The Evolution of Starfleet Vessels

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AlexMcpherson79
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The Evolution of Starfleet Vessels

Post by AlexMcpherson79 »

It seems to me that ships kept getting bigger in the prime universe, but for reasons that maybe made sense?

Lets start right back with TOS.

The NCC-1701 Enterprise, in its original pre-movie configuration(s).
Deck 1 would be the bridge, Deck 2 the lower part of the bulged area ontop of the saucer, and Deck 3 and 4 the 'sloped' area, with Deck 5 and Deck 6 being the two that ocupy out to the rim, with the impulse drive also across those two decks. Then theres Deck 7 and 8 in the lower sloped part, with the torpedo launcher and phaser array in what would count as deck 9 and the dome in line with deck 10.
The Neck is six decks tall, and the engineering hull itself eight or nine, (I've got the cross-section by gus on EAS that offsets the shuttlebay half a deck to line up a all decks in the rest of the ship evenly.)
This produces 21 decks.

Now, the ship is supposed to have a crew of around 400. (200 in the original pilot?)
someone smarter than me came up with the idea that Deck five and six, if they were identical at least, with 30% of space given to corridors and other things, could have like just over 250 quarters on each deck - so, for a single deck, not that unreasonable to presume that crewmen bunk together, with officers being the ones with privacy, presuming anyway that each quarters is no more than the size of an RV. Not an unreasonable presumption. I'll go with the deck six not having any quarters because of the weird way the hull curved inward between the outer rim and the lower deck slope down to the phaser/photons.

Now, the size of nearly 300m long makes sense in this regard - the US Navy just three centuries prior would have ships of the same overall length, but with greater mass and more than ten times the crew count (aka 4,000 instead of 400) so realistically these values are not in doubt. But did it make sense to build bigger or smaller? well, no, in either direction, not for the roles involved. Lets apply treknobabble for why the saucer/engineering hull with a connecting neck arrangement for the time period, and move on.

still, Move ahead to the 2280s, and the Constitution is buitl a bit bigger. Maybe they need more space for systems and other stuff. Warp engines are getting bigger, yet also more powerful in ways that aren't linear. Then again, power needed to get to particular warp 'threshold points' isn't a linear increase, (thank you Enterprise for canonising this! I actually like the idea of 'as much as over 2x more power needed to reach a specific warp speed than, once at speed, to maintain it or even increase speed beyond that again)

So the refit of the constitution is needed. And at the same time, other smaller ships are getting that refit, reflecting an increased need for speed and combat capabilities in the other ships, while the constitution is still designed from the angle that its the explorer of starfleet. But there are limitations. Its the 2270s, and already despite that redesign, ships that are being put into service still are too close to their theoretical limitations to last long, and with more and more scientific disciplines, and engineering disciplines and so on and so on, crews for that exploration role, need to be bigger, much bigger than the Constitution can handle.

Cue the Excelsior class.
Given the obvious differences of proportion between the saucer and engineering hull, I think it's safe to say that it has a much expanded internal area for working. The Saucer section has a bit more internal space, so probably expanded crew capacities, and presuming other decks now have quarters (and not just the saucer rim decks), 750 is still rather reasonable...
Going off of a senior/junior/enlisted ratio of 1:7:17, this places thirty senior officers aboard, 210 junior officers, and 510 enlisted. this... places too many senior officers. so say the ratio totals 30, not 25... So 1:10:19
25 Senior officers, 250 Junior Officers, 475 Enlisted. So there's a requirement there for, 275 officers quarters. Or, if Junior officers double up, not an unreasonable assumption, then that's 150 officer quarters total (25+125). the 475 enlisted need quarters, and they'd be sharing since the juniors do. Lets go with both hotbunking (though only 2x twelve hour shifts so theres four hours between each sleeping shift), and two pairs of double-bunks per enlisted quarters, so each one handles eight. You'll only need Sixty such to handle 480 enlisted. or cut down on the hotbunking, need one hundred and twenty.

So, 210~270 quarters to crew the 750. Or, 756 is at may be (now also counting the captain., and the five extra. My ratio is just to loosely calculate cut-down crew sizes rather than a 'full' compliment)

Still possible, since the Constitution had within that range at a smaller size on a single deck. The Excelsior doesn't even need to place all of its quarters on a single deck.

Anyway so the Excelsior becomes the explorer ship of the fleet, capable of multiple roles, and given the extra space for equipment, thats why its bigger - and with a bigger crew to service that equipment.

Then you get to the Ambassador, and, oh boy. I headcanon that it was an attempt to replace the Excelsior that failed, because of 'insufficient combat capability' as demonstrated by the Enterprise-C's loss during the incident at Narendra III, even as her participation in that battle as a weak ship solidified the federation-klingon relationship even further.

Now, the ship is bigger again by a hundred metres, taller, wider, yet has a smaller crew. I'll argue this being increased automation, and how some roles were eventually merged together (like how Sulu was the helmsman and Chekov Navigator, when that is a job done by one in the TNG-era shows, and unlike in TMP, chekov's role as weapons officer was eventually also given over to security, even though I dont believe it was a role that existed in TOS.)
But still... DITL gives 550. Still more than the constitution of fifty years earlier, but less of the ship that came forty years earlier.

The increase in its size, however, I will give to, as per its name, increased facilities in regard to diplomacy, as well as science facilities per its purpose as an exploration vessel.

Then we get the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D, of the Galaxy class.
The idea of that ship is it's the constitution/excelsior of its era - the biggest ship, with the biggest crew, very capable as an explorer, but unlike how the Ambassador failed to, it lives up to the idea that the Explorer vessels of Starfleet are also supposed to be very capable of defending themselves.
At 641 metres of length, 145m height, 470m beam, it not only lives up to that promise of being large, its wider than the excelsior is longm and has a crew of over a thousand. (I always presumed that the crew count did NOT include the families, so with families, the total number aboard is actually much higher, though not by more than fifty percent of that.)

Given its sheer size, however, it also made sense that, like the Constitution, there were only a handful built. Given the sheer size of it, even in the future of the class, it wouldn't be built with near the production run that the Excelsior saw - which I see as a ship that was built so many times once it was no longer the 'explorer of starfleet', but the workhorse of the federation.

Then The whole, borg and dominion thing, and the Sovereign Class was designed as the Galaxy's replacement in the role of 'Large Diplomatic Explorer that can take care of itself in a fight'. Once more, it was larger in length, though with design shifts, not as wide or high, yet still a crew of seven hundred. Now, the part where it seems smaller (because it is), even when its' bigger (massive nacelles!) is because it doesn't carry the families of its crew. It's agressive, because the Starfleet, and the Federation expect to be facing threats that can give them a run for their money.


Which only dovetails into the issue in the other post I made about 'peaceful explorers' (the one about the Cardassians), with in that idea, Owen Paris going 'they haven't learned' until the end of the Dominion War.
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