Or better: three numbers. TOS (2270), TNG (pre-Dominion War, 2370), after TNG (post DW, 2380).
And, if there's nothing else you want or have to do today, you may also try to explain why you chose that number.
Not taken into account are civilian vessels, everything with an NAR-prefix, freighters, supply ships, waste-transfer barges or any other non-Starfleet vessel (at least not recommended for starters, but if you want to, I wont stop you...).
Me? TOS: 200; TNG: 4,500; Post-DW: 3,800 (not counting weirdo kitbashes, the ships that were recommissioned just for the war and those that went back to their yard to be finished properly)
Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
As you say, "you may also try to explain why you chose that number".
Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :
I just happen to be working on an article for my Starfleet Museum site. I counted up all my classes and came up with 400 to 500 ships in service during TOS (first line and second line). This doesn't include transports and other auxiliary ships.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
A minimum of 1000, based on dialog from Deep Space Nine, split into numbered Fleets, the highest known being the Tenth Fleet. At one point, the Seventh Fleet numbered 112 ships ("A Time To Stand"[DS9-6]). But, mere elements of the Second and Fifth combined into a 600 ship fleet to retake DS9, suggesting that some fleets had many more than 112 ships. "Tacking Into The Wind"[DS9-7] claims that the Dominion War enemy forces (Dominion in the AQ, Cardassia, and the Breen) had 30,000 ships (the 1,500 Klingon warships that could be modified to resist the Breen weapon would be outnumbered 20 to 1). One would hope the Federation/Klingon/Romulan Alliance had at least half that many warships. The 30,000 figure correlates well with reaction to the Dominion loss of 2,800+ ships in "Sacrifice of Angels"[DS9-6], which might've constituted a loss of as much as half the Dominion fleet in the Alpha Quadrant at that point.
Assuming rough parity between the DCB and FKR alliances, I would posit 8-10,000 Federation starships, with the Klingon Empire having a somewhat higher total pre-war and the Romulans having a somewhat smaller total. (The Klingons build a lot of smaller ships, the Romulans seem focused on huge ones.)
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
but how many of those Fed ships are fighters or runabluts with "NCC" numbers? If the Fed does indeed have 10,000 ships, I'd think the number reflects home fleets and all the reserve fleets not involved in frontline actions.
Posted by Ultra 2 Legit 2 Magnus (Member # 239) on :
Post-DS9: 1,000,000.
Posted by Ultra 2 Legit 2 Magnus (Member # 239) on :
Just a number.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
TOS: about 1,500 (chiefly because Ships of the Star Fleet gyrates around such figures), roughly half of them explorer/combatants and the other half support vessels. A hundred cruisers, but the dozen Constitutions were "special". At least to their captains.
TNG: about 8,000, to allow about 4,000 explorer/combatants to be divided into a dozen fleets with about 300 ships each, with 4,000 support ships.
Post-TNG: about 7,000. I don't want to think the Feds can build ships easily or quickly, or else we wouldn't have seen so many old/outdated designs in the war. In fact, I'm not convinced the Feds could even keep up with their wartime losses.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Futurama IV 8.24.04 (Member # 968) on :
Well, I was thinking that during TNG, the loss of ~50 ships at Wolf 359 was to them a staggering loss to the fleet. Otherwise Earth is just plain piss poorly defended suggested my the complete lack of nearby ship, which I guess we have seen in the case of "Generations" and "Paradise Lost". Anyway, the following year for the blockade at the Klingon/Romulan border it was a real pain to muster up ~20 ships for that. Now, I realize the Federation is huge and they were probably spread out pretty thin, but they sure seemed to have resource issues when it came to organizing any sort of fleet, so to me, 8000 seems to be a bit of a stretch.
