The Federation is roughly 200ly across in my latest theories, Chris makes the area even smaller. Let's assume the territory is 50ly thick, for most of the stars are roughly in the same galactic plane (I would have to check the thickness more exactly, though). I wouldn't believe the territory is thicker than it is wide, since the main direction for expansion would be the galactic plane. This gives a volume of pi*100^2*50ly^3 = 1.57 million cubic lightyears. With a fleet strength of 7000 (my favorite number recently) there would be an average of 224 cubic lightyears per starship. Assuming a uniform distribution we get one starship every 6ly which is a credible figure. Assuming that the core of the Federation and critical areas like the Cardassian border or the Romulan Neutral Zone will have a denser starship distribution, it is reasonable that there was usually no starship in a one-day range in the outer regions where the E-D operated. On the other hand, there are supposed to be regions that have a hostile environment (nebulae, badlands and such) and other regions without anything interesting yielding a higher density in the other regions, but the order of size remains.

Summarizing, a fleet strength of up to 10000 or even more is absolutely credible and even complies with TNG.

Now try to scale up the Federation to the official size of 8000ly across and a thickness of 500ly, spanning most of the thickness of the galaxy. The according density for 7000 starships would be 1 ship every 153ly! This means, one ship would be all alone in a volume that is as large as the whole recently proposed small Federation. It is absolutely impossible to achieve anything (exploration, diplomacy, defense) in this vast territory with so few ships. There should be millions of ships in Starfleet in this case to hold the Federation together.

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"Naomi Wildman, sub-unit of Ensign Samantha Wildman, state your intentions." (VOY: "Infinite Regress")
Ex Astris Scientia
 

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"Naomi Wildman, sub-unit of Ensign Samantha Wildman, state your intentions." (VOY: "Infinite Regress")
Ex Astris Scientia
 

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-Striker
kob.diabloii.net
 

Boris

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"Wrong again. Although we want to be scientifically accurate, we've found that selection of [Photon Energy Plasma Scientifically Inaccurate as a major Star Trek format error] usually indicates a preoccupation with science and gadgetry over people and story."

---a Writers' Test from the Original Series Writer's Guide

One might well say that starship density comes in three grades: core worlds/war zones, where there are enough ships to really respond to a military crisis; outer holdings some 500 ly off, where single starships can respond to various crises and patrol a region perhaps ten ly across each; and the exploration zones thousands of ly off, where a single ship "patrols" regions of space 100 ly across or more, or 100 days or more of travel time.

Add to this not just one core, but perhaps three: one around Earth, one around Rigel and one around Deneb. Between these would be wide regions of space where the Federation does not mount a credible defence, but any enemy contemplating an invasion would have to realize that any of the three cores can send a retaliatory fleet to take the occupied system back at their leisure - and the system is beyond replenishment range from the viewpoint of the invader, too.

So the Federation could really be 8,000 ly across, from the most rotationward member system in the fringes of the Deneb garrisons to the most rimward holding within retaliation reach of the Rigel garrisons. Ships within the core regions would travel fast, either along warp highways or simply by straining their engines since the RAC-or ADAC-equivalent is never far away if the engines give. Ships between the regions suffer from the 1000 ly/y limit, and travel times between cores are measured in years except for the biggest Starfleet explorer ships. Most of the 1st season TNG would take place near Deneb, then, with the time between "We'll Always have Paris" and "Conspiracy" preferably spent on a three-month journey towards Earth...

Timo Saloniemi
 

The worst problem is that *all* episodes and movies suggest that Earth, Bajor, Cardassia, Ferenginar, Romulus and maybe also Kronos are very close to each other. I doubt warp highways would be used in all directions. They should play a very big role. Especially keeping in mind that Star Trek opponents keep on bashing the show because each and everything is explained ("See this isolytic metadisruptor. It works on a techobabbion discharge basis, and BTW, I will kill you with it.") I wonder how one can assume the existence of warp highways that are *never* mentioned.

Striker: You mean shaped like a cylinder . Actually, I would have used an ellipsoid, but I was too lazy to get the geometry book.

About the lateral extension vs. thickness of Federation space: The galaxy is about 1000ly thick. Make that 500ly for the interesting region with a considerable star densitity. If the Federation and its starships behaved like statistical particles, Federation space would be more or less a bullet. The lateral movement is somewhat more interesting, but why not explore and incorporate territories that are closer, but in vertical direction?

If the Federation is 8000ly across, it would most likely occupy the whole thickness of 500ly. If it's only 200ly, I reckon the depth wouldn't be so much smaller than these 200ly. I was generous to assume only 50ly.

