USS Discovery

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The newest ship in Star Trek Fleet Command is the Discovery. The first “prime universe” ship to enter the game, after the announcement a few weeks ago that Scopely had acquired the rights.

It’s a rare 3* explorer, and for purposes of the game, it’s a neutral ship, meaning the buffs that apply to a Federation ship won’t apply.

How Does One Get A Discovery?

Completing milestones of the Discovery BattlePass will give you get the 100 blueprints you need. You’ll need to have a shipyard of at least level 21 to construct it.

Ship Ability

The USS Discovery has two ship abilities. One, it gives you a huge bonus when it comes to harvesting Mycelium, and two, rather obviously, it allows you to instantly jump around the galaxy using the power of Mycelium.

So the Discovery will have you hopping around the galaxy instantaneously.

The more you level up your Discovery, the bigger your Mycelium collection bonus will be.

The limitation is that you’ll only be able to do so if you have enough Cultivated Mycelium, and you’ll only be able to jump to systems within your warp range. The Discovery’s warp range starts out at 20, and maxes out at 30.

Mycelium Spores can be mined from 15 systems or dropped by hostiles from those systems which can then be refined from the new refinery which will create Cultivated Mycelium.

Lastly, almost off-topic, how exactly is the power of Mycelium related to the Power of Cheese?

Weaponry

The USS Discovery has two kinetic weapons and one energy weapon.

Improving Your Discovery

Your Discovery will require “Spore Drive components” that will decrease the cost of Mycelium needed when instantly warping whilst also increasing the USS Discovery’s warp range. You’ll get those in the Discovery Refinery, where you’ll also be able to get Discovery recruit tokens, speed ups, and “minor commendations,” which you’ll be able to trade in at any of the faction stores for officer badges!

When Should I Scrap It?

Never. Don’t even think about it. You can’t. If you even think about it, I will turn the internet around right now, and just wait until your father gets home. There will be hell to pay, I tell you!

Discovery Background

Ralph McQuarrie’s concept of the redesigned Enterprise from “Planet of the Titans”

The look of Discovery has its roots in the 1970s, and the never-produced Star Trek: Planet of the Titans (parts of which were used as a basis for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.) And these roots give the ship connections to both the Star Wars and James Bond franchises.

Please indulge me while I nerd out now, and give you the story around Planet Of the Titans.

After the cancellation of Star Trek in 1969, the series was moved to reruns. In reruns, it gained popularity, reaching more people than it had during its initial run. So there was a clamoring for a new series. First, the Animated Series came, and after that, there were several attempts at a return to live-action. First, there were some scripts thrown around for a possible TV movie, and then for a relaunch of the TV series, Star Trek Phase II. None of them were ever produced, but elements of each of them came together as Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Planet of the Titans

The first of these projects was “Planet of the Titans.” One of the story elements of that TV movie was that the Enterprise was to have been reconstructed. The men in charge of this reconstruction were two movie legends. The first was production designer Ken Adam. Adam was the production designer on Dr. No, Dr. Strangleove, Goldfinger, and You Only Live Twice. His volcano interior set for You Only Live Twice is iconic.

His work on Star Trek came right before his work on The Spy Who Loved Me.

From Adam, we have some basic sketches of what the redesigned Enterprise would look like.

ken adams sketch of enterprise, that later evolved into USS Discovery — Ken Adam’s initial sketch (Memory Alpha photo)

The task of doing the more refined drawing, and creation of the eventual model fell to Ralph McQuarrie. So the guy who designed Darth Vader, Chewbacca, R2-D2 and C-3PO for Star Wars. And AT-AT Walkers and Cloud City from The Empire Strikes Back

He also worked on Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

And he returned to Star Trek for The Voyage Home.

So McQuarrie took Adam’s initial sketch, and fleshed it out as seen above. It was then put into a basic model…

And then Planet of the Titans was cancelled in pre-production.

The Ken Adam/Ralph McQuarrie version died with it. A new refit Enterprise would be created for Star Trek Phase II, and an evolved version of that one would appear on screens in The Motion Picture.

And that was that for the triangular hulled starship, except that…

Nothing in Star Trek ever really goes away. Ever.

You could win a lot of bar trivia nights if you knew that the original design for Discovery shows up in Star Trek III. It’s not obvious, but since the Excelsior and Spacedock took up a great deal of the budget, and the interior of Spacedock looked a little empty, the Planet of the Titans model shows up on-screen. In 1985 they didn’t have nearly as many ship models lying around as they would after The Next Generation debuted.

So as the Enterprise enters Spacedock, if you look really quickly, you can see the back of the Titans model, hiding in the background.

And then it showed up again in The Next Generation episode Unification I, which ironically enough, like Star Trek III, also features both Spock and Sarek. It’s at the bottom right of the screen.