Your Favorite Federation Starship Class

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

My favorite is the refit-Connie. Ah, such a lovely ship there.

[Atekimogus]

Most comfortable: probably; but it's not as if serving on a Sovereign is comparable to crossing the Atlantic on a Bermuda sloop. Judging by Picard's quarters on the E-E vs. his quarters on the E-D, the GCS might have the edge in comfort but not to the point at which the comfort level of a Sov is a negative factor.

That depends. If I am confined to my quarters during a five year voyage (and happen to be the captain of the ship), then by all means the difference is negible. Now regardless of what blueprints one chooses to follow there is just so much more stuff going on on a GCS you just cannot fit into any other class. Now I do not know how the informal protocoll regarding dating is within starfleet but once again, prowling the galaxy for years on end I do find the thought of having a bunch of civilians with me rather entertaining. Kids might be pushing it a bit but no matter, exploring the galaxy within what is basically a small town seems highly appealing to me.

Most advanced: Nope. The Sovereign-class is far and away more advanced. Not through any fault of the GCS, of course, but it's not even a question.

How so? I just don't see it, I am sorry. On the inside she pretty much looks like a redressed galaxy-set (imagine that ) and on the outside.....shoots phasers looking exactly the same, still doesn't fly with warp 10+, still uses the same shields and quantum torpedoes also do not seem to be an unique feature. But for the sake of the argument I give you that for a time she was the most advanced ship as in the newest there was, similar to the voyager or the defiant but other than that, as I said I am not impressed by her.

Most capable: Nope - again, not even close. The Sov, by nature of its "new-ness" and greater technological advancement, is faster; tougher; more powerful in combat; most likely at least as capable sensor-wise; and likely more maneuverable. The GCS might have the edge in research facilities, etc. - but not enough by a long shot to say that it's more capable overall.

Might be true, might not be true. Basically we never had a comparision to other contemporary ships and on her own she repeatedly got her ass handed to her. Once again I am not impressed. Faster...possible, I do not recall the exact maximum speed other than both are flying 9.+ something. Tougher? Don't see it. One ramming vs. one planet crash....seems even to me. More powerful in combat? Quite possible yet still only speculation. No direct comparison to any other starfleet ship and no comparison against ships both classes fought with exeption of borg cubes. Going by that comparision I would give it to the galaxy, first because she survived engagements with them which lastet FAR longer and the damage her phasers did against a cube where exeptional when not adapted. The only edge the SOV seemed to have where the quantum torpedoes but those are not a feature of the class imho, thats just more advanced ammunition.

Well, I suppose it's possible. But so is the Doctor showing up to repair the ship with a sonic screwdriver. There is evidence for a less-than-stellar (no pun intended) reliability record of the GCS in this regard, and no evidence of other classes having the same issues. You can correctly say that this is only because the E-D was the only ship on which the action was focused every week of TNG, and that any other ship might react the same if it were exposed to the continuous dangers that the E-D was; but there is absolutely zero basis for your statement that any other class definitely would react the same.

You are right of course but then I do think this bad image of the class is just because it is more recent in our memory than TOS for example. As I stated in my first post, if one rewatches many of the TOS episodes our beloved E-nil suffers as equally and from far more embarassing afflictions than the GCS. Therefore, as long as noone inuniverse states that the design of the constitutions or GCSs is utter crap, yet always praises them as the height of technology I go with that and treat the weakly dangers as what they are, story devices to produce suspense.

So depending on where you come from you can argue this way or that way which of them has the bigger ******* and is superior but in the end it comes down to personal preference and I would prefer exploring the galaxy with my spaceborn min-village instead of patroling the borders of the neutral zone with a ship half the size. (Ever wondered if giving Picard command of the E-E was a small demotion for loosing the flagship? I mean if he transfered prior to her demise he could have expected to be moved up, instead he ends up with a ship with half the crew compliment, about half to two third as large patroling the butt end of the galaxy...yes, she is brand new and all that...but still.....)

