How big are Star trek fleets?

[El Amigo Carlos]

I'm aware that this is hard to guess but looking at how much territory the Federation covers or the Romulans, you need a big fleet to guard all of that.
What I noticed when Thomas Riker took the Defiant, as soon as it was found out 8 Cardassian ships were already attacking him in the sector.

While in the case of the Federation well...
"The nearest federation ship can arrive to aid us in 1 week atleast"
Not really a quote as much as I am refrencing what happened daily in TNG.

So how many does each Empire have?
The Klingons,Cardassian,Romulans and The Federation.

 

[Markonian]

The Federation needing one year to replace the Wolf 359 fleet is the best starting point for an estimate.

So, that's 50 you need to build in addition to those on schedule. It takes 1 year. Hm.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I don't think there is a set number. The size of fleets could be dependent on the particular mission they have to carry out, other tactical & logistical considerations, as well as by how many ships the other guy has.

 

[MacLeod]

Operation return planned to use elements of 3 fleets though it left with only elements of two fleets, if they pulled 50% of those fleets we could have each fleet numbering in the 600 ships mark and with at least ten fleets that could place the figure at around 6000 ships, At on ships engaged in deep space exploartion and sectors wellbehind the front lines during the DOminion War and the figure could be around 10 000+ ships by the time of DSN.

 

[Jono]

Some suggest that the Dominion-Cardassian-Breen Alliance could field 30,000 ships late in the Dominion War. This is based on someone commenting that the Klingons would be outnumbered 20 to 1 after Martok makes a comment regarding 1,500 Klingon ships being ready the next day.

 

[{ Emilia }]

As big as the writers need them to be for a given plot.

 

[BillJ]

As big as the writers need them to be for a given plot.

Exactly this. They went from having trouble scraping together 39 ships at Wolf 359, to having thousands of them in DS9.

 

[El Amigo Carlos]

As big as the writers need them to be for a given plot.

True but they're always indicating that the Federation is around equal to everyone else that's major they might of had a number in their mind, for refrence..
Idk really.

 

[El Amigo Carlos]

Some suggest that the Dominion-Cardassian-Breen Alliance could field 30,000 ships late in the Dominion War. This is based on someone commenting that the Klingons would be outnumbered 20 to 1 after Martok makes a comment regarding 1,500 Klingon ships being ready the next day.

I haven't watched the whole Ds9 yet, it's on the TV every day so i'm limited.
But i'm preety sure that the Klingon ships would be the ones he'd manage to upgrade and send in one day.
Also to say it's doubtfull that the Dominion and Cardassians sent all of their war capable ships, the Dominion had a strong need to secure their space from any possible rebellions or idk. They seemed to be holding everyone in their empire beneth their foot so rebellions would be possible.

And weren't mines placed at the wormhole Gate or something?

Spoilers were impossible to dodge XD
Even before watching it I already knew the endings.

 

[Nerys Myk]

True but they're always indicating that the Federation is around equal to everyone else that's major they might of had a number in their mind, for refrence..
Idk really.

Probably not.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Depends on the writer. In DS9's version of Trek, hundreds/thousands. In TOS, they had 12 starships total. In TNG, 50 ships to battle the Borg was a big deal. In the reboot universe, they mustered 7 ships for an emergency mission while the "primary fleet" was elsewhere. Most schizophrenic of all, ENT went from a handful of lesser ships (none of which were around) and one NX-class starship to a big fleet between "Zero Hour" and the ending scene of "Storm Front"

Pull a number out your bum and there's probably a precident for it.

 

[kkt]

TOS 12 ships meant Constitution class. There were other classes, not as big or capable of operating independently as long.

 

[Brass]

It really varies with the examples others cited. At times scraping together 100 ships is a big deal, during DS9 there appear to be thousands of ships. I guess the "logical" explanation is that in times of war they can crank those things out. But that raises the question of where are all the trained crew-members coming from?

Maybe they just have versions of the EMH and Vic Fontaine manning those warbirds?

 

[Timo]

The Federation needing one year to replace the Wolf 359 fleet is the best starting point for an estimate.

