How The Avenger Class, Broke the Game! 

I remember when the Avenger came out in Star Trek Online, it was a nasty beast. It was Kind of the first ship to start knocking the cruisers out of dominance, it was just a very well designed ship. I think the best description for it as a battlecruiser is the survivability of cruisers with the firepower of an escort without the luggage of science teams weighing it down.

Battlecruiser is more of a role than a size. It's a warship that combines speed, firepower and durability to make what amounts to a smaller, faster and more nimble battleship. From your description of this ship, Avenger class fits the bill.

_"The Federation is no longer afraid of a fight, but it won't embark on one needlessly."_ That indeed sums up the post-Dominion War UFP. I didn't notice the parallels to Klingon ships & Avenger being a scaled up Defiant before. I agree the idea it being reconsidered as a Starfleet attack cruiser makes sense. Given sapient cetaceans are canon in Trek, I wonder if any Avengers have actual orcas in their crew? Also, I think the Avenger class has 16 phasers arrays; I saw another one in the ventral aft of the secondary hull.

Avenger. If the Intrepid and Defiant had a baby. I would love a video on the Romulan Republic and Imperial Remnants use of older 23rd and 22nd century ships in their fleets.

You know, when I originally made the request, I likened Avenger to a fast battleship. She cruises, and she SLAPS. But... factoring what you said here, I buy into the heavy frigate idea. Thanks also for confirming my own head-canon that the black bits are reinforced armour panels. If there is a motto for Avenger-chan, it is this: "I won't ever start a fight... but if you do, I'll damn sure finish it, and you'll regret every second of it."

You're making me want to go get my Avenger / Arbiter out and go do some pew pewing. 😉

I love that there's an Avenger-class video like this. It's an iconic Startrek Online ship that even made it to becoming an Eaglemoss miniature (several more concept arts over there, if you bother to look up the reviews). Now that the Enterprise-F is soon to be remastered (probably once it's shown off in PIC S3), I really hope 2409 vessel like the Avenger will have the opportunity to get a new coat of paint in-game.

The way my old group described the Avenger was the Pocket Sovereign. Most of the firepower in a much cheaper package. Lower frame life from construction due to that smaller space, but... Hey, it costs less and its less logistically intensive.

I'd say the Avenger is probably a Destroyer Leader. An escort ship (destroyer) meant to lead a small flotilla of other escort sized ships.

This was my Fed Main ship for sooooo long back when I still played STO!!! Had fellow Fleet members who would specifically request that my Avenger and I participate in the higher tier group missions with them

Finally a fighter ship that feels like an older 'brother' to the Defiant, nice video cherrs

Got one of these on just about all of my Federation characters. I will agree, this is one of those starships that you do NOT want to mess with! Though I will say this. Quoting my fleet boss, Cody: "Any ship you have can be as formidable and as tough as you want it to be, if you build it right." And that's true.

