The Niagara design was fielded shortly after the Ambassador class, and originally showed a high degree of commonality with that class.
This confers both higher cruise speed or longer component life on the engines, as well as enhancing manoeuvrability. Like the Rigel class, the Niagara is able to travel on the upper nacelle pair whilst resting the Lower nacelle, or vice versa. The Niagara class belongs to the three nacelle family this means that the class has a small decrease in efficiency compared to the likes of the Galaxy class, but it does confer certain advantages. However, efficiency is not always the deciding factor and over the last few centuries vessels have been produced with one, three or even four nacelles. Notes Starfleet has always preferred to design Starships with a two nacelle configuration, it being long recognized that this is the ideal layout for optimal warp field efficiency.
Standard level Structural Integrity Field Standard Duranium / Tritanium Double hull plus 0.4 cm High density armour. Standard shield system, total capacity 1,687,500 TeraJoules 52 have been lost in all.Ħ x Type VIII phaser arrays, total output 22,500 TeraWattsĢ x Standard photon torpedo tube with 80 rounds