Regarding:
quote: Tacking Into The Wind"[DS9-7] claims that the Dominion War enemy forces (Dominion in the AQ, Cardassia, and the Breen) had 30,000 ships (the 1,500 Klingon warships that could be modified to resist the Breen weapon would be outnumbered 20 to 1). One would hope the Federation/Klingon/Romulan Alliance had at least half that many warships. The 30,000 figure correlates well with reaction to the Dominion loss of 2,800+ ships in "Sacrifice of Angels"[DS9-6], which might've constituted a loss of as much as half the Dominion fleet in the Alpha Quadrant at that point.
It was actually in "When it Rains...", anyway, wasn't it 1100 Klingon ships ready for deployment = 22,000 Dominion/Cardassian/Breen ships (20:1)?
Another number to add to the mix is the combined Rom/Kli/Fed ships wiped out by the Breen, that was a fleet of 312.
The thing I am floored about, regarding the battle to retake DS9, is how Feds were outnumbered 2:1, yet 1/3 of their fleet was able to break through the lines!! I understand there was the third fleet that was to join that they left without, it is possible that they joined later and were part of the 200 that broke through? It just seems strange that the Feds are suddenly so superior in that battle but earlier sucked it up so bad when the 7th fleet was annihilated, just how many ships did the Klingon reinforcements contribute to save 1/3 of the fleet?
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
1. Wolf 359 was a terrible thing for the Federation, but remember Shelby's comment that the fleet would be restored in a year. A construction rate of 40 ships per year at minimum (assuming they were only restoring the fleet and not continuing to build normally in addition) is nothing to sneeze at.
2. Assuming a Federation 8,000 light-years long, 6,000 light-years wide, and about 1,000 light-years deep (for reasons explained here: http://st-v-sw.net/STSWcompare.html#Size ), an 8,000 ship fleet leaves you with an average of one starship covering over five million cubic light-years of space (six million if you make the Federation a perfect rectangle . . . I fudged downward for a better fit). That's equal to each ship having a 170 light-year block of space to take care of.
"Only ship in the sector", indeed.
3. It was 1,500 Klingon ships at a 20:1 disadvantage. Thus, 30,000 D/C/B ships.
Posted by Nim the Merciful (Member # 205) on :
Amazing. One needs only to trickle a few drops on the desert floor, and slumbering flowers shall shoot out from the sand.
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
quote:Well, I was thinking that during TNG, the loss of ~50 ships at Wolf 359 was to them a staggering loss to the fleet.
Yes, but probably only in comparison to recent losses. Shelby said the fleet could be restored in a year; 40 a year is fairly impressive. It's possible that the losses were just seen as so severe because Starfleet hadn't taken that kind of loss in one battle for X number of years. Imagine if a modern armed force lost the same number of casualties as in a WW2 or Korean battle.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I dont think it was so much a "staggering loss" as it was a "staggering shock" to the Federation's superior attitude. THey thought they could handle whatever was thrown at them and they were waaaay wrong.
Oddly, it's the new ship classes and preperations to defend against a far superior threat force -the Borg- that saved them years later when the Dominion first invaded.
Probably Q's intention all along.
Posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov (Member # 742) on :
I really didn't take Wolf into account. The problems of assembling a fleet a year later were probably related to the fact that every ship participating in the blockade was one ship less to secure the Neutral Zone border. In that context I got the impression that many of the captains of the Wolf-ships must have been high-ranking officers or veterans because they seemed to have more problems finding expirienced captains than ships.
And to answer the above question, my numbers for the 24th century are based on careful calculations (what else did you expect? ). Threre were nine fleets between earth and Cardassia, and at least one of them had more than 100 ships (A Time To Stand) while 2 1/2 fleets had 600 ships (SoA). In other words, the average strength of a fleet (assuming that they are all somewhat balanced) is somewhere between 100 and 250. So with 10 fleets, we get roughly 2000 ships. Starfleet of course would be stupid to pack every available ship into a fleet. We have seen numerous examples of single ships operating without a fleet (the E-E, the Centaur, even the Defiant). Even if the majority of ships is part of one of the fleets, there are probably a thousand, maybe more independent vessels, mostly explorers, diplomatic vessels and science ships. And finally, we know that the war basically took place in one half of the Federation. From watching Star Trek we all know that there are many threats out there, and I'm absolutely sure that Starfleet would not risk being vulnerable on any borderline.
