posted
You make some good points, but is the Federation really going to be in the habit of ... doing what, with perfectly good starships that just need some upgrades to keep functioning? The Galaxy Class, IIRC the technical manual correctly, was intended to be in service for a century -- there's no reason to expect that many movie-era classes weren't built with the same intention.
Even if they're not used as front-line ships, Starfleet (and the Federation) has a lot of personnel to shuffle about: how many of those ships are in service as glorified transit buses? Or running boring interdiction patrols on inner trade routes.
When you consider that Earth, by the 24th Century, must have a population of (extremely conservatively 10 billion), and there are over 100 member planets in the Federation (plus assorted colonies), many of which presumably have similar populations, if even only a very small fraction serves in Starfleet or in a government role with the Federation ...
I just don't buy the concept that Starfleet would scrap ships simply because of their age - especially in the 24th Century. (Yeah, I know, Morrow wanted to retire the Enterprise - but that as a full century earlier).
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posted
Regarding Lakota versus Defiant, I suspect that O'Brien's surprise was HOW MUCH the Lakota had been upgraded rather than the fact that it had been upgraded at all. It would be stupid to leave ships in service with no refits or improvements. We've seen Mirandas and Oberths with TNG-era LCARS consoles on their bridges. Considering the industrial capabilities of the Federation, upgrading ships wouldn't be THAT hard by the 24th century.
Technology can be modular, as power increases equipment can be made smaller. Why are the upgrades seen as such a bad idea? Just because they don't look as cool, I think.
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posted
The notion that automation is hard to retrofit is true in real life but not for Trek.
Witness Scotty making a semi-combat-capable automated Constitution in ST3, and the Mirandas of TNG that all fly around with a duty shift crew of like six people total.
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quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: And yes, registries aside, I consider the First Contact designs all new classes specifically made to defend against the Borg.
Re: The FC ships.
I'm of two minds about them. Mainly, my issue is their low registries. If registries are chronological, that would put their construction around the same time as the BoBW kitbashes and the Nebula class. The designs really don't gel with what was previously established (although I'm well aware that ship classes can look very different and still be contemporaneous, I don't think Alex Jaeger was going for that). There also seems to be a whole lot of them for some reason (well, not the Norway though), when there are no other 5XXXX and 6XXXX ships in the fleet shots from other classes.
On the other hand, these four ships, as Jason surmised, would make an excellent post-BoBW fleet. That would explain why there were so many of them, since Starfleet would have ramped up production after BoBW. Heck, the underside of the Norway class was created from the Defiant's CGI mesh, and we know what the Defiant was built for, right? It would also explain why they look so different and newer than the Galaxy class family of designs. The only issue is the above registry conundrum, unless of course they were not chronological.
I'm actually in the process of writing up a conjectural list of starship production times, based on canon and official info. I've come to an interesting conclusion. There seems to be evidence that ships with registries of 5xxxx, 6xxxx, 7xxxx and even 8xxxx were actually built around the same time and are not chronological (I.e. a 5xxxx ship could have been built after a 7xxxx ship). I'll post it soon.
-------------------- "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
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quote:Originally posted by The Ginger Beacon: Really, I find it hard to believe that the rich Federation would bother using older ships when you consider its main goals are exploration and making new friends. While upgrades are commonly used in real life navies to extend the life of older ships, richer nations tend to get rid of ships at a faster rate, have smaller navies and move towards automation - something hard to retrofit into older designs.
Ah, but modern navies are not part of expanding empires- the Federation, as I said, got lazy on new ship development and the new ships they were making were being built at a trickle- the UFP had been in unprecedented peacetime when TNG starts- Klingons were pals, Romulans were AWOL and the only new ships were explorers- everything else was refitted to remain part of a self-defense only force or downgraded to milk run duty like the USS lantree.
In such a peacetime climate, it's unlikely the UFP Council and President would authorize a massive ship building campaign.
quote:Because of this I suspect that the vast majority of Starfleet prior to Wolf 359 would be ships 10 - 30 years older than the E-D, primarily of the designs that were only ever made as wreckage for that battle scene.
I think Starfleet was in a classic "fortress mentality"- all their defense was at the perimeter, with all their second stringers toward the center- and the fleet was "stretched thin"- they had this massive area to patrol and not enough ships to make it happen. The Borg zipped on through and the responding force of 42 ships was more "whatever we can throw at them" instead of the best and most powerful ships.
quote:[qb]As for registries? Well, I always thought the numbered the TNG ships way to high. The highest registry we see in the movies is what? 2050ish? So they built 68000 odd ships between TUC and TNG - 1000 ships a year. That just seems like a really big number to me.
Different shipyards might have different ranges of numbers assigned to them- and, Enterprise aside, different classes might conform to certain registry ranges for ease of coordination- when assigning dozens of ships, it would be a pain in the ass to have to constantly look up what class a ship is- the registry might indicate that information in some way for ease of identification.
