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Originally posted by Capped In Mic:
i also think the Ambassadors tech is most likely post-2320.

And why would they build the 24th century's first large explorer class before the Excelsior had even been proven?

BTW, there are a few other 10xxx Ambassadors.. the Horatio i believe.

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The registry is from the show and the name, too.

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The real problem is the fact that the Enterprise-C's more modern design became the Ambassador-class afterwards.

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Not quite. The Ent-C model was always supposed to represent the Ambassador class, from EAF with Porbert's painting, all the way to YE, with panels on the Ent-C stating the class of the ship. I realize that in YE, no one ever actually called the Ent-C an "Ambassador class" ship, AFAIK. But it was supposed to be one all the time.

What I'm trying to figure out is the Ambassador/Excelsior conundrum. In the Encyclopedia, Okuda stated that the design for the Ambassador class was supposed to be a middle ground between the Excelsior and the Galaxy classes. This implies that the Excelsior was no longer in production, because the Ambassador was the (pardon the pun) next generation of Starfleet technology, just as the Galaxy would be the next step after the Ambassador. However, registry-wise, this is not the case. Here's a theory as to what might have happened:

Somewhere between the years 2310 to 2320, production of the Ambassador class was started, and then abruptly halted, while production of the Excelsior class continued & exceeded the Ambassador well into the 2330's. This doesn't make sense to me, unless the Ambassador class had a serious design flaw which stopped production much sooner than anticipated, with the only other option being the continuation of Excelsior production in the meantime, with registries up to the 40000's. By the 2340's, newer types of ships like the Springfield, Niagara, Olympic, & Challenger classes came into production with 50000 registries, while Excelsiors finally became obsolete. By the 2350's, even more advanced ships such as the Nebula, Saber, Akira, & Norway classes emerged, and finally in the 2360's, the Galaxy class.

And the reason why we always see so many Excelsiors, as opposed to the other, newer classes, was because so many Excelsiors were produced in the 50 years spanning 2285 to 2335, the need for more ships wasn't as great. That, or the newer ships fell victim to such things as the Cardassian wars, or again to more mundane things like design flaws.

Any thoughts?
 

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Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
 
The Excelsior was 2280's--- but it was built long before this. There was probably a good amount of drawing board progress at the end of the 2260's.

The Enterprise-B was shown to be launched in 2290's, the early part at that. So it was being built during the time of ST:5 and ST:6--- whether or not it was named E-B at that time, we don't know... but it was around.

The Ambassador NX has a registry of 10521--- The Enterprise-C has nothing to do with when the Ambassador NX was launched--- as was said for all we know the E-C was on her maiden voyage when she was destroyed in 2344. There is absolutely no reason to have the Ambassador launched before 2310--- this gives Starfleet fifty years with the Excelsior [about the time between the Constitution and Excelsior] and less than twenty years with the Refit Excel [which seems to have been a defunct design because they didn't make many of them]. Project start can definately be before 2310, but should be after 2300--- this gives enough time for the Refit Excel to prove worthless and enough time for the Ambassador to be ready before 2320. --- I've personally put the Launch of the NX Ambassador in 2318, obviously construction and design occured anywhere between 10 and 15 years prior.
 

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Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
 
PS: The reason we haven't seen any Ambassador Class vessels is because the model was dropped--- personally within canon I'd like to say that we haven't seen any because they were never where our heros were at. You ask why didn't we see them during the Dominion War but we saw the Excelsiors. Personally I think that is because the Excelsior Class vessels were cannon fodder, and the Ambassador was capable of holding it's own against other threats within and along other edges of the Federation.
 

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Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
I generalize that you never saw any Ambies simply because they were Explorers - and thus, during TNG and DS9 they were out exploring stuff. Galaxies, being more rounded ships, were somewhat more common closer to home. In any case, most people seem to think that they were simply outdated by the TNG era anyway, and there simply weren't many left.

Mark
 

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Posted by Akira62497 (Member # 850) on :
 
This is the way i see the Stardates and ships going http://240sxs14.nissanpower.com/startrek the doc. in there
 

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Posted by Capped In Mic (Member # 709) on :
 
stardates dont even go in order.. dont try to figure them out. itll give you a headache.

