Nebula Bonchune vs Sutherland variants

[Richard Baker]

My problem with the Batch Numbering System is that it becomes unwieldy with a large number of different ships produced. The 1700 series assumes 100 ships of that class, if production was only 12 then you have a bunch of unused numbers. Same thing goes if it is based on what shipyard creates the vessels- after 100 you are stuck again or have a new number assigned.
The numbers we have seen are just all over the place- I tend to think they are generated by some bureaucratic process and have little to do with the type of ship, where it was produced or when. Some ships take longer to build, some shipyards are bigger and more productive and while some ships may be created in vast numbers others may be limited runs due to specialty. Trying to figure out which ship came before the other one by registry number gets you nowhere since the show/movie creators were not following a specific pattern themselves.

 

[CharlieZardoz]

I think the batch system Dukat mentions is based more on ship type rather than registry. For example in the 70,000's you had Nebula's Galaxy's Danube class Runabout's etc. all built at the same time in various dockyards perhaps an order for several hundred of each and the numbers added were based on either when each ship's keel was laid (as with real life navy ships) or when each ship was launched but either way if a Galaxy class ship is launched the same day as a runabout then the numbers will be uh 71810 and 71811 respectively though that more common in older designs. I have a feeling that a vast majority of Federation ships are tiny little transports like the Ravin, Danube or Sydney types hence why so many registries are unknown. While I think the creators did there best to make sure certain registries fit certain classes some definitely overlap and I doubt they were ever intended on being studied so closely.

But I do believe the batch system makes a lot of sense for ship types like Excelsior which appear to have been built in waves 2500's 10,000's 30,000's 40,000's and even a few in the early 50,000's (if we assume Melbourne could have been NCC-52043).

 

[Unicron]

There's also the possibility that some assigned registries in a given batch might not actually be built due to resource limitations or politics, so they either might be canceled or built at a later time. While Starfleet might use a number like 100 as an initial order (I'm inclined to think most orders would be fewer than that, however), they're not guaranteed to necessarily build every ship.

 

[CharlieZardoz]

It's never been confirmed as far as I know however I do feel that the intent of the creators was to imply that every registry has been used at some point. It is wholly possible though that some registries never got out of space dock or past certain preliminary phases. Let's take the Steamrunner for example, the numbers are in the 52,000 range which is obviously a pretty old registry. It either implies that the Steamrunner was old (older than the New Orleans, Nebula class and similar), or we could surmise that A. those numbers were never used and were scooped up for a new ship design (looks new since Jager's ships all look similar), or B. the ship was designed but like the Prometheus was sitting around trials for a long time unfinished until after wolf359 (perhaps Starfleet didn't see the purpose of more aggressive looking warships at a time of relative peace and kept them on the stocks).

 

[JES]

There is also the possibility that the Steamrunner, Saber, Norway, and Akira class were around since circa the Cardassian War, and the ships that we see have been upgraded or refitted, complete with newer lifepods.

 

[Dukhat]

There is also the possibility that the Steamrunner, Saber, Norway, and Akira class were around since circa the Cardassian War, and the ships that we see have been upgraded or refitted, complete with newer lifepods.

While that is certainly a possibility, I find it highly unlikely that the Sector 001 battle consisted primarily of four types of ship classes that coincidentally were all refitted from previous older designs. And really, the Saber and Akira classes don't look too far off from other ships in their registry range (except for their ugly angular nacelles). And the Norway wasn't even a completely finished mesh when it was used for the scene. The only really problematic ship is the Steamrunner, with its low 5XXXX registry and weird design.

 

[CharlieZardoz]

I agree with Dukhat, there is really only two possibilities 1. that the Steamrunner was like the Prometheus a new design that was in testing for a very long time until the 001 battle or 2. that they are all new and for whatever reason the 52,000 registries were never used until this point. It does make sense that Starfleet would section off a group of numbers and build different ships in different number sections based on size or design in various waves. It would explain why bigger ships tend to have higher registries than small ships (the Oberth for example which was likely newer than the Constitution class, etc.). It's probably a mix of both including carelessness on the part of the creators but since all the new designs are of a similar style ei Jager's designs they do look as if they were designed as pure warships to combat the borg, dominion etc. I do like the idea though that for whatever reason the Jager ships were not finished until after wolf 359 like maybe the federation was at peace for quite a few years and left them as skeletons until only after the battle did the program go ahead to create/finish/launch these new "weird" designs. No evidence for that but it makes for an interesting story and might explain how so many of them could have been built so quickly.