The problem with the classifications is that the definition of the ship types varies over time. A frigate use to be a fast light armed galley with oars and sails, frigata. Later, it was any full-masted (i.e. three masts, square-rigged) ship with one gun deck. It was used mainly as a cruiser. To clarify, the ship type was a frigate, but its mission was that as a cruiser (i.e. commerce protection and raiding, and patrol). The frigate ship type disapeared with the the introduction of armored ships with turreted guns. It reappeared in WW II. Slow convoy escort warships were called frigates. It did not have the speed or firepower of fleet destroyers, but they were not needed against submarines and merchantships turned commerce raiders. The US Navy equivalent were called destroyer escorts. Today, most modern frigates have gained multi-mission capabilities and are as fast as destroyers in some cases. And Europeans often classify destroyers as frigates. Destroyers used to be "torpedoboat destroyers", intended to screen battleship fleets from torpedo boats. Ironically, destroyers took over the mission of torpedo boats. Today, they are usually multimission to some degree and efffectively taken over the role of cruisers. Pretty much teh main distinctiopn of between cruisers and destroyers today is the size and the presence of dedicated command and control facilities in many cruisers. Historically, the mission of cruising was that of patroling of waterways and commerce raiding. Any ship that did this mission was a "cruiser", be it ship-of-the-line, a frigate, or a corvette. Only with the end of the 19th centiury was tehre a ship type called the cruiser, and even then, the definition was still fuzzy. The battlecruiser was suppose to be be a cruiser killer. It was suppose to nominally be a cruiser (with cruiser level armor) with battleship guns. It was also effective as a scout for a battleship fleet. It had the speed of a cruiser, but can screen against cruisers being used as fleet scouts. The Battle of Jutland is a textbook case of how NOT to employ battlecruisers. If you are going to describe a ship, I personally think it best to define it by its mission, unless there is a well defined definition for the ship type. From your description (I don't play STO), I would say the Avenger can be a "battlecruiser" in the sense that it is a cruiser (or possibly destroyer) hunter. ANd based on its firepower, I would say it is a cruiser or destroyer, rather than a frigate since I suspect teh Avenger does not do much escorting (other than battleships or fighter carriers lol). I personally am not comfortable with the term "attack" ship. Pretty much all military vessels are used in the attack. Federation ships are usually multimission ships that includes exploration in its mission profile. One can say the Avernger is a pure military vessel, much like the Defiant. Just throwing this out there. It seems the classification of vessels are a bit capricious in the Star Trek universe.

The Avenger still holds up design wise. Next to the Odyssey class, I'd say this one is the next STO ship people would LOVE to see be canon. Federation only. Not including any other faction or species. As for the Battlecruiser, Starfleet has a history of downplaying stuff in weird ways... calling something this size a battle cruiser downplays it's role slightly. it is a battle focused cruiser. calling it an assault cruiser is probs the most accurate in my head.

i myself would classify it as a destroyer, destroyers atleast in the current era are multirole ships inbetween frigates and cruisers

8:22 VGM98 designs a new class of ship, the USS Orgy. I'm certain it was designed with Betazoids, Bajorans and Orions in mind.

She's a battlecruiser. Not a frigate, not an escort. Her heavy, durable hull and, slower turn rate factor of 8 supports the Avenger being exactly that. She's just an ultra compact and rather thick battlecruiser with an average crew complement of 500.

If I remember correctly when the Odyssey Class was first introduced (they had an event for it where you could get it by running a mission to test the ship) they were explaining in that mission that the reason for the split, "neck," or saucer support structure was it some how gave the ship an advantage with its Advanced Quantum Slipstream Drive, enabling it to sustain quantum slipstream speeds for a longer period of time, so I would imagine the split saucer support structure for the Avenger would do the same thing. I don't think that's how it works in the actual game mechanics for the Avenger, the Odyssey Class does have a longer quantum slipstream duration, I don't remember if the Avenger does or not, I don't think it does, but from a design standpoint it should, especially since that was the reason for the Odyssey Class's split saucer support structure given in that mission. I found that mission completely by accident, I didn't even know they were having an event for it, it wasn't like a regular event, it was more like how they used to have those events once every 2 or 3 years to get the Shard of Possibilities from a regular story mission, this wasn't a story mission, I just seen I think it was Kani you had to talk to to pick up the mission, I was very low level at the time and was simply trying to pick up every mission I could to level up, so when I picked up that ship I didn't even know it was part of a temporary one time event that never happened again, so I had a T5 ship I couldn't even use until I got up to level 50, it just stayed in its reward box until I reached level 50 because the box wouldn't open until I reached level 50. I just looked it up, the mission was titled, "The Odyssey Class," it was during the 2nd year anniversary of the game. From the STO Wiki: "The original Odyssey class introduced split saucer pylons with the aim of reducing subspace wake at higher warp speeds. The Odyssey is designed as an extreme long-range vessel, and can operate for long periods of time away from support."

