What the heck is a Steamrunner?

legendarylycan · October 2020

as the title says...what is a steamrunner? all of starfleet's ship classes are references to something or other that you can generally find out with a quick google - like sovereign being a monarchy title or akira being the name of an anime film or nova being the name of a celestial phenomenon...but what the actual FLIP is a steamrunner?

neutronium09 · October 2020

It might simply be a generic reference broad brushing old steam powered machinery and vehicles into a group description.

phoenixc · October 2020

The Steamrunner class is a Federation frigate sized ship that made an appearance with the Akira and Sabre. It is probably a smaller stablemate of the Akira in fact, it combines features of the Defiant class such as the shrouded strutless nacelles with Akira features like the automated deflector/engineering pod slung between the nacelles.

On a less canon footing, according to Eaglemoss it is a rather large frigate, with a length of 356 meters a crew of 200 and a top speed of warp 9.6. Like Defiant it is apparently war oriented and carries weapons larger than traditional Fed ships of that size, both phasers and photon torpedoes are Mk. X (TNG notation, not STO tier) which is cruiser grade weapons.

I read somewhere that "steamrunner" was a typo and originally it was "streamrunner" in reference to a river gunboat but the 'r' got dropped. No idea if that is the actual case though.

hawku001x · October 2020

I always imagine the inside of that ship being completely Steampunk.

snowwolf · October 2020

shadowfang240 wrote: »

as the title says...what is a steamrunner? all of starfleet's ship classes are references to something or other that you can generally find out with a quick google - like sovereign being a monarchy title or akira being the name of an anime film or nova being the name of a celestial phenomenon...but what the actual FLIP is a steamrunner?

Most Starfleet ship classes are not named after a title thing in general, it can be quite random. Just because most of them are, doesn't mean all of them are.

THere's a lot more weirder class names than Steamrunner..

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Federation_starship_classes

legendarylycan · October 2020

and...with the exception of the ships that don't have actual class names - like the J or Class 4 types - every single one of those names is a direct reference to something, so i don't know what point you were trying to make

even Alka-Selsior is a reference - it's a pun on Alka-Seltzer

phoenixc · October 2020

The steamrunner would be a great ship to have a quality pass to screen accurate and upgrade to T6.

rattler2 · October 2020

Actually it pretty much is screen accurate. You can have the impulse engines on the saucer like the canon version. A T6 would be appreciated though.

legendarylycan · October 2020

that's why i started the topic - i was trying to think of what name cryptic might use for a T6 version when it occurred to me...steamrunner doesn't actually MEAN anything

i even tried to look on urban dictionary to see if it was slang for something, and no results that i could find

rattler2 · October 2020

Well... we already have an existing "variant" of the Steamrunner that was in game from day one.
The Zephyr Class parts available to the Akira line. It just happens to not be usable by the actual Steamrunner.

So in theory they could play off the Zephyr for a name.

dirlettia · October 2020

I always assumed it was called Steamrunner because it was firstly an exclusive DLC available through Steam.

legendarylycan · October 2020

first contact was around LONG before steam was ever even conceived of

phoenixc · October 2020

True, the DLC was a play on the already existing class name from the movie.

One thing though, why would a T6 version of the same ship need a different class name? The carrier package they came out with used different names because they are not precisely the same class of ship, rather they are a sort of advanced stablemate who's enhancements can also be retrofitted into its immediate predecessor.

I found the original reference I mentioned earlier, it is a ways down the page though:
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Film_studio_models

For convenience I have copied the important part (it is a quote from Alex Jaeger, the person who designed it) :

"Here's a bit of background on the Steamrunner: As one person pointed out, it was originally to be called the StReamrunner. This was the name of a song from a band called 'Fold Zandura' (formerly 'Mortal') It had a sci-fi feel to it and I thought it made a cool ship class name. But somewhere in the process the 'R' got dropped in one of the approval pages and it became the Steamrunner, which is still kinda cool retro-steampunk sounding. So the name stuck. ...

After that he talks about the design itself.

I found a song from that band, but it was named "Steamrunner" in the first place (though it may not be the one Jaeger is taking about) which could be why someone along the line changed it from the "streamrunner" on the plans to "steamrunner" whether they are the same song or just similar names from the same band:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7b6IUNxBII

rattler2 · October 2020

phoenixc#0738 wrote: »

One thing though, why would a T6 version of the same ship need a different class name? The carrier package they came out with used different names because they are not precisely the same class of ship, rather they are a sort of advanced stablemate who's enhancements can also be retrofitted into its immediate predecessor.

Because we have a precident in place. Each new variant is given a new class name. Lore wise the T6 Akira is not an Akira, but an Alita. The T6 Sovereign is either the Vizir or Archon. The T6 Galaxy is the Andromeda.
The fact that they have access to various parts is just for the players. Lore wise they are entirely separate ships of the same lineage.

What the heck is a Steamrunner?

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