In the end, it all depends on the size and number of the fleets. the estimation of 4500+ ships before/during the war is a minimum on an open-ended scale.
(Besides that, I can't believe the 30,000 Dominion ships-theory. Altough most of them may be bugs, that's still an awful lot. With such a fleet, the Alliance would have been defeated within weeks. Even if it's not just an exaggeration, they may have been talking about troops, not ships. I don't even want to estimate how many Jem'Hadar were produced on the Dominion worlds in the AQ during the war.)
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
SoA involves mere elements of two fleets, not the entirety of those fleets.
Posted by MarianLH (Member # 1102) on :
Click on "Articles" at the bottom, and then "The Size Of Starfleet" on the left-hand menu. Stupid frames.
Marian
Posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov (Member # 742) on :
The fleets involved in the retaking of DS9 were the 2nd, 5th and 9th (according to the Encyclopedia). And I am quite sure that they were not parts but the entire fleets. Sisko mentioned that parts of the 2nd (?) fleet didn't arrive in time but he wanted to take off nontheless because the Cardassians would be able to remove the mines soon.
And the ditl-article is an interesting summary, but doesn't add that much new information. And the final statement that there are between probably between 1,000 and 10,000 ships in service in the 24th century isn't very precise, either. Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
Why would Sisko take entire fleets off their assigned patrol areas and leave those areas unprotected?
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I'd think that the re-assigned ships had older and less combat-ready ships take their places to defend the threatened Federation worlds.
It explains why we never saw any Ambassador class ships or any of the Wolf 359 classes during the war.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov: The fleets involved in the retaking of DS9 were the 2nd, 5th and 9th (according to the Encyclopedia). And I am quite sure that they were not parts but the entire fleets.
Sisko: "By putting together a task force comprised of elements of the Second, Fifth, and Ninth Fleets, I believe we can retake Deep Space Nine -- the most important piece of real estate in the Alpha Quadrant." - "Favor the Bold"[DS9-6]
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
"Elements" sont sound like very large percentages of those fleets. ...of course, that might have been Sisko's intention. Posted by TheF0rce (Member # 533) on :
I don't think every Fed. fleet during the war were of equal size. Fleets guarding key systems probably were larger and made up of better ships.
I'm not sure which fleet it was[9th? 2nd, or 5th], but Damar mentioned that one of these fleets were originally deployed along the vulcan front and were being withdrawn. Vulcan being a core world was guarded then by a much larger fleet.
The 7th was guarding something less important or a rear action fleet, or was structured for smaller assault operations or...*shrugs*.
This explains the difference between the fleet sizes but makes predicting how big the overall fleet all the more harder. You can take wild guesses and say the 10th[which was guarding earth] as having anywhere between 200-800 ships.
Posted by Futurama IV Shizzle (Member # 968) on :
The 10th was just one. The Enterprise.
PIKCARD ROKCS!
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
Personally I think Starfleet has this amount of each class in service:- THIS IS PURE GUESS WORK
During Dominion War 2373-2376 Intrepid Class:95=55 lost Akira Class:150=150 lost Excelsior Class:1500=1500 lost Ambassordor Class:1950=1950 lost Miranda:2250=2250 lost Galaxy Class:750=750 lost Soveriegn:6=4 lost Steamrunner Class:175:175 lost Sabre Class:200=150 lost Defiant Class:4=2 lost Oberth:20=30 lost Nova:400=100 lost =7365 starships left My Guess is that during the War Starfleet lost 50% of its fleet
Posted by Ultra Manjuice (Member # 239) on :
1500 Galaxy Class Starships sounds perfectly reasonable.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
I thought Cartman was all grown up and responsible now. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO OUR SECOND-MOST SARCASTIC MEMBER!