Another approach: I have taken the values from Christian's famous list of known stars and calculated the averages and standard deviations from both the plane distances and the "heights" of the stars above the galactic plane. http://www.stdimension.de/int/Cartography/RealStars.htm

Plane distance av: 221ly stdv: 414ly
Height: av: 90ly stdv: 106ly

This shows that

1) a very very rough estimation for the diameter would be 400ly, taking the average distance as radius, and the height would be 180ly. This doesn't take into account that single stars are much farther away and it doesn't account for the many member planets whose positions are unknown. Anyway, this works much better than Picard's (pretentious) "8000ly across". Hey, he also made the E-E 15m longer! Definitely a "man-explains-technical-things-to-a-woman-effect". ;-)

2) irrespective of the absolute size this suggests that the diameter/height ratio of the Federation ellipsoid should be around 2.5.

The high standard deviations are because most of the mentioned stars are very close (only a few lightyears), while other stars are very far away, and the latter contribute a lot to it.
 

On the other hand, it didn't take the E-D that long to travel to sector 001 from Wolf 359 (which is a real star, 7.8 lightyears away) so they either pushed the engines very hard in The Best of Both Worlds, or the entire warpscale is inaccurate and starships are actually much faster than what has been assumed so far (though this is inconsistent too, for it would mean that Voyager should be able to cover the 70.000 lightyear trip a lot quicker)

My guess is that when SF's vessels have access to outposts/starbases (in the AQ) they will travel at, say, warp 9.6 for longer periods of time since they can easily undergo maintainance every so often.

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"Cry havoc and let's slip the dogs of Evil"

 

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"Its a CLOCK!" - Sisko, "Dramatis Personae" DS9.

Also, during the TNG era I believe the reason for a lack of starships in the area is due to the fact that the Romulans hadn't been heard from for about 30 years. I'll bet Starfleet felt there wasn't much need to keep a large number of ships in the area.

Whatever the number of ships are in the TNG era, it's a fact that starfleet must of been pumping out ships like crazy during the war.

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-Striker
kob.diabloii.net

[This message has been edited by Striker (edited December 01, 1999).]
 

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USS Infinity
NX-99237
First Transwarp Ship of the Fleet
Discovered Stardate 4578
San Fransico Fleet Yards

"The more things change, the more they stay the same."-Unknown Vulcan Philosopher

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USS Infinity
NX-99237
First Transwarp Ship of the Fleet
Discovered Stardate 4578
San Fransico Fleet Yards

"The more things change, the more they stay the same."-Unknown Vulcan Philosopher

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When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum

[This message has been edited by Masao (edited December 01, 1999).]
 

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Elim Garak: "Oh, it's just Garak. Plain, simple Garak. Now, good day to you, Doctor. I'm so glad to have made such an... interesting new friend today." (DS9: "Past Prologue")
 

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When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum

It would make sense for the UFP to concentrate its defences near its clustered homeworlds, since probably none of the outer holdings can be protected directly anyway. Another area of importance would be the part of the border surface that lies directly between your homeworld and that of the enemy - wide-flung "hail Mary" maneuvers probably don't pay off in space warfare. Most of the border could be left unattended, since even message buoys would be in too short a supply to adequately patrol it. Enemy incursions would be met with near-coreworld defences and retaliatory fleets.

It's not as if the British Empire controlled the seas by monitoring, much less occupying every square nautical mile of them. Big ships need harbors, and harbors can be blockaded, or traffic to and fro preyed on. In turn, merchant convoys can be escorted. A credible defence could result from a fleet that could theoretically patrol/occupy just a small fraction of the volume.

Timo Saloniemi
 

In my other reply I forgot about the warp-corridors which supposedly have a lower "subspace drag coefficient" but these are offset by the warpfactor 5 speedlimit that was imposed on all vessels in "Force of Nature". This makes an 8000 ly wide Federation even more unlikely, IMHO.

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"Cry havoc and let's slip the dogs of Evil"

 

But it's not an Empire. Starfleet's main duties within the borders largely consists of trasnportation, and research (say, in the gaps between member systems - there's a lot there they don't know about). And, of course, public relations. This, by the way, is distinct from their duties ON the borders, which consist of guarding and expanding said borders (in a non-belligerent way).

Starfleet's punch comes in the suggestion of physical force - walking softly with said big stick. You may invade this sector which is free of any of our ships, they say, but bear witness that we WILL retaliate, bringing in ships from all around, so that the border almost seems to recoil against the intrusion.

