posted
I didn't forget the Entente or the Merrimack (however the hell it's spelled). As they would fall in the Cruiser/Starship category, there's no need to change the 'NCC' prefix.
I think it makes a lot of sense for the Federation class (the 21st Cruiser design) to be introduced as a "stopgap" when the delays of getting the 19th and 20th Cruiser designs (the Constellation and Excelsior classes, respectively) became apparant...
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
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Like the Constitution mess for starters -- by him deciding all the ships on the "Court Martial" wall chart were Constitutions, that creates the illogical and unnecessary notion that registries are non-sequential in this time period. It's pretty apparant the class ship is NCC-1700 from other sources throughout TOS, and that the other Constitutions should go upward from there. There's no reason to assign the 16xx registries to other Constitution-class ships at all -- but Okuda does.
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
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quote:Originally posted by Peregrinus: Like the Constitution mess for starters -- by him deciding all the ships on the "Court Martial" wall chart were Constitutions, that creates the illogical and unnecessary notion that registries are non-sequential in this time period. It's pretty apparant the class ship is NCC-1700 from other sources throughout TOS, and that the other Constitutions should go upward from there. There's no reason to assign the 16xx registries to other Constitution-class ships at all -- but Okuda does.
--Jonah
Solution: Easy -
Disregard the notion that those were all Constitution Class starships, yet maintain the chronological registries idea.
Works for me.
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posted
There will now follow a 3 page arguement as to what classes these ships belong to...
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"...by him deciding all the ships on the 'Court Martial' wall chart were Constitutions..."
Well, by referring to Okuda's system, I figured you meant the general concept (registries are assigned in order) as opposed to the Jeffries system (first two digits == class number, last two digits == ship number) or the Joseph system (registries simply assigned in blocks to each class). Personally, I ignore the Encyclopedia's matching of registries, names, and classes for the TOS ships that weren't specified on the show.
And I'm curious what makes it "apparent" that the NCC-1700 was the class ship of the Constitution class?
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quote: Originally posted by Peregrinus: I think it makes a lot of sense for the Federation class (the 21st Cruiser design) to be introduced as a "stopgap" when the delays of getting the 19th and 20th Cruiser designs (the Constellation and Excelsior classes, respectively) became apparant...
What delays might these be? Were they enough to delay two different cruiser class deployments for twenty years or more? If NCC-2120 is in service in 2271, then the class must have begun deployment in the mid 2260s, and design work on it may have gone all the way back into the 2250s. That argument seems a little hard to swallow, at least to me. Besides, if the Constellation was going to be delayed, why didn't Starfleet just assign the 19th class designation to the Federation class? Of course, this assumes it assigns numbers by blocks, which isn't in Jefferies' numbering scheme in the first place.
Also, by that scheme, the Constellation's registry doesn't make sense either. If she were the first ship of the 19th cruiser design, then she should have been NX-1900, not NX-1974.
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First, TSN... The use of a schematic onscreen in a couple instances in TOS showing a vessel that was Constitution-class, but not the Enterprise, as it bore the registry 'NCC-1700'. Come up with a more plausible reason why people on the Enterprise -- particularly Khan -- would be looking at just another random ship in this class rather than the lead ship or the actual ship they were on... _____
Second, Mr. Kid... I say delays because the Excelsior herself was just ready for trial runs over fifteen years after the Federation class was in service, and the Constellation was still undergoing deep-space certification trials several years after that. I carry the notion that registry numbers are assigned when the ships are ordered or laid down to their logical next step in this era, saying the hull design numbers are assigned in the order the classes begin development.
Of course, having the Constellation at 1974 is one of the little problems I observe with Okuda's system being shoehorned onto Jeffries' system. In my "personal canon" I knock the Constellation down to 1900, as the Constellation-class Hathaway was launched around the time of Star Trek III. I find it odd to think that the lead ship of a class would be still undergoing certification trials when other ships of that class are entering active service. Then, I tidy things up by saying that the 1974 ship in Star Trek VI was some other Constellation-class ship undergoing deep-space tests, and say it was the last one ordered before the registry system changeover, with the Hathaway being the first Constellation-class ship ordered after the changeover.
