And why the hell would he want to take such a long trip? And on top of that it would be extremely difficult to arrange for such a ship after. Say every frakking major city on earth blown to bits after the desperate east attack in the ST World War 3. There is no population explosion anymore so there is little will to go to another solar system before warp anyway.
Why indeed!
Why did Columbus sail West during the Inquistion? Why did Lief Erickson make his voyages of discovery during the Dark Ages? Why did Polynesians sail thousands of miles across the South Pacific without a compass? Why did tribes of humans migrate NORTHward during an Ice Age to cross the frozen Bearing Sea into the "New World"?
Because it is what we do!
Enterprise is cannon. Your enterprise lies in a different universe if it does not involve "First Contact" It is valid but more valid along the lines of Starfleet museum.
Enterprise showed a great deal of promise and there are parts of it that I like. However, on the whole, it was written with a great deal of disregard for what had gone before.
And, yes, a good deal of my reference material came from the Starfleet Museum.
Anyway about the Warp 6/7 engine. Before the Romulan war the NX-01 Enterprise went back to exploring and making first contacts. After the war started the data from NX-01 and NX-02s warp core was used to design a new Warp engine program. So by the 2200s starships would have been able to go much faster.
Uh... Okay...
In the game "Star Trek Legacy" This type of class seems to be a mass produced warp vessel. It is more TOS in style so the only thing I can figure is this class or similar was a testbed for the new engine and other tech before going into a mass produced design. I mean think about it. The shape means it can be assembled quickly and even with the 1701 flying about in the low part of Warp 9 you still need a "workhorse" of the fleet.
Never played Star Trek Legacy...
All I'm trying to do is to build some ships from the Star Trek Universe for Orbiter that I hope people here will enjoy. Along with that I am giving a little background on myself and an feelings about Star Trek. I'm not trying to convert anybody, I just want to let you know where I'm coming from with the ships I build.
Enjoy!
-KU