Engineered after the historic battle against the Borg at Wolf-359 as part of StarFleet's effort to modernize its aging fleet, its design was based on the larger Sabre class light cruiser and intended to act as a counter-part for it in larger operations.

The design incorporates a few innovative features, the most notable of which is the attachment of the forward sections of the warp nacelles directly to the rear of the primary hull. This was done for several purposes. It enabled the engineering crew easier access, ensuring less downtime for maintenance and faster repair times. Secondly, the result is a much sturdier design than more traditional ships, with the nacelles able withstand a much greater amount of shearing force. In fact, one of the designers working on the Sovereign class wanted to incorporate the design into the new cruiser, but his proposal was rejected because of the time it would set the project back.

Another unusual feature is the relatively small secondary hull, as compared to similarly sized designs, which is not directly attached to the primary hull. Essentially consisting of the deflector dish, a tractor emitter and key components of the long-range sensor array, it contains no other key systems. Again, this is done to ensure easier access to various important systems for the engineering staff speeding up maintenance and repairs. Only being attached to the rest of the ship via an inverted-roll bar between the nacelles has had the undesired result of making it difficult to access the secondary hull in emergency situations. It is currently standard operating proceedure for damage control teams to travel there by means of a site-to-site transport during any yellow or red alert situations.

Its primary hull is also shaped far less elliptical than ships like the Galaxy and Nebula classes. With a more angled profile, the hull is slightly stronger than older hulls like the Miranda class. Following the success of the Defiant class, ablative armor was mated to exterior of the chassis to provide additional protection. After the advent of the emergency ablative armor generation system, all Steamrunners were scheduled to be refitted with the new system. The system replicates huge interlocking plates of 10cm thick armor onto pylons built on the hull, which are held in place with a sophisticated force-field grid, powered by the ship's deflector systems, running through the plates and pylons. Though the fields provide no additional protection against enemy ships, they do prevent enemy troops from being transported aboard. This system is usually reserved for emergency use, because the ship cannot raise its shields while the system is in use and it has to drain half of the ship's supply of replicator matter.

As is standard with most frigate designs, the Steamrunner is quite heavily armed for a ship of its size. Able to launch 24 torpedoes at targets lying in its forward arc in under 5 seconds, it is well suited for its primary roles of escorting other vessels through hostile territories and combat patrol, as well as providing substantial fire-support in larger engagements.

While it may be armed as well as larger ships, it cannot withstand nearly as much punishment. In combat situations where it lacks support, a Steamrunner's crew must attempt to use the ship's superior mobility to avoid taking damage.

The Mosquito is a step up in countermeasures from the aging Nettle Defense System. Where as Nettle had to be targeted and locked onto a target the Mosquito system takes a more historical approach. In essence the Mosquito is an old fashioned machine gun. However, the mosquito is slightly different.

The Mosquito uses eight rotary barrels to fed with 3 rotary magazines, mounted on an turret to fire well over 7,500 rounds/min of 30mm projectiles.

The approach may sound out dated, but a projectile at sub-light speeds thrown into the path of an object, even an object at warp would be torn apart. This is why the mosquito was designed. It tracks the course of a target and fires in its path to shower the enemy: the enemy in this case being torpedoes and fighters.

Composed by Aaron MacRae, with the assistance of Richard Woodcock; based on Steamrunner-class starhip, property of Paramount. Used without permission, for the personal use of the composer and the other players on the USS CHILLICOTHE-A, in GYPSY FLEET, solely.

This technical readout does not attempt to represent, in any way, the actual layout of the Steamrunner-class starship. It is nothing more than a fictitious interpretation, with a great deal of speculation and improvisation, intended to be a useful reference to the players of the USS CHILLICOTHE-A.

No copyright infringement was intended.