Well the fleet issue's been solved this season by them doing what they should have done last season - ask the STO folks for models!
Don't think I need to spoiler this since there's no context. The Sovereign and Akira models were also provided by Cryptic, not just the four STO ships, and Thomas Marrone, one of the head ship designers, also contributed significant work on the middle ship there. This is a guy who actually put in personal time to revamp older models in STO to better match the show models on his own, so this was something of a dream for him, to actually contribute to a Trek show himself. I also got the impression going forward it'll be a thing they continue to do, given the huge variety of ship models basically already done for them.
As for the episode itself, they used the time skip to really push the reset button - other than the characters already knowing each other, this really feels like it could have been the proper start of the series. I'm withholding judgment overall though until they hit the 2024 stuff they showed in the trailers, as a promising first episode doesn't always mean a good series.
(I'm also really chuffed the Gagarin was one of the four, as it's one of my favorite STO Trek designs, and practically the second poster ship for STO now after the Odyssey class - which from twitter hints we may see at some point this season too.)