*whew*
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
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Woodside, the Federation design wouldnt have taken much research at all, it was a rearrangement of Constitution parts, and started production only a couple years before the end of the FYM, according to "Dreadnought!," and the earliest other mention of them was "The Klingon Gambit," during the late FYM.
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quote:First, TSN... The use of a schematic onscreen in a couple instances in TOS showing a vessel that was Constitution-class, but not the Enterprise, as it bore the registry 'NCC-1700'. Come up with a more plausible reason why people on the Enterprise -- particularly Khan -- would be looking at just another random ship in this class rather than the lead ship or the actual ship they were on...
Umm...this never happened during TOS. It did happen in TSFS, though.
I do agree, however, that the NCC-1700 is the original class ship, because that was what it was conceived as. The NCC-1700 was always supposed to be the class ship, and has never been intended as anything else, and that's why I say it's the class ship.
-MMoM
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"Come up with a more plausible reason why people on the Enterprise -- particularly Khan -- would be looking at just another random ship in this class rather than the lead ship or the actual ship they were on..."
Because the NCC-1700 was the first ship in the same configuration as the E? After all, we know there were differences between the E and the Constellation. It's reasonable to assume that there were a few subtly different version of the Connie, and the NCC-1700 happened to be the one used for the schematics of the E's version.
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"Second, Mr. Kid... I say delays because the Excelsior herself was just ready for trial runs over fifteen years after the Federation class was in service, and the Constellation was still undergoing deep-space certification trials several years after that. I carry the notion that registry numbers are assigned when the ships are ordered or laid down to their logical next step in this era, saying the hull design numbers are assigned in the order the classes begin development."
Unfortunately, Peregrinus, this particular argument gives you a bigger problem than the one it was intended to solve. By this proposal, you state that the Constellation precedes both Excelsior and Federation in the design process. Given that Entente was pretty far down her class' procurement list (registry wise, at any rate), I think the idea that the dreadnought design process would have originally been begun in the 2250s is entirely reasonable for a class deployment a decade later. So, if Constellation and Excelsior were ordered before Federation, then they would have spent the better part of thirty years in development hell before being launched. In the meantime we see the Constitution refits, the Mirandas, the Soyuz class...well, you get the picture. This problem is particularly glaring in the case of Constellation, since she is so obviously a Connie kitbash.
Incidentally, Captain Mike, getting the Federation class out of Constitution parts would be a little rough, since the only thing they have in common is their engine design (as opposed to the Hermes, Saladin, and Ptolemy classes from FJ). Yes, both the cruiser and dreadnought have two hulls connected by a dorsal, but that's as far as it goes. There's less actual duplication of structure between Constitution and Federation than there is between the Connie refit and the Miranda.
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posted
How about an all-inclusive deal (with licensed sources only):
1) In the TOS era, the Jefferies/Joseph system was used for hull numbers. Here, the 17th "major design of the Federation" was not a class, but rather one of several prefices for the type Heavy Cruiser. Specific classes would have their own ranges.
2) Only about thirteen ships of various heavy cruiser classes would be outfitted for exploration during TOS. The Constellation and the Republic would've been older heavy cruisers refitted into Constitution-class, as Joseph's tech manual indicates. It just happened that Constitution-class specs ended up being the best for this purpose.
3) Later on, Starfleet completely switched to something like the pennant number system, where numbers are basically linear but can change based on mission requirements and are not assigned at construction time. Most of the original Constitutions received different numbers, though some retained them. The reality is that nobody could care less whether or not the final numbers were in a sort of a strict system because any computer can hold a database of 70000+ numbers quite easily and decode the necessary information.
[ April 26, 2002, 16:56: Message edited by: Boris ]
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I knock the Constellation down to 1900, as the Constellation-class Hathaway was launched around the time of Star Trek III. I find it odd to think that the lead ship of a class would be still undergoing certification trials when other ships of that class are entering active service. Then, I tidy things up by saying that the 1974 ship in Star Trek VI was some other Constellation-class ship undergoing deep-space tests, and say it was the last one ordered before the registry system changeover, with the Hathaway being the first Constellation-class ship ordered after the changeover.
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