Editing New Orleans Class (section)

==NAVIGATION DEFLECTOR==

Vessels of the New Orleans class make use of two scaled down deflectors systems of what was later developed to become the standard deflector systems aboard Nebula and Galaxy-class starships. The main navigation deflector is located at the forward-most part of the engineering hull and spreads across Decks 14-18, with the dual subspace field distortion amplifiers located on Deck 15.  

Composed of molybdenum/duranium mesh panels over a duranium framework, the dish can be manually moved 7.2 degrees in any direction off the ship's Z-axis. The main deflector dish's subspace field and sensor power comes from three graviton polarity generators located on Decks 14 and 17, each capable of generating one hundred twenty-eight megawatts which feed into the two 550 millicochrane subspace field distortion amplifiers.

A backup deflector is located on the ventral side of the primary hull, and in addition to its role as a backup, the secondary deflector serves to reinforce the ship's warp field at speeds exceeding Warp 8.5.  Originally seen as a means to augment the warp field due to technological limitations in graviton field generation during the development of the pathfinder vehicle, the saucer deflector is actually identical to the primary deflector of the Springfield-class and is more or less a carry-over in the design process.