Topic: Starfleet ships in active service. Just a number.
Amasov Prime
lensfare-induced epileptic shock
Member # 742
posted
Or better: three numbers. TOS (2270), TNG (pre-Dominion War, 2370), after TNG (post DW, 2380).
And, if there's nothing else you want or have to do today, you may also try to explain why you chose that number.
Not taken into account are civilian vessels, everything with an NAR-prefix, freighters, supply ships, waste-transfer barges or any other non-Starfleet vessel (at least not recommended for starters, but if you want to, I wont stop you...).
Me? TOS: 200; TNG: 4,500; Post-DW: 3,800 (not counting weirdo kitbashes, the ships that were recommissioned just for the war and those that went back to their yard to be finished properly)
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Registered: Nov 2001
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posted
I just happen to be working on an article for my Starfleet Museum site. I counted up all my classes and came up with 400 to 500 ships in service during TOS (first line and second line). This doesn't include transports and other auxiliary ships.
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Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
A minimum of 1000, based on dialog from Deep Space Nine, split into numbered Fleets, the highest known being the Tenth Fleet. At one point, the Seventh Fleet numbered 112 ships ("A Time To Stand"[DS9-6]). But, mere elements of the Second and Fifth combined into a 600 ship fleet to retake DS9, suggesting that some fleets had many more than 112 ships. "Tacking Into The Wind"[DS9-7] claims that the Dominion War enemy forces (Dominion in the AQ, Cardassia, and the Breen) had 30,000 ships (the 1,500 Klingon warships that could be modified to resist the Breen weapon would be outnumbered 20 to 1). One would hope the Federation/Klingon/Romulan Alliance had at least half that many warships. The 30,000 figure correlates well with reaction to the Dominion loss of 2,800+ ships in "Sacrifice of Angels"[DS9-6], which might've constituted a loss of as much as half the Dominion fleet in the Alpha Quadrant at that point.
Assuming rough parity between the DCB and FKR alliances, I would posit 8-10,000 Federation starships, with the Klingon Empire having a somewhat higher total pre-war and the Romulans having a somewhat smaller total. (The Klingons build a lot of smaller ships, the Romulans seem focused on huge ones.)
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posted
but how many of those Fed ships are fighters or runabluts with "NCC" numbers? If the Fed does indeed have 10,000 ships, I'd think the number reflects home fleets and all the reserve fleets not involved in frontline actions.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
TOS: about 1,500 (chiefly because Ships of the Star Fleet gyrates around such figures), roughly half of them explorer/combatants and the other half support vessels. A hundred cruisers, but the dozen Constitutions were "special". At least to their captains.
TNG: about 8,000, to allow about 4,000 explorer/combatants to be divided into a dozen fleets with about 300 ships each, with 4,000 support ships.
Post-TNG: about 7,000. I don't want to think the Feds can build ships easily or quickly, or else we wouldn't have seen so many old/outdated designs in the war. In fact, I'm not convinced the Feds could even keep up with their wartime losses.
posted
Well, I was thinking that during TNG, the loss of ~50 ships at Wolf 359 was to them a staggering loss to the fleet. Otherwise Earth is just plain piss poorly defended suggested my the complete lack of nearby ship, which I guess we have seen in the case of "Generations" and "Paradise Lost". Anyway, the following year for the blockade at the Klingon/Romulan border it was a real pain to muster up ~20 ships for that. Now, I realize the Federation is huge and they were probably spread out pretty thin, but they sure seemed to have resource issues when it came to organizing any sort of fleet, so to me, 8000 seems to be a bit of a stretch.
Regarding:
quote: Tacking Into The Wind"[DS9-7] claims that the Dominion War enemy forces (Dominion in the AQ, Cardassia, and the Breen) had 30,000 ships (the 1,500 Klingon warships that could be modified to resist the Breen weapon would be outnumbered 20 to 1). One would hope the Federation/Klingon/Romulan Alliance had at least half that many warships. The 30,000 figure correlates well with reaction to the Dominion loss of 2,800+ ships in "Sacrifice of Angels"[DS9-6], which might've constituted a loss of as much as half the Dominion fleet in the Alpha Quadrant at that point.
