With all of these different options, it’s clear to see that there is a wide variety of ships in Star Trek: Cypher. A much rarer variation is experimental designs where an established ship class is outfitted with a new system to test its behavior in active service, usually a temporary measure. Others might be refits of older ships, overhauling their systems to make them competitive with advances in ship design and systems. These variants account for the differences in newer ships of a given class which incorporate improvements and optimizations found while the first examples were in service. There are some changes in ship design that are not considered to be dramatic enough even for a subclass. In this case, though, the changes to the Shi’Kahr design are too significant to mark down as a subclass: this is a new class altogether. This is especially true when compared to other light cruiser classes such as the Centaur class which is a completely independent design.
For example, looking at the newer Shi’Kahr-class light cruiser next to any of the Miranda subclasses shows a definite similarity and design.
In other cases, the changes are significant enough to necessitate a new class entirely. In the century since its first production, this feature has undergone significant shifts producing the Reliant, Lantree, and Saratoga subclass. For example, the Miranda class of light cruisers is an old design featuring a raised “rollbar” above the saucer section. In some cases, the ships of different design might not be considered of the same class each variation would either be its own class, or a subclass of the original class. In the course of building a class of ships, design changes might be implemented between the production of different ships. Cairo which is also a cruiser but of the Excelsior class. Enterprise-D is a cruiser (ship type) of the Galaxy class (ship class) and can be readily told apart from the U.S.S. This is distinct from a ship type, in both the game mechanics sense and the in-universe sense, which reflects a similarity of intended use. Ship Classes A ship class is a group of ships of a similar design, developed and mass-produced by fleet shipyards to fill the needs of the government producing them.