The Ship
The USS Dauntless is not a real Starship. The "Starship" is a metaphor that represents the social and ideological elements that binds the crew together. The crew is the ship.
For a number of thematic reasons, and for fun, STARFLEET chapters select a specific class of Starship from Star Trek to be the symbolic representation of that crew. The founders of the USS Dauntless chose the Defiant Class for this purpose.
Defiant Class Starship
The prototype of this class, the USS Defiant NX-74205, was built as a proof-of-concept - the idea was to create the first ever Federation warship. The design team took the standard layout of a Federation Starship, removed all the unnecessary elements and beefed up what was left as far as possible. The result was an extremely powerful, fast, agile and light "first strike assault cruiser", ideal for intercepting enemy incursions and doing maximum damage ahead of the arrival of heavier ships.
In addition to being an effective combat vessel, the Defiant Class is also perfectly suited to short-range missions, and tend to be tethered to a Starbase. In the case of the USS Dauntless, we are tethered to Starbase 8, the base of operations for SFI's 8th Fleet.
Specifications
Courtesy of the Daystrom Institute Technical LibraryDimensions:
Length: 170.68m
Beam: 134.11m
Height: 30.1 m
Decks: 4 (A pair of large Jefferies Tubes beneath the nacelles are sometimes considered a 5th deck)
Mass: 355,000 metric tons
Crew Capacity: 50 (150 evacuation limit)
Armament:
Fore:
4 x Class I rapid fire phaser pulse cannon
3 x Pulse fire quantum torpedo tube
Aft:
1 x Type X phaser bank, total output 70,000 TeraWatts
1 x Probe/photon launcher equivalent to standard photon torpedo tube with 120 rounds
Defense Systems:
Auto modulated shield system, total capacity 2,376,000 Terajoules
Heavy Duranium/Tritanium Double hull plus 20 cm Ablative armour.
High level Structural Integrity Field
Warp Speeds:
Normal Cruise : 6
Maximum Cruise : 8.7
Maximum Rated : 9.513 for 12 hours.
Strength Indices (Galaxy class = 1,000):
Beam Firepower: 1,400
Torpedo Firepower : 2,150
Weapon Range and Accuracy : 810
Shield Strength : 880
Hull Armour : 3,400
Speed : 955
Combat Maneuverability : 8,660