It was actually in "When it Rains...", anyway, wasn't it 1100 Klingon ships ready for deployment = 22,000 Dominion/Cardassian/Breen ships (20:1)?
Another number to add to the mix is the combined Rom/Kli/Fed ships wiped out by the Breen, that was a fleet of 312.
The thing I am floored about, regarding the battle to retake DS9, is how Feds were outnumbered 2:1, yet 1/3 of their fleet was able to break through the lines!! I understand there was the third fleet that was to join that they left without, it is possible that they joined later and were part of the 200 that broke through? It just seems strange that the Feds are suddenly so superior in that battle but earlier sucked it up so bad when the 7th fleet was annihilated, just how many ships did the Klingon reinforcements contribute to save 1/3 of the fleet?
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Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
1. Wolf 359 was a terrible thing for the Federation, but remember Shelby's comment that the fleet would be restored in a year. A construction rate of 40 ships per year at minimum (assuming they were only restoring the fleet and not continuing to build normally in addition) is nothing to sneeze at.
2. Assuming a Federation 8,000 light-years long, 6,000 light-years wide, and about 1,000 light-years deep (for reasons explained here: http://st-v-sw.net/STSWcompare.html#Size ), an 8,000 ship fleet leaves you with an average of one starship covering over five million cubic light-years of space (six million if you make the Federation a perfect rectangle . . . I fudged downward for a better fit). That's equal to each ship having a 170 light-year block of space to take care of.
"Only ship in the sector", indeed.
3. It was 1,500 Klingon ships at a 20:1 disadvantage. Thus, 30,000 D/C/B ships.
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posted
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Registered: Aug 1999
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quote:Well, I was thinking that during TNG, the loss of ~50 ships at Wolf 359 was to them a staggering loss to the fleet.
Yes, but probably only in comparison to recent losses. Shelby said the fleet could be restored in a year; 40 a year is fairly impressive. It's possible that the losses were just seen as so severe because Starfleet hadn't taken that kind of loss in one battle for X number of years. Imagine if a modern armed force lost the same number of casualties as in a WW2 or Korean battle.
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Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
I dont think it was so much a "staggering loss" as it was a "staggering shock" to the Federation's superior attitude. THey thought they could handle whatever was thrown at them and they were waaaay wrong.
Oddly, it's the new ship classes and preperations to defend against a far superior threat force -the Borg- that saved them years later when the Dominion first invaded.
Probably Q's intention all along.
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Amasov Prime
lensfare-induced epileptic shock
Member # 742
posted
I really didn't take Wolf into account. The problems of assembling a fleet a year later were probably related to the fact that every ship participating in the blockade was one ship less to secure the Neutral Zone border. In that context I got the impression that many of the captains of the Wolf-ships must have been high-ranking officers or veterans because they seemed to have more problems finding expirienced captains than ships.
And to answer the above question, my numbers for the 24th century are based on careful calculations (what else did you expect? ). Threre were nine fleets between earth and Cardassia, and at least one of them had more than 100 ships (A Time To Stand) while 2 1/2 fleets had 600 ships (SoA). In other words, the average strength of a fleet (assuming that they are all somewhat balanced) is somewhere between 100 and 250. So with 10 fleets, we get roughly 2000 ships. Starfleet of course would be stupid to pack every available ship into a fleet. We have seen numerous examples of single ships operating without a fleet (the E-E, the Centaur, even the Defiant). Even if the majority of ships is part of one of the fleets, there are probably a thousand, maybe more independent vessels, mostly explorers, diplomatic vessels and science ships. And finally, we know that the war basically took place in one half of the Federation. From watching Star Trek we all know that there are many threats out there, and I'm absolutely sure that Starfleet would not risk being vulnerable on any borderline.
In the end, it all depends on the size and number of the fleets. the estimation of 4500+ ships before/during the war is a minimum on an open-ended scale.
(Besides that, I can't believe the 30,000 Dominion ships-theory. Altough most of them may be bugs, that's still an awful lot. With such a fleet, the Alliance would have been defeated within weeks. Even if it's not just an exaggeration, they may have been talking about troops, not ships. I don't even want to estimate how many Jem'Hadar were produced on the Dominion worlds in the AQ during the war.)
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