Purely my own speculation, but I imagined that the location of the warp exhaust vents flanking the bridge was an intentional way of combining the practical need for venting heat with an additional layer of protection for the bridge in the way of sensor interference from the excess heat. Another thing about the ship’s design in-game that I think is interesting relates to a couple of its unique options: 1. It has the option to “flatten” the pylons to give the ship a more narrow profile similar to the Intrepid. 2. The warp nacelles can be optionally fitted with stabilizing fins, which along with the shared DNA of the Nova and Intrepid, means the Avenger is a warship meant to function competently in atmospheric combat. 3. The Avenger is one of very few Federation ships that can equip a cloaking device that was not purpose-built with that in mind. For all of these reasons, the implications of this ship are possibly more aggressive than even the defiant. A personal favorite of mine…that feels more like everything the Inquiry is too incompetent to be. Great video!

I really appreciate the community response and help. I've always enjoyed this channel but after watching the video I was just shown to I find myself even more impressed by the strategic mind and creative aspects of the author that goes into the content here. Thank you.

To clarify, the Odyssey-class' warp pylon-integrated impulse engines were inspired by the Vesta-class' secondary impulse engines on its warp pylons (which, in turn, were probably inspired off the Intrepid-class). I was there. I'm the one whom made the suggestion to add those to CapnLogan (the artist whom originally built the Enteprise-F model) and the idea was accepted. Though the way he implemented it was not what I had in mind (it was actually cooler, though).

I believe Eaglemoss' official magazine lists the Avenger at 425 meters, rather than 390...

a really cool boom and zoom attack ship. I could see one targeting a fleet flagship, overwhelm the shields with the pulse cannons and use torps for a surgical strike on vulnerable sections, then rely on engine power and armor to get out of range for a quick escape or draw them in for an ambush as either part of a wolfpack or fleet action.

The Inquiry has something like 10000 more hit points... It should be MUCH bigger than that...

Personally I do like the Avenger class starship on Star Trek Online has a really neat feature that you never see in the game or any Star Trek show or shutters come down over the windows and protect the vulnerable parts of the warp nacelle like I thought that was unique

No mention of the Arbiter? If you haven't already you should do that ship next. My STO Avenger is actually a kitbash of the Avenger, Fleet Avenger, Arbiter & Inquiry. Inquiry was my first Event campaign pick. Arbiter was one of my earliest t6 purchases and used a t5 coupon for the Avenger. I'd call her a light battlecruiser maybe or pocket battlecruiser perhaps. At any rate she absolutely shreds in combat!

I would call it a Pocket Battlecruiser.

Federation 25th Century Motto; "Runneth up then"

This ship is a beast and my personal favorite, there's a a fleet variant that has its nacelles swung low like voyager...its fantastic and has a massive alpha, think defiant in a cruiser its awesome.

The Avenger sees ya. It wants ya. It's ga haves ya lol!

Love seeing my ship in some of these stills!

So... what you're telling me is that the Avenger class is basically Steve Rodgers with Mjolnir?

Unless the plasma is actually venting, there is no cooling going on because there are no particles in the vacuum of space that will be running over the surface of heat exchanger to absorb the heat.

The inquiry was based on a tier 6 version of the avenger

Loved this video. I’m gonna have to pull mine out of mothballs this weekend and go on a murder spree with it :)

I think Avenger was given a more official length of 425 metres, which I think does push her up and over into the battlecruiser range. Also she was given a more updated model recently which replaced the vents with more clear forward torpedoes.

That was a pretty good one 👍 I like any vehicle with big engines .

The Avenger was what Starfleet needed to replace the ancient Miranda class; a larger hunter-killer fast attack destroyer capable of handling the new standard of fast attack frigates the Dominion had brought to the Alpha quadrant, while still packing enough punch to be threatening to larger vessels in packs. Frankly, it's a gorgeous design, and one of the few post nu-trek era designs I like without much reservation. (making the bridge module the easiest thing to identify and shoot at is still quite silly for a spaceship, but it's a Starfleet tradition)

I have the Assault Cruiser Variant of the Sovereign Class. Just got it, and I love it.

Will you be covering more STO ships down the line or maybe even the sucessor to the Avenger, the Arbiter?

The Angry Duck.

