Elements of SFU History and The LDR Master Starship Book

This is Steven Petrick posting.

Way back in the 1980s Stephen Koehler created the Lyran Democratic Republic by taking Lyran ships and changing the phaser-3s to phaser-Gs (and in some cases upgrading the phaser-2s on the ships to phaser-1s). As part of this he also introduced the Caracal police corvette (an FF-DW like conversion of the Manx police corvette).

This mini-empire (a single province of the Lyran Star Empire) broke away from the empire and achieved independence, and a history explaining this, and alluding to various political machinations, was included.

All of this was introduced in Nexus #13 to the Star Fleet Universe at large.

It was an exciting time in the  Star Fleet Universe where enthusiasm sometimes overrode research.

What this meant was that the known background of the Lyran Empire as operating on a sort of feudal system meant that all counties provided the same basic warships (heavy cruiser, light cruiser, destroyer, and frigate) and each provided at least one of the specialty ships (scouts, tugs, etc.) so that each duchy (of five counties) basically provided an organized fleet.

The Lyran Democratic Republic, as part of being granted autonomous status, so the history says, was required to give up its two speciality ships, noted as a scout and a minesweeper prior to Y150.

This is where things go off the rails a bit.

First, if the nascent LDR was operating a scout, it would have been present at the Battle of the Long Claws. There are (historically) two scouts in that battle, one provided by the Foremost county in support of the LDR, the second is owned by the Enemy's Blood Duchy from which the LDR is seeking independence (eventually). That pretty much means that the LDR could not have had its own scout, because in Y150 the only "speciality" ships available were the tug, scout, and commando destroyer. Since there were only three speciality ship types available, there is no way that the LDR would have had two of them, and since the scout was clearly not one of them in any case . . .

So you ask "what about the minesweeper, you have not mentioned it."

The problem with the minesweeper is that the class does not enter service until sometime in the Y160s, so it is not available as a "speciality ship" that the LDR could have been operating or have given up in the early Y150s.

Now, of course, the "commando destroyer" did not exist as an SSD at the time the LDR was originally created. It does exist now, and has a year in service date that makes it available in the Y140s, so the history of the Lyran Democratic Republic in the Master Starship Book has been adjusted to reduce the loss of specialty ships from two, to only one, and that one is a commando destroyer.