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posted
I'm pretty sure that the hightest registry seen in the first 6 films (excluding unreadable background displays) is the Excelsior, at NCC-2000, a number which was obviously chosen in the real-world as a "this is the start of a new generation *cough* of starship design", a reason which can quite happily apply in-universe as well.
Regarding the 7xxxx registries... did they pick that range from the start so that they could do the 747 puns, or did those come AFTER they'd decided to give most modern ships registries beginning with 7?
quote:Originally posted by Dukhat: Heck, the underside of the Norway class was created from the Defiant's CGI mesh, and we know what the Defiant was built for, right?
I did not know that. Are there any pictures to show that in action?
Regarding building new CGI ships, the producers will have exactly the same issue as they did before. Building a CGI ship still costs time and money. If they started to show new designs instead of (rather than in addition to) Mirandas and Excelsiors, there would be a lot of complaints. They are both good designs that have an essential "Starfleet" look about them. If they wanted to populate fleet scenes with new ships, then they are going to have to pay people to build them, and they might not have the budget for that.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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posted
Sure, but the cost of making a CG ship is far less than making a physical model- a full sized "hero" shooting prop back in the 80's cost over ten grand- and then there's the added cost and time spent of shooting the model with motion control and composiing it into backgrounds...
And of course, lighting and such works much better with multiple ships when it's all CG- no need for that annoying "ship glow" that destroyed so much of the subtle details on ships like the talarian ships or the tiny details on the Enterprise- they saturated the brightness to the point where shadows were nil.
Not that I dont love physical models, of course, but there was certainly a downside.
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posted
I always assumed that Starfleet reserved blocks of registries for future ship classes, so that's why we see newish ships with 5xxxx and 6xxxx registries. I mean that has to be the reason why Oberths have three digit registries, but don't look like anything that could have existed in The Original Series or predate it. And an in-universe explanation as to why the warship Prometheus has a 5xxxx registry. On the other hand, I can't really believe Starfleet has had around 79,000 to 80,000 starships in its history, much less 10,000-20,000 at any one time.
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quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: I'm pretty sure that the hightest registry seen in the first 6 films (excluding unreadable background displays) is the Excelsior, at NCC-2000, a number which was obviously chosen in the real-world as a "this is the start of a new generation *cough* of starship design", a reason which can quite happily apply in-universe as well.
Yeah, I'm of the opinion that the only reason why the Excelsior's registry was 2000 was to imply that she was such a new and large ship (this was the early '80's after all, and the number "2000" at the time was regarded as so futuristic). I also think the reverse reasoning was why the Grissom had such a small registry, because she was such a small ship.
quote:Regarding the 7xxxx registries... did they pick that range from the start so that they could do the 747 puns, or did those come AFTER they'd decided to give most modern ships registries beginning with 7?
No. As early as "The Naked Now," the highest registries for brand-new ships was in the 5XXXX range. Only later did they change to 7XXXX...as if 5XXXX wasn't high enough...
quote:I did not know that. Are there any pictures to show that in action?
Flare member MattC, who claimed to actually have a copy of the "missing" Norway CGI mesh, explained that because the ship was kinda never finished before being used in FC, it's underside was a badly-put-together version of the Defiant's mesh. Since he hasn't been around here for quite some time he never showed what he had, but seeing both FC HD screencaps and the Fact Files artwork, I believe he's telling the truth.
quote:Regarding building new CGI ships, the producers will have exactly the same issue as they did before. Building a CGI ship still costs time and money. If they started to show new designs instead of (rather than in addition to) Mirandas and Excelsiors, there would be a lot of complaints. They are both good designs that have an essential "Starfleet" look about them. If they wanted to populate fleet scenes with new ships, then they are going to have to pay people to build them, and they might not have the budget for that.
You mean complaints from CBS, who would be funding this? I'm not sure why they'd care, if both a new design or an old one would have to be created essentially from scratch, and cost the same amount of money no matter who was building them. I don't think they care whether the audience sees an Excelsior class or a Rigel class ship. And the fans certainly wouldn't complain. Yes, it takes more time to come up with an original design instead of copying an older one (unless you just kitbash an already existing design, only in CGI instead of physically, which would be even easier), but that would be done by someone who is already on their payroll. And it's not like that exact thing didn't happen with TOS-R, with new designs for the Gorn ship, the Aurora, Masao's space station design, the Orion ship, etc.
quote:Originally posted by Mars Needs Women: I always assumed that Starfleet reserved blocks of registries for future ship classes, so that's why we see newish ships with 5xxxx and 6xxxx registries. I mean that has to be the reason why Oberths have three digit registries, but don't look like anything that could have existed in The Original Series or predate it. And an in-universe explanation as to why the warship Prometheus has a 5xxxx registry. On the other hand, I can't really believe Starfleet has had around 79,000 to 80,000 starships in its history, much less 10,000-20,000 at any one time.
