Trek in a dreadnought arms race?

[Duskofdead]

I do think the "Frankenstein" fleet is the best explanation for some of those kitbashes. As far as some fo the more specialized ship types; I think htat can be attributed to a willingness or ability to apply new technology "across teh baord," as it were. For example, the New Orleans-class is a result od applying GCS technology to a different and more limited role.

I think the Federation is a huge place and we only ever see small bits of it. I think it's more likely that ship classes not commonly seen in the three areas of the Federation (frontier for TNG, and then near Cardassia, and Earth) came together for the Dominion War. The fact that they look flung together from kits of other starships (going off canon here) was of course for cheaper effects and probably we were never "meant" to notice it as closely as those of us who pay painful attention to the Trek technical detail do. ("Heeeey, that's an Intrepid bottom and a Peregrine top! What the hell?!" is not probably a reaction 90% of viewers would have.)

I never liked the idea that Starfleet merely cannibalized junkyards and threw junk ships together with bits and pieces of whatever was laying around, and getting some of those ships to work would be a nightmare. I always operate under the presumption that unless we are told a ship is totally custom slapjob (such as Maquis ships often are) or are told its new, then it is probably a class that has been in service in some form or another in some part of the Federation, even if we haven't seen it before.

[sunnyside]

It does have a bazooka look I suppose. Though unless it's cheaper to make I'd still question if it could do anything better than an Intrepid.


The sound of things(Kennedies and general looks times) is that there was a production run of

Galaxy, long range explorer flagship
Nebula, workhorse
New Orleans, Frigate
Cheyenne scout
plus some really speculative kitbashes and such (Rigel etc)

So anyway a nice workable set. With the ancient Oberths being swapped from Nova and Olympics moving onto the scene.

But then in just a couple years you see better/deadlier/certainly higher maximum Warp models hitting
Akira
Steamrunner
Norway

A hair longer and you get the paradigm smashing Defiant, you also see the Galaxy class get impressive upgrades after such a short time to speed and weaponry.

And then you get the Soverign and Intrepid classes. Blazingly fast and sportin new bells and whistles. The Intrepid ceartainly shutting out the Cheyenne(and I'd also argue the New Orleans) and the Soveriegn taking the place of the Galaxy after such a short run for those classes.

And it seem to be keeping going with the Promethius design.

[Duskofdead]

It does have a bazooka look I suppose. Though unless it's cheaper to make I'd still question if it could do anything better than an Intrepid.


The sound of things(Kennedies and general looks times) is that there was a production run of

Galaxy, long range explorer flagship
Nebula, workhorse
New Orleans, Frigate
Cheyenne scout
plus some really speculative kitbashes and such (Rigel etc)

So anyway a nice workable set. With the ancient Oberths being swapped from Nova and Olympics moving onto the scene.

But then in just a couple years you see better/deadlier/certainly higher maximum Warp models hitting
Akira
Steamrunner
Norway

A hair longer and you get the paradigm smashing Defiant, you also see the Galaxy class get impressive upgrades after such a short time to speed and weaponry.

And then you get the Soverign and Intrepid classes. Blazingly fast and sportin new bells and whistles. The Intrepid ceartainly shutting out the Cheyenne(and I'd also argue the New Orleans) and the Soveriegn taking the place of the Galaxy after such a short run for those classes.

And it seem to be keeping going with the Promethius design.

Don't forget that there were less than TEN Galaxy-class ships for years. There were a "couple dozen" tops at the time of the Dominion War, what, a decade later. Nebula class ships, while MORE common, are still nearly as resource intensive compared to smaller ships, and I wouldn't be surprised if their numbers are limited to the high dozens, low hundreds tops at the end of DS9. I don't think the Federation ever intended these ships to numerically "make up the fleet", I think they were the most advanced, largest, and most capable ships of performing potent multirole capabilities "without supervision" for long periods of time along borders and frontiers. I think that, at the time Wolf 359 occurred, the Galaxy, Nebula and New Orleans were its newest designs and most capable in that order. But I think it also had many other designs "in development" because I don't believe they planned to just have a number of Galaxies you could count on two hands, some Nebulas and New Orleans supporting them, and then several thousand Oberths along with some Mirandas. If we take TNG as a straight, direct, proportional representation of the fleet, then you could come up with something along those lines, but I think TNG just happened to be a transitional period where Starfleet's newest ships had only just come off the lines, with new designs in development or production.