[Graham Kennedy]

I'd go for the Sovereign as well as my favourite. She is the most advanced ship in the fleet, canonically speaking - Geordi says so in First Contact.

I would put the GCS down as second choice, though. Yes she lags somewhat behind the times now... though I've no doubt that refits and such have or will close the gap somewhat. Surely we will see GCS carrying quantum torpedoes and such in future... and the hull has plenty of room for other upgrades. And hey, there's always the 3rd nacelle and phaser lance upgrade for the future!

[Foxfyre]

Mine would have to be the Akira Class, I like the sleek and pratical look of it. That and having 15 torp luanchers and a very large shuttle bay

[Mikey]

How so? I just don't see it, I am sorry. On the inside she pretty much looks like a redressed galaxy-set (imagine that ) and on the outside.....shoots phasers looking exactly the same, still doesn't fly with warp 10+, still uses the same shields and quantum torpedoes also do not seem to be an unique feature. But for the sake of the argument I give you that for a time she was the most advanced ship as in the newest there was, similar to the voyager or the defiant but other than that, as I said I am not impressed by her.

You don't need to be impressed. Even disregarding the non-canon specifications of more advanced types of phasers, the Sov had a lot more. That is, I don't recall the model number of the E-E's phasers being mentioned, but if they were I'd like to hear it. Sov has quantum torpedoes, GCS doesn't. Sov has a warp-capable captain's yacht, GCS doesn't (the existence of the GCS captain's yacht at all is non-canon.) Etc., etc. Don't get defensive; it isn't a knock against the GCS to say that a newer ship is more advanced. In fact, it would be surprising were it to be otherwise, just as the GCS was the most advanced when she was new.

Might be true, might not be true. Basically we never had a comparision to other contemporary ships and on her own she repeatedly got her ass handed to her. Once again I am not impressed. Faster...possible, I do not recall the exact maximum speed other than both are flying 9.+ something. Tougher? Don't see it. One ramming vs. one planet crash....seems even to me. More powerful in combat? Quite possible yet still only speculation. No direct comparison to any other starfleet ship and no comparison against ships both classes fought with exeption of borg cubes. Going by that comparision I would give it to the galaxy, first because she survived engagements with them which lastet FAR longer and the damage her phasers did against a cube where exeptional when not adapted. The only edge the SOV seemed to have where the quantum torpedoes but those are not a feature of the class imho, thats just more advanced ammunition.

Let's see... GCS meets a cube, gets a huge chunk cut out of her like a soil core sample. E-E uses itself to shield another vessel from a cube, spearheads the assault which destroys the cube...

Quantum torpedoes may not be unique to the Sovereign class, but neither are they ubiquitous to Starfleet. Most germane to this discussion is the fact that the Sov has 'em, the GCS doesn't.

As to the comment about getting the E-E being a demotion - nope. The status of the E-E being the cutting edge of what Starfleet has to offer was stated in canon; the ship was named "Enterprise;" and the relegation of the E-E to a makework mission was specifically stated to be the brass' commentary on Picard, not on the ship.

[DarkMoineau]

What is my favorite ship?

It's an hard question ^^. Time of Peace or Time of War?

If it's during a time of peace, I choose the Galaxy because it's a true Space City, and for a long travel, it's important to have a comfortable ship.
But in time of War, the Galaxy Mark II is a great ship (and a gorgeous ship if we changes the ammo for quantum torpedo ^^) but the Sov is still the more powerful and faster ship: the DITL is clear, the Sov Mark I & II have greater firepower, shields (Mk2), armor and they are faster and more maneuverable than any other Galaxy ship.

Well, because we aren't always in war, I choose the Galaxy Mark II as my favorite ship, but the Sovereign is second.

[Atekimogus]

You don't need to be impressed. Even disregarding the non-canon specifications of more advanced types of phasers, the Sov had a lot more. That is, I don't recall the model number of the E-E's phasers being mentioned, but if they were I'd like to hear it.

