Starfleet size

[Mikey]

I think that's the logic behind every post I've written.

[Deepcrush]

Thats cool, for me its a family motto!

[Jordanis]

Yep, that's the thing the UFP seems always to forget alright.

[Deepcrush]

They should just give me one year as the head of Starfleet! I could do some great work!

[Duskofdead]

Starfleet numbers

Ok this is something I have been wanting to be covered for awhile now.

I suppose generally this ties into the total size of Starfleet. Which Graham covered here http://www.ditl.org/index.php?daybody=/ ... cle.php?14

But what I want to cover is the individual costs of each starship.

Just how much does it take to build field and maintain a starship?

This was brought on by Rocheys and others comments on how if they were in charge they would slap a few feet of extra armor on ships and quadruple the thickness of bulk heads and have multiple warp cores

But to do that would take a lot more resources and labor vastly reducing the amount of ships fielded.

Snipped.


I always thought of it very much like Master of Orion III portrayed it. For those of you who didn't play it (or vastly preferred MOOII and only touched III for a few minutes before uninstalling it), it had a fairly detailed freestyle ship design setup. Unlike games like Sword of the Stars where hulls had preset weapon emplacements and you just got to choose what color laser to put there, you could pretty much free design your ship from the bottom up. As an example: (I am just making up the numbers since I don't have the game open in front of me)

Add shields (level IV), production cost 40 AU.
Add dotomite fuel cell engines (warp), production cost 90 AU.
Add 4 herculear warhead launchers with 6 light rounds each, cost 220 AU.

then:
Add heavy hull armor, cost 500 AU.

The game let you add heavy armor that made the ship extremely tough once shields were down, but in many cases (especially for larger ships and the heaviest levels of armor) you were practically talking about doubling the cost, or making it so production intensive that you could make two or three ships WITHOUT the armor using the same resources.

So, Starfleet I think has been economically accurate in the sense that ablative armor is outfitted on its heaviest combat battleships (Sovereign, Prometheus, Defiant) meant to pack a big punch, while the vast majority of ships have the typical level of hull protection. This gives you the optimal mix of keeping high numbers while still having a few ships that "can really take a beating" to be your front line combat vessels, I think.

Granted we have no idea what materials are used in Star Trek hull armor or how much they "cost" or how long a process is involved in installing it, but clearly it's an expensive or time intensive procedure since they don't routinely do it for all starship designs.

[Tsukiyumi]

That sounds about correct to me. The idea that the technology wasn't available during the pre-TNG era seems to strain credulity; we have ablative armor now, and I find it hard to believe that the concept was lost by that time-period. It must be a case of logistics outweighing superior designs (like the US Seawolf-class subs - though they only ended up slightly more expensive than the much crappier Virginia-class)

[Mikey]

To play devil's advocate, just because we have it NOW doesn't mean it would be effective in the future. Example; medieval Europe had extensive body armor - a "maximilian" style suit could stand up to the primitive arquebus in use at the time. Does that mean that they had the same technology as what goes into a modern Dragonskin vest?

In other words, OUR ablative armor would be insignifcant as anythign more than structural material against pre-TOS era weaponry - until the materila technology OF THAT ERA caught up.

[mlsnoopy]

ablative armor is outfitted on its heaviest combat battleships (Sovereign, Prometheus, Defiant)

Or is it just a new development and its fitted on their newes ships.

[Duskofdead]

ablative armor is outfitted on its heaviest combat battleships (Sovereign, Prometheus, Defiant)

Or is it just a new development and its fitted on their newes ships.

Possible, but my point just is that you can't have every single asset in your military be outfitted with the absolute best of everything, unless you can get by with a tiny military. It's nice to fantasize that "If I were in charge of the Federation, even my weakest scoutship would have ablative armor, type XII phasers, Defiant style pulse phaser cannons, quantum torpedoes and shield strength double a Galaxy class!" but the resources involved in creating such a fleet would restrict your numbers tremendously, I imagine. There must be some resource drawback to packing huge firepower onto a starship or else there would be no reason to not pack huge firepower on every starship created. My "guess" would be (if Trek were real life) it would cost about as much to make a single Defiant class ship as let's say a non-Lakota upgrade Excelsior or two or three Intrepid class ships, due to the heavy armament and ablative armoring. And in virtually every respect except for straight firepower, Intrepids and Excelsiors are incredibly more capable ships than Defiants-- better research, living accomodations, evacuation capacity, longer durability out in space without base support, and at least in the case of the Intrepid (not sure about Excelsior) better speed. So yes you'd want to pump out some Defiants and Sovereigns but for every one of those you'd want to make say 10 Intrepids and 5 Nebulas. Keep a balance between numbers, capability and having a small "shock" force for frontline activity.

