BRAD'S COMMENTS:  Doing the stats for this ship was a worrisome affair.  There are no game stats in FASA for this latest Enterprise design, and although I was tempted to borrow stats from the Royal Sovereign (a design of FASA origin not connected to the real  Sovereign class in any way) I quickly realized that the Royal Sovereign is not as powerful as the Galaxy class.  And it seems quite evident from the movies that the actual Sovereign class is superior to the Galaxy class, even if the Sovereign is smaller than the Galaxy in both dimensions and mass.
        So, I looked long and hard at the Galaxy class stats from the TNG Officers Manual, and then took them one step further.  The results are a ship that is fantastically, ridiculously powerful.  This violates all my own rules of ship design!  But I am not sure what else to do?  This is a class designed to take on the Jem'Hadar, the Borg, the Cardassians, Romulan warbirds, et al.  And it is the successor class to the uber-powerful Galaxy class.  By definition it is going to be one whale of a ship!  So you will pardon me if the stats below seem not just a little outrageous.
        Aesthetically, I think the Sovereign looks a lot better than the Galaxy class, almost a fusion between the organic of TNG-era and the industrial of Kirk-era.  When ST:TNG debuted in the late 1980's I recall being shocked and very put off by the overly rounded shape of the Galaxy class, and other similar TNG classes like the Nebula.  It took forever for that design aesthetic to grow on me, and once the Sovereign class was unveiled in ST:FC I found myself much better prepared to embrace the new design, especially since it seemed to incorporate the best aspects of both the Kirk-era aesthetic and the Picard-era aesthetic.
        I'm also glad that they are not making each new Enterprise bigger than the one before it.  Past a certain point, increasing the size truly does seem like a futile effort.  Bigger is not always better, and how much bigger does the Federation need to go?  The Romulans can have their whopper D'Daridex.  So long as the USS Enterprise  can dish out as much damage as it can take, size truly does not matter.  And, from my point of view, I would think size on a warship would be a severe disadvantage.  Size almost always means less maneuverability, and it makes you a bigger target and therefore easier for the bad guys to hit when they shoot at you.
       I have not actually play-tested this ship yet.  I imagine it would take either a ship of equally fell potential to combat the Sovereign, or a legion of smaller ships able to bring down the mighty ship in the same manner a pack of wolves might bring down a grizzly bear.  Those poor wolves will get the crap knocked out of them, but by numbers alone they might accomplish what each cannot hope to do individually.

* Denotes completely hypothetical model number and stats, devised by Brad R. Torgersen.
** D and WDF numbers provided by Bryan Jecko.  Thanks Bryan!

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