Posted by UFPSFMC-Colonel Mike Captain (Member # 709) on :
he forgot four nacelle intrepid variants
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
The backbone of the fleet is currently the wildly successful Elkins and Raging Queen classes.
There are four whole fleets of Raging Queens alone....the USS Ultra Magnus being their flagshhip.
By the end of the Dominion War there were eleventy billion Galaxy class dreadnaughts stationed around cleverly oversized Regula spacelabs.
Posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov (Member # 742) on :
Cartman's post got me thinking: if the appearances of ships per class on screen represent the average size of a class, here are some possible numbers:
242 ships counted (only ships with known class designations or onscreen appearances, multiple appearances just count as one. No kitbashes, as we don't know where the spare parts come from. With more time on my hands I could count every appearance of every ship and use that number, but for now - as a test - this will work). Assuming the size of Starfleet to be 5.000. I didn't sort out ships from the 23rd century because, even if they may not be in service any more, we know that the possible lifespan of a ship can be 100+ years, and especially during the DW they probably used everything they had. Plus, I have no idea which ships have been decommissioned. Again, if I had the time, I'd take it into concideration.
Assuming there are classes we haven't seen yet and ships already out of service, this should give us - at least for some classes - an impression of what we have to deal with. If anyone wants to further enhance my technique, feel free to do so. Posted by Ultra Manjuice (Member # 239) on :
Holy! Flagship!
Posted by Captain Boh (Member # 1282) on :
I would think that there are probably more Danube's since they are small and easy to build
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
Yes, and the registry is NCC-000000.....
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ultra Manjuice: Holy! Flagship!
Yes....you're the head Raging Queen of the fleet.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Originally posted by Cartman: [QB] Personally I think Starfleet has this amount of each class in service:- s THIS IS PURE GUESS WORK
Intrepid Class:150 There's probably not been this many constructed (since Voyager was lost and the production of more firepower-oriented ships would've been a priority after the brief war with the Klingons and preparing for Dominion Invasion). Akira Class:300 probably ahigh number but if we consider the 5XXXXX registry number on some Akiras, it's not inpossible. Excelsior:3000 a good number of the total ships ever constructed of this class, but (I think) too large a number to be active at the same time. Ambassordor:3900 Almost certainly too many. I'd lower it to prahaps 300-900 still in service fleetwide: remember that larger capital ships take a long time to build and the Amby was the largest of her generation (probably, anyway). Miranda:4500 convievable, fleet-wide and spread across the federation, but mostly not as available combat ships for the war effort. Galaxy Class:1500 Waaaaaaaay too many. Mabye as many as 50 if you consider that some were launched incomplete. mabye. Soveriegn Class:10 possible....they could have been held back as a last line of defense Steamrunner Class:350 sounds right for aFed-wide number of ships Sabre Class:350 mabye a few more- it's asmall ship. Defiant Class:6 by war's end I'd think there would be at least ten to fifteen in service Oberth:50 Probably more if you're counting "S.S."/ civillian registry ships. ]/b] Nova:500 [b] mabye half that many at tops: it seemed a very new class when Voyager envountered it. Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
IT IS FORTUNATE I WAS BEING TOTALLY SERIOUS
Posted by Futurama IV Shizzle (Member # 968) on :
Wow. I even knew that. Mabye.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Cartman: IT IS FORTUNATE I WAS BEING TOTALLY SERIOUS
I know you were'nt serious but looking at the shiplist breakdown got me thinking about plusable numbers of starships.
It's always bugged me that the Enterprise could possibly be "the only ship in the sector", regardless of how vast the Fed is.