 

[yenny]

I myself don't believe that the Akira, Steamrunners, Norway and Saber class starships are refit. I also don't believe that they are recently built starships. I believe that they had enter service some year before the Enterprise-D was launch. The Akira I believe enter service in 2255, Sabers in either 2253 or 54. Norway in 2256 and the Steamrunners in 2245.

I actually think that there was a Akira, Norway, Saber and Steamrunner in 40 ship fleet that Admiral Hanson had put together to fight the Borgs at Wolf 359 and that they held out against the Borg cube longer then all the other starships in the the fleet. And maybe cost enough damages to the Borg cube to slow it down for the Enterprise-D to catch up with it.

 

[Timo]

the ships that we see have been upgraded or refitted, complete with newer lifepods

Or then triangular lifepods are a thing of the 2340s-50s, an outdated design that has been superseded by the more modern square-topped lifepod, as seen in modern 2360s-70s starships such as Nebula, Galaxy, Nova and Intrepid.

The Sovereign class just happens to be a conservative design, retaining the older lifepod shape. Heck, for all we know, the entire class is old, older than Galaxy, and the E-E just happens to be a late build. Or possibly an early build, as her registry tells us nothing about her age (it wouldn't even had she had that registry before the loss of the E-D - "honorary" registries like that are quite uninformative - but she no doubt got renamed and re-registered only after the Veridian debacle, regardless of whether she was a newbuild or an older ship). The E-E may have received a refit before being launched under Picard's command and the new name (say, all-new engines, yet still the original lifepods). Or then not, and the nacelle style we see is an older one, currently only fit for lesser vessels such as the slow-as-molasses Nova surveyors.

Whether there were ST:FC style vessels present at Wolf 359, we don't know, as we saw so little of the battle or the aftermath. Might be that the ST:FC designs are dedicated warships and would be lying in mothballs after the Cardassian war winded down, not available for Wolf 359 (but certainly for ST:FC where the Federation is gearing up for a war with the Dominion) - or then deep space vessels unlikely to be anywhere near Earth in peacetime (but again summoned to Earth for their secondary combat role for the Dominion war).

Akira looks like a nice, "rounded" general purpose starship that might be encountered anywhere. But the Steamrunner is a virtually unarmed big hangar with nacelles glued on, and the Norway is an oddball with variable geometry and whatnot - these specialist designs might only appear in special situations. The tiny Saber might in turn only see "coastal" action outside desperate times of war; some might have been at Wolf 359, but none would bump into the E-D on her deep space missions of diplomacy and troubleshooting, let alone during scientific surveys.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[137th Gebirg]

The Sovereign class just happens to be a conservative design, retaining the older lifepod shape. Heck, for all we know, the entire class is old, older than Galaxy, and the E-E just happens to be a late build. Or possibly an early build, as her registry tells us nothing about her age (it wouldn't even had she had that registry before the loss of the E-D - "honorary" registries like that are quite uninformative

Memory Alpha lists the (apocryphal) registry of the USS Sovereign as NX-73811 (later NCC-73811) due to several references to it in various video games - a registry that appears to have become "widely-accepted" amongst the fandom (see the thread on "Head Canon" in this context), and that the entire rest of the class sits in the NX/NCC-75000 range.

Shockingly, even the Akira's appear to be in the older 63000 to 65000 range, which always seemed odd to me, since the USS Galaxy is said to be NCC-70637, yet we never saw Akira or her "class mates" until long into the Galaxy's run.

 

[Timo]

Yup. I'm certainly a sucker for adopting noncanon ideas to plug holes in canon knowledge.

