Following the end of the Dominion War, Starfleet was ready to once again return to its primary mission of peaceful exploration and diplomatic outreach. To that end, new classes of long-range exploratory cruisers were being developed by shipyards all over the Federation. One such design was the Ross class, which built on the success of the Galaxy class, but incorporated a variety of technological advancements made during the last decade.

Named after Earth engineering pioneer Mary G. Ross, the class featured a secondary warp core and engine coils inside its saucer section. This arrangement could propel the Ross primary hull to speeds of up to warp 6. During standard flight this core also supplements the ship’s power grid, providing energy to the saucer’s impulse engines and phaser arrays. In emergency situations the main warp nacelles could be powered by this secondary core, but this added significant stress to the spaceframe.

USS Ross NX-76710

The first ship of its class, Ross was launched in 2381 under the command of Captain Azeri Sull, and was assigned to explore the Shackleton Expanse out of Narendra Station, as part of Starfleet’s 20th Fleet.

The ship incorporated the first holographic first officer in Starfleet, Commander EXEO, who ran on a dedicated computer core with its own holographic matrix. Other inclusions were a large diplomatic promenade on deck 8 for receptions; and a Cetacean Ops department on deck 13 crewed by 22 Odanian officers.

The ship’s motto, inscribed on its dedication plaque, was a quote by Sally Ride: “The stars don’t look bigger, but they do look brighter.”

• The Ross class was designed by Thomas Marrone for "Star Trek Online" in early 2020, in collaboration with The Streampunks RPG group for their "Star Trek Adventures" actual-play campaign "Clear Skies". I was approached to design the Ross bridge for the campaign shortly afterwards. The USS Ross (now NCC-76710) was made canon when it appeared in the background of several episodes in seasons 2 and 3 of "Star Trek: Picard".