Even though the Gorn are officially classified as "best ally", it's not very often that they show up in the Sol sector. Still, from time to time diplomacy makes it necessary to make an appearance.
After the General War with the threat of the Romulans all but gone, their Empire collapsed into civil war, the Gorn government initiated major cutbacks in their military's budget. The military did however convince the more passive moderates, who typical of the politics after a long war had assumed a majority role by this point, that it would be unwise to sit back and let technology pass them by. There was still the ISC to contend with and not everyone believed that they were merely here to "passify" the quadrant. The Andromedan threat was looming larger, as well. To this end there were quite a number of limited production designs used as test beds for current technologies. This is the 1st one of this design christened, (It's possibly the only one. Some report as many as 3 being built, but it's not known for sure.) and the only to ever be seen "in the flesh" by Federation eyes, let alone parked right next to Mars. (You can understand why the crew in the Connie wanted to get a closer look. )
It's reported that early in it's production stage the design was shown to Federation personnel, who were themselves on a diplomatic visit to Ghdar 1. The Federation spokesperson reportedly, upon seeing the design, said it reminded him of a "great she dragon". Nothing more was said and they went on. The tone of the Federation officer was positive, and he seemed quite impressed with himself when he said it. The Gorns had no idea what the reference to a dragon was, dragons are an Earth legend. After checking the reference (they were really curious as to what the officer meant) they were quite enamored with it. So much so that they christened the ship the Gorn Starship "Dragoness". As direct a reference as possible to "great she dragon" in the Gorn language (Or possibly it just fit on the hull better?).
Not much is known of the design, no Federation personnel boarded it. Some things can be ascertained from the exterior scans though. First off is it's armament. The placement of the phasers and plasma turrets show a "throwback" of sorts to older Gorn Designs. There are no 360 degree phasers and the main plasma turrets are out on the "wings" rather than mounted along the centerline like the more aggressive designs which emerged during the General War. This, and it's role in diplomatic missions, tells us that it's a command vessel. This is further confirmed when you look at the Gorn's heavy command cruiser design (and the x-refit command cruiser) which has identical apparent armament. Make no mistakes though, while she's not intended to attack head on, but to fight from the outside, the heavy armoring and the amount of armament shows the ability to more than "stand up for herself". The large bridge under the top saucer also suggests she's a command vessel. For our purposes we could use it as a direct replacement for either ship (CCH/CCX) in our simulations. Or you could just opt to replace the GCA model with it, depending on how specialized your models folder is.
The timeline of the design (post war) would definitely make it an X-class cruiser. It's possibly even 2nd generation X-class, but we aren't sure of the exact dates that technology became available and this ship has a 1st generation X look, more classic, less stretched and curved than the known X2 designs.
An Atolm design:
http://www.battleclinic.com/docks/dock.php?id=4329 The model includes 2 sets of textures, clean and weathered, depending on your preference. The 1st two pics are with the clean textures, last 2 weathered. The Connie refit in the background of the 1st pic is Wicked Zombies.
Topic: Sol sector appearance (Read 1583 times)