Your best online resources may be the
Master Ship Information Tables available over on ADB's BBS for the strategic game
Federation and Empire (which are separated out by empire, and include a lot of ships that you may not be familiar with).
However, the devil is in the detail. The way in which the concept of a Year in Service varies in
Star Fleet Battles relative to
Federation Commander; and since
A Call to Arms: Star Fleet takes after the latter, that has a knock-on effect on what you see in this game.
For example, take the
Constitution-class Heavy Cruiser. On paper, its Year in Service date is Y125; however, the version of the ship that actually set sail in that era did not possess certain later refits that are incorporated into the version you see in the
ACtA:SF core rulebook.
In
SFB, the background data for the Federation specifically includes data on which refit was added when; and on the SSD for the Fed CA, you can see the various refit costs statted out (and various types of shaded boxes showing which systems get added per refit).
In
FC, however, the Ship Card for the Main Era CA has the refits already incorporated in; the "pre-refit" version of the Heavy Cruiser is published as a separate Middle Years CA Ship Card.
So, in
SFB, you have a more incremental process where you can gradually introduce refits on a year-by-year basis; whereas in
FC, you have the Middle Years (Y120-160, give or take) and the Main Era (General War) treated as whollly separate settings.
Therefore, in
ACtA:SF, the "CA" you currently see is good for use in the Main Era "setting"; but you'd need to convert the Middle Years CA Ship Card in order to get the original version of the ship.
(And it gets even worse with the likes of the Fed CL. That has a Main Era version, a Middle Years version, an Early Warp version, a Warp-Refitted Version, a "sublight" version, and the Federal Republic of Aurora's version over in the Omega Octant.)
If you are familiar with the way in which
Babylon 5: A Call to Arms worked, there was a similar dynamic for some of the older EarthForce ships (like the
Hyperion); the stats for the hull varied depending on which of the three era fleet lists (Early Years, Dawn of the Third Age, or
Crusade Era) you were using to create your own fleet.
Only that we haven't seen the older era ship versions officially statted up in
ACtA:SF yet; and they would probably only really work if the other Middle Years fleets in
FC: Briefing #2 were ported over at the same time.
So, to cut a long story short; if you want to use the current crop of ships in a year-by-year campaign, start off in Y166 or so, and assume that any ships with an older YIS date than that are already available "as-is".
It has all sorts of interesting "stuff" in there.
