Size of various fleets in ENT era

[Hando]

How big where the various fleets (Earth, Vulcan, Andorian, Tellarite Romulan, and/or Klingon) in 2155?

I would welcome any help in determining the military power of the various nations on the eve of the Earth-Romulan War.

Here is what we know:
Vulcan 4 D'Kyr cruisers and 8 light support craft are able to conquer Andoria - or more likely, use something like surrender or we will start planetary bombardment.
Vulcan 4 D'Kyr cruisers and 8 light support craft are slightly more powerful than 1 NX starship, 4 Andorian warships and 2 Andorian cruisers.
I would expect the Andorian and Vulcan fleets to be roughly equal in power. Tellarite only 80-85%.
Vulcan, Andoria and Tellar were able to gather 128 ships, 23 of them Vulcan.
During the War, Romulans lost half of a fleet at Haakona.
The Battle of Cheron started with 81 Romulan ships and 24 Earth ships (1 NX, 3 Daedalus, the rest probably Delta/Emmette/Neptune class or ?DY-500).
Both forces experienced 50% losses, so I would equal 40 Romulan ships with 18 Earth ships.
The Romulans considered the loss of 40 ships as insignificant, although the main Coalition Forces were still out there.
In the 3rd phase a Vulcan-Andorian-Tellarite task force of some 30 ships arrived.
So with a loss of 40 ships, the Romulans still considered the battle a victory, but a loss of 80 ships forced them to agree to a ceasefire and ultimately to a peace agreement.

So what can be determined from this? Also if you know any additional facts, like something from the Mirror Universe, just post it.

[T'Girl]

Hando wrote:

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The Battle of Cheron started with 81 Romulan ships and 24 Earth ships (1 NX, 3 Daedalus, the rest probably Delta/Emmette/Neptune class or ?DY-500).

Where are you getting this?

[Timo]

The recent ENT novels have plenty of descriptions of Romulan War battles, but typically they dare not mention any ship types other than NX and Daedalus. As far as I know, they have not invented a single ship type of their own yet.

Typically, a battle is described in terms of listing a lot of starship names. There are about thirty names in the novels so far that are more or less directly attributed to the Daedalus class, which the novels treat as the mass-produced salvation of Earth in this war, and a dozen "floaters" that may belong to other classes.

So, that gives us statistics like the ones quoted above. Doesn't mean these would necessarily be consistent with what we see on screen.

Timo Saloniemi

[Hando]

T'Girl wrote:

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Where are you getting this?

^What Timo said.

I have taken it from "To Brave the Storm". The numbers were directly stated there. And here I am paraphrasing the 20 ships were described as older. This, along with the fact that Archer had to beg and call on favors to assemble this task force would indicate what type of ships they are.
It is possible that there could have been some Intrepids, but I doubt it. And the Warp Delta and DY-500 were the other other fight classes mentioned in the current continuity.
I suppose it is possible that ships from Star Trek Legacy (like the Strider, Discovery, ... classes) were involved, but I did not want to open that can of worms.


If nobody wants to try, here are my estimates (+/-5) before the war :

Romulan Star Navy size: 310 vessels
Vulcan Defense Command size: 100 vessels
Andorian Imperial Guard size: 160 vessels
Tellarite Stellar Navy size: 120 vessels
Klingon Imperial Navy size: 205 vessels

[King Daniel]

The forthcoming book, Federation: The First 150 Years, looks like it's going to feature it's own version of the Romulan War.

[Timo]

At least it seems to have pretty pictures relating to that war. I wonder if there's going to be any extensive textual fiction there, beyond these make-believe minutiae, posters and other fairly limited documents?

There is something to be said for the ENT and ENT novel take on the "telepresence war", although it's a somewhat timid take from the general dramatic point of view, chiefly going where canon has gone before. It still leaves unsolved a few things about "Balance of Terror", such as why our heroes were so ignorant of the conflict if it really was that big and important an event. Perhaps the ignorance would be best explained if the fleets involved did not really number in the hundreds - but if instead just a few individual ships clashed in a quickly forgotten "bush war" of some sort?

Timo Saloniemi

[T'Girl]

Timo wrote:

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... if instead just a few individual ships clashed in a quickly forgotten "bush war" of some sort

]The events of Balance of Terror have alway lead me to believe that the war was fairly large, or even huge. A hundred years later the neutral zone is still being monitored, I feel (personal opinion) that if the "Earth/Romulan" war was a short lived orgy of violence culminating in a treaty (but not a surrender), we would not still have a monitored zone, not even one that was consider a low priority back water assignment.

A multiple year, extremely high casualty war would have a more likely chance of creating a long term effect upon a later society. So instead of the Battle of Gettysburg in a small area with tens of thousands of casualties over three days -- a war more like the Second World War that would span hundreds of star systems and consume life by the tens (or hundreds) of millions on all sides.

A war that would psychologically mark later generations, who would insist on still maintaining a North/South Korea DMZ like wall in space.

KingDaniel wrote:

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The forthcoming book, Federation: The First 150 Years, looks like it's going to feature it's own version of the Romulan War.

It will be entertaining to read a different interpretation of the Romulan War from the the one in the resent novels. Contrast the two and see which is "better."

Of the all the various versions of the war, I personally favor the one in the Starfleet Museum website.

[Timo]

A war that would psychologically mark later generations, who would insist on still maintaining a North/South Korea DMZ like wall in space.

But the thing is, only the Stileses are "marked". The others barely remember who the Romulans are - and there isn't a single specific reference to how costly or widespread that old war might have been. It takes Stiles and Spock combined to drive home the concept that the Romulans might not calm down if their attack was left unavenged; only these two seem to know how Romulans act in war, and even then, Spock is explicitly only speculating.