Unfortunately this isn't perfect. Time and again it's been shown that there are hardly ever any ships available to retaliate. Plus the recoil is usually less than spectacular - throughout TNG and DS9 there were always references to three or six or nine ships on their way, hardly a massive fleet. . .
 

Another factor: if the area you cannot defend is 2,341 ly from you garrison, and all the major players' homeworlds are clustered near Earth, then the undefended area is impractically far away from the *enemy* as well. The foe can only take it, not keep it. And single planets are not of much strategic value if they lie in deep space - the planets themselves can be blockaded, but they cannot be used to blockade trade routes or anything.

A Trek empire potentially *could* fight by picking enemy planets one by one with those small six-ship fleets, trying to get them faster than the enemy gets his. But spreading the fleet out to do this privateering would weaken homeworld defences and allow the enemy to perform a strike that REALLY mattered. Starship fleets could be used like MAD-style deterrents to prevent hostile takeover of far-flung holdings. And the better deterrent would probably be the big strike against the homeworld, not the numerous small strikes with six-packs of ships.

Timo Saloniemi
 

First of all this concept wouldn't work at all if these border areas were millions of square light years in the case the Federation were thousands of ly across. This would require tens of thousands of ships and outposts on either side in this border region alone. One might object that the two territories touch only in a small area, but then the question is why there is a border conflict at all. The Romulans would have had a century to conquer all the remaining space in between, as would have the Federation, not to conquer, of course, but to find new members and found new outposts. Therefore the border areas as well as the territories need to be several orders of magnitude smaller.

Timo: It is obvious that this vicinity has been created for dramaturgic reasons, and if the overall territories were actually that large it would be an incredible coincidence that the homeworlds are all so close to each other. One suggestion was that the Federation, Romulans, Klingons are something like European countries founding colonies in Africa. This would imply the borders of the motherland/fatherland (which do you prefer?) would be well-defined, whereas the colonies are spread throughout a larger region. The Federation, Klingon, Cardassian and other colonies wouldn't probably form a uniform three-dimensional territory, but it doesn't matter that much because neither side is going to risk a war about it. Only the Romulans are most probably isolationists and hide beyond their Neutral Zone. Actually, this would be one more reason to move the Klingons and Cardassians closer together that Bajor is actually located "above" the Federation.

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"Naomi Wildman, sub-unit of Ensign Samantha Wildman, state your intentions." (VOY: "Infinite Regress")
Ex Astris Scientia
 

And really that border patrol is the perfect example of how I see Starfleet policing the Federation. There are going to be certain points which make obvious places for border posts. Here you find the Deep Space stations, monitoring posts, and so forth that we've seen. The mobile element of the border guards, the starships, arrange their patrol routes around these anchoring points, varying the routine for security, and according to intelligence reports.

And so it is in the rest of the Federation. Starbases are placed at strategic points, ships fill in the gaps according to whatever duties they're assigned at the time.

So, I reckon the 'fleets' we've seen in Deep Space Nine are probably very arbitrary groupings, gathhered together in a way so as not to neglect their regular duties. In order to maintain the organisation of the fleet, ships are assigned by class and 'type' - but which ships of that class/'type' are called to fleet duties depends on the priority of what they're doing at the time.
 

True, the Federation is at war, but come on, one fleet at DS9, some at Earth and several more at other key systems. Either they are really replicating entire ships, which no one believes than can, or the less important systems and areas of Federation space are left virtually defenseless.

Think of "Best of both worlds". In the German version of the episode Shelby says that they will have rebuilt "the fleet" in one year. What exactly does she mean by this? Is she talking about the entire Starfleet or just these 39 ships lost at Wolf359?

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oh behave!!

 

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-Striker
kob.diabloii.net
 

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"Forgive me if I don't share your euphoria!" (Weyoun to Dukat, Tears of the Prophets)
Dax's Ships of STAR TREK

 

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"Cry havoc and let's slip the dogs of Evil"

 

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"Forgive me if I don't share your euphoria!" (Weyoun to Dukat, Tears of the Prophets)
Dax's Ships of STAR TREK

 

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"Naomi Wildman, sub-unit of Ensign Samantha Wildman, state your intentions." (VOY: "Infinite Regress")
Ex Astris Scientia
 

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"I wish that everything went just as I wish everything would go."
--
John Linnell
 

(Of course, it could be that Riker was just bluffing to scare the Kes/Prytt.

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"There will be an answer, let it be..."
Motto of the USS Sutherland

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"Its a CLOCK!" - Sisko, "Dramatis Personae" DS9.