Anyways, to PsyLiam's comment: It is feasible to have only 9 Galaxy's as they are large vessels and take more time to build than smaller ships. There is also the issue of 'all the eggs in one basket'. Still, what with the war and all, there could very well be more. I seem to recall a Star Trek Voyager episode (involving the timeship Relativity), we were taken to a time before the pilot episode "Caretaker". There we saw Voyager in the drydock - with what looked like a Galaxy under contruction. However, it could have been a Nebula - they share a similar hull.

Ultra Magnus: no offence taken. I see and understand your point about canon stuff and how anyone could easily make up some numbers - loads of Star Trek Simming Groups have done this, for example - USS Discovery, Galaxy-class, NCC-62991. It's made up & is not a valid part of any equation, just made up for people's enjoyment. Besides, I got the impression that a forum like this was for discussion - so that we can identify what is right and what is wrong, and throw what is wrong and not 'canon' in the bin with the rest of the rubbish!

USS Trinculo - a model at a convention you say? That would explain it; I'm in the UK and sadly have never been to one.

So, anyone know what the last registry number of Starfleet's latest vessel is? I've got NCC-75433 (USS Sao Paulo, renamed Defiant). Oh and how many ship are built per year? DITL says 100-402, what do you folks think? I'm interested for a Star Trek Simming Group who want a realistic number, and I'm the one who agree to come up with one! (It's a Sabre-class ship & the number of the Sabre herself would also be of tremendous help!)

Am I mad or am I mad? No, I just like Star Trek and believe in keeping to the facts.

It's reasonable to assume that Starfleet builds a limited number of each new class they're introducing. This gives them time to see if the ship is being used as they intended, or somehow different. Do they really need the new class, or are other ships still effectively completing the duties? Is the ship not properly equipped for its mission? For example: you wouldn't send a Miranda-Class on a twenty-year deep space exploration mission beyond the Federation border.

Now, while the Enterprise never really got to do a lot of deep-space exploration, it's reasonable to assume that some of the other Galaxy-Class ships did. Starfleet likes research missions. They built more.

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Star Trek Gamma Quadrant
Average Rated 8.32 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux (with seven eps posted)
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"Oh, yes, screw logic, let's go for a theory with no evidence!"
-Omega 11:48am, Jan. 19th, 2001

Yes, quite right. It could well be that Starfleet decided on a second, third and even forth production run of the Galaxy-class. They are very well suited for deep-space exploration missions, and would obviously like to keep their numbers up, what with losing 3. The Galaxy-class was also designed to replace the Oberth- and Excelsior-classes, so again more could be built. After all, how many Excelsior's and Oberth's are there in Starfleet? They must have had loads of production runs!

Fleet size issue - the Dominion had 2,800 ship waiting to travel through the wormhole. What percentage of their fleet was that?! If that was 1%, then the fleet as a whole would be 280,000!!! If it was 10%, that would still bring the fleet to 28,000 ships!!! So the estimates of 10,000+ I guess are justified if you think of that fact.All these numbers, my head is spinning! Hehe! Also, the lifespan of the ships is an issue. A ship with a lifespan of 100 years would have to be replace in 100 years (obviously). If Starfleet built 12 Galaxy's every year, then they could maintain a fleet of them in the size of 1,200. Nebula's are smaller so they could maintain a Nebula fleet of 1,800 or 2,400 plus. Prototypes could also very well be scrapped/mothballed if they prove useless - accounts for the reg numbers being 75433+. Also, what about the civilian ships built by Starfleet? I think I'll pause on this issue for now, or I'll be here for a month! Hehe!

I guess the main issue over Galaxy's is numbers - mmm, at a guess as to what others are saying, I'd place my money on a number between 24 and 48. Certainly not 1,500! :0

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Star Trek Gamma Quadrant
Average Rated 8.32 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux (with seven eps posted)
***
"Oh, yes, screw logic, let's go for a theory with no evidence!"
-Omega 11:48am, Jan. 19th, 2001

--jacob

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"Hi, my name's Locutus, and I'll be your assimilator tonight. Can I interest you in our specials? Super. Well, currently we're offering an arm-replacement tool with extra wiggly-waggly bits on, or, for the more daring among you, not one but two ocular replacements! Terrific. You want fries with that? Ohh, I'm sorry, I've just heard from the chef that fries are off - they're irrelevant, apparently."

To build over a thousand Galaxys would take a very long time, resources, man power and space in the yards to do. If this was the case, then why worry about the Borg anyway? Build 5 Defiant for every Galaxy and you have a fleet that would be unstoppable. Of course this isn't true so...

By the way, Darkstar from viewing his latest posts and his 'supposed' last post is totally uncalled for and stupid. By the way he posts I would only guess that he's 12-14 years of age. Even though I am 17 years old, people calling me names doesn't bother me that much. He needs to grow up, fuck some girl/boy and then come back and look what he did from a different perspective.

I know this is General discussion on Star Trek not Darkstar, so... if we want to insult Darkstar and stuff we should do it on the Flameboard.

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quote:

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Originally posted by JeffKardde:
Yes, indeedy it does ... (pissed 'cuz I just accidently deleted my very long post explaining why the Galaxy isn't replacing the Oberth or Excelsiors which have different missions, but nevermind)

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According to the TNG TM, the Galaxies were indeed expected to replace the Oberths, as well as the Ambassadors. I don't think there is any merit in taking this as a literal truth, since obviously you cannot replace six hundred tiny Oberths with six hundred Galaxies in order to keep surveying six hundred planets at the same time. Small ships should be replaced by small ships, bowing to the wisdom of those who originally decided that a small ship is what is best for the given mission.

Instead of 1:1 replacing of old surveyors, I suspect the Galaxies were intended to alter the way Starfleet thinks of planetary surveys. A Galaxy would take over the mission of an aging Ambassador 1:1 all right; but instead of replacing one Oberth, it would replace ten or more Oberths at a time. How could it do that if it can't separate into ten pieces? Presumably by one of the following methods:

-a Galaxy would conduct a survey ten times as fast as an Oberth
-a Galaxy would have decisively longer scanning range, so it could survey things during transit, without having to stop and stalk them (like, say, orbit a planet or enter a nebula)
-a Galaxy would perform a mission that would make ship-based surveying wholly unnecessary (say, establish diplomatic relations with people who already have conducted a survey, or deploy shipless survey teams on location, or blast apart the planets so that there wouldn't be anything to survey)

So I see the line in the TNG TM more as proof that Starfleet wanted to get rid of the Oberth *mission* than as indication that Starfleet wanted to field a modern successor to the Oberth *ships*. By saying "Galaxy replaces aging Ambassador and Oberth", Starfleet actually means two things:

-Ambassadors and Oberths are aging, so they have to be replaced somehow
-Galaxy will merge the missions of these two classes and create a wholly new type of mission, thereby taking care of the aging problem without building actual successor ships

quote:

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Originally posted by Dax:
This is bound to piss someone off but I tend to think that the Galaxy-class completely replaced the Ambassador-class i.e. there are no longer any Ambassadors in service (hence why they're never seen).

Also, if anything, I would speculate that the Nova-class is set to replace the Oberths.

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Well, you've not pissed me off but . . .
Just because the Galaxy-class has been introduced does not mean that the Ambassadors would be kicked out of service. They're still useful for something: colonist transportation, boarder patrol, cargo transfers, diplomatic missions, exploration (assuming that they have decent range and duration), defence . . . needless to say Starfleet would not scrap an entire class of ships if they could still be of use - especially considering how many ships were lost to the Dominion.