Earth Alliance Discovery Class Survey Ship Discovery Class History The Discovery Class Survey Ships were the Earth Alliance's first attempt at building scientific exploration ships. Built in the late 2100's, these massive vessels met with only limited success. Lacking any sort of artificial gravity generation, these ships had only limited range. Added to this, they were also rather flimsy, meanng easily destroyed. Of the six built, none survive in the 2260's. The last, EAS Challenger, was taken out of service in 2227, and was mothballed until scrapped in 2249. These ships were manned mainly by civilian scientists, with only hired Belt Alliance fighter support. The Discovery class was approximately one mile long, and armed with a mix of plasma and laser weapons. Mounting only four Mk I interceptors, was well defended at its time of launch, but over time, they became easy targets for the ever-evolving raiders that began to populate the spacelanes. They were equipped with a hangar capable of only carrying a flight of fighters. The ships were the largest things the EA built at the time, and thus suffered from the EA's inexperience with enormous units. It's manueverability was even worse than the later Explorer class (The Explorer was larger than the Discovery, but had the same acceleration and better turn cost and delay. Explorer had 2xspeed delay and 2xspeed cost, while Discovery had 2 1/2xspeed cost and 3xspeed delay.). Discovery Class (Alpha Model) SCS