One of the first ships I bought on the C-Store, and the first ship I bought the Fleet version of. Haven't used it in years, since I switched to playing the Console version of STO. Been thinking of buying it again.

Its called a battle cruiser in game, and its a really good ship, but I always considered it a heavy destroyer which is my play style

I was thinking on getting it in sto but ehhh, I like it but nothing can out class my valkis class XD Speaking of witch what's your views on the temporal heavy dreadnoughts? (Universe class, valkis class, and durgath)

That ship design slaps hams.

Hey Venom will you do the Arbiter anytime soon?

What would you say about a ship capable of launching 200+ torpedoes at a single target in a single volley?

USAF : You're a intriguing fellow .

8:38 😳 Well, to quote Neelix, "😨😱 First thing in the morning, I replicate some curtains! 🤯😵" VOY, Night.

I'm pretty sure that background ship was the Tahoe class. The foreground one was the Archer. iirc.

While I do give Cryptic a lot of s*** for a lot of things, I trust them with the Star Trek IP more than Secret Hideout and Kurtzman. They're more respectful of old Trek and do a better job with what they're given to work with.

Captain of the Axalon here. Avenger class, great breakdown of what i have always described as "one part enterprise. one part defiant. two parts attitude" you didn't cover her primary torpedo system the Variable Assault Tactical Armament (VATA) torpedo thoughts on that system? love the rest of the breakdown... and no I didn't put the pervs in the neck those idiots where near the forward guns so their rooms where hot :p

The mention of ablative deployable armor jogged my memory about a head canon I'd thought up about said armor. Basically, taking into account the Federations typical 'bells and whistles' approach of trying to cram as much capability as possible into their equipment, what if ablative armor is more than just the armor plating, what if the armor system incorporates a dedicated replicator system to replace the armor material as it ablates possibly drawing from stores of the material in the ship or from non critical areas of the hull. As evidence off the top of my head the only times we see the Defiant(or or other ships of the class) suffering major visible hull damage are in First Contact(a long drawn out battle against a powerful enemy exhausting the stores) the 2nd battle of Chintoka(the energy dampener shutting down the replicators) or the Valiant against the Jem'Hadar BB(likely store depletion coupled with the BBs overwhelming firepower) It could also explain Voyagers Endgame batmobile armor as an evolution that basically allows the ship to replicate the entire armor over the existing hull allowing older vessels to have improved defenses

Brilliant vid. I remember flying her when she launched in STO. Maybe I'll pull her out of drydock for a bit.

Most of the sites i read have the length at 474 meters with one site saying 425. The 474 m lengh has just a bit longer than an exlesior 1 class. Right in line with battlecruiser tonnage.

A personal favorite. It's a mini dreadnought.

To me this beautiful beast fits perfectly into the Destroyer category. Bigger then a frigate smaller then a cruiser.

Something that occurred to me while watching this: Does a post-ironclad/modern classification scheme for ships in Star Trek actually fit the setting better or worse than an Age of Sail style classification scheme? The concept of a frigate you laid out here has more in common with Age of Sail Frigates than it does with modern ones for instance, and listing a Galaxy class as a First Rate during the TNG/DS9 era would make an awful lot of sense. This would make a great topic to bring Drach back in for too.

I couldn't find the Intercepter class on your channel..have you not yet covered it? What about the Enigma class?

I think what this video most clearly shows is that Star Trek Online needs to make its animations for phasers and torpedoes about 99% smaller.

Is the Intercepter class (baby Intrepid class) an sto design?

I always felt that smaller attack ships, such as the Defiant (and possibly this ship, depending on the crew requirements,) because instead of being assigned dedicated crews, they could be assigned to outposts spread across the Federation, as the Defiant was to DS9, and then simply crewed and deployed using the staff of the outpost, as needed, thus increasing the available combat fleet, without increasing the overall manpower needs of Starfleet

11:30 I wonder if Starfleet’s first foray into nacelle pylon mounted impulse “wings” wasn’t the Sovereign. I mean, it was supposed to be capable of saucer separation, and the stardrive section needed some way of maneuvering at impulse. Though, I suppose the Intrepid’s impulse engines would have been the precursor even to that (though still with dedicated engine pods rather than a stretched out wing array).