Well if we go strictly canonical we never hear the model number of the E-E phasers and it is never stated that they are particularily more powerful or more advanced than other phasers. They look exactly like other phasers so "strictly" canonical we see phaserstripes which are about half the size and length of the GCS' phasers and thats it. For them to be more powerful even considering the much reduced calibre they must have had a real breakthrough in phaser-tech.

Don't get defensive; it isn't a knock against the GCS to say that a newer ship is more advanced. In fact, it would be surprising were it to be otherwise, just as the GCS was the most advanced when she was new.

Yea, I realise I defend my favourite ship a bit to passionatly but I just don't view the sov as a real successor to the GCS. As far as ship classes go I always viewed her as a step beneath the GCS, more advanced and newer, yet still less capable mainly due to just being a more advanced excelsior successor. Obviously those two classes perform (also tacitcal) different roles otherwise they would have stopped producing GCS, which seems not to be the case.

And to be honest, the GCS isn't OLD inuniverse by any means. That is a class with about 7 -10 years of active service (at the time of the E-E launch) given her size and (non-canonical) estimated life-time of 100+ years the class probably just worked out her jinks. Considering that I remember at least one warp core upgrade during this relativly short time and numerous other enhancements we saw I would imagine that the class remains the most prestigous one for years to come.

Let's see... GCS meets a cube, gets a huge chunk cut out of her like a soil core sample. E-E uses itself to shield another vessel from a cube, spearheads the assault which destroys the cube...

Let's see, GCS meets a cube and blasts huge junks out of it before they adapted and withstands severel seconds of concentrated fire before their shields give up. E-E arrives late into battle were the cube already suffered heavy damage, shields a ship from two salvoes and gets ignored, fires phasers with no notacible effect and brings the cube down with the help of newer ammunition and the help of 10+ ships.

It really is just a matter of how you like to spin the tale .

Quantum torpedoes may not be unique to the Sovereign class, but neither are they ubiquitous to Starfleet. Most germane to this discussion is the fact that the Sov has 'em, the GCS doesn't.

I give you that. Altough every other ship and her grandmother has them now, we actually never see a GCS fire one during the dominion war. Still, since the E-E also carries normal photons maybe they are just usefull against certain targets, so the tactical advantage might not be as great overall as one could think.

As to the comment about getting the E-E being a demotion - nope. The status of the E-E being the cutting edge of what Starfleet has to offer was stated in canon; the ship was named "Enterprise;" and the relegation of the E-E to a makework mission was specifically stated to be the brass' commentary on Picard, not on the ship.

I don't know...every other captain of the hero-ships get's promoted to admirality after their five to seven year tour on their ships. (Kirk and Janeway). The E-E being the cutting edge was true for First Contact, but then what was Geordi supposed to say? The engineer not loving his ship? Inconceivable . From Picards perspective...instead of being promoted to admiral or the diplomatic corps he ends up once again as ship-captain on a much smaller ship with a smaller crew (read dimnished responsibility) which is arguable designed to perform in a combat role first and explorer second and more suited to Sisko-type captains. True, she is cutting edge due to being the newest addition.....but seven years later he is still stuck on her.... .

Methinks that is the elegant Starfleet way of showing one of their more influencal, and not easily demoted, captains the middle-finger for loosing their flagship.

[Mikey]

One could easily say that Picard's failure to enter the admiralty was due to his decision, based partly on Kirk's warning to that effect. Whatever.

Well if we go strictly canonical we never hear the model number of the E-E phasers and it is never stated that they are particularily more powerful or more advanced than other phasers. They look exactly like other phasers so "strictly" canonical we see phaserstripes which are about half the size and length of the GCS' phasers and thats it. For them to be more powerful even considering the much reduced calibre they must have had a real breakthrough in phaser-tech.