Then again, she could also be NCC-17454 as suggested by one of those off-canon sources! (I like several of the LUG ideas even if I don't actually like any of their ship designs.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CharlieZardoz]

There is no evidence to suggest that the registry numbers of starships are purely sequential. The evidence honestly suggests that Starfleet carves out a bunch of numbers (lets say 50,000 to 80,000) and over time assigns them to different classes based on size/design/purpose over the course of a few decades until they are all filled then they move upward again. But the creation of the Steamrunner, Akira, Norway and Sabre also feels like a retcon and we are meant to believe that they have been there all along we just haven't seen them. So for sanity's sake my thoughts are that they were like the Prometheus (assuming the 59650 registry is accurate), experimental designs which weren't launched until after wolf 359 out of necessity and the Sovereign being a direct line to those ships. It does offer some explanation as to why the Ambassador registry is so low and why Excelsior's and Miranda's were seemingly built afterwards. A block of numbers from 10,000-50,000 were sectioned up and assuming the Ambassador class was an experimental design like the Prometheus they may have spent quite a lot of time in trials before they were used and by then they became the part of the evolutionary step that led to the Renaissance class, Niagara class and eventually the Galaxy line.

 

[Timo]

Why should we think that when we are seeing things for the first time, they are brand new?

This has never been true of Trek, really. In TOS, Kirk operated legacy hardware. In the movies, he operated hardware that was beyond legacy and well into the decomposing phase. Picard had a ship that was new but not particularly novel. Sisko relied on scraps from programs decades past.

Janeway is quite an exception in being explicitly credited with a brand new starship. But this is no reason to assume that we would have seen every older starship design by then, and none could be "inserted" into the universe. It's pretty silly to call it a "retcon" that the ST:FC ships exist - it's like claiming that Ben Finney must be a retcon because we never saw him making an appearance before his big episode (or worse, it's like claiming he was born the day before that episode!).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[137th Gebirg]

Sisko relied on scraps from programs decades past.

True, at least up until he got the Defiant, that is.

 

[CharlieZardoz]

All I mean is that the creators hadn't invented those ships yet and when they were introduced in First Contact there wasn't a logical explanation as to why we'd never seen them before "in universe" There is plenty to suggest that there is an evolutionary connection between the Akira, Steamrunner, Sabre and Sovereign classes and that there is an evolutionary connection between the Ambassador, Nebula, Galaxy and Intrepid classes and since we know the Excelsior/Miranda line ended after the Ambassador-Galaxy line had already begun there is evidence to suggest that the Akira-Sovereign line had also started before the prior line had finished. Of course we know the reason these ships look similar is because of who created them Jager, Sternbach, Probert but as for whether they were new or not I doubt it since I find it hard to believe that Starfleet could build so many new ships and designs so quickly. So I definitely believe they were built at the same time as other ships in the 50000-60000 range but whether they've been flying around all along since before wolf 359 I'm not so sure.

 

[Timo]

there wasn't a logical explanation as to why we'd never seen them before "in universe"

But there never is a "logical explanation" as to why a ship that makes an appearance didn't make an appearance earlier on.

The Reliant isn't a brand new prototype, nor does she sport a high registry or ultramodern equipment, yet she appears without explanation. The Grissom isn't explicitly supposed to be hypermodern when first appearing, either. The Nebula class Phoenix comes out of nowhere, and if she's a somewhat "logical" companion to the Galaxy aesthetically, Wolf 359 blows all such logic out of the, uh, vacuum. And then we get in-between ships like Constellation and Ambassador and are simply supposed to believe that they existed before their introduction.

Dialogue is provided when the audience needs to know that something is new - otherwise we couldn't recognize the generic-looking Excelsior for a new thing. Dialogue isn't necessarily provided to establish that something is old, though.

