My inspiration for this miniature came from a Star Fleet Battles General War Historical Scenario from Volume III (1985). In Year 171, the Klingons attacked the Federation, with a Declaration of War arriving nearly at the same time reports of battles along the border reached Council Chambers. One hundred Klingon warships crossed into Federation space, with the Fleet engaging them in twenty separate battles. One of these battles involved the heavy cruiser USS Hood - which had been patrolling the Klingon Border when the attack commenced. USS Hood had not reported in to Fleet Command since the Klingon assault began. A day later, a message was received, not from USS Hood - but from the Klingons: "And when the fight was over, the mighty Hood went down."

USS Hood was ambushed by three Klingon battlecruisers: a D7B named Challenger and two D6 vessels named Bloodshedder and Desolation. It is an interesting scenario, in that the Federation player's Heavy Cruiser had virtually no chance of defeating the Klingon force, with the objective being to evade the Klingon trap and disengage with as little damage as possible. Historically, USS Hood did not win this fight, her Captain was forced to initiate an emergency saucer separation, which successfully evaded the Klingon force (in what I imagine slipping away in the flash of her secondary hull and nacelles exploding to inflict grievous injury to the enemy force) to soft-land and find refuge in a nearby planet's ocean. The saucer of the USS Hood returned to base some three years later, remarkably. The saucer would be refurbished and mated to a new secondary hull and reentered service in the Fleet - the mighty Hood returns!

I wanted the reborn USS Hood to be something special and unique - not simply be refit as just another Heavy Cruiser - but be a little piecemeal because of the strains of wartime production and restrictions - and not indicative of a ship designed from the keel up to be that way. What I have is sort of a pocket Command Cruiser, with a dual Deflector Dish arrangement akin the the Dreadnought Cruiser (DN) in a bobbed Secondary Hull with no shuttlecraft embarked. USS Hood would be useful in a role as a light CC, an expedient task force leader, or as a Survey Cruiser in a peacetime role ( why I coined it CCS).

This is not an official gaming miniature design (that I know of), and I didn't want to create an uber-powerful combatant either. I just was intrigued by the return of the Hood's saucer and ran with an idea of how a new vessel might be reintroduced into the Fleet.