Vengeance seems almost like something designed by an engineer who visited multiple universes and took the best aspects from the timelines of each.
Strictly speaking (and again, using the IDW series as background) it was designed by two groups of people working (somewhat) in parallel:
1) The Starfleet engineers who saw the Narada in action and realized that the Klingons were reverse engineering the Narada's technology to upgrade their fleet
2) Khan, who actually has experience designing and operating weapon systems in combat and has an idea of what sort of solutions will work and what sort of solutions are just wishful thinking.
All in all, Vengeance is a starship designed by 23rd century jingoists and then upgraded by a 21st century war criminal. It's five year mission: to destroy strange new worlds, to force recon new life forms and new civilizations, to boldly conquer what no man has conquer before.
