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I want to explain and apologize to everyone for my absence over this weekend, including our RP Event on Sunday evening. I was hospitalized on Friday, and was not discharged until late Monday night.

Despite this, I feel terrible that I was unable to attend the Event I was supposed to be co-hosting, and that a number of Pax Officers and Operatives have worked hard to plan and schedule.

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If you are going to take a break off STO for month or more please post here so we don't kick you off the fleet by accident during house cleaning. I've noticed that sometimes people take a break from the game and accidentally get kicked off the fleet.

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BREAKING NEWS!

The Excelsior III-class (Excelsior Retrofit II) Advanced Heavy Cruiser passed field trials and are now coming off the assembly lines in limited quantities at San Francisco Fleet Yards.  The Excelsior-class has been decomissioned for nearly 40 years, as technology advanced at a pace that made the spaceframe obsolete even 60 to 70 years ago.  Regardless, the vessel design proved to be more reliable than initially thought and it lasted past it's expectancy.  Most of the Excelsior-class starships last in service paid the ultimate sacrifice in the defence of the Federation during the Dominion War.  After the war, the remaining ships served out their time until their scheduled refit date which was chosen as their decomission date instead.

Ever since the rediscovery of Transwarp technology through reverse-engineered Borg technology, almost every starship now has a Minor Transwarp Drive installed for primary use in emergencies and whenever there is a need to return to Starfleet Command HQ or Spacedock in as quick time as possible.  The superior Enhanced Transwarp hub constructed in the Sol system makes this possible and is much smoother and safer for Starfleet vessels to traverse, as the kind the Borg use have proven to be too unstable to operate (as trial runs have proven).  

Due to this new relook into experimental technology, Starfleet has again turned it's attention to the Excelsior-class.  The starship spaceframe was designed specifically with Transwarp travel in mind and instead of investing in an entirely new design of spaceframe and chassis, they decided out of economy to contract San Francisco Fleet Yards to create a retrofit variant of the Excelsior-class bearing all the most up-to-date material & technology possible to fit within the new redesign.  On top of the list, the new Generation 2 TW M/ARA Transwarp Drive has been installed - this being the primary reason for revisiting a 150 year old design.  The Advanced Heavy Cruiser type starship will now be able to traverse entire sector blocks in a mere matter of hours.  The Great Experiment has finally succeeded.  Only inescapable flaw to the design is the large amount of fuel and energy required to use the Transwarp Drive making repetitive use in a short period of time unfeasible. 

This advantage has propelled Starfleet's Advanced Starship Design Bureau to designate the new Excelsior III-class Retrofit as a Quick Reaction Multi-Role (QRMR) Starship.  The role comprises the ability to be the spearhead of any defence fleet as the Excelsior Retrofits will be the first to interdict any enemy forces.  Scientifically they'll be used to investigate spacial anomalies and explore uncharted space in a shorter span of time due to significantly reduced travel time.

For more information on the Excelsior-class background, click on the plague: