Starship Classes

[Beavis420]

Hey fellow trekkers. First time poster, but I've been a fan of the series for about a year now. Just a quick questoin:

I know that the starships are classified by class. Constitution, Excelsior etc. but what I really want is a list of all the classes by importance and most of all understand the classes itself. What they really mean, their duty and what not.

Try to avoid spoilers as I've only seen the first season of TOS and the movies up to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

 

[Kaziarl]

Most of what you want to know can be found at Memory Alpha
In the original series you don't really get to see very many OTHER classes. This was due to financial issues of making more models I think. So primarily you see the Constitution Class, (USS Enterprise, USS Defiant, USS Constellation) These were the backbone of the fleet. Exploration, defense, offense. Obviously there were more in the movies. Miranda class, USS Reliant. Oberth class, USS Grissom. Excelsior class... USS Excelsior.

I'm not completely sure of all of there specific roles, and pretty much anything can be refit for one thing or another.

Miranda - My guess is something along the lines of a border cutter. They patrol the fringe territories.
Oberth - Science, science, and oh, did I mention science?
Excelsior - What I gathered from the movies was that the Excelsior was essentially a replacement to the Constitution class. Much like its predecessor the Excelsior class line seemed capable of doing many things, and doing a pretty good job of it.

 

[Beavis420]

Thank you Kaziarl! Some useful information there and I'll bookmark that site.

I'm a knowledge freak, and Star Trek is filled with tons of it that I just want to know all of it!

 

[Kaziarl]

Then MA is definitely where you want to go. They are very particular about what they have on their site, and very strict about sources