As for "lines", those mentioned span decades or sometimes a full century. I don't see how they could be sequential instead of parallel, then. And Akira certainly looks more like a Galaxy than a Steamrunner or Sovereign to me! Heck, it's even colored like a Galaxy, in sharp contrast to the other ST:FC "novelties".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CharlieZardoz]

I always saw the Reliant and Grissom as ships designed between the Motion picture and Wrath of Khan, likely produced alongside the 1701 refit. Are we disagreeing? It sounds like we agree that the Akira and Steamrunner are not brand new designs. The quandy lies in the design itself, since the Defiant established that new ships use ablative armor as a new tech to defend against the Borg and the Sovereign uses triangular escape pod hatches which appear in the Steamrunner and Akira designs as well. We know that's because they were designed by John Eaves, Alex Jager and Jim Martin who used a sleeker and less traditional approach than Probert or Sternbach but as to their sudden appearance in the 001 battle, all I can say is that the tech they use seems connected to what was already established as "experimental" in the Defiant which makes them appear "newer" then lets say the Freedom class (which has a higher registry). Past that it's anyones guess, the only thing I don't believe is that the ships were refits since no one bothered adding ablative armor and triangular escape pods to Miranda's and Excelsior's and would probably have kept them from getting poofed so often

 

[Timo]

I always saw the Reliant and Grissom as ships designed between the Motion picture and Wrath of Khan, likely produced alongside the 1701 refit. Are we disagreeing?

On that issue, yes. Heck, the Reliant existed back in "Court Martial" already, according to the list of registries seen on Commodore Stone's office wall!

the Defiant established that new ships use ablative armor as a new tech to defend against the Borg

We only know the Defiant herself had such armor. Its presence comes as a complete surprise to Captain Benteen in "Paradise Lost", though, so it's not a standard feature, not even in Benteen's own fresh-from-the-(refit)-dockyard USS Lakota.

And we don't know if it has anything to do with the Borg, or even that it was a feature of the Defiant originally. The first time it gets a mention, in the episode "Past Tense", it's quite casually name-dropped, but with the implication that it has been there for some time before that episode and after "The Search", coexisting with the cloaking device.

Yet in "Way of the Warrior", half a year later, it's referred to as "the Defiant's new armor"... Was it only applied just before that episode? That is, about a year before that episode? This is the first time the ship takes shields-down hits, but certainly not the first time ever (or after "The Search" let alone "Past Tense") that the ship would see combat.

the tech they use seems connected to what was already established as "experimental" in the Defiant

What connection is there to the Defiant? The DS9 hero ship doesn't have lifepod shapes visible to the exterior, while the pods themselves are hexagonal and identical to those found behind the square hatches of the Voyager. In turn, the ST:FC ships aren't credited with ablative armor or quantum torpedoes, the only two things that really make the Defiant distinct.

(If we accept backstage gossip, then we have to accept that the E-D also had ablative armor from the get-go, as established in the TNG Tech Manual...)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CharlieZardoz]

I remember Sisko said "the Defiant class was designed only for the one purpose, to fight and defeat the Borg" Aside from that I always saw the ablated armor as the reason why ships started looking all uh panel-ish like on the Sovereign, Steamrunner Akira and Defiant etc. vs smoother surfaces on the Intrepid, Nebula and Galaxy. Dukat help me out here if you can I'm really bad at explaining this stuff in detail lol.

And the 1864 registry was changed to 1664 The Excalibur so there

 

[Dukhat]

I remember Sisko said "the Defiant class was designed only for the one purpose, to fight and defeat the Borg" Aside from that I always saw the ablated armor as the reason why ships started looking all uh panel-ish like on the Sovereign, Steamrunner Akira and Defiant etc. vs smoother surfaces on the Intrepid, Nebula and Galaxy. Dukat help me out here if you can I'm really bad at explaining this stuff in detail lol.

Unfortunately without any more information, I can't speculate about the FC ships other than my opinions, which I've already stated (Saber and Akira are contemporaries of the New Orleans, Cheyenne, Springfield and Challenger classes; the Norway should probably look much different than it does; and the Steamrunner is just a monkeywrench thrown into the works.)

And the 1864 registry was changed to 1664 The Excalibur so there

But the entry on the list in Stone's office does say "1864." "1664" was just a product of someone squinting at a low-definition freeze-frame of the scene and extrapolating the best they could at the time.