Reliant121 wrote:I'm coming very late to the debate so forgive me. I'm going to start by using visual evidence from the TV Series to evaluate certain classes and the areas in which ships were lost.
Okay, Dominion War has reached its conclusion and Starfleet has lost an enormous amount of ships. When you look at visual evidence from the TV series, DS9 Showed fairly hefty losses among the workhorse classes that appeared to run "inteference", such as the Sitak and the Majestic, that were knocked down in the Valley of Death scene. The Mirandas suffered heavily; as did the Excelsiors but they showed a phenomenal ability to go down fighting. In the first Battle of Chin'Toka, the Cardassian platforms knock a Miranda from the sky yet it remained firing till the last.
I agree. But if you subsitute a newer class ship of let's say the Sabre class, it may have been different. You do wonder what it took to keep these Miranda class ships within 24th century standards though.
In both of these battles, the Defiant took an enormous amount of firepower compared to its compatriots. Obvious to say, but the Defiant warships were clearly a powerful and above all else resilient warship. The Galaxy class starship in Chin'toka 1st took a heavy pounding and continud to fire, despite one of the ODP's burning half of its engineering section off; whatever niggles the E-D suffered from, its clear that the later GCS was a bloody tough warship.
Well I wouldn't say half. Mainly it burned huge holes into the hull. One of them is extremely close to the warp core if not directly hit. So it's pretty obvious that the GCS 's problems have been ironed out and can be an effective battleship for the fleet.
The Defiant is in a legaue of it's own really. The ship can punch through massive fleets, have a running battle with the Borg and take unshielded hits pretty easily. If every Defiant class ship is like that (save the Valiant which I think is a underpowered training vessel version IMO) than Starfleet should have a whole fleet of these ships. They don't require a large crew so the only thing that may prevent them from being in huge numbers is how difficult it is to make them. Something that could be fixed over time.
From First contact, we can see that the Steamrunner, Norway and Saber classes all seem reasonably tough ships, although not very powerful. The DITL information pages have all speculated on the design basis for each of these but ultimately we do not know what they were designed for. All we know is they weren't that big and took quite heavy losses to the Borg; apart from the Sabers.
I cannot really comment of these ships in that we it was that battle we only really see what they can potentially capable of. For all we know these can be fresh ships coming in late into the battle.
The Sovereign shows every sign of being a more military designed warship; from having hidden weapons storage throughout the ship (NEM), The lack of Civilians, the highly increased pounding the Sovereign took at a vastly superior foe (The Ent-D facing the Cube compared to the Ent-E facing the Scimitar). I admit, a lot of this is circumstantial and you are free to believe otherwise, but I believe the Sovereign is a far more military orientated flagship for the Federation.
There are some examples in real life such as the Sovereign and the Galaxy class ships, though not entirely comparable. The difference between a South Dakota class ship to the Iowa class ship to the Montana class ship. The Iowa being essentially a stetched out faster and better armed version of the Iowa class, whereas the Montana class is based on the old principles of armoring against it's own guns, but slower than the Iowa class. The British Lion (II) class is essentially a upgunned version of the KGV (II) class.
Priority number one is getting people and ships in space. Federation territory is vast, beyond that of any of the other spacefaring empires (So maps suggest anyway). The Federation borders are littered with powers that may well attempt to take advantage of weakness along the borders. This means the borders are the first priority and the more modern combat ships are going to be tied up keeping the borders secure; immediate priority is to then get all the useless flimflam in a remotely spaceworthy condition to ferry commodore-of-the-occasion to wherever they are going.
Essentially building enough ships to replace the ships that were lost. So that means medium to small ships and not the huge ships of the Galaxy, Sovereign and Nebula classes to be built in huge numbers. Which is why I said something along the lines of 1-1-1 ratio. One Nova class for every Defiant for every multipurposed ship.
