The Constellation class was put into service during the early 2280's as a smaller, faster counterpart to the Enterprise class. This was Starfleet's first attempt at building a ship with a 4-nacelle configuration. It departed from the standard design practice of the time which was the saucer connecting to the engineering hull w/2 nacelles, in favor of a smaller saucer with 4 nacelles attached at the back. With the Enterprise & Excelsior classes, Starfleet had already experienced troubles trying to control their structural integrity, the Constellation class doubled their trouble. Some say the the Constellation's designers tried to accomplish too much in one step, further compounded by a rushed design process which garunteed that faults would surface in the ships. After the designers sacrificed a great deal of blood, sweat & tears trying to fix their stupid mistakes, they decided to install "stop-gap" sotfware which further limited the power of the warp cores.

While this option kept the ships in one piece, it robbed them of important advances. Even though they were seriously under-powered, Starfleet still wanted the Constellation class to enter series production. This went ahead as scheduled, and along with the Excelsior class, the Constellation class became the mainstay of the fleet. During the early 24th century, many attempts were made to try & boost the Constellation's power. Six ships recieved new warpcores which brought the power up near their planned power output, while others had new software installed that let the power be boosted by 15%. By this time, the Constellation class was 25 years old. The Ambassador class was already in the planning stages and Starfleet felt that an extensive refit would be wasting it's resources. To make room for the new Ambassador class ships, some Constellations were retired all together, while others were assigned patrol routes. In 2364, the USS Stargazer was recovered, repaired and now resides in the fleet museum. As with other older designs such as the Excelsior class, the Constellations are still used for general support duties.