Yep. Basically, what I mentioned above. However, it still stands that the Sov had more - a lot more - and they were oriented in a more tactically-minded fashion. And the difference in number and placement of torp launchers - even aside from the presence of QT's - is night-and-day.

Yea, I realise I defend my favourite ship a bit to passionatly but I just don't view the sov as a real successor to the GCS.

I don't either, and I never said it was. That's like asking if a nuclear supercarrier is a replacement for a WWII-era hospital ship. They are built for different things. It seems pretty obvious that the Sov is primarily a warship, and is better at conducting war; while the GCS is primarily a vessel of exploration; and is better at conducting such operations.

As far as ship classes go I always viewed her as a step beneath the GCS, more advanced and newer, yet still less capable mainly due to just being a more advanced excelsior successor.

The Sov certainly isn't a step below the GCS, either, for the same reasons. Like I said, for tactical ability; toughness; technological advancement; etc.; the Sov wins easily. For the ability to go away for the better part of a decade, find stuff, and explore stuff, the GCS wins.

[Mikey]

BTW, The Sov doesn't seem at all to be a successor to the Excelsior. The Excelsior - beautiful darling that it is - was designed to be both a transwarp testbed and successor to the Connie. That entails a multi-role explorer cruiser, like the Connie before her and the Ambassador and GCS after her.

[Reliant121]

The Sov certainly isn't a step below the GCS, either, for the same reasons. Like I said, for tactical ability; toughness; technological advancement; etc.; the Sov wins easily. For the ability to go away for the better part of a decade, find stuff, and explore stuff, the GCS wins.

Although, I don't think the GCS is massively more capable at long range stuff than the Sov. But that is entirely personal opinion.

[Mikey]

Mebbe not of itself; but it's certainly got the amenities to keep a crew at optimum efficiency for a longer period of time.

[JudgeKing]

For the whole Galaxy/Sovereign thing, I found this quite interesting.

Full post here

The Galaxy class was originally intended as a proof of concept prototype for several new technologies, but ambitious designers at Utopia Planitia proposed Starfleet to replace both the by now obsolete Ambassador and Excelsior classes with a production model of the Galaxy.

It's known for;
- Having one of the shortest production runs in the history of Starfleet (effectively canceled before the first was even finished)
- Having the by far longest development and construction time of any class (20 years between design and production model)
- Being the largest and most expensive ship to build in the history of the Federation (up until 2381 at least)
- Having a replacement class start being designed less than a year after the first production model was launched

The prototype, USS Galaxy, was laid down in 2343 but wasn't ready for launch until 2357. It took another six years and the best and brightest in Starfleet (!) to iron out the bugs in the design and the first production models, the Enterprise-D and Yamato, weren't launched until 2363. The Enterprise-D was thus already 20 years out of date on the day it launched.

12 were originally ordered, with 6 of them as frames laid out for future production, but production was cancelled even before the Enterprise-D was launched due to the obsolescence of the production design and high expense of their construction. Only the first six which were almost finished were completed while the six frames were mothballed, and had to undergo continuous refits to bring them up to modern specs.

The Galaxy design was reworked and modernized while still designed to use the same existing stockpile of Galaxy parts, and after the new streamlined prototype, USS Nebula, proved successful Starfleet ordered several of the new class explorers, aiming to finally replace the aging Miranda and Constellation classes instead.

With the failure of the Galaxy to deliver what Starfleet had hoped and the reworked Nebula being primarily designed for long range exploration, a team of engineers began designing a new ship at the San Francisco Fleet Yards - a class intended to replace both the Galaxy *and* the remaining Ambassadors and Excelsiors, which the Galaxy had failed to do. The work on the design began in early 2364 (less than a year after 1701-D launched!), and the keel for the prototype USS Sovereign was laid down in mid-2365.

