Miranda Classes???

[robjkay]

The original Miranda Class Starship which was supposedly built around the same time as the original Constitution Class which was around approximately between 2243-2269. Once the Constitution Class received its refit (ST: The Motion Picture) sometime before or after the Miranda Class also received a refit to as we have seen in ST: The Wraith of Khan the USS Reliant. I have an approximate date for this as 2270-2285.

Now between 2270 and the Dominion War, DS9: Sacrifice of Angels (2374) we have seen allot of Miranda's, if anything any SF ship we see most of in any given scene is the Miranda!

Now by Dominion War, DS9: Sacrifice of Angels (2374) the Miranda is over 100+ years old ship and design. Could there have been a new class of Miranda that was more-up-to-date that was more powerful, faster, maneuverable operating in the battles of the Dominion War? Maybe a new class of ship that was based off of the Miranda design?

[Tsukiyumi]

I think it's supposed to be the same original spaceframe, maybe a second batch was ordered in the 2290-2300 range. Also, they obviously recieved progressive upgrades over the years, and some were converted into other roles (some of them look radically different than the Wrath of Khan Miranda).

Un-offically, I think they just had to use the model more because they spent a lot on it to begin with, and didn't have a crapload of budget to design a bunch of new frigate-sized ships.

[Thorin]

As Tsukiyumi said, they seem to be the original Mirandas but with upgrades - technology from a hundred years previous with no upgrades wouldn't stand a chance - as I remember it could only fire one or two torpedos in a volley in TWOK.
Though it shows up Starfleet's incompetance (again) - they prepared for nothing and expected the best. Recycling maybe 5 Mirandas for a Galaxy class - or maybe even just 1 for a Defiant class, would surely be worth it. Had they always been ready for a major conflict then you'd probably see no Mirandas, or even Excelsiors, except for maybe a few Lakota-types.

[Bryan Moore]

Why did the spaceframe to the Mirandas last so damn long but the Connies go the way of the dodo by 2300?

[Tsukiyumi]

Why did the spaceframe to the Mirandas last so damn long but the Connies go the way of the dodo by 2300?

Because they didn't have Scotty around to keep them together with spit and duct tape.

[Thorin]

Why did the spaceframe to the Mirandas last so damn long but the Connies go the way of the dodo by 2300?

Because the Miranda didn't have a self destruct that leaves the entire back half of the saucer section and all the engineering hull in tact, even though that's where the warp core is located

[Blackstar the Chakat]

Well the Mirandas are known to be highly modular, more so then the Connies. Much easier and cheaper to upgrade. The Connies also were replaced by the Excelsiors(since we see 20+ named Excelsiors in the show). The Connies may also may be far older then the Mirandas, since we didn't see the Mirandas until Star Trek II. It's possible the Mirandas weren't built until after the refit. The Enterprise was 31 years old when it was destroyed, after Starfleet planned to retire the class as they were due for a refit. It was roughly 20 years old about the time of the refit.

Many Mirandas may have been recommissioned at some point due to a lack of successful replacement vessels, and Starfleet decided to order additional batches.

We also have no evidence that the Connies were retired too long after Star Trek VI. Many may have served well into the next century, but due to being older then the Mirandas they may have been retired long before the war, just a little before the Galaxy's were commissioned. I doubt they were as easy to refit for battle.

If the Mirandas were built at the time of the refit then the Connies would have been retired just before the TNG series, with the Mirandas being near the end of their lifespan during the war. I suspect many were decommissioned after taking enough damage. Seeing the Mirandas in any later series will be pushing belivability without some explination, or at least more recent hull numbers. A real life example would be how the Kitty Hawk-class carriers had near-identicle hulls to the Enterprise but used a different(oddly more primitive) engine configuration.

[Sionnach Glic]

The Miranda is one of the few inteligent designs Starfleet put out. That's likely why it lasted so long. Same hull, different tech inside.

