Just how big is this ship? Why is it only crewed by 40 people? Sources conflict on these answers, so I'd love to hear what some of you have come up with.
Counting the window rows seems the only way to establish the size of this vessel. All other scaling features are arbitrary, really: we have no idea whether the lifepods would be designed to hold one man or thirty, or whether the bridge is supposed to accommodate two dozen officers or just two people. The window row count does support the idea that the ship would only be about 170 meters long, that is, Defiant-sized. She's admittedly taller, but the broad forward hull doesn't extend all the way to the stern, reducing habitable volume somewhat. There could still be room for hundreds in there, but it's not implausible that all the machinery would take up enough room to squeeze out everybody but forty. Although I think something like 80-120 is the more realistic crew size, with the quoted 40 a special case for the USS da Vinci where extra space is taken by the unique engineering arrangements. I don't think other Saber class ships have featured in novels much, and canon doesn't give us any specs; the DS9 Tech Manual in turn is a hopelessly confused mess as regards the ship specs section at the end, and should be disregarded. The ship IMO is a corvette of some sort, and the factual successor to the Miranda class, even if said older class is a frigate or somesuch - the same way modern "small" cars are the factual successors of yesterday's "medium" cars. The standards have changed, is all. Timo Saloniemi
I believe Alex Jaeger had said that the ship was actually as large as a Galaxy class starship's saucer. I'm also not sure that there is any canon information whatsoever about its crew size.
I agree with Timo. The Saber appears similarly as broad as the Defiant (although the Defiant size is a whole 'nother argument). Then there's the Saber underslung hull that the Defiant doesn't have, so add that. But generally, yeah, I'd consider the Saber roughly similar to Defiant. I've seen no indication that a Saber is any type of capital ship, nothing comparable to a Nebula or Ambassador or Galaxy class. So I'd accept a smaller vessel, Defiant sized. Just my two cents.
I've seen specs out there that says it should be a bigger ship, but that just doesn't sit well with me. I always peg the Sabre-Class as being a little larger than a Defiant-Class, with a crew of around 40. It is one of my favourite designs, so anytime I use it, I make it fit my preference. But each to their own.
I make 8 or 9 decks. I drew an MSD for one a while back using Ex Astris Scienta as my guide It's about 10 decks high, with 8 or 9 habitable, the rest made up of structural stuff and equipment: http://lcarsgfx.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/sabre-rattling/
Comparing the Saber to ocean going vessels, I think that the Saber is similar to a Coast Guard cutter.
It's a bit difficult to do good comparisons between real-world and Starfleet "mission classes" or designations, because unfortunately all starships are seen performing general and generic missions. The Saber isn't doing anything "coastal", she's flying along the bigger ships in generic fleet formations and firing the same guns at the same targets with the same results... It would be fun to see differently shaped and sized starships actually have different types of performance, and consequently different types of mission. See the "specialized designs" thread on this forum... But we basically never get to see that in the episodes and movies. Timo Saloniemi
Didn't someone compute the volume of this class and determine it's essentially "larger" than the Constution-refit?
The good old volumetrics page at ST-v-SW.Net assumes 172m length for the Saber, giving her 240,000 cubic meters vs. the 211,000 of the refitted Constitution. Then again, some of that volume is in machinery: the warp engines of the 24th century ship are so much thicker than those of the 23rd century hero vessel that this alone already accounts for the difference. Admittedly, though, the Saber is of a boxier construct: it must be much easier to make use of those interiors than of the narrow neck of the Constitution! Timo Saloniemi