Yes, I'm of a similar mind too. That could be why Ambassadors, while clearly newer and technologically superior to the Excelsior and Miranda, has regs of 2XXXX, while the latter has regs of 3XXXX and 4XXXX.
-------------------- "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
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-------------------- "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
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-------------------- "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
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WizArtist II
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posted
But we are talking about nothing more than arbitrary number assignments. Look at the M-1 Abrams or the F-22 Raptor. Someone who was not familiar with modern military designations could logically interpret that an F-101 Voodoo from the early 60's or an M-4 Sherman from WW2 were more advanced replacements of the Abrams and Raptor if all they knew were the designations.
In the same way USN aircraft carriers have gone from being "CV-XX" to "CVA-XX" to "CVA(N)-XX" to now the use of "CVN-XX". Who is to say that hull numbers for whatever replaced the Ford class (if there are ever replacements) will not start over at "XX-1".
Since every registry is "NCC" instead of a type specific like the Navy uses,Starfleet could simply have started classifying ranges of numbers to equate to type/usage. Anything below 4 digits would be utility vessels and the 2000's could have been intended for "Fast Battleships" (Transwarp) etc. Personally, I think they should have used other class/type designations from the beginning. "NCC" would be for a "Cruiser", "NCD" a "Destroyer" etc.
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quote:Originally posted by WizArtist II: But we are talking about nothing more than arbitrary number assignments. Look at the M-1 Abrams or the F-22 Raptor. Someone who was not familiar with modern military designations could logically interpret that an F-101 Voodoo from the early 60's or an M-4 Sherman from WW2 were more advanced replacements of the Abrams and Raptor if all they knew were the designations.
While I don't think starship registries are always necessarily chronological (or chronological at all, for that matter), I certainly don't think they're completely arbitrary either. If that were the case, then we'd be getting registries like NCC-GF78, or NCC-07 for a brand-new Galaxy class starship. I think the issue is just that most Trek fans who care about stuff like this (myself included), prefer registries to be more cut-and-dried than that. Nice, orderly chronological registries are easier to deal with
quote:Since every registry is "NCC" instead of a type specific like the Navy uses,Starfleet could simply have started classifying ranges of numbers to equate to type/usage. Anything below 4 digits would be utility vessels and the 2000's could have been intended for "Fast Battleships" (Transwarp) etc.
For all we know, that's exactly what they do. Something I noticed when I was writing up my essay about starship production times was the almost total occurrence of the registries of each conjectural class of starship being extremely close together (i.e. the three known Renaissance class registries all being 45XXX). This also happens with some regular classes, like the Intrepid. Maybe these numbers actually stand for the type of ship or mission it was built for.
-------------------- "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
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quote:Originally posted by Dukhat: [I'm not sure why they'd care, if both a new design or an old one would have to be created essentially from scratch, and cost the same amount of money no matter who was building them. I don't think they care whether the audience sees an Excelsior class or a Rigel class ship. And the fans certainly wouldn't complain. Yes, it takes more time to come up with an original design instead of copying an older one (unless you just kitbash an already existing design, only in CGI instead of physically, which would be even easier), but that would be done by someone who is already on their payroll. And it's not like that exact thing didn't happen with TOS-R, with new designs for the Gorn ship, the Aurora, Masao's space station design, the Orion ship, etc.
The guy might already be on payroll, but that doesn't mean he's not currently occupied. They will have a certain amount of resources for making CGI meshes, and doing a Rigel-Class one might mean that the Excelsior-class one doesn't get done. And I DO think fans would compain if every instance of an Excelsior-class ship in CGI-era Trek was replaced with a different class.
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: Sure, but the cost of making a CG ship is far less than making a physical model- a full sized "hero" shooting prop back in the 80's cost over ten grand- and then there's the added cost and time spent of shooting the model with motion control and composiing it into backgrounds...
We say that, but what is the cost of creating the CGI mesh, texturising it, paying the licences for the software, the hardware to do the processing on...
(I'm not saying it's not cheaper. It probably is. But there's an occasional impression given that because some people create these models in their spare time that the cost is almost nil. Artists might draw something for free. Doesn't meant that Jim Lee will draw Justice League for Pop Tarts.)
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: The guy might already be on payroll, but that doesn't mean he's not currently occupied. They will have a certain amount of resources for making CGI meshes, and doing a Rigel-Class one might mean that the Excelsior-class one doesn't get done. And I do think fans would complain if every instance of an Excelsior-class ship in CGI-era Trek was replaced with a different class.
Don't get me wrong: I wasn't advocating that every time we saw an Excelsior in the DS9 fleet scenes, they should now replace it with something else. As much as I personally don't like the Excelsior or Miranda classes, most of the physical model shots done before the switch to CGI (finale of "Call to Arms;" the ships in orbit of Starbase 375, etc.) were of those classes of ships. Obviously any new CGI shots would have to include those ships as well. All I was saying was to add more than just the seven or so classes which comprised the original fleet.
-------------------- "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
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