Posted by Grand Admiral Thrawn (Member # 1490) on :
The point about Q introducing the Feds to the Borg so they could survive the Dominion war is a genius idea, we saw Picard scoff at the notion of a battle simulation in peak performance, and saying to Q that whatever was out there they were ready for it, not with a fleet of 80 year-old excelsiors (Hansons flagship!!!) your not! The development of Quantom torpedoes, Akira, Promethius, Deffiant class ships were all owed to this one encounter J25. Weyouns insistance that 'without the federation the others are no threat to us' also points to a fleet size pushing 15-20,000 ships, if we infer that the Klingons and romulans have roughly 1,500-2,000 each, and that the Dominion fielded a force 20 times the size of the Klingon one along the border. I must admit though I think this sounds excesive, judgeing by the fact starfleet tell Picard 'we are not ready for a major confrontation' after the loss of 'only' 39 ships at wolf 359. As well as Bashir's 'we can't go on taking these kinds of losses' after the loss of 98 ships in the Tyra system. The number of Ageing ships in the major battle scenes points to a major refurbishment project with the likes of the Qualor 2 surpluss depot being emptied of its stock and then rushed to the front lines. Although if Starfleet asked me to take a Miranda class ship into battle against a Dominion battleship with a couple of flanking Keldon's I would have to be having strong words with someone!
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
I see.
Don't you think the Federation's importance as a threat has a little to do with its historic ability to build working alliances between disparate, often acrimonious, groups? I mean, two hundred years prior the Andorians and Vulcans were at each others' throats and now they're citizens of the same nation and probably listen to the same pop music.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Well, pop-music has always been the universal peacemaker. It's why Brittney Spears is a Nobel laurate.
The Klingons have far more than 1500 ships at their disposal: they agree to commit that many ships to the invasion of Cardassia alone.
Of course, a fleet of 1500 -mostly 80 year old KBOPs- is far less impressive than a fleet of 500 Romulan Warbirds.
Posted by Grand Admiral Thrawn (Member # 1490) on :
I've seen no figures to suggest the Klingon military commited that many ships to the invasion of Cardassia, Dax says 'we're talking over a hundred ships in the first wave alone, all in all they've commited over a third of their millitary'
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Martok says he's sending 1500 ships in a season seven episode. I believe he says it's a "third of the entire fleet".
Posted by Grand Admiral Thrawn (Member # 1490) on :
Nah he doesn't, he just says he has 1500 ships ready for deployment, the serious lack of decent television means I only watch ths same DVD's over and over these days!
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
(There are many good shows on TV. More than in recent memory, at least for me personally.)
Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :
I once did numbers for a pre and post Dominion War fleet, and all I came out was about 6,500 ships. The problem was that I was using already established classes (meaning shown on screen). Each class on average had hundreds of ships in each fleet while at the same explain why ships like those in Wolf 359 and the Ambassador class were not shown in the war.
Another problem I found was trying to explain how Starfleet could have survived the war, I came up with a maximum ship production a year of about 300 ships. That's impressive but not when hundreds of ships are being destroyed. Also, I found that how did the Dominion make roughly 20,000 to 30,000 ships in less than three years? I counted about 60 ships in the few times the Dominion were shown coming out of the wormhole.
If thousands of ships were coming out of the wormhole each time, I think Starfleet would have mined the wormhole awhole lot sooner. Imagine if they just mined the mouth of the wormhole as soon as the Cardassians joined the Dominion. All Starfleet would have to worry about is the relatively small Dominion fleet and the Cardassian fleet. It would have been a whole lot simpler if they just did that.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
So, any reason why the Federation, hundreds of years in the future and with the resources available to 100+ fully developed planetary economies, can't build a fraction of the ships the U.S. could build in World War II?
The real problem isn't material, anyway. It takes four years to train a Starfleet officer, and at least several months, one imagines, for various crewmen. It takes three days to grow a combat-ready Jem'Hadar.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Starfleet would have to build more ships than everything made in WWII during peacetime alone (assuming they add a new member wprld every couple of years) to patrol the expanding frontier.
Good points on the crew requirments: I wonder if starfleet would have instituted a draft if the Dominion War dragged on another couple of years (or if one of the Federation's founding worlds fell).