With Starfleet's experiences from the Borg during the early design phase the design was augmented both in 2365 and 2366 to dramatically augment the Sovereign's offensive and defensive capabilities, and the other 6 Galaxy frames were ordered to be rushed to completion as a stop-gap after the massive losses at Wolf 359. Many of them were completed using Nebula parts and some missing up to 60% of their internal structure - but they were spaceworthy and although the design was obsolete they were still more advanced than most of the rest of the aging Starfleet.

Starfleet's thirst for a rapid renewal of the fleet made them give approval for six additinal spaceframes to be built parallel to the Sovereign herself, but ordered them left at a point where they could still be scrapped and recycled as with the recent failure of the Galaxy to match expectations Starfleet wanted to test the design before committing to it.

The USS Sovereign launched in 2370, and her space trials went so well that Starfleet put the six spaceframes on rush to completion with another twenty new frames laid down. A number of changes were however made, including changing the nacelles to a new variant which didn't damage subspace. Still, by canon, Starfleet only ever had a total of 13 Galaxy class starships. No new ships were ordered after the USS Sovereign was launched and proved she not only far outclassed the Galaxy but was also both much faster and cheaper to build.

The six prepared spaceframes were quickly completed, with the expected first production model being called the USS Honorius until the destruction of the Enterprise in 2371, just months before the scheduled launch of the ship. She was renamed and the Enterprise-E thus became the first production model when she launched in 2372, but issues during the Enterprise shakedown delayed her sister ships and the Bozeman-A, which should have been completed only days after the Enterprise, launched six months later. By the time the Borg attacked Sector 001, those were the only two Sovereigns in service and both participated in the battle which instantly proved the design's worth.

Shortly after the battle the Destiny, Atlas, Musashi and Gibraltar were completed, and Sovereign herself finished her refit to the production model, but with these seven being the only ships capable of holding their own against the Borg they were kept out of the raging Dominion War and instead sent to deal with brush fires along the other borders.

The Federation didn't see the real influx of Sovereigns until after the Dominion War, but by 2379 at least the originally ordered 27 (1 + 6 + 20) were in service with even more of them being built at both the San Francisco, Antares and Utopia Planitia yards.

[Mikey]

Certainly interesting, but with little canon basis I suspect.

[Foxfyre]

However does make some interesting points. The Galaxy seemed to have several problems earily on in its production run.

[BigJKU316]

BTW, The Sov doesn't seem at all to be a successor to the Excelsior. The Excelsior - beautiful darling that it is - was designed to be both a transwarp testbed and successor to the Connie. That entails a multi-role explorer cruiser, like the Connie before her and the Ambassador and GCS after her.

I like to think of the Sov as being the answer to what I would call mission creep for Starfleet. Simply put EVERYTHING about the GCS design and concept was flawed.

1. There is nothing wrong with make a big ship. There is nothing wrong with making a very large exploration ship. There is nothing wrong with making a very large combat ship. There is a problem with making one ship that is both your strongest ship and your main long-range explorer. The two missions are not consistent with one another. I mean how much exploring did the Ent-D really get done in between responding to all the crisis of the week? I would venture almost none. There should be two different ships. One you can afford to not have around for 5 years while it goes exploring and one for defense. If you can't afford both at then you have no business building a dual-purpose ship that big.

2. The ship suffers as an explorer because of all the weapons on it and the fact that it is the best armed ship in the fleet when it comes out. They can't afford to send the thing all that far away but....

3. If you need those weapons to defend the Federation then everything on there not related to that mission is wasted space. Not to mention the space for families. The ship could be half the size if you got rid of all the non-essential crap and just created a warship.

4. If you just built some warships then you could build a fleet of dedicated explorers that could you know...explore. Both missions get done and get done better by doing it this way.



I think the Sovereign is a ship that starts to redress this problem. It is designed to do what it does well. It can still probably do exploration if you need it to but for once its a properly armed and sized ship. Hell, you could even build a cheaper and less well armed version to send out exploring and put the families on it again if you wanted.