3125 Scale Gorn Neo-Command Cruiser+ SRZ

The Gorns are six-to-seven-foot-tall, 350-pound, cold-blooded, egg-laying, reptilian humanoids bearing a superficial resemblance to a T-Rex or Raptor. Despite the fearsome visage, they are actually quite civilized people who run one of the few democracies in the galaxy. The Federation and Gorns met in a border incident in which two hot-headed captains shot first and faced embarrassing questions later. (A Federation corporation built an unauthorized colony outside of Federation territory. The Gorns saw a few Vulcans and thought the colonists were Romulans (with which they had fought wars for over a century). Diplomats smoothed everything over and the Gorns became the most stable ally of the Federation. The Gorn legislature’s reluctance to spend money or join the Federation's war limited this alliance during some periods. (Note: The dinosaur-based names are Federation “reporting names” because few in the Federation could pronounce the Gorn names for them. Shown books on paleontology, the Gorns were reportedly honored and amused by the naming convention.)

As the General War approached the Gorn Navy was always looking for ways to increase the strength of the fleet in the face of the obstinacy of the Confederation legislature to pinch every centi-credit it could. One idea that was floated was to produce a new command cruiser. The design was developed by essentially taking the plans for the Dreadnought, which was then being built, and cutting away much of the rear portions of the design. Normal heavy cruiser engines would then be installed.

The idea was that Neo-Command Cruisers could then be quickly upgraded to full dreadnoughts in less time than it would take to build new dreadnoughts from scratch. In effect, the plan was not to build a new command cruiser but to slip the production of more dreadnoughts past the credit-pinching legislature. The loss of the rear hull and the less powerful engines made the ship subject to shock effects on the hull when launching the plasma-R torpedo.

Ultimately the concept was dropped for three reasons. The legislature refused to fund a new fleet command cruiser when the existing ships were deemed to be fully capable. Ultimately the primary problem in building new dreadnoughts was simply that there was only one dock available to build them, and the size of the wings on the Neo-Command Cruiser required that they be built in that dock, so building a Neo-Command Cruiser meant not building a Dreadnought, which was the entire point. Finally, both the admiralty and the legislature saw the design of a ship subject to shock as a bad arrangement. The only prototype, after serving nearly a year, was converted into a dreadnought; its name was Volcano. The scaled panels on the outer surfaces represent efforts to reduce the electronic signature of the Neo-Command Cruiser+ and match it to the standard Neo-Command Cruiser so the enemy could not tell the difference.

The ship is available in a variety of materials. Ships are unpainted, use standard flight stands available from many sources, and, while designed for gaming, make fine display pieces.