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Do we know there *isn't* a draft on? Picard seems to have volunteered (judging by his applying before standard entry age), but we don't really know about the others.
quote: So, any reason why the Federation, hundreds of years in the future and with the resources available to 100+ fully developed planetary economies, can't build a fraction of the ships the U.S. could build in World War II?
The same reason why Denmark or Spain, builders of hundreds of first-rate warships in the 17th and 18th centuries, haven't managed to build a single space combatant so far?
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
If there were a draft on, Jake would have been far less carefree. Unless you think Jake-O got the same treatment GWB did because of his daddy being the Bajoran Jesus.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
I think that a draft that hits one out of every 342,000 able-bodied man, woman or assorted other would serve Starfleet just fine, and still not quite drive fear into the hearts of youngsters...
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Uh, Timo, you've lost me.
Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :
Using the wartime economy of the US as an example, Starfleet would have over a million ships.
However the peace time economy allows the US to build only one fleet carrier every three years. About 100 planes, a handful fo subs and cruisers. In WW2, the US was able to build about 20 fleet carriers, 10 battleships, hundreds of destroyers, 100 smaller carriers and nearly a hundred thousand planes, in a four year period.
So the Federation up until the couple of years leading up to the war, the Federation was at a peacetime economy. That's my theory at least.
I'm willing to bet that Starfleet before the war and during the war started to shift it's focus instead on large ships like the Galaxy class but smaller ships such as the Defiant and Sabre class. Perhaps the largest would have been the Akira class.
To get on topic: TOS 1,600 to 2,000 ships. Seems like a nice number with no evidence to back it up. TNG: 6,000 to 10,000 ships. I think most of you know the answer.
Posted by Futurama Guy (Member # 968) on :
quote:Originally posted by Matrix: I'm willing to bet that Starfleet before the war and during the war started to shift it's focus instead on large ships like the Galaxy class but smaller ships such as the Defiant and Sabre class. Perhaps the largest would have been the Akira class.
That explains all the "kitbashes" well enough....
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
quote: Uh, Timo, you've lost me.
(Pats himself on the back, ticks a box in the calendar.)
Basically, I meant that the capacity to build seagoing warships at date X may not be a relevant measure of the capacity to build spacegoing warships at date Y. Even the United States currently couldn't build a single space shuttle per year, no matter how much it wanted. And it's not just that it's politically, financially and technologically unprepared to build further space shuttles, period. The *order of magnitude* of the job is simply different from that of churning out cruisers in the 1940s.
There could be many limiting factors even in the vast UFP when it comes to shipbuilding. A whopping 25% of your population can probably become Rosie the Riveter in a time of crisis, but only 0.00000001% of it can become Oppenheimer, and only 0.0000000000000000001% can become Einstein - and you need the latter in order to build starship-type thingamabobs just as much as you need the former.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Yeah, but, all that work was done two hundred years prior to the onscreen action, and nothing has suggested that warp engines, for instance, are particularly difficult or expensive to manufacture. The Federation puts them on shuttles and runabouts, even.
The very setting depends on a whole host of similarities between a fictional space navy and real-world wet ones, and I see no reason to think that this particular case is meant to diverge from that.
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
That'd be like saying your Rosie the Riveters are all equal to Orvill and Wilbur Wright, which they weren't.
Once technology becomes commonplace, you no longer need the giants of the field (Oppenheimer and Einstein), you simply stand on their shoulders.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
But the percentage of space shuttle builders at Rosie level is not the same as the percentage of Liberty ship builders at that level. To get even a "series production" shuttle off the air, you need academically trained people to turn most of the screws and solder most of the wires, or at least one academician to look over every five riveters' shoulders.
The same is true to a lesser degree of aircraft, which are a bit closer to Liberty ships but not quite there yet. A Liberty can stall in mid-ocean and await repairs. An Airbus stalling in mid-ocean won't be good publicity. It's not that aircraft are newer tech - it's that aircraft are more demanding tech. And there's no indication that a greater percentage of world population could build aircraft today than fifty years ago, despite advances in training and social conditions.
