So I've been working for several years on some essays about the conjectural classes from the Encyclopedia, and I've finally finished. The whole thing actually consists of four parts:
All of this is of course, my own opinion, and any errors are my own. I hope you enjoy it. Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
Okay, so, not your fault but you just happened to post this while I am away for work. I'll be home again in another week-and-a-half at which point I will be able to give this a proper response... Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
This is really exceptional- you should send it to Mike Okuda to look at...though I guess he gets a ton of Trek stuff.
Really cool of you though- and there's a TON of speculation that reading throough it brings up- like the Soyuz class getting retired so early while the Miranda kept on trucking.
I'd chock that one up to sensor technology- the Soyuz seemed to be a sensor boat (I dont subscribe to the fanboy notion that those protrusions are weapons). The Miranda might have been made to be upgraded in modular sections while the Soyuz was mission specific only.
As to the batch registries, I still think the likely answer for sudden leaps in registries and lulls refers to Federation expansion- bringing in new member worlds with their own design influences making additional classes as well as the need for rapid mass production of proven classes like the Excelsior during wartime.
If you think on it, it could explain the fluctuation in class ship size by era- during the time before TNG, there was the Cardassian war which seems to have caught Starfleet either unprepared or short of ships- requiring more (and smaller) classes like the BOBW ships- New Orleans, Springfield, Challenger, etc instead of giant designs like the ambassador. It would also keep shipyards producing Miranda and Excelsior classes- OR possibly bringing those classes out of mothballs and assigning them new registries after refitting as a means of filling gaps during war or crisis and adding ships to "home fleets" of new Federation worlds as protection, training and transport.
Or it's all a TV show. Whichever.
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
Thanks for the kind words. I also posted this over at the TrekBBS, and Timo made a suggestion that sounds quite logical. He surmised that the reason why there are so few conjectural class ships might be because they were made for specific missions (i.e. transports, freighters, etc.). That would match with why each conjectural class's registries are so close together within their own classes (i.e. that they were all built at the same point in time, but weren't continued past that point, unlike the Miranda and Excelsior classes which were built over a long period of time.)
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