BTW, the Horatio's registry is by Okuda, from the Encyclopedia, and its class is from the episode. The only canonical (onscreen) Ambassador registries are 1701-C, 2xxxx for the Yamaguchi and 62136 for the Zuhkov , so unless we go by Okuda's others, we really dont have a hell of a lot to work with. Accepting Okuda's background registries (some from the shiplist, i believe), there was a 10xxx series of Ambassadors and a 2xxxx series. (i might even believe a theoretical late build Ambie could have a 6xxxx registry, but that incites violence here, so im going to leave those two series).

and its true, we have no date reference for any Ambassador commissioning, especially since we dont even have a registry reference for the Enteprise: 1701-C doesnt tell us which series it came from, and it could have been 1 year old or 31 years old when destroyed, we just dont know.
 

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Posted by Akira62497 (Member # 850) on :
 
That�s just my best shot into trying to make it out of the best we have. Stardate are close in TNG so I use those to reference and started counting back. st6 and generations make it seem the Stardate correct themselves, so I counted from there to were it meets with the TNG ones and started Putting the ships in by Stardate, and seems to me like it came out pretty well by using the Tsiolkovsky Stardate and the Brattain launch date and the 1701-D's launch date with the and dividing them up and that�s what I came out with. For the Brattain and the Excelsior I use them to reference the one for the ambassador

[ September 13, 2002, 00:41: Message edited by: Akira62497 ]
 

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Posted by Capped In Mic (Member # 709) on :
 
has anyone pointed out to you that stardates dont even go in order sometimes?
 

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Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
 
I doubt the Excelsiors became "obsolete" even with the introduction of the "Galaxy generation". That generation had nothing to offer for replacement - unless we retcon a large number of Akiras into existence in the pre-TNG years, since this class has been the only modern class with a chance to numerically rival the Excelsiors in DS9.

Furthermore, I don't see the Ambassadors as successors to the Excelsiors at all. They are more probably a parallel design, simply a bigger one - much like the Galaxy is a parallel design to the New Orleans.

The Ambassadors have several Excelsior-like features that IMHO fully justify considering them "Excelsior generation" vessels: the saucer rim, the gradual emergence of more portholes, the nacelle design with a dorsal opening... Thus, I see no problem at all with the E-C replacing the E-B at an early date. Or a late date, for that matter. Anything between 2300 and 2340 goes for me, but I personally favor the early alternatives. If 23rd century Starfleet can build things as big as the Spacedock, surely we can credit it with the capacity to build an Ambassador!

(Note that Kirk's Constitutions or Sulu's Excelsior were never explicitly referred to as the biggest fish in the pond, some banter in ST6 notwithstanding... Starfleet could have had far bigger ships in TOS already.)

The E-B design did NOT become obsolete when the E-B was replaced. Starfleet simply "laterally" moved the name Enterprise from the top-of-the-line heavy cruiser of the day (Excelsior) to the top-of-the-line explorer/evenheaviercruiser/whatnot of the day (Ambassador). Note that in the 2370s, it will in fact "demote" the name from the large Galaxy class to the smaller Sovereign class, again without any indication that the Galaxies would become obsolete. To the contrary, they feature prominently in DS9, and even in the alternate futures of TNG and VOY.

As for cadets aboard the E-C, I saw none, really. The jumpsuit uniforms are indeed supposed to denote noncoms, as long as the undershirt collar is black instead of red. A red undershirt collar would denote cadets. Or, more probably, a red collar under a jumpsuit means noncom trainee, while a red collar under an officer uniform plus a red-plus-department-color shoulder/sleeve pad (as with Saavik and the blonde guy) means cadet.

Timo Saloniemi
 

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Posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov (Member # 742) on :
 

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Originally posted by Dukhat:
The name "Horatio" was of course mentioned, but I don't believe it's registry was ever mentioned. Do you mean the class?

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and less than twenty years with the Refit Excel [which seems to have been a defunct design because they didn't make many of them]. Project start can definately be before 2310, but should be after 2300--- this gives enough time for the Refit Excel to prove worthless and enough time for the Ambassador to be ready before 2320.

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Isn't it bad enough that the A was decommissioned so quickly? Why would the B have been decommissioned after only 17 years?

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In the Encyclopedia, Okuda stated that the design for the Ambassador class was supposed to be a middle ground between the Excelsior and the Galaxy classes

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The Excelsior was 2280's--- but it was built long before this. There was probably a good amount of drawing board progress at the end of the 2260's.