(Indeed, there are *more* poor and uneducated today, relatively and absolutely speaking. Will their eradication, one way or other, markedly alter things in the Trek universe?)
We simply can't tell whether a starship will be built by a slightly retarded button-pusher kid who got this easiest of all jobs as a sort of charity, or by a team of Wesleys who swim in cold sweat 24 hours a day to get the job done. Granted, TNG tech *theoretically* makes it possible that once a ship is designed, building her is a no-brainer. But the big TNG ships still are full of bugs, and moreover appear to be individuals with different bugs on different ships. There may be a need for a hands-on, design-as-you-build approach, which simply can't be handled by the majority of your population. Not today, not yesterday, and in all likelihood not tomorrow, either.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Timo, your point about varying degrees of technical difficulty is indeed worth noting, and I'd say a lengthy and ongoing design process is nearly canon, from what little we've seen on the subject (the whole Leah Brahms thing, for instance), but what is tripping me up is that, from my point of view, building starships is obviously not intended, within this particular fiction, to be a feat of exceptional difficulty. I mean, I guess the gap in our readings just goes to show how little time the subject has been given on TV.
But, I do think your shuttle example is fundamentally misleading. The space shuttle's problems are well known and the source of much discussion elsewhere, but I think we can agree that there is a major difference between building the first partly reusable spacecraft (whose design specs were famously yanked around between civilian and military requirements) and constructing spacecraft (or anything, really) within a mature industry.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Add to the discussion that the Space Shuttle represents the pinnacle of current spaceflight technology. Sure, it takes dozens of specialists years to build just one shuttle (just as it might a Galaxy class starship) but just as servicable- at a known and much lower tech level- are Soyuz capsules (which may, I suppose, be compared to a Miranda or Excelsior class).
There would likely exist a happy medium between extremes- those uber-specialists each may lead teams of highly competant, if not quite as uber-skilled, starship construction workers.
I doubt the guys that asssemble the warpcore are the same ones that build the spaceframe or paint on the ship's name and registry.
Posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov (Member # 742) on :
Here's an interesting fact from TNG's third season. When Riker, Troi and Lwaxana are taken hostage by the Ferengi, Data and Wesley talk about the academy. Data tells him that 90% of those who finish the academy are not transferred to Galaxy-class starships. Assuming that there are six Galaxys, each with a crew of 1000, there are only 60,000 new ensigns each year. Just taking the statement from Wolf 359 into concideration (40 ships equal 10,000 people) either starfleet has been constantly growing at a constant rate over the past decades (few retirements/deaths) to maintain such a fleet or there are (better: were during TNG) much less ships in service than we currently think. For comparison: The DS9TM assumes that the Cardassian military recruits more than half a million new troops each year.
Posted by Grand Master General Futurama God (Member # 968) on :
quote:Originally posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov: Here's an interesting fact from TNG's third season. When Riker, Troi and Lwaxana are taken hostage by the Ferengi, Data and Wesley talk about the academy. Data tells him that 90% of those who finish the academy are not transferred to Galaxy-class starships. Assuming that there are six Galaxys, each with a crew of 1000, there are only 60,000 new ensigns each year. Just taking the statement from Wolf 359 into concideration (40 ships equal 10,000 people) either starfleet has been constantly growing at a constant rate over the past decades (few retirements/deaths) to maintain such a fleet or there are (better: were during TNG) much less ships in service than we currently think. For comparison: The DS9TM assumes that the Cardassian military recruits more than half a million new troops each year.
I don't believe your math is correct.
You're assuming that each Galaxy gets a 1000 *new* ensigns each year (x6), if I'm reading you right. There isn't even that many officers assigned to a Galaxy in the first place, AFAIK - being the large number of civilians/families aboard.
