Gabriel class

The Gabriel-class was a Federation starship that saw service in the 24th century. 

Role
The Gabriel-class was designed as a shuttle carrier. Its main purpose was to transport large numbers of shuttles. While transporters were the most common form of transport over short distances there were still plenty of situations were they were not the favoured form of transport because of factor such as interference and that some beings and materials did not respond well to the effects of transporters. The Gabriel was built to fill this hole.

A large starship it is mainly a support vessel. It is lightly armed with poor manoeuvrability at impulse making it a poor combat vessel. Though it is still expected to perform multiple roles, like most Starfleet vessels, and these ships also fulfil patrol duties. Several of these vessels have had run-ins with hostile vessels and in these cases the best option is either a diplomatic one or to warp out of the area.

The first ship of the class, the USS Gabriel, entered Starfleet service in 2360.

Design features
The class had a roughly circular saucer section that was directly connected to the engineering hull. The engineering hull was wedged between the major feature of the class, two totally separate shuttlebays that were placed on either side of the engineering hull. The warp nacelles were in line with the shuttlebays so that they appeared to be under the saucer section when viewed from the front. They were connected to the engineering section by long connecting arms that arched over the shuttlebay to meet at the centre of the ship.

Armament
The ship was lightly armed for its size. It had four Type-X phaser arrays on the saucer section. Two on the dorsal and two on the ventral sides separated into port and starboard arrays. There was an array located on the bottom of the engineering section and one array near where the nacelle connecting arms joined the hull. This arrangement left significant blind spots in the phaser coverage of the ship.

The ship only had two torpedo launchers. On on the underside of the engineering hull facing to the rear and the other was located on the saucer section's ventral side almost directly under the bridge.

Shuttlebays
The ship's main feature were its two large shuttlebays. At over two hundred metres long these individual bays are what made this ship a carrier. They both had large doors at the front and rear of the bays allowing for significant operations. Each bay could hold dozens of shuttlecraft.

Refit
Six years after the first Gabriel was launched the class under went a refit. The new Peregrine-class fighter was about to enter service and the designers of the Gabriel saw that the shuttle carrier could be upgraded to take advantage of this.

The design also had an increase in firepower. However the Gabriel is still a support vessel. During times of conflict these vessels normally hung back from battles letting their fighters engage instead of getting directly involved.

The first vessel to be refitted was the USS Celtic.

Design features
The ship's refit increased the size of the ship so that it was now longer and wider. An extra two decks were added to the engineering section as well making the ship taller.

Shuttlebays
The main change in the design was an expansion of the already large shuttlebays. They were widen and lengthed such that the nacelles now extended past the edge of the saucer section and the bays continued past the rear of the nacelles. This resulted in a slightly larger vessel.

Armament
The ship was also more heavily armed. The Type-X phaser array arrangement was altered with only two arrays been placed on the saucer section, much like the arrangement on the Galaxy-class. Each nacelle had a array placed on the dorsal side to provide better coverage under the vessel. On each connecting arm a small array was placed facing aft to cover that quarter. These additional weapons went a long way towards fixing the weapons' coverage issues that the original design had.

An extra torpedo launcher was also placed with the forward launcher.

Gabriel-class starships

 * USS Gabriel

Modified Gabriel-class starships

 * USS Celtic
 * USS Bush
 * USS Cartwright
 * USS Carter

Background information

 * The Gabriel-class is based on a design with the same name by James Lythgoe.