[mlsnoopy]

[/quote]Possible, but my point just is that you can't have every single asset in your military be outfitted with the absolute best of everything

When the best becomes easly produced, you can. In Endgame a shuttle was equiped with ablative armor generator. Type 10 was the standart weapon, photon torpedos.

There must be some resource drawback to packing huge firepower onto a starship or else there would be no reason to not pack huge firepower on every starship created

Maybe their is not enough power avalible to have as many weapons as possible.

a small "shock" force for frontline activity

And for that you use every ship you have, from a Saber to a Sovereign.

[Duskofdead]

That's twenty some years in the future. Not only had the ablative armor technology been simplified by then (to the point where a shuttle could carry it and it could be easily transferred and installed on a larger ship) but likely weapons technology had advanced to the point where it was a necessary defense system. (It's hard to imagine it being on a shuttle because of the dire need for shuttles to survive extra heavy combat situations left and right, unless it was considered a basic defensive system like shields by that point.) And in that future timeline likely the very newest, strongest ships have some NEW cutting edge technology on them which is still too new, rare, and expensive to routinely outfit on every ship.

That's the way it goes, usually. I still stand by my point that not every ship rolling off the yards can have the best weapons and ablative armor. My guess is that even if it's not a cost issue, it would increase the production times of ships and decrease the size of the fleet by an unacceptable margin. Power is definitely an issue as well, if you "could" put Defiant phaser cannons on a shuttle (let's just assume they'd fit) my guess is they either wouldn't fire or would fire once every 4 minutes because of the power drain/requirements.

Starfleet's philosophy when it comes to defensive systems (and most everyone else as well) seems to be that it is preferrable to be able to lay down constant fire (even if each individual "shot" is weaker than it could potentially be) rather than to have enormous big one-shot weapons. This is why instead of going the deflector burst route (like in Best of Both Worlds) they went the opposite direction towards Defiant esque weapons (lots of quick firing instead of one big powerful weapon.) On the larger ships arrays seem to fill both roles because they can fire quick, weaker powered bursts (seen many times in Voyager for example) or higher powered single blasts (seen many times in TNG with the Ent-D disabling ships with single shots.)

[Tsukiyumi]

The problem with the "multiple weaker shots" strategy against the Borg is that it would give them more time to adapt. Of course, if your big one-shot uber weapon fails, you probably wont get a second shot. I thought the virus approach was the most sensible strategy the Feds ever contemplated against the Borg.

[Duskofdead]

The problem with the "multiple weaker shots" strategy against the Borg is that it would give them more time to adapt. Of course, if your big one-shot uber weapon fails, you probably wont get a second shot. I thought the virus approach was the most sensible strategy the Feds ever contemplated against the Borg.

My idea of what would have been better against the Borg (and I know it's pipedreaming) would be a ship that had multiple different weapon systems integrated to work simultaneously. Basically picture a ship that would fire phaser beams, disruptor pulses, quantum torpedoes and plasma torpedoes and Cardassian compression waves in random orders. In "Dark Frontier" we saw that rather than "being immune to all weapons at all times" (which of course is impossible) the Borg instead adapt their single defensive field system to optimally repel whatever particular weapon type is being used against them. (Apparently no great diverse armada of various races has ever come together to fight the Borg, but that's not necessarily a big surprise either.) Instead of focusing on ever more powerful single weapon types or "upgrading" phasers and torpedoes, using weapons which would each require very different adjustments to Borg shields to effectively absorb would seem to be better.

[Tsukiyumi]

That is a very logical, astute, and awesome conclusion, Dusk.

An alliance of races with different tech would then be the most logical approach to defeating the Borg (a Dominion/Voth/Krenim/AQ alliance would be a serious force, for sure).

[Duskofdead]

That is a very logical, astute, and awesome conclusion, Dusk.

An alliance of races with different tech would then be the most logical approach to defeating the Borg (a Dominion/Voth/Krenim/AQ alliance would be a serious force, for sure).

That was why I wished they had followed up more on the statement in Best of Both Worlds that the Klingons were sending warships. It would have been interesting if they had followed it up with a passing statement later that the Klingon ships, arriving late to the battle, had initially been able to do some real damage to the cube before it adjusted.