I really wish they would add the steamrunner (with the ability to use the heavy escort and heavy escort refit skins) as a tier 5 ship.

I was one of the people really pushing for a tier 5 heavy escort refit, and then I came back after a year or so away from STO and found out that they added it... only it's still tier 3 =(

I only remember the steamrunner from Star Trek Armada. When they were those long distance torpedo guys. Nice looking ship. And my not so subtle hint as to what its special console should be

Ya steamrunners were built as destroyer, long distance tricobalt torpedo dmg dealers. Since the akira and steamrunners are built around torpedo stuff it wouldnt be to bad to have them together as T5 ship pack. Give the SR a regular non heavy tricobalt torpedo useable with HYT and TS with maybe a slightly longer range like 12km.

Give the Akira a rapid fire torpedo tube system, basicly a free HYT3 on a 1 1/2 min cooldown. Give them the same boff layout with diff extra ensign spots. Sell them seperatly or as a pack for less. Everybody wins then. Could also include the Norway and have 3 flavors. Norway sci based, Akira eng based, and SR tac based.

More hull and less turnrate then the promethus would keep the norway diff even if its boff loadout was the exact same.

They are 3 of the most well liked ships, and i would get em all even if i can only fly one at a time =).

The Akira was more of an all-around crowd control torpedo based escort. What I mean by all-around is that while it does have an impressive torpedo bank, it also has several phaser banks to deal with enemy's shields. It's special weapon/power enabled it to fire a high yield torpedo that upon impact on the first target, it would inflict damage and then redirect to a second target and inflict damage. The torpedo seemed to cut through shields.

The SteamRunner was a different setup altogether. While having incredibly limited phaser banks, it's main ability was to fire several tricobalt torpedoes at once saturating an area. Essentially, to enable this effect into the game the devs would have to enable a Torpedo Spread 3 fire from two or more torpedo launchers at the same time. I don't know if the engine can handle this as everything I've read from engineering reports and listened from the developer interviews contradicts this ability. However, if they made a console that eliminated a global cool down for the torpedoes mounted on the ship and and the torpedo BOFF powers and reduced the refire rate by 30 seconds, I think they'll get the desired effect.

Keeping with the same setup, I can see people putting a forward beam array and three tricobalt torpedo launchers with 3 Rear beam arrays. Essentially, the user could fire a barrage of torpedoes in fairly quick succession independent on the target's shields being down. So while torpedoes don't do tremendous damage to ships with their shields up, the ship wouldn't be OP due to that game mechanic. I wouldn't suggest the console work with any other torpedo type, otherwise you'll see people firing an unending stream of quantum torpedoes which would be OP.

Additionally, this was the quintessential SUPPORT escort ship. To harken to this fact, the turn rate needs to be reduced to 5 and the crew reduced to 100.

The power levels need to be:
+5 Engines
+5 Auxillary

Reason: It's a support ship and not designed to be under heavy attack for extended periods of time.

Basically, this is NOT a ship one would bring into PvP unless they want to purposely throw the match.

Consoles:
2 Engineer
2 Science
4 Tactical

There is president for a long range torpedo weapon with the Bioneural Warhead in the KDF.

So i'm for something similar for the steamrunner.

Although-

I cen't help but notice the Activision issue.
Why didn't the Akira refit/Thunderchild not get an Isometric Charge module? Because it would have been a direct ripoff of Armada's Akira/Akula ship and special weapon.

The Isometric Charge and Bioneural Warhead are KDF options to workaround that issue.

So:
I'm for a Long Range Torpedo for Steamrunner but a Tricobalt weapon could be an issue.

Perhaps "Long Range Targeting" console instead. 30 sec duration, extends the range of torpedo weapons to 12.5 km for the duration.

everyone always assumes the steamie is an arty ship, but it was just another mid range warship like the akira. but STA makes it look like that it was an arty ship, its one thing that annoyed the hell out of me since early 2000 until now and still going.

if anything the steamie should be a t2 ship, since the miranda, shi'kahr and centaur are frigates (i dont care how cryptic name their class), the steamie was meant to be just a step above as a heavier frigate, so it should be treated as such.

its pointless discussing this anyway, the Zephyr is the upgrade to the steamie.

Actually, I am forced to respectfully disagree. Although the community is starving for more ships to pilot and more general content, a ship mechanic that can be tailored with little effort to both the FED and Klingon side is exactly what the developers have been stating over and over... Where to spend the time of their game designers to get the best bang for their buck. So, the general response to that is BOTH sides.

As you can name your ship whatever you want, the main point of this conversation is for designing a class of ship. As you may note, the Zephyr is a SteamRunner Class and WAS a Miranda class ship. According to MA, the Zephyr became active as a Steamrunner in the 2370s and thus would put it in line with this timeline. So when we say Steamrunner, Constitution, Galaxy, or whatever ship; what we're really meaning is class of ship. As becoming active AFTER the U.S.S Akira, one may logically believe that the systems upon the later model were superior to the previous model. Therefore, it would be ridiculous to believe that the Akira class would be a T5 and the Steamrunner a T2. If anything it should be reversed. Well, don't we already have the Thunderchild as a T2? I would then go back to my previous argument that the SteamRunner needs to have 7 weapons (T5 escort) and is specifically designed for long range support that can deal massive amounts of splash damage, but doesn't necessarily hit for strong alpha's.

Instead of increased range, I'd probably go more with a universal ship console that reduces the cooldown of torpedo-related abilities, equippable to escorts only. That'd be more in-line with the other cstore ships we're seeing lately.

Artillery Control Console
Universal Console - May only be equipped to escort-class ships.
Reduces the cooldown and shared cooldown of all Torpedo: High Yield and Torpedo: Spread abilities by 33%.

Normally if you use two copies of torpedo: high yield, the one you activate gets a 30 second cooldown and the non-activated ability gets a 15 second shared cooldown. With this console, the activated ability would have a 20 second cooldown, and the shared ability would have a 10 second cooldown.

The steamrunner/norway should be released as a Tier 5 ship, classified as a heavy escort retrofit, and able to use the akira, oslo, zephyr, and thunderchild parts, as well as the steamrunner/norway parts.

4 Forward weapon slots, 3 aft weapon slots
4 Tactical Consoles, 2 Science Consoles, 3 Engineering Consoles
1 Commander Tactical, 1 Lieutenant Commander Tactical, 1 Lieutenant Commander Engineer, and 1 Lieutenant Science

Akira was meant to be a heavy phaser boat(support, engineering), a heavy cruiser, the steamie was not, it was meant for the interception role (escort), but just a bit more manouverable. the akira's position has been flattered quite a bit if it gets the T5 treatment, but with these later technologies coming including that of the thunderchild as you stated yourself, now the akira has to be relegated to its position of a cruiser rather then a heavy cruiser. looking at it from a trek universe point of view;
how many akira's are in existance, and how long would it take to refit all of em? better offjust leaving them.
what happened to the miranda when it was launched and then 100 years later? it was a heavy cruiser, matched the ent-A, and 100 years later its relegated to a frigate and a supply ship.