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I generalize that you never saw any Ambies simply because they were Explorers

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Note that Kirk's Constitutions or Sulu's Excelsior were never explicitly referred to as the biggest fish in the pond, some banter in ST6 notwithstanding... Starfleet could have had far bigger ships in TOS already.

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True enough, but that never made much sense to me as the two don't resemble each other much. The Ambassador resembles the Constitution more than the Galaxy.

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I always assumed that there is a 'missing link' design that we haven't seen that links the Ambassador to more modern design themes. I speculated before that the Renaissance Class could be that - 'Renaissance' in essence means 'new', it just feels to me like a capital ship, and it's even mentioned in the Tech Manual.

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I generalize that you never saw any Ambies simply because they were Explorers

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The four times we saw an Ambassador on screen, none of them were doing any exploring. The Ent-C was answering a distress call from a Klingon outpost, the Yamaguchi was battling the Borg at Wolf 359, the Excalibur was in a tachyon grid, and the Zhukov was transferring crew members to the Enterprise. When I think of ships out exploring, I think of the Olympia, which was gone for years, alone, out of contact with everyone, and farther out that any other ship has gone before.

[ September 13, 2002, 14:48: Message edited by: Dukhat ]
 

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Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
That's exactly what I mean. We don't know what the E-C was doing before she got timejacked; Yamaguchi, Zhukov and Excalibur could easily have been doing stuff on their way to exploration missions, or in between missions / being refitted. There could be dozens of 'em, and we simply don't see them because they're too far away to be seen on any regular basis. Heck, there could be lots of them that were never involved in the Dominion War because it'd take years for them to get back.

Mark
 

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Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
 
Re: the idea that red ramscoops are a TNG feature... Aren't they more like a TOS one? Especially hemispherical ones, like those on the early Ambassadors?

I doubt even the Federation dreadnoughts were the biggest things afloat during TOS. There could quite well have been something in the Ambassador size ballpark out there, doing deep space stuff well outside camera range.

Since the canted saucer edge of the Ambassadors/Excelsiors is now proven to be an old design feature (NX-01), too, I have no trouble believing that the Jupiter Station stacked saucers could come from a TOS era behemoth-ship production line... Perhaps in the ENT timeframe, the station had just one such saucer, with more added every half-century or so.

Timo Saloniemi
 

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 

"There's nothing to say the Ent-C wasn't commissioned with the first batch of Ambassadors at the beginning of the 24th century. Maybe the Ent-B was destroyed after only a few years in service."

Yes, that's possible. What's your point?
 

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Posted by Woodside Kid (Member # 699) on :
 
I don't know... I find the idea of the Excelsior taking twenty years to construct a little hard to swallow. Granted, R&D on the transwarp would have been going on for years, but the actual construction? Consider: with all the changes, internal and external, the "refit" of the TOS Enterprise is closer to constructing a new vessel (I doubt very much more than a few structural members were retained, given the differences). Yet this major reworking was concluded in eighteen months. Constructing the E-D, a far larger and more complex vessel, only took twelve years. So what were the yard crews building the Excelsior doing for all that time? Taking REALLY long coffee breaks?

The comparison with the Galaxy class project raises an interesting point which, I think, is another sticking point against a twenty year construction time for the Excelsior. As I said above, the E-D took twelve years to build, and the Galaxy herself took thirteen years. Extrapolate that into the Excelsior class, and it leaves you with the amusing idea that Starfleet would have begun building the E-B in roughly 2273.

As for assigning the prototype a registry number so long before her commissioning, if you buy into what the DS9TM says about the Defiant's design history (a dangerous proposition, I admit), the pathfinder had neither name nor registry number when the design work began. This makes sense to me; why assign a registry to a project unless you're sure you're going to build it?
 

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Posted by Capped In Mic (Member # 709) on :
 
but planning the Galaxy took over 20 years.. the project was officially approved in 2343, according to the TNG TM.

Why this push to make the Ambassador so early. I still think anything earlier than 2315-2320 just doesnt 'feel' right.
 

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Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
I think part of it has to do with trying to make NCCs fit. Putting them at the beginning of the century makes some amount of sense. However, I look at it as not a problem of it being so long before TNG, as it is a problem of being so soon AFTER the TOS movies. In a visual sense, I don't think there's enough of a gap before moving to a different Starfleet design paradigm - while there's no evidence to the contrary, there's little evidence by the end of ST6 that there are many (or any) Excelsior-school ship designs out there. The visual impression (and intent) of the movies is to assume that the day of the Connie era is not yet over.