[Captain Seafort]

The concept of there being a "TOS Miranda" is one of the few occassions where I think the main site made a mistake. It's more likely that the Mirandas started comming into service in the late 2260s, shortly before the Connie refit program started, and the new nacelle design was carried over to the refits, hence their similarity. As for the long life of the hull, a lot of 24th century Mirandas lack the roll bar, indicating either a refit or a Batch 2/3/whatever Miranda. Strangely, the Mirandas seen during the Dominion War had the same layout as the Reliant, perhaps indictating mothballed ships brought back into service.

[Deepcrush]

I would take it like this. The ships are easy to upgrade, cheap to build and large in numbers. That makes it a good ship for light duties where there isn't really a rush to get anything done. Updating starcharts or setting up research outposts. I could easily see it as the forrunner of the Nebula class ships.

[robjkay]

The concept of there being a "TOS Miranda" is one of the few occassions where I think the main site made a mistake. It's more likely that the Mirandas started comming into service in the late 2260s, shortly before the Connie refit program started, and the new nacelle design was carried over to the refits, hence their similarity. As for the long life of the hull, a lot of 24th century Mirandas lack the roll bar, indicating either a refit or a Batch 2/3/whatever Miranda. Strangely, the Mirandas seen during the Dominion War had the same layout as the Reliant, perhaps indictating mothballed ships brought back into service.

Well there seems to be a couple of types of Miranda's. First you have the Soyuz class which was apperently based of the Miranda. Then you have the Lantree type which is missing the torpedoe roll bar and is used as a supply ship, the Saratoga type that has extra that is also missing the roll bar but has extra sensor pods on the sides. Then Majestic type which is the version we see most off in the Dominion War that has updated phasers & newer nacells and has extra pair of impulse engines.

[Captain Seafort]

Well there seems to be a couple of types of Miranda's. First you have the Soyuz class which was apperently based of the Miranda. Then you have the Lantree type which is missing the torpedoe roll bar and is used as a supply ship, the Saratoga type that has extra that is also missing the roll bar but has extra sensor pods on the sides. Then Majestic type which is the version we see most off in the Dominion War that has updated phasers & newer nacells and has extra pair of impulse engines.

All of these still use the basic Miranda hull, they haven't gone through a complete rebuild the way the E-nil did. There have been variations on it, with roll bars, sensor pods and the like, but I very much doubt there was an original, cilindrical nacelled ship.

[robjkay]

How long does anyone think that the Miranda's were produced? I have hearing that maybe they were produce all the way up to ST: First Contact or even up to the Dominion War. The reason for this is because there were so many shown in the Dominion War, the high registrations of the ship, and there was no comparable replacement of this type of ship.

Maybe its just me, but is it not strange that such a ship would last so long within the ranks of SF? Even if SF were still producing these ships lets say up to ST: First Contact or earlier, the design of the ship would still be close to a hundred years. In the Dominion War as many of these ships we saw, to me it seems they were not very effective in battles. Unless we were seeing older versions of the Miranda that were being destroyed in the battles and that there was a more powerful updated version of this ship we did not see except for the ships we saw before and after the battles.

[Captain Seafort]

There's a limit to how fr to can continue updating a ships before it either rips itself apart or it becomes more expensive than building a (more effective) brand new ship. They were probably mass produced through the last couple of decades of the 23rd century, and the first couple of the 24th, before production switched to newer designs.

As for the ones in the Dominion war, I noted in my earlier post that at least some of those ships were of the same layout as the Reliant - with the rollbar - rather than the roll bar free Saratoga model. This could indicate older ships being pressed back into service - the equivalent of the 4-stacker US destroyers loaded the Britain in 1940. They were too old to be effective fleet escorts, but they made up the numbers for convoy duty, and I can see the Feds pressing those sorts of ships into front-line work.

[Captain Peabody]

I agree with Seafort on this: the Mirandas are clearly not TOS-era ships...everything we've seen of them would indicate that they were from around the time of the Constitution refit, not a refitted earlier ship.
And the Mirandas continued existence into the 24th century really isn't that remarkable...my guess is that they had a literally huge initial run, and perhaps another later batch in the early 24th century...thus there would be both heavily refitted older ships, and relatively newer Mirandas out there serving side by side. But its just an idea.

As for the Majestic-type Dominion War Mirandas...there are some differences between them and the older Reliant models...and anyway, the ship just looks so much better with the rollbar than without.