- The Mission class Courier was one of the most often-used ships in FASA's Star Trek Roleplaying Game adventures, mostly as a civilian ship. It originally appeared in the first edition of the Star Trek RPG boxed set's unimaginatively named Adventure Book. It was stated that it was a Starfleet design, although it almost always appeared as a civilian vessel (surplus, perhaps?). Its size was given as 31.5 metres in length, but at that size the upper deck would have been nothing more than a closet, so I have scaled it up in size to 58.05 metres long. This gives adequate room for the ship's stated three decks, specified as two with full-height deck-to-ceiling and one at two metres. I have also done an alternate version at the stated 31.5 metre length, with three much smaller decks in a split-level design. The deckplans in the game were FASA's typical mess, totally ignoring the shape of the ship. The plans had the distinctive wedge shape, but the lower two decks were shown at nearly the same size! For a company that started out doing licenced deckplans for Traveller, I find this inexplicable.
- The Mission class comes in three standard fit-outs - courier, research vessel and light freighter. In civilian use, the light freighter is by far the most common. Unlike larger Starfleet ships, the main bridge is on the lowest deck. Instead of being numbered from the top down, the decks are simply designated "upper", "middle" and "lower". The FASA plans merely noted the different layouts but only provided a single set of plans. I have produced specific plans for each version in both 31.5 and 58.05 metre sizes.
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