Welcome to the USS Hephestus, a Mobile Engineering Platform. The second moible repairing platform Starfleet has created, the first being the USS Montgomery Scott. The USS Hephestus has 14 decks. Feal free to visit the ship as much as you would like, if you have any questions about our starship don't hesitate to ask the CO.

The Briefing Room on the USS Hephestus is much like the one on Galaxy Class Starships. It can comfortably seat up to eight people and has a display consol on the wall. The room is equiped with two Holographic Communications Systems to contact other Starfleet Captains and Admirals.

Briefings are called by the Commanding Officer or the Executive Officer. All Senior Staff are expected to arrive promtly so the CO may give his orders. The Senior Staff compromises of all the ship's departement heads, the Commanding Officer, the Executive Officer and any mission related personel. All Starfleet Personel holding a rank of Commander or higher are invited to the meetings even though they might not be a member of the Senior Staff.

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	The Captain's Office is located just off of the Flight Bridge on Deck 1. This is the Captain's main office and is where he will usually give briefings to individual officers or small groups of people. It is also a place for the Captain to think and plan out strategy while on a shift.
	The room is rather large and comfortablel with a desk, two chairs infront of it, a large chair behind the desk and the traditional fish bowl. The room features many models of other starships as well as a couch, a coffee talbe, a replicator and a large window area behind the couch that looks out into space.

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This Office is reserved for the first officer and the second in command of the ship. Although a small room, it is nicely finished with a glass desk, a two person couch, a small coffee table, a chair. Behind the desk a big chair and a panel to access personel logs, the ship computer and other tactical data. The room is also equiped with a replicator. Click here to see the picture enlarged.

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The Senior Staff aboard most Federation Starships enjoy some extra luxury over their junior counterparts. A large room, situated on deck 2 allows the Senior Officers to be on the Bridge as soon as possible if their presence is requested in an emergency and permits them to be next to their office. The quarters include a desk, a sitting area, a bedroom or two (depending if family is with the officer, a bathroom, a dinning area, extra storage areas and a supplementary room.

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The USS Hephestus has two runabout landing pads. These pads can be lowered into maintenance bays where the storage of two runabouts is possible. The surface liftoff and touchdown pad is the upper assembly of the runabout elevator system. The pad includes all navigational RF and subspace com aids, approach and departure lighting, and auto-capture tractor mooring strips. Once alligned by the approach vector subsystem, the mooring strips provide an EM-based hard docking latch-up to the elevator.

With the elevator lowered to its fully retracted position, the overhead entry door can be sealed. The elevator is a hybrid electrohydraulic and storedtension mechanism capable of liftin a mass 2.5 times that of the runabout. In many cases, the prelift sequence involves detuning the local gravitational mat to reduce the stresses on the elevator system. The runabout swappable modules are serviced in the space adjacent to the elevator pad. The two level facility is capable of performing major overhauls to runabouts.

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The image above is of the standard probe and torpedo launcher aboard the USS Hephestus. The launchers can send photon torpedoes and quantum torpedoes at warp speed at a target. Since the torpedoes can be launched at warp speed it is necessary for the torpedo launchers to be working at maximum efficientcy. The Hephestus can launch up to 4 torpedoes per tube simultaneously. Each torpedo can be independently targeted.

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The ship uses three transporter rooms. Transporter are matter-energy conversion device use to provide a convenient means of transportation. The transporter briefly converts an object or person into energy, beams that energy to another location, then reassembles the subject into its original form.

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Holodecks also known as a Holographic Environment Simulatior, the holdeck permits the simulation of virtually any environment or person with a degree of fidelity virtually indistinguishable from reality. These facilities can be used for a wide range of recreational, sports, and training applications. The computer contains a large library of simulations that are available in the holodecks of the Hephestus. The software allows the programs to be customized according to use preferences.

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This is the USS Hephetus' warp core that spans many decks vertically. The matter-antimatter reaction assembly (M/ARA) is embedded within Deck 12 (Main Engineering) with the surrunding systems balcony above, on Deck 11.

On the right you can see the master systems display. It is an information display and control console used by the ship personel in Main Engineering of the Hephestus. Also known for obvious reasons as "the pool table". Because the warp core can become unstable, which would result in a masive explosion, the ship has been designed so that the warp core can be safely ejected in case of an emergency.

The Hephestus' computers combine traditional isolinear systems with the latest in bio-neural technology. Known as bio-neural gel packs, employ synthetic neural fibers that are suspended in biomimetic gel. This enables the computer to operate inm a similar way to the humanoid brain. making a 'best guess' rather than working through all possible calculations. They use a mechanical interface to simply slot into housings that connect them to the rest of the computer. Back to the deck layout.