posted
As I stated in my thread about the Brattain, I'm writing up some starship-related essays, one of which concerns the conjectural Starfleet ship classes. In order to pin down attributes for each class, I needed to find out in what time-frame they were hypothetically built, by using the registry numbers of the known ships of each class, along with the numbers of some other official contemporaneous classes. So by using such research materials as the Chronology, Bernd's timeline from Ex-Astris-Scientia, the TNG Tech Manual, statements made about the ships in dialogue, and other factors, I made a hypothetical timeline of ship production. Not only did it help me out, it also showed some interesting information, such as that production of new ship classes happened in roughly ten-year increments between the 2290's and 2360's, the timespan of the timeline.
As always, please understand that these are my own unofficial opinions based on my data, and that there has never been official proof that registries are chronological (and even in some cases, my timeline has no good explanation for some classes of ships, i.e. the Oberth production). But I've tried to do my best with the information I had. Please bring to my attention any mistakes or omissions, as I want this to be as complete and accurate as possible. In a few cases, my findings will also be in dispute with some of the ASDB stuff. It's not my intention to disregard the work that the ASDB did, but hopefully they'll see my work as a supplement to theirs.
Since I don't have a website, I'm just going to cut & paste the OpenOffice document I used to write the timeline into the next post. The original document had black font for canon statements and blue font for conjectural statements, so I'll have to differentiate the two some other way. Asterisks are the quickest thing that comes to mind...
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
Registered: Jun 2000
| IP: Logged
Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
posted
OR, you could save it as an HTML document & Flareupload it.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
Registered: Jun 2000
| IP: Logged
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
Registered: Jun 2000
| IP: Logged
Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
posted
Not bad...a little different that what I worked out (especially for the 2290s & 2300s), but it works.
How did you choose your specific data points?
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
Registered: Jun 2000
| IP: Logged
posted
I don't have any trouble with your list, in fact haven't gone through the whole thing yet.
But some thoughts in general.
A "major" class showing up every ten years is probably pretty reasonable, and might even be a goal. The major cost (in time and resources if not cash) is in making the first unit of something and getting it to work right. Even for Star Fleet this is going to be true. After that it gets easier and easier as your construction team gets more efficient at their job.
So it might actually make sense to stick with a hull form for a long time, especially if it was initially designed to have a great deal of growth potential, as described in the tech manual. Of course post-TNG sort of messes this up with new classes popping up right and left but we can probably "fix" most of those.
Galaxy as a Ambassador replacement and the Sov's as Excellsior replacements or something like that.
That said I'm not sure I'd count Jenolan as a "major" ship type though.
Aside-- really does make you wonder what happened to 1701-B, doesn't it?
-------------------- Twee bieren tevreden, zullen mijn vriend betalen.
Registered: Oct 2000
| IP: Logged
Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
I ascribe those post-TNG ships spawning like rabbits to Dominion War fleet escalation.
Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged
posted
I don't know if it will help you at all, but I did a chart/timeline based on when the ships were first & last seen on-screen. It hasn't been updated since late 2006 (& I really need to finish off those ENT entries!), but here it is, for what it's worth: http://flareupload.pleh.net/uploads/858/ships.html
Registered: Jul 2002
| IP: Logged
quote:Not bad...a little different that what I worked out (especially for the 2290s & 2300s), but it works.
How did you choose your specific data points?
Basically I started with all the known instances of ships in operation before the start of TNG. For example, I knew that the Apollo class Ajax was at least in service in 2327, the year in which the past sequences of "Tapestry" take place. So obviously the Apollo class had to have been commissioned at least before that date.
Then after that, I extrapolated some logical shipbuilding times around those points, based on the registries. I'm of the opinion that Okuda didn't just pull registry numbers out of his ass, and that they do have some semblance of chronological sense. It's usually the registry numbers he wasn't involved in creating that cause problems (i.e. the First Contact ships, or Greg Jein's extrapolation of Commodore Stone's wall chart).
The TNG Tech Manual's timeline of Galaxy class design & production also helped considerably, as did the date of the replacement of duotronics with isolinear chip technology, which affected my timeline in a major way.
Besides the FC ships, the only problem registry-wise was, of course, the Oberth class. However, although I still find it preposterous that the Oberth class was still in production right up to the start of TNG, I've come to the conclusion that its registry scheme is different than other ships, starting right when we saw the ship for the first time as the Grissom NCC-638 (the reason for that, however, is unknown, and I couldn't even hazard a guess). There's no way that ship was commissioned even before the TOS Connies were, as the registry seems to indicate. But the TNG Oberth registries are internally chronological to other Oberths, but not to other starships.
BTW, I wouldn't mind seeing your interpretation for the 2290's-2300's, although any differences between yours and mine still wouldn't affect my speculation about the conjectural classes, as the earliest known class (Deneva) wouldn't be in production until after the 2300's.
quote:I ascribe those post-TNG ships spawning like rabbits to Dominion War fleet escalation.
That, and the Borg threat, too.