Recently acquired the legendary version. It absolutely rocks in sto. By far my favourite ship.

Would you consider the Nebula class a light cruiser of the Galaxy class? Great video, thank you for this.

She's a Fubuki! Now there just needs to be an Akagi-senpai for her to follow.

R.E.; double neck etc oh it's absolutely beautiful. One of my top all time 5...(sorry that was an odd way of getting that out)..but it doesn't make sense in a tactical or structural sense. A solid neck is not just more structurally solid...obviously..sound I meant..but it's a better use of space adding internal volume without adding to the size..didn't articulate that well..the size/area is filled regardless. Either with a vacuum/emptiness or usable area. However my biggest issue with this kind of gap comes from my many deployments in the Corps and a good bit of time on ships. In the event of an emergency you want as many paths to safety, damage to repair, ability to get to your duty station as possible and as near to as many areas where people will be as possible to ovoid bottlenecks and having to double back due to damage/blockage. Every second counts! Limiting those paths is a very bad thing. You could say transporters...but that's one of the first things to go down EVERY TIME. I feel the same way about everything being on a screen or holographic controls rather than actual buttons and switches..power failure happens ALL THE TIME. I have zero interest in telling others what to like/find visually appealing. I'm just a bit stuck to practicality...which has always been one of the best things about star trek. Those idiotic..(in my opinion ) "futuristic" ships with unconnected nacelles etc are even worse..SOOO MUCH WORSE!!!For all the previous reasons.

You forgot the auto targeting variable Warheads that is like a gigantic Quantum Warhead that fires miniature Quantum Warheads at the Target before it hits or it can do chroniton slow down the enemy or it can do tachyon beams but otherwise a good review

...if i had a bar of Gold presses Latinum for every time he said DNA during this video I'd be rich....er than Quark 😅

Has anyone noticed in Picard when enterprise f leave dock it looks almost like avenger

..maybe it should be reclassified as a "Battle Frigate" instead of a "Battle Cruiser"..? Frigates are traditionally smaller in scale than to a cruiser. Having previous experience playing STO but preference leaning more toward piloting a research vessel as I would spend the game exploring planetary biomes for insect diversity or else ancient ruins. I would like to have had my suggestion considered of in-game specialization mission pods (or add-on cabin redesign) which could be switched out on starships.. like how voyager converted a storage room into a stellar cartography suite. In a pod, a planetary scan would actually use the metadata of that in-game construct to show "flavor-text" for that construct. Or in exploring an astronomical anomaly, a scan would use the metadata of that construct's program to display on screen the astro-mechanism of what it does. I enjoyed my generic travels in STO when I played it, but think there's a good portion of the population who enjoys the metadata of learning about the inner workings of things. At my place of business, coworkers would talk all day about the number values of different character builds in order to increase their survivability in one particular game or another.I just enjoyed exploring and think that there's an untapped in-game resource which deep thinking players would feast on AND that the creators could profit from.

Oreo Dolphins are scary, they eat Moose.

I still hope that STO's Thunderchild Class (basically an Akira Refit) becomes canon one day - maybe as a "Akira II" considering we've got quite afew II and III classes nowadays? I just love the Akira and i think that the Thunderchild Class really looks like a mid 25th century Akira Modernaization Programm might look.

"Hah! Puny Federtation petaqs! Those pacifist cowards are running for the hills! ... Wait, what's that ship? Zoom in on it! ... ... ... Oh, bij." (explodes)

Pitbull class.

Would someone let me know if I'm remembering something from the franchise or if I thought it up please ? Outer hull hard light projectors that create another layer of armor over the ablative armor. Possibly layers inches and feet..maybe yards thick/spaced..absorbing energy weapons and heat as well as kinetic energy/conclusive force. Sold and able to modulate frequency. I could have sworn I heard, saw, read about something similar in the Trek universe...but I often make things in my head for daydreams cannon and can forget where the inspiration oriented. I have it written down somewhere...thank you.