[sunnyside]

The thing is that it isn't historically like starfleet to switch designs that fast. I contend the reason for the short run on those ships is that their initial production runs were cut short to make way for Akiras, Norways, and Steamrunners first. And then so on and so forth. Same as the fate that was met by "last years battleship" in the dreadnaught arms race.

And I'm claiming this both in universe and out (where writers wanted to bring new and better Trek ships online and so had to make room. Also just giving us glimpses of some models like the New Orleans in order to bring newer fancier models into the picture).

[Mikey]

Again, changing priorities will push design and R&D in a particular direction, no matter how new the last model is. That recent quick shift between models may (hopefully) be a conscious effort to diversify the fleet as well.

[Duskofdead]

My opinion is that the Federation had been in a period of prolonged, relatively peaceful expansion and colonization and diplomatic growth for decades prior to, and including, TNG. The biggest thing they had to worry about was playing referee to antics with the Romulans and Klingons once in awhile, but aside from that most of their resources were routed into colonization, expansion, pure research and diplomacy. At a certain point, and the re-emergence of the Romulans (which was directly in response to Borg activity), and certainly Wolf 359 were major landmarks in the decision, it was felt that the fleet had been stretched too thin, and older roles were performing past their prime trying to meet the demands on Starfleet. So the philosophy shifted away from expansion and into consolidation and new starship designs to replace older and obsolete fleet ships. This was ramped upwards several times and didn't stop until after the Dominion War.

One of the main reasons I wind up in clashes with people who criticize that the Federation hadn't been building better, newer, stronger ships all along, is because I think the speed and rather large magnitude jump in ship capabilities Starfleet was able to pull off and implement and start producing in short order came about as a direct result of their long focus on expansion, discovery and research. (You may need 10 different ships out there pursuing 10 different fields of study to acquire the information you need to produce one new weapon or one new important applied improvement in power generation, etc.) In other words I think sometimes we are putting the cart before the horse in saying ech, look at this long period of pathetic "peaceful" TNG, they should have been building warships with type XII phasers and quantums and better shields... well, no doubt a lot of those advances were made possible by research which had been ongoing throughout TNG, and we probably can't do one without the other.

Can I prove this idea? Nope, I just think it makes the most sense. I think Starfleet had neither the need, nor the capacity, to build VASTLY better designs than it did, but the nature of focusing so much on exploration, exchange with new cultures, and research is that "the best you can build" at any given time will be increasing significantly. The same is not true for say, the Klingons, or the Romulans, who seem to manage to barely "catch up" in the tech race in one big leap every so often, but other than that spend most of their time "struggling against falling behind."

[Mikey]

I understand your point, and it does make some sense - it jsut seems that in the past, the UFP didn't prioritize defensive preparedness because it took an approach somehwere between rose-colored glasses and head in the sand. Your idea, that the ships we saw were as good as they could have been, may account for the state of the art, but not for conscious design decisions - the UFP's idyllic and idealistic viewpoint accounted for that.

[Teaos]

I still think a lot of the ships we only see once could very welll be one off ships as test beds or thrown together out of bits.

Maybe the New Orleans class had some fundamental fault in it that needed a replacement class far faster than usual.

[Mikey]

I still don't think that the New Orleans-class has been replaced. Just visually, it seems clear that the New Orleans-class and the Intrepid-class were meant for different purposes.

[Teaos]

It could be that it was designed or a rollthat has now been taken over by two different ships. Saber and Intrepid. They decided to split up its tasks.

[sunnyside]

Now we don't know exaclty what the New Orleans could do. But as DITL writes it up it's certianly replacable by later models in the same size.

[Teaos]

But was it replaced by one ship or many? If it was just replaced by one that indicates high turn over and maybe poor design. If it was many that just shows they are spliting up its duties.