To the contrary, I don't see any valid way to get relevant data from that. It's a peacetime event, we don't know if "the fleet" refers to Starfleet or the 23rd Fleet or whatnot, and we have no working definition of how "the fleet" is going to get shipshape - construction, reassigning or downsizing?

In contrast, DS9 is very explicit about all this, spelling out the answers.

We hear of exactly ten Fleets in wartime Starfleet, although we admittedly never get direct references to the 1st, 4th or 8th. There could be twelve fleets, perhaps, but if there are twenty-plus, then it's a major statistical anomaly that we only ever get references to 10 and lower.

We also hear how many ships there are in those Fleets. When the 2nd and 5th combine forces, there are 600 ships total. Sure, Sisko said this would be "elements" of said Fleets, but that was back when "elements" of the 9th were supposed to join the fray. 300 is a pretty good estimate for Fleet size, then, although possibly a lower-end one for the day. And the 7th having just 121 ships when going to major action in "A Time to Stand" may be taken to mean smaller Fleets at the early months of the war, or then an already badly hurt the 7th - we're still in the low-three-digits ballpark.

So, ten times 300 for 3,000 combatants. There may be plenty of support ships attached to a Fleet, but none were seen among the 600 in "Favor the Bold", so 3,000 would still be the number of actual combat vessels. How many would be available outside the Fleet organization, we don't know - for the "pseudo-WWI" style of fighting seen, keeping reserves would be strategically absurd, but OTOH Starfleet probably always has ships deployed so far from home on exploration duties that they miss any wars shorter than five years...

Another solid number we get is 1,500 Klingon ships against twenty times the number of Dominion ones in "When it Rains...". Makes sense, sort of - Klingons could well be level with Starfleet in numbers (their BoPs are smaller and probably cheaper and weaker, so the Klingons might be weaker overall), while the Dominion's massive numerical superiority would belie the fact that they operate plenty of tiny combat craft.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Markonian]

^ Great analysis, @Timo. I stand happily corrected.

 

[Ithekro]

The Federation also had about two years to prepare for the Dominion War, while they had days to gather what ships they could to stop one Borg cube at Wolf 359. The second cube to close on Earth had a bunch of ships that had been gathering for the soon coming war with the Dominion attack it. Unlike the Borg, the Federation knew pretty much exactly where the Dominion would strike from. The wormhole was a nice choke point. Then the Dominion being in Cardassian Space ment they would come from that region, rather then the 70 or so year trip from the Gamma Quadrant directly.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

I think at least as interesting a question of "how big" the fleets, is "what are they made of". Obviously for budgetary reasons we saw mostly Galaxies, Excelsiors and Mirandas, with a few Nebulas and occasional "FC" models like the Akira. But it strikes me that while the former is plausible (biggest most advanced and highly adaptable, Excelsiors and Mirandas are at least two generations out-of-date in technical terms so shouldn't really be on the 'frontlines' as combat vessels (although the Miranda might make a decent logistics support/SpecOps platform, and we probably should have seen more Galaxy kitbashes or Ambassadors, and of course Intrepids.

Thoughts?

 

[Paradise City]

I suspect they came across some mass-replicator technology that helped them build mass fleets and replace the antiquated ships that were doing the rounds in TNG.. Perhaps the "industrial replicator" of DS9 fame.

 

[Timo]

To the contrary, it doesn't seem as if they built a single ship during the entire war - save for the Sao Paulo. All the registry numbers we ever see are lower than those of known prewar ships, after all...

Possibly some of the Fleets were more modern than others, and the 9th got the short stick because Bajor was supposed to be a fairly irrelevant stretch of battlefront (wormhole shut down for good by the Prophets, no real hope of attacking the neighboring Cardassia Prime, all Dominion action somewhere more interesting and important and distant). Basically Washington vs. Richmond all over again. And back in "Favor the Bold", all the old junk was there for the supposed suicide action, there being no point in losing good combatants over DS9 when the plan anyway was to sacrifice hundreds of ships in order to get a couple through for demolishing the wormhole...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Jono]

I'm not sure how useful using registry numbers are to make a judgement. How many registries did we even see? How many of those were on that of the TNG era designed starships? We probably don't have a great sample to make too much of.