Otherwise, what I pictured is this.

As we already know, the Klingons have, on VERY rare occasion, pulled the chin phasers out of a D-class ship in favor of another weapon. The classic case of this is the D7A Stasis Battlecruiser (R3.8), which replaces all three of its chin phasers with a two-box SFG.

With this hypothetical Plasma-R armed Kestrel, it would replace the trio of phasers in the chin with a single Plasma-R torpedo.

The loss of forward phasers is addressed with replacing the Disruptors from the ORIGINAL D6 (R3.5) on which the Kestrels are based, with Phaser-1s on the same firing arc (FA; non-expandable).

With the Type-F Drone Racks being replaced with ADMIN (as on the Canon Kestrel), this gives the proposed ship a total armament (at this point) of eight phasers and the Plasma-R.

Sundry items (?) include exchanging the boom Security Station with a one-box Flag Bridge (I see the Romulans using this as a ship of pride initially). Also, I do see a potential problem for lack of reserve power; something the Romulans would probably see as necessary for proper use of the Plasma-R torpedo.

A couple thoughts for that would be to either exchange the two box BTTY and four box TRAN in the aft hull, replace the APR in the deckhouse with BTTY, or both, to give this potential proposal nearly the same reserve power as the WE (R4.3) that seems so necessary for proper tactical use of the Plasma-R.

SIDE NOTE; I do know on the Canon Kestrel (R4.4), the aft SCTY was replaced by a BTTY, BUT there is one other item that will probably be pretty controversial that I have in my (alleged) mind for this ship.

Again, inspired by the Klingon Battlecruisers from the first Star Trek movie, I'm picturing this ship as having its aft TRAC replaced with an aft firing Plasma-F torpedo. This is something I imagined both because I thought it was cool (which shows how poor my ability to be "Cool" is ) and to give the ship a second PPT (or, more critically ECP). However, putting it in does force the ship to either give up a Tractor Beam OR forces it to relocate it elsewhere. My thought was to relocate it to the box of the aft hull SCTY on the original D6.

At this point, I suppose I could put a page (or twenty) of Pseudo-Scientific Bovine Fritters on how this whole thing won't work, but instead I'll just ask, does this (even just parts of it) strike a chord with anyone?

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Friday, June 20, 2025 - 12:07 pm: Edit

By and large, plasma-Rs require four "centerline adjacent option mounts" to install, and in some cases involve setting up a fixed mount in which to install the torpedo itself.

For example: as shown in the Starline 2500 miniature range, and as had been seen on Shapeways 1.0, the FireHawk and NovaHawk cruisers have their plasma-S torpedo launchers installed on their respective centre warp nacelles' nacelle caps. However, in the case of the RegalHawk and RoyalHawk combat variants, the centre nacelle caps are left blank; instead, a dedicated structure is installed between them that provides the room needed to mount the plasma-R torpedo.

In this case, however, the FireHawk and NovaHawk "base hulls" had been drawn up by the Romulans themselves, no doubt with the potential for such a range of combat variants in mind.

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By contrast, I'd argue that Size Class 3 Kestrels, having not originally been designed to install plasma torpedo armament of any kind - and which, to be fair, are already somewhat generous in terms of allowing D7-based conversions to install 1 plasma-G and one plasna-F in the space taken up by two disruptors - do not have the concentration of heavy weapon option mount capacity needed to make a type-R mount installable.

While it is possible for the Klingons to install phasers and SFGs in booms, the stasis field generator is more if a "system" than a "heavy weapon". I'd argue that the Romulans - despite "hard-welding" their booms to their respective secondary hulls - would still find these structures to not be sturdy enough to install heavy plasma launchers into.

In principle, one could then ask if it were possible to, say, try and install RoyalHawk-esque structure on a KR or K7R secondary hull. In practice, however, there would be two problems. One: can the ship support such a structure, even if the nacelle heavy weapon mounts were left blank? And two: would the boom not block the torpedo's launch arc in any event?

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Personally, I would prefer there simply not be a Kestrel variant of the D6 or D7 that is armed with a type-R plasma torpedo.

Especially since I would prefer that ADB not attempt to incur the wrath of Paramount by leaning into a "torpedo-launchers-in-booms" setup from the post-1979 Franchise which is off-limits to the Star Fleet Universe...

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That said, I would argue that there is another possibility for an "imported" starship design to which the Romulans might be able to install a type-R plasma torpedo.

One might have to look to a would-be alternate timeline in order to find it, however...

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, June 20, 2025 - 12:12 pm: Edit

I cannot approve this design for the reasons Gary stated.