Hey, all, Here's a few questions I'm guessing someone can answer... 1.- Is there a website that might contain a complete listing of all known 'Classes' of Starships? 2.- Can 'Classes' be duplicated across ship classification lines? Can a *Boink*-Class of Tug also be a *Boink*-Class of Star Fleet Starship? 3.- In WW-II there were "Rules" for naming Naval ships,... Battleships from States, Oilers from Rivers, etc. Does that convention exist in Star Fleet? I can't really detect a pattern. Yeah, I know,... odd questions from someone who should know all this stuff,... (I'm a designer, dammit, not a namer)... until now that is. And speaking of Classes,... my Ambassador ship project is starting to move back up to the front burner. Andrew-
Yeah, YOU'RE asking US?! When in doubt, ask the fans (I wish Rick & Brannon had done that!) Ex Astris has a starships listed by class: http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/ Specifically here: http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/starship_database.htm And don't forget the ST Encyclopedia that some guy around here illustrated (though it may not be complete).
Thank you both,... these will do nicely. I do intend to create a new class Starship but didn't want to duplicate any names. Andrew-
Other than runabouts in DS9 being named after rivers there does not seem to be any rhyme or reason to the naming scheme of Starfleet ships in onscreen Trek. Naming conventions in a Federation of a 150 worlds would be ridiculous though. Politician #1: "Let's name the ship the James T. Kirk." Politician #2: "No way! We already have too many ships named after humans! We need to name it after a Pakled." Politician #1: "But no Pakled has ever saved the Federation!" Politician #2: "But maybe more Pakleds would join Starfleet if we named ships after them you racist bigot!" Thus begins the downfall of the Federation.
I generally have given up trying to come up with unique names for ships in the Star Trek setting. Between the canon stuff and the Fanon stuff, it's all been done.
1 - As Forbin said, Ex Astris Scientia is a good source. Memory Alpha also has a listing of classes/types: http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Category:Federation_starship_classes or here: http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Federation_starship_classes The ones listed as "type" instead of "class" are ones that don't have an official class name, and are being called by the first one we've seen. 2 - I don't know why class names *can't* be duplicated, but as far as we've seen on-screen, they haven't. 3 - Yeah, no rules for naming as far as we can tell either.
I don't understand this question. Can a class name be repeated? Say, if they designed and built a brand-new USS Essex CVN, would it be permissible to call it Essex-class, even though there is already a historical Essex-class CV? I would say sure. I'm pretty sure that there's never been any conventional rules for naming Starfleet ships, other than the admiralty sticking their hands at random into the grab-bag of Earth history. "USS... Iosif Stalin? That's not going to be popular." "The bag has spoken!"