Starfleet needs to streamline its ridiculous construction practices, with all the various classes for same roles. In that light, I will go class by class and state where things should be constructed. Firstly, I think it is important to build a very small, reasonably fast "Cutter". It isn't a 100% priority at the very culmination of the war; this role could easily be filled by Miranda and Excelsior classes. But replacing the old ships should still be a priority. In this role, the Sabre shines through. It's very small, agile, reasonably strong (as shown by the number that survived the encounter with the FC Cube). Perfect little ship to keep an eye on edge systems.
I agree as well. I think it's time for Starfleet to build one class for one role with small incremental changes in the design. I mean there are so many various classes within the same the size range and presumably role that it is rediculous.
However, my theory is that Starfleet allows shipyards in other systems some leeway in building their own version of a frigate. Some shipyards are perhaps not quite up to date so they have to build essentially updated older designs which perhaps may explain why there are so many Mirandas, Excelsiors and Oberths in the 24th century. The British for example allowed private shipyards to turn out almost entirely different ships (mainly destroyers and small cruisers) because of competition to see which one is better and than expand upon that. Perhaps Starfleet does the same.
In the role of destroyer, the Defiant is the obvious choice. In small "Wolfpacks", few ships could match such firepower. Attaching small groups of these ships to major starbases and colonies could potentially have a highly powerful battlegroup respond to border incursions before it ever requires a full sized battlegroup. I have it in my head they were intensive to maintain; no idea why, but I seem to have vague memories of them being...difficult to work effectively. In this light, these things would only be used for wartime or heavy combat situations/
I have the same idea. In Message in a Bottle, we did see some form of hunter killer group with two Defiants and a Akira class ship. That does seem to be a nice grouping if you ask me.
The light cruiser is where it gets challenging. As far as I can see it, there is no ship that immediately fills this role but vessels that COULD do. In this situation I'd go for either the Intrepid or the Steamrunner. The Steamrunner purely because it fills the correct size there abouts but the Intrepid because its reasonably large, not to high in the crew stakes and powerful enough. Unless another ship is designed, the Intrepid is all that fills this role at the moment.
Depends on how you view light cruiser. A WW2 light cruiser is essentially a 6" gunned version of a heavy cruiser. But if you are talking about a WW1 light cruiser, then it's something anywhere between a scout and a battlecruiser. Usually they are teamed up with destroyers and have accordingly high speed. In this respect you could assume the intrepid class fits this role.
Heavy cruiser however is catered for with three ships; Nebula, Akira and Prometheus. I know the MVAM seems a complete and utter waste of time but a Prometheus with only standard weapons is still a potent warship, especially for its QT armament. I think all are useful in their way but I would be lead to vote for the Nebula simply because it has so much space to work with. The pods could allow individual warships to be fitted for different missions, despite having to travel home to pick up another pod. Weapons upgrades could simply be bolted into the pods; there's scope even to provide them with their own power systems. Endless possibilities. However, I could see the argument for all three.
Maybe not for a Nebula class or Prometheus class because the Nebula class is roughly equal to a Galaxy class but far more versatile. The Prometheus seems be a battleship or a battlecruiser. Akira class does fit in nicely within this role. I am assuming the heavy cruiser being a junior capital ship like the armored cruisers.
As for the capital ships. This is where it gets tricky. The GCS and the Sovereign fulfil wildly different roles, even though they are often employed in a similar manner. I can see both being created for quite some time yet; imagine the CnC abilities a GCS could have if all the wide open space or science labs were converted to command centres. They are perfect flagships, even if they aren't quite as deadly. In this light, I can see the GCS serving as a fleet command ship while the more powerful Sovereigns serve as assault battlecruisers, although each would have somewhat interchangeable roles.
So in summary: Use outdated ships to throw something in space, replace combat losses with a much more focused construction strategy WITHOUT billions of classes for a single role.
Thoughts?
Navies throughout the world, their capital ships were never of one class. So I can see having the Galaxy class, Nebula class and the Sovereign class doing the same thing with perhaps the Sovereign class doing more combat orientated missions as opposed to the Nebula and Galaxy classes doing what they are good at: long ranged, missions.
"Don't underestimate the power of technobabble: the Federation can win anything with the sheer force of bullshit"
but we will ignore that) was able to create them with information that Admiral Janeway brought with her. 