Guide:Tavares

Tavares
Class Overview
Category	light transport
Operational	2254-2283
Constructed	54 light transports corvette tenders
Dimensions
Length	65.5 m
Beam	36.1 m
Height	18.0 m (landing gear retracted) 20.8 m (landing gear extended)
Mass	45,000 mt
Performance
Cruise Speed	w 5
Max Speed	w 6
Endurance	1.5 years
Complement
Officers	4
Enlisted	12
Cargo	12,000 mt
Tactical Systems
Beam Weapons	2x phaser VI (dorsal bow)
Shields	1-layer conformal forcefield 1x navigational deflector (dorsal bow)
Transporters	1x general purpose (6-pad), Mk II
Auxiliary Craft	2x light (or medium) shuttles
Historical
Ships of Note	USS Orlando (NCC-F1219) USS Ganelon (NCC-5003) USS Tavares
Canonicity
Design	FASA
Name	FASA
History	FASA, own

A bow view of a Star Fleet supply ship, USS Orlando (NCC-F1219), shows to good effect the twin phaser turrets and the Fleet livery. While the bridge on Deck 4 is invisible to the surface here, other key areas lie close to the outer hull; the very modest shielding of the transport made her highly vulnerable to any opponent not frightened away by the guns and pennants. No less than nineteen Tavares units were lost in Star Fleet supply duty, eleven of those to combat action.

A stern view reveals two of the three primary means of cargo entry to this Tavares on starport tarmac: the vast doors of the lower hold, and the shuttlebay directly above. The starboard cargo transporter platform can also be glimpsed in the far corner of the hold, which is lit brightly and provided with integrated antigravs for ease of loading on austere ports like this.

Rounding out the logistics escalation program of the mid-23rd century was a light transport combining a solid-state warp drive system and an atmospheric hull capable of planetfall and takeoff. Emboldened by a decade of operating Chameleon and Mission light craft of these characteristics, Star Fleet wanted to push the envelope and field a larger, more potent theater transport—in part to cover the shortfall of frontline orbit-to-surface logistics due to Project Tradewinds that had dispersed the modern light craft to civilian assignments. Naturally, there were still technological hurdles to be overcome, or then acknowledged and acquiesced to for the time being. By 2254, a workable configuration had nevertheless emerged, and the influence of its success can be compared to that of the fast Aakenn heavyweights. For the 2270s, the Tavares class would be virtually the standard light transport of Federation deep space commerce agencies.

The Tavares was propelled by two solid-state warp engines – PB-40 in the Star Fleet model and DB-2250 in concurrently produced civilian versions, even if the difference was basically in name only. The engine type provided the same warp 5 cruise and 6 maximum speed performance here as in the other prominent application, the Masterson police corvette refit. The coils were nacelle-mounted yet semi-embedded on the flanks of the six-deck hull, straddling a cargo hold that formed the lowermost two decks and enjoyed direct access to surface from a pair of doors astern, plus indirect access via a pair of cargo transporters forward. Hydrogen fuel was held in the engine cowlings, and intermix systems and antimatter tanks were kept out of the way of the cargo at the upper bow. This arrangement maximized stability and surface accessibility; penalties in radiation shielding and warp field gradient management were tolerable, leaving the Tavares class only slightly behind the heavier and more powerful Independence in performance.

Above the ventral cargo hold, a second major volume accommodated two shuttlecraft for maximum flexibility in stevedoring the cargo. Star Fleet insisted on full maintenance facilities, while most civilian operators of the vessels saw it better to dedicate some of the shuttle spaces to additional cargo. Civilian transports also typically made do with much smaller crews, donating some of the officer accommodation on Deck 2 or crew quarters on Deck 1 to passenger use, or converting the Deck 1 vaults for high value cargo to passenger cabins.

The civilian market was still wary of Klingon aggression, and slow to absorb the 200 units produced. Fifty hulls were earmarked for Star Fleet theater logistics from the beginning, and four added when their civilian sales fell through. Their major distinction from their mercantile counterparts, a pair of Type VI phasers plus their fire control computer, still came to see frequent use in the lawless outer trade routes in the 2250s. A decade and a half later, Star Fleet’s anti-piracy crusade finally brought back the confidence of the commercial operators, and saw the explosion of Tavares operations across the inner sectors and the colonization zone alike.

Being a pathfinder, the Tavares was quickly overrun by more refined competition when commercial interest peaked. Star Fleet was slower to let go of its transports, operating a handful of corvette tenders till the early 2280s and only developing the replacement Deneva class after the Khitomer peace. Yet even Fleet analysts saw the attractiveness of the warp-nimble, aerodynamically agile transport, and modeled the successful Sydney medium-weight class on the same basic pattern, even extending some of the design influences to the much heavier Laweyas and Overfields. The modern runabout also owes much to the Tavares layout, which has basically surpassed all earlier Star Fleet configurations for orbit-to-surface transport vessels.

Gallery

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  Tavares class

Notes

• Timo provides two differing hull registries for the class: standard & letter prefix. Because the class was split between two roles (light transports & corvette tenders), the F1200 series will go to the transports, while the tenders get the standard in the 5000 series.

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• Appendix C: Star Fleet Organization - General Outline
• Appendix D: Abbreviations From Outside