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
Registered: Jun 2000
| IP: Logged
Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
posted
Ok, here's quick listing of canonical & Okudaic conjectural classes for 2290 to 2315. Please keep in mid that things are still being fiddled with lightly, especially at the turn-of-the-century end:
Deneva, 2293
Ambassador, 2301
Apollo, 2302
Hokule'a, 2308
Wambundu, 2309
Niagara, 2315
It looks really bare, but there are other non-canon classes filling gaps a lot.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
Registered: Jun 2000
| IP: Logged
posted
I have a forty-year window between major classes in my timeline, with varying numbers of supplementary classes in between. Not counting development time, we have the Constitution class becoming viable circa 2245, the Excelsior class becoming viable circa 2285, and the Galaxy class becoming viable pretty close to 2365. So slotting the Ambassador in at 2325 made good sense to me. And it also means the next major class would be coming along around 2405.
The Sovereign class, to me, is a bad choice for an Enterprise. It's a placeholder, a new Heavy Cruiser that Picard takes out to explore because tht's who he is. The class only came along five years or so after the Galaxy class entered service, and -- I feel -- was a rush job to complete in order to have it available to fight the Borg.
In between those forty-year cycles, I have new batches of the current/previous major class at the twenty-year marks, depending on viability. So a round of refits and newbuilds for the Constitution class in 2265, some Enterprise class (yep, I still say that) newbuilds circa 2285, and maybe again around 2305 (the one that was at Wolf 359...? ).
Similarly the Excelsior class in 2305 and 2325, with a big building surge around 2345 for the increasing state of turmoil locally.
We really weren't due for anything until 2385, but the Borg, the Dominion, the Cardassians... That forced things a little. Early completion of Flight-I Galaxy spaceframes, early introduction of the Sovereign class (and making the new Enterprise one of those, to boot), rapid refit program for some post-Ambassador, pre-Galaxy classes*...
--Jonah
[*Yes, I still stubbornly cling to the belief that the Akira, Saber, StReamrunner, and Norway classes are recent but old enough to be cheaply made/refit -- more cheaply than another New Orleans or Springfield, say. And not to the same standard as the newer Intrepid or Prometheus classes (why they all have the same "unfinished" look as the Sovereign).]
-------------------- "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
Registered: Feb 2001
| IP: Logged
quote:And it also means the next major class would be coming along around 2405.
The Enterprise-F...?
quote:The Sovereign class, to me, is a bad choice for an Enterprise. It's a placeholder, a new Heavy Cruiser that Picard takes out to explore because tht's who he is. The class only came along five years or so after the Galaxy class entered service, and -- I feel -- was a rush job to complete in order to have it available to fight the Borg.
I think it was bad, too, but that's just because I don't like anything that John Eaves designed. As for your hypothesis about the Borg...
quote:Yes, I still stubbornly cling to the belief that the Akira, Saber, StReamrunner, and Norway classes are recent but old enough to be cheaply made/refit -- more cheaply than another New Orleans or Springfield, say. And not to the same standard as the newer Intrepid or Prometheus classes (why they all have the same "unfinished" look as the Sovereign).
Yes, but would you feel the same way if those FC ships had registries of 77XXX or 8XXXX? Probably not. They all had the same design attributes that the Enterprise-D, the Enterprise-E, and the Defiant had, which in my mind makes them newbuilds.
Although I agree with you that the Sovereign class probably came about so soon because of Wolf 359, I think the other FC ships did as well, regardless of what their registries are. I certainly don't think they're refits of older designs. If that was the case, then why didn't Starfleet refit all the Excelsiors, Mirandas and Oberths to look more modern? (and I don't consider making the warp grilles on the Miranda's engines glow blue to be a refit.)
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
Registered: Jun 2000
| IP: Logged
quote:Originally posted by Daniel Butler: I ascribe those post-TNG ships spawning like rabbits to Dominion War fleet escalation.
But if we put in the context of previous (apparent) shipbuilding time scales than there isn't time for them to done more than *start* to respond to the Borg by the time that the Dominion show up. Let alone enough time between when it is shown that diplomacy isn't going to work (and the wormhole can't be held) and the war starts.
I'm firmly in the Star Fleet had to fight the Dominion war with the "fleet they had" and not the "fleet they might have wanted".
-------------------- Twee bieren tevreden, zullen mijn vriend betalen.
Registered: Oct 2000
| IP: Logged
Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
No, I agree. What I meant was that after the Dominion and Borg, Starfleet escalated it's activities because (I think, anyway) they were shown they were too complacent, trusting, and didn't have enough true warships to fight a war - which, they were shown very strongly, could happen to them easily no matter how diplomatic and peace-loving they were. Kind of like the Hobbits where their "keep yer nose outta trubble and no trubble'll come ter you" attitude.
Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged
posted
My personal view on the Oberth-Class is that it is exactly as old as the Grissom's reg makes it look and the reason why it looks so radically different from most other Starfleet ships of the time is because it was mostly designed and built by Vulcans. Just as it seams logical that the very first Federation Starfleet ships would have been made up of already serving vessels from Earth, Vulcan, Andoria et al. It stands to reason that the second generation would be a mix of hybrid designs as each world would still be making ship's semi-independently but with more and more influence from other worlds. So the Oberth is a Vulcan design that has been heavily influenced by Earth tech, but still retains it's cultural aesthetic.
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
).
Printer-friendly view of this topic
