Sailing the USS Mayflower

For you Federation players, the first faction ship you’ll likely get is the USS Mayflower. It’s the JJ-verse’s answer to the Reliant.

What The USS Mayflower Is Good At

Um… it’s a definite upgrade over the biggest independent Explorer, the Vahklas. It does have the Klingon Pursuer ability, which will give you a damage increase against Klingon ships. It’s an explorer, so you can use it to go after Klingon interceptors. It can even go after Swarms if you don’t have the Franklin. You’re not taking out level 32 swarms with this, but if your level is in the 20s, you’re not going after them anyway.

It will help you complete a good number of missions, and is useful at harvesting op miners.

What It’s Not Good At

Even though they rebalanced the ships last November, it’s still a little bit underpowered, when compared to the Legionary This hurts it in PvP. It’s also not going to be very good at opening bases. However, if you’ve got someone defending their base with a D3, this would be a good ship to use to pick them off before you break with another ship.

And One More Thing…

It’s also great for recycling. A fully upgraded Mayflower will get you 4* materials from the scrapyard. You can’t scrap it until level 34, but when you do, it will give you enough for some excellent prime research.

How You Get Yours

Unfortunately, you can’t really grind your way to a USS Mayflower. It got its nickname, the “Payflower”, for a reason. Apart from the 32 blueprints that you’ll be able to acquire from missions (starting with “A Gift Horse”), you’ll need to buy it in the faction store. I’m going to tell you not to buy the blueprints with your hard-earned cash. It’s just not worth it. If you really feel you NEED a Mayflower now, buy a Federation Recruit pack – especially if your offer includes officer tokens. On the bright side, the Mayflower isn’t that expensive in terms of Fed credits. It’s only 125 credits per blueprint.

You’ll also need to have at least a level 26 shipyard.

If you have the willpower, I’d recommend holding out for a Saladin… but I know it’s hard to resist that first ship that looks like classic Trek. It’s why you downloaded the game.

Background of the USS Mayflower

The first mention of a ship called the Mayflower in Trek-lore was in Deep Space Nine, as a ship that was never seen onscreen, but did occasionally pick up and drop off cargo at the station.

The USS Mayflower appeared in Star Trek (2009), although it wasn’t mentioned in any dialogue. It was destroyed at the Battle of Vulcan, and the Enterprise arrived in the middle of its wreckage. A few other Mayflower-type ships were shown docked.

The design itself was based on that of the Miranda-class, which first appeared as the Reliant in The Wrath of Khan, and the model made many more appearances. It’s just missing the top rollbar/torpedo launcher.

Originally, the Reliant’s nacelles were intended to be on top of the vessel, but it was later inverted to make it easier to differentiate from the Enterprise.

And in the trivia you really, really don’t need – the space shuttle from Airplane 2, was, of course, Mayflower 1. And the obvious trek-connection to Airplane 2…