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BRAD'S COMMENTS:  Two different schematics of the Constellation class appeared in two different FASA publications.  The first was that seen in the TNG Officer's Manual, and was little more than a Constitution Refit saucer adorned with a flimsy set of dorsal and ventral warp pylons capped by slightly-altered FWG-style warp nacelles.  I suspect the artist who created this first schematic had little or no official material from the TV show upon which to base the Officer's Manual schematic, as the thickened, somewhat teardrop-like shape of the main hull is ignored, surface structural differences between the original Consitution Refit saucer and the actual Constellation saucer are nowhere to be seen, and the nacelles are aligned in a familiar vertical fashion, instead of horizontal as they are on the actual model of the ship used for production shooting.  FASA got it almost right with the second version from the TNG First Year Sourcebook: correctly reflecting the teardrop hull when viewed top-down, the overall design of the nacelles and their alignment, and the thickened main hull, with side-on detailing to match.  However, FASA still missed the impulse decks and unusual ventral structure details which are aft of the ventral saucer bulge; details which have been the topic of much fan conjecture since the class first appeared.
        To be fair, it is hard to fault the FASA artists when all they had to go on was ST:TNG Season One, during which the Constellation appears ever so briefly.  I don't think I even noticed something was wrong until Season Two or Three when Riker takes on Picard with the USS Hathaway during wargame exercises.
        I have seen a semi-official schematic that supposedly appeared in the Star Trek Magazine a few years ago, but even this design did not seem to entirely jive with the studio model photos that I have seen, so I set about creating my own interpretation of the Constellation, using Mike Okuda's port-side view from his 1996 Star Trek Encyclopedia as a base, copying over components parts from the Enterprise (as rendered in Pocketbooks' "Mister Scott's Guide to the Enterprise"), and paying close attention to various model shots featured at various sites on the internet.  One intentional change I did make was in clarifying the boxy ports which appear on the front and sides of the main hull.  The studio model shows them as being a nondescript blue color, with no apparent purpose.  I have always taken the three largest side-mounted ports for shuttle hangar doors, while the large port at the bow of the craft is almost certainly a multi-tube torpedo bay.  I took a few other creative liberties where additional fine-detailing is concerned, but I'd say my version is upwards of 85% correct, which is more than I can say for FASA.
        Factoids revealed in various TNG episodes suggest that the Constellation class is indeed a Kirk-era design, arising at roughly the same time as the Excelsior class.  Played in Kirk's time, circa ST:TMP through Star Trek VI and after, the Constellation is a top-rate ship capable of clubbing it out with even the largest Romulan and Klingon cruisers.  It even fairs half decent against the big enemy battleships, thanks to a potent spread of weapons and a good amount of power generated by four warp engines.  In Kirk's time the class would certainly be considered advanced, and somewhat rare, occupying a special place within the fleet alongside similarly potent ships of the day.
        By Picard's era however, the Constellation is run-of-the-mill, at best.  The Constellation is badly outmatched by the Klingon KDF-2, Romulan D'Daridex, and Ferengi Marauder.  You may have some success against these bigger ships using the Constellation in numbers, but still the ship is out of its league, and fairs better against older opponents from a different time.  If only FASA had kept the license and provided us with all those dreamt of Klingon and Romulan ships that emerged between roughly 2290 and 2365 A.D!  Maybe then it would be easier to place this class in its proper historical perspective.
        Without these missing and imagined opponents, though, the Constellation is kind of a ship out of time: a little too advanced for general Kirk-era scenarios, a little too aged for Picard-era combat.
        For the sake of eliminating this deficiency, I took the liberty of building out stats for hypothetical Mk III, Mk IV, and Mk V models, upgrading the class at all levels.

* Denotes completely hypothetical model number and stats, devised by Brad R. Torgersen.

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