Data inversely says, that 10% of all graduating ensigns get transferred to a GCS -- so the math cannot be figured unless you know the number of ensigns assigned to a Galaxy each year, which was not given -- and/or you need to know what percentage of the ships crew of 1000 are *new* ensigns. In contrast, you can only determine the number of newly assigned ensigns to a GCS if you know the number of SFA grads....
Also, at that point, as far as we know, there were only 5 GCS, being that the Yamato was out of the picture.
As far as Wolf 359 goes and the average of 250 casualities per ship...there must have been a significant number of survivors or a lot of skeleton crew ships, or we have vastly under estimated the number of crewmembers these ships have, as I cannot imagine the Excelsiors, and Nebulae and Ambassadors involved were so lightly manned.
Posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov (Member # 742) on :
We don't know exactly how many out of these 1,000 people are civilians so the actual crew of a Galaxy could be 500. We also don't know if those 40 ships had a total crew of 20,000 and fifty percent of them were able to escape. I'm just doing a basic interpretation of the figures given on TNG to get a number they probably had in mind when they wrote the show. That number may not be accurate, but at the moment we have nothing; this could at least give us a hint.
Let's assume that a Galaxy class gets the same percentage of new ensigns a year (in relation to the total number of crewmembers) than any other starfleet vessel. It does not matter if they get 10 or 900 ensigns, the information we get is that consequently 10% of all starfleet crewmen who serve on a starship are stationed on a Galaxy-class vessel. Basically, if 6,000 people on a Galaxy are 10% of the fleet, and we take the 10,000=40 ships figure, Starfleet would consist of no more than 240 ships at the time the statement was made. Of course the fleet is growing and we don't know how fast. But if Starfleet was supposed to have 250 ships at that time, Shelby's statement that the fleet needs a year to return to its former strength after loosing 40 ships sounds reasonable.
Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
Another assumption is that all these greenhorns are all going to the fleet. What about shore installations, various research labs, communications arrays, etc, etc.? There has to be new postings in these areas not to mention where do the crews of ships in for SLEP-like programs ( to borrow from the USN ) go?
We know that stafleet has its own R&D programs and maintenance facilities, but one of the things we never see is the depths of support needed to maintain a fleet.
It's like seeing a bunch of Tomcat crews having adventures with an occasional appearance on deck of a fuel handler, munitions or deck handler or LSO. Not to mention the cooks, barbers, supply, logistics and other personnel of a carrier. If I remember right, there's about 5,000 crewmen on a flattop and only about 200 of them are the glamour boy pilots. While I realize that showing the day-to-day life of a fuel handler isn't exciting, it is an extremely important support function that could cripple an airgroup if they were to be unable to perform their duties.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
When Data says that 91% of fresh ensigns don't get assigned to Galaxies for their first assignments, it still sounds as if this is only a MILD rebuke of Wesley's expectations. That is, Wesley probably was justified in thinking that he'd get a Galaxy, if not the Enterprise. Nine percent is such a big part of the (yearly? bimonthly?) total that one might postulate that Galaxies are actually the appointed ensign acclimatization vessels of the Fleet.
Thus, virtually everybody who graduates (=9%) ends up on a Galaxy at first, before being distributed to the Fleet. The 91% that don't aren't evenly distributed across the rest, either - they end up on other acclimatization vessels before seeing regular service. Some 99% of the Fleet vessels might never receive a fresh ensign at all. Thus the 91%/9% division here gives us no meaningful data on the size of the overall Fleet, except that its needs for fresh blood are adequately served by what is channeled through the acclimatization vessels.
We can't even accurately tell how many ensigns a starship would need per year, not even in the case of the E-D whose overall crew size we do know. Perhaps several thousands of ensigns actually go through the E-D each year, on assignments that last mere months? The mission profile of the vessel seems eminently suited for that.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by FuturamaGuy (Member # 968) on :
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
) - 558 (!!!)![[Cool]](cool.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)