LONG BEFORE THE CANON AMBASSADOR CLASS APPEARED in ST:TNG, there was another Ambassador design—of FASA manufacture.  First appearing in the TNG Officer's Manual, the FASA Ambassador featured Excelsior-type warp nacelles swooping down from the aft end of an angled secondary hull, which in turn was joined to a TMP-era Enterprise saucer.  Overall, I think the FASA design is quite nice, but as was too typical, no attention was paid (during the design phase) to scale.  Excelsior nacelles should not be on the same scale as the rather diminutive TMP-era saucer section.  And besides which, the TMP-era saucer is an obsolete item given the fact that FASA's Ambassador was touted as a heavy battle-cruiser serving on the main lines at the time Picard assumes command of the Galaxy class USS Enterprise.
     Also, the FASA version is missing key pieces of hardware, such as a navigational deflector, apertures for torpedo tubes, and doorways for shuttle bays.
     With all of this in mind, I set to work re-drawing the ship from the ground up.  Giving it a totally new saucer, new nacelles which borrow much from the Excelsior (refit), and adding in the missing components which I named previously.  It took a devilish amount of work, as the saucer is something of a fusion between the original style of the Excelsior, and the actual Ambassador as it is shown on-screen.  Making the new saucer far more complexly detailed than a mere TMP-era saucer.  I also went to great lengths to rectify the linear flaws which become apparent upon examination of the original FASA drawing—especially the variation in secondary hull shape, when comparing the bow-on view with the dorsal view, neither of which matches in the original art.
     All in all, I think it worked out pretty well, and the overall look of the class has not been sacrificed.  Just the same, because of the different details—and to avoid confusion between canon and FASA ships—I decided to give this class a new designation for listing in the OLD&A library. Something synonymous with 'ambassador' but different at the same time.  I hope FASA purists will not mind.
     2020 note: I went back to the drawing board on the saucer specifically, because my re-draw from 2007 had not matched certain components with either the Galaxy or Excelsior classes.  So, escape pods got larger, as did windows in the dorsal saucer surface.  Still, with the aim of showing something transitional between the Kirk-era films, and the TNG-era Galaxy class ship.  I also re-worked some details on the secondary hull, and added the ventral and stern views.  All in all, a time-consuming but worthwhile project.
     Offensively (within the game) this class is one of the most powerful of the TNG-era FASA designs, featuring a total of ten FP-4 photon torpedoes, with eight of those ten capable of firing into the forward arc at any given moment!  Combine that with 70 superstructure points and over 112 power points, and the Envoy class is one mean sumbitch!  Almost as lethal as the Galaxy class—and at least as potent as the Royal Sovereign class—this ship kicks butt.