In 2381, work on the Odyssey was just over half-complete, and somewhat further behind on the Verity, when Starfleet learned of the impending Romulan supernova. The spaceframe of a sister ship, the Verity, was also laid down not too long after. The new class was named after the USS Odyssey, the first Starfleet casualty in conflict with the Dominion, and the spaceframe that would become the USS Odyssey was laid down at San Francisco Fleet Yards. The development of a totally new spaceframe would take much longer. Work began at Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards in 2374, and easier than developing a ship from scratch, the refit was ready within three years, and the first vessels of the Olympus configuration entered into service in 2377. ![]() The first was envisioned as an upgrade and structural overhaul of the Galaxy class into a configuration along the lines of the last century's Federation-class dreadnought, and would develop into the Olympus class. The wartime encounters with Jem'Hadar dreadnoughts had already forced Starfleet to reconsider this stance, and the Scimitar incident only served as further confirmation that a new class of dreadnought was needed.Īs typical when a new design mandate is given, the Starfleet Corps of Engineers and the Advanced Starship Design Bureau began work on two dreadnought classes during the later half of the Dominion War, anticipating a prolonged conflict. At the time, such warships were few, and most of the fleet was built upon the backs of exploration cruisers like the Galaxy and Sovereign classes. Since the end of the long Federation-Klingon Cold War, over the last century Starfleet's starship design philosophy had shifted away from large dreadnought-style ships, and the few battleship designs in service were small, maneuverable escorts such as the Defiant class and Prometheus class designed to harass larger foes like a Borg Cube or a D'deridex-class warbird. ![]() The second incident came several years after the war, when in 2379, the USS Enterprise encountered the Reman warship Scimitar, and was nearly destroyed by her in the Bassen Rift. Later during the war, further such vessels would be encountered, even larger, up to three times the size of the Galaxy, with massively increased power output. The first of these incidents was during the Dominion War, when the USS Valiant encountered a prototype Jem'Hadar dreadnought, twice the size of a Galaxy-class starship and three times as powerful. During the 2370s, Starfleet reconsidered their stance on the development of large dreadnought classes after encountering two massive enemy starships.
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