3788 Scale Gorn Battle Destroyer Scout+ 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.)

The Gorns, like other empires, began the General War with tiny destroyer-sized scouts expected to do no more than detect a distant enemy fleet. When it became necessary for scouts to operate in the battlespace to provide jamming and counter-jamming support, the destroyer-sized scout was found too small to survive. The solution was to take the next larger ship (the battle destroyer) and convert it into a scout. Luckily for the Gorns (or perhaps due to unusual foresight) all of the existing obsolete destroyer-scouts could be quickly converted to the battle destroyer scouts by upgrading the engines and adding a rear pod. The Federation’s codename for this ship was Ceratosaurus-S. It later received the “plus” refit. The scaled panels on the outer surfaces represent efforts to reduce the electronic signature of the Ceratosaurus-S+ battle destroyer scout and match it to the standard Ceratosaurus-S battle destroyer scout 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.