Embpor Orbitals Exploratory Battleship

The Orion attempt to one-up the Excelsior and design a ship capable of a six-year independent exploratory mission, the Exploratory Battleship took a long time to gestate. For a time, the design looked like it would never take shape due to cost issues, but the use of a Rigellian-supplied warp core and refinements in disruptor and torpedo technology made a ship with the desired capabilities possible despite the limited budget allocated to it. Reliability issues and the Orion Civil War prevented this ship from making its shakedown cruise until the Eternal Empire crisis began, where it fought a brief battle with the much larger Orion Ascendant dreadnought and can be said to have performed well.

Comparable in many respects to the Excelsior-A, the Exploratory Battleship manages similar performance on a smaller platform and at a smaller cost in crew, build time, and especially special resources. In exchange, it has a high supply cost and reliability issues, and while joining the Federation is part of what ended plans for a Six-Year Mission, those same issues contributed to the Felicity Xanothos being rejected for long-distance missions to Allupii or Sei-Ferie space.