While of course there's plenty of time for Excelsior derived ships following 2300, there seems not enough time for them to become an "established" design paradigm before all this new-era stuff started showing up. At least, that's my rationalization... I think that the Ambies shouls come later as well, and that poor Harriman should be given at least a LITTLE bit of a chance.

Mark
 

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Posted by Capped In Mic (Member # 709) on :
 
These n00bz don't seem to realize that NCCs are only a rough guideline for placing ships either. youre not going to decode any definitive answers out of either the stardate system or the NCC numbers, because none exists. its randomly from the minds of many many peoples conflicting ideas.
 

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Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
 

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I don't know... I find the idea of the Excelsior taking twenty years to construct a little hard to swallow. Granted, R&D on the transwarp would have been going on for years, but the actual construction? Consider: with all the changes, internal and external, the "refit" of the TOS Enterprise is closer to constructing a new vessel (I doubt very much more than a few structural members were retained, given the differences). Yet this major reworking was concluded in eighteen months. Constructing the E-D, a far larger and more complex vessel, only took twelve years. So what were the yard crews building the Excelsior doing for all that time? Taking REALLY long coffee breaks?

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The visual impression (and intent) of the movies is to assume that the day of the Connie era is not yet over.

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That's what I like to hear .

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While of course there's plenty of time for Excelsior derived ships following 2300

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That's what I like to hear .

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At least until the end of St6, when it was pretty conclusively decided that the time of the Excelsior era had begun.

Mark
 

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Posted by The Red Admiral (Member # 602) on :
 
TSN-

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"There's nothing to say the Ent-C wasn't commissioned with the first batch of Ambassadors at the beginning of the 24th century. Maybe the Ent-B was destroyed after only a few years in service."

Yes, that's possible. What's your point?

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So what were the yard crews building the Excelsior doing for all that time? Taking REALLY long coffee breaks?

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Supposedly many design phases to get the Excelsior just right, ie, all the prototype Excelsiors (study models) that they chewed through. It was meant to be a completely new-tech ship - an experiment. They may have started with the four nacelle ship, then went back to two, built another prototype, it failed, built another... etc. 20 years is more than plausible. It may have been a similar process for the Prometheus, and a possible reason why its NX number is so low, because it hails back to very beginnings of the Prometheus project. When finalised and commissioned it was given, for whatever reason, a new active registry (hence the dedication plaque). It's one possible theory.
 

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
 
1.) Though it of course may be possible that there were larger starships just offscreen during TOS, this seems to go against the very spirit of the show, in which we are told time and time again that the Constitution class was the pinnacle of Federation engineering.

2.) I don't think there is any way to have the Prometheus' plaque and hull registries be different and both be true. In other words, one of them has to be a mistake. If the ship was "recommissioned" then they would paint a new number on the hull. So either it was, and that number is a mistake we should ignore, or it wasn't, and the plaque is a mistake we should ignore.
 

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Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 
...Or they were just getting ready to paint on the new number when a bunch of naughty Romulans half inched it.
 

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Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
 
Twenty years for a ship as large as the Galaxy is alright, twenty years for a ship as technologically advancing as the Excelsior was supposed to be is alright... twenty years for a relatively simple ship such as the Ambassador doesn't sound quite right to me.

Beyond all that, NCC numbers don't have to be assign for a few years after the official start of the project, so you can have it start in 2307 but the NCC numbers are assigned or reserved until 2315.
 

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Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
The Ambassador, a "relatively simple ship"?! The first use of that sort of impulse engine design? The return of the bussard collectors? The first known use of phaser strips? Not to mention - the largest Starfleet ship to that point?

Simple?!

Mark
 

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Posted by Akira (Member # 850) on :
 
I agree with you mark that is not a simple design.
 

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Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
 

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Originally posted by Reverend:
...Or they were just getting ready to paint on the new number when a bunch of naughty Romulans half inched it.

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Originally posted by Mark Nguyen:
The Ambassador, a "relatively simple ship"?! The first use of that sort of impulse engine design? The return of the bussard collectors? The first known use of phaser strips? Not to mention - the largest Starfleet ship to that point?

Simple?!

Mark

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