The only thing about the Avenger that i didn't like was the split neck. I'd personally fill it in, and then it be beautiful.

(Heheh, 'when the windows look across the necks it's for pervs' (Or it's like living in a city where you put up curtains ?) :)

You're delivering a gold standard of Star Trek, ship break down. I love how you highlight the hard points for weapons. Does the Avenger Class carry and fighters?

The Inquiry is a beautiful ship, too.

I call it a destroyer. Size between cruiser and frigate and the task of destroying attack ships. Nice complement to the Reliant in the borders of the Federation

The Avenger is what happens when Starfleet actually commits to building a warship.

This is one of my favorite ships in the game. I ran it primarily for 3 years on my first char I made in 2010. The ship obviously came out later, but I ran it for 3 years. Still do from time to time. I uave the fleet variant and the Arbiter. I hate the Arbiter design. I use the Avenger skin with it though and that makes me happy. Even have the Avenger as T5u currently. Arbiter is T6X though.

Maybe 'Armored Cruiser' if you want to dredge up some really old classification types.

also the Avenger class is one of the few federation ship that uses a federation cloaking device snice the treaty of algreon is largely abandon by the federation and Romulan republic but the imperial Romulan star empire protest at the treaty violation or its v.a.t.a. Variable auto targeting armament which as three modes quantum mode which make it a huge quantum/chronotron warhead that fire micro quantum torpedoes/chronotron micro torpedoes or tachyon beams to drain shields of the target, make it even more deadlier hunter killer ship

It was my understanding that a "destroyer" was specifically for defending against smaller vessels. Why is this not classified as a destroyer?

Yeah having window face each other in the double neck section would be good especially if have perverts onboard.

Funny...I named my avenger class Archer 😮

So a Frigate leader, an oversized frigate designed to open holes for the frigates it is leading.

One drawback on this ship concerning it's size is it's turn rate...still kinda slow considering what it was built to do.

Strike cruiser but not a battlecruiser. A Shangri La with more armor would be a better choice to standardize design, construction, and maintenance.

I think it is fine to describe this ship as a frigate. Even though it is larger than previous frigates given that the Odyssey is significantly larger than the Galaxy and the Sovereign I think it makes sense.

you are using modern ship designations for federation starships; this doesnt work for a verity of reasons. but anyway... in ST cannon there are only 3 STARSHIP variants; cruiser (multi-mission capable), science/survey, and escorts (warship focus) the avenger class is an ESCORT (feel free to add whatever adjectives you prefer) the TOS Enterprise, in its day, at about 290 meters was listed as a "heavy" cruiser the TNG Enterprise, in its day, at about 641 meters was listed as a "Exploration" cruiser the Enterprise - E is listed as an "Exploration" cruiser (you'll find lots of variations on this one) Voyager at about 343 meters is listed as a science vessel size has little to do with ship designation/function with Federation starships what one would generally regard as a "capital" ship; you'll find are ALWAYS referred to in ST as a "cruiser" or an "Explorer" Frigate, destroyer, cruiser, battleship, carrier, dreadnought... your could apply these to the Klingons perhaps

The paint scheme reminds me of Lord Nelsons black and yellow, like you see on HMS Victory at Portsmouth. Obvs this isnt yellow but something about it just strikes me as very Nelsonian

Do the Mogh class and everything wrong with the Romulan ships in Picard

i play sto and there been a update to the avengers call odyessy material with a total of 8 torpeodo tube with 4 tubes in two luanchers in the fount and 4 tubes in two lunchers in the back with 16 phaser arrays 8 Pulse Phaser Cannons 4 small 4 large, i bout the t5 version all time a go good ship

So this is where the USS Corssier or how ever you spell it from star trek fleet command comes from.

Doesn't the sovereign class have the same Impulse set up in its Warp pylons too

The Intrepid was better armed than a Galaxy! It was a bad ass warship pretending to be a science ship! It was a war frigate that Starfleet tricked the council into thinking was a science ship.

god thats a handsome ship