first: i think the ship would be bether with a deflector dish
Uhhhh...that blue thing on the front of the hull is the deflector dish...dang that was done before my hiatus...don't tell me you couldn't tell!
Seriously though, I think you mean an actual dish like a modern radar dish...could do one like that, but as I understand it this falls about the same time frame as the Ent.A, kind of a cross between TOS and TMP.
As to it's effectiveness in combat, remember, Starfleet is more about exploration than combat, so it stands to reason that there would be ships that were more non-combatants than we see in the series and movies. As for game use, you could always re-classify her as a special ops carrier
Anyway, I hope to get more done tonight...remembering more and more, but it still seems to be like pulling the knowledge from molasses....super ssslllooowwww....