And the real enemies of the UFP supposedly aren't stopped by chains of outposts: Klingons roam freely. That Romulans don't is more a sign of current weakness than of past infamy - and that the UFP would build the outpost chain in the first place is a sign of similar weakness in the past as well.

Would any soldier today need a refresher course in history like that before his troopship or plane hit Incheon and his unit moved to the Korean DMZ? The assignment would be (almost) unique but also famous, whereas the Romulan NZ doesn't appear to be the latter.

On the other hand, I could see an introductory speech being given to the troops regardless of need; Kirk could have been prepared to do the standard indoctrination speech before starting his patrol assignment, and now had Spock give a truncated version en route to an active crisis anyway.

Timo Saloniemi

[Hando]

Well, it depends if the book will fulfill its role or if it is just some another attempt to get our money. Will it actually address the war in a new way, or will it just fill out some holes that were created by the ENT novels, or just inform us how great Archer was and so on? Other examples are the Disastrous First Contact with the Klingons and the Axanar (?)conflict.

Timo, are your issues with the information on the Earth/Romulan War in "The Balance of Terror" the big 3/4 (atomics, impulse, cloaking device, no face-to-face)? As those can be explained - probably with better arguments than those already used.

I have my issues with the War in the novels: that, basically nothing happens, something happens off-screen, something happens and the end. This is because the last 2 books had to be joined into 1, and I think that the authors left out passages/chapters they were not supposed to and left many unimportant in.


PS. The numbers I posted earlier are total numbers of vessels not only the state-of-the-art cruisers.

[Timo]

(atomics, impulse, cloaking device, no face-to-face)

I have no problem with "no face-to-face": it's a cool scifi way to fight wars. "Atomic weapons" is a scifi term as well, with no real-world meaning in the 21st century and thus perhaps not in the 23rd one, either. But I do think the lack of experience with invisibility devices in "Balance of Terror" is just bad writing from the very start, and not really a "continuity" issue but rather a "believability" one.

The big issue I have is the one I opened up with: that the war is a forgotten one in this episode and basically in all others as well (except of course by the Romulans themselves), which suggests it was a forgettable one - but the novels assume the opposite.

Well, it depends if the book will fulfill its role or if it is just some another attempt to get our money.

I'd be happier with a book that only has pretty pictures than with one that tries to set Trek pseudohistory in stone...

Timo Saloniemi

[Hando]

^Well, you are right about the cloaking device. The easiest answer would be that there was no ENT-era Cloaking device prior to the Temporal Cold War. (Please don't loook at me like that. )
If it were just Romulans, I could understand that people forgot
about them (only Archer saw it and his report got lost, let's not forget the Borg , who too were ignored...)
But there were the Xyrillians and Sulban too. Well something could have happened to them.

Timo wrote:

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The big issue I have is the one I opened up with: that the war is a forgotten one in this episode and basically in all others as well (except of course by the Romulans themselves), which suggests it was a forgettable one - but the novels assume the opposite.

Yes, Spock's refresh is kind of strange. But if the Federation is trying to be a peaceful society, they may be trying to forget any wars (the Romulan one included). Also, if John Gill is the main author of histories, I wouldn't be surprised if the people of the future were so confused about the past. That man got so many things wrong.

Timo wrote:

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I'd be happier with a book that only has pretty pictures than with one that tries to set Trek pseudohistory in stone...

That is also true. I still remember the Star Charts. And I would not be pleased if the book were to bring nuTrek and Prime closer (such as showing the Kelvin ).

[King Daniel]

In an alternate reality, the Romulan war was canonized as this: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/34635

Cloak-equipped Romulan drone ships fighting United Earth Stellar Navy fighters in Earth orbit for a week in October 2159, as Tiberius Chase and Skon fly the stolen warp 7 prototype USS Spartan toward Romulus, with an old nuclear weapon (stolen from Terra Prime) on board.

As for Star Trek: Enterprise's continuity, they simply ignored Spock's little mission broadcast from "Balance of Terror". No use trying to work around it. It's simply been dumped with James R. Kirk, "Time Warp" drive, lasers, "Bill" Riker and lithium crystals in the bits of Trek that don't count anymore.

[Timo]

Also, if John Gill is the main author of histories, I wouldn't be surprised if the people of the future were so confused about the past.

It might be that most of the fuzzily remembered wars (mainly in TNG and DS9) are forgotten because they were forgettable - but the Romulan War was such a huge deal that the Federation had to send out thousands of Men in Black to erase the memory of Vulcan-looking people having been the enemy. Back when so few people from the major worlds were starfaring (for various reasons - Earthlings too primitive, Vulcans too dogmatic, Andorians perhaps too militaristic, etc.), this might even have been almost practicable...

Timo Saloniemi

[V]

I recall some mention during the Romulan Drone Ship trilogy in season 4, that after the Vulcan Reformation, T'Pau had to drastically cut back on military funding, thus their fleet went through a reduction in force, and wasn't able to lend as much help (this would also begin to explain why Vulcan would stop being the nanny-state superpower, and more roughly on-par with Earth, the Andorians, and the Tellarites).

[Timo]

Quite so. This is from "United":

T'Pol: "Minister T'Pau is dispatching 23 vessels."
Archer: "That's all?"
T'Pol: "The High Command has been disbanded. Many of our ships no longer have full crew compliments."
Archer: "T'Pau could have picked a better time to clean house."

So, not necessarily funding cutbacks, but rather good old-fashioned purges.

The ships would still be there, waiting for new and politically palatable crews. So, in the medium and long term, the unavailability of ships probably wouldn't dictate T'Pau's politics. Rather, T'Pau's politics would be the reason for Vulcans not using the ships imperialistically any more.

Timo Saloniemi