gh!  As originally shown, the Brenton is an ugly design that never made any aesthetic sense to me.  They basically took a saucer off a Constellation class vessel, chopped it in half, and stretched it out like the leaves in a dining room table, then stuck two warp engines on both ends.  When approaching the re-draw in 2007 I considered various, often radical options, some of which would have dramatically altered the look of this class.  However, because I am not a total anti-classicist, I opted to keep the shape and feel of the ship, with mostly minor modifications, save for one: the merging of the two saucer halves.  That "feature" always seemed asinine to me, and I couldn't find any rational way to explain why that would have been done on a Starfleet ship; especially given the original "stretch" version of the bridge.  Better, in my opinion, to have a standard saucer and then fill in some details on the slab-like secondary hull.  All in all, she's still the Brenton, as you all know her.  Only, slightly refined.
        For game play, this is a solid ship.  The Mark V Brenton is about as potent as a Reliant (Miranda) class cruiser, and it has been my experience that the Brenton is a little better off than the Reliant as an offensive weapon, mainly because the Brenton has more torpedo tubes and phaser banks.  Superstructure is very good, and the shielding system is also good.  Along with the Enterprise and Reliant classes, the Brenton is actually one of the most playable cruisers in the FASA Federation inventory.
        However, because of the relative (apparent) size of the class, when compared to the Miranda or the Constitution (refit) designs, I opted to give this class some additional stats that would a) reflect its true size/mass and b) make it playable into the interim years between the end of Kirk's era and the beginning of ST:TNG.

          ---- Brad, STSTCSOLD&A