Ship continuity.

[Jon holder]

So have ping been established that SHINZOU old (per Georgious own words “ SHINZOU is old but she gets us where we are going.” ) and DISCOVERY is brand new ( not a scratch on her hangar deck). And the Enterprise already exists. And has already been in service long enough for them to have been to Arcanus V.
There seems to me to be an issue with registration of the major ships.
Shenzou NCC-1226 should be the oldest of the registration numbers but comes after Discovery NCC-1031. And of course Enterprise NCC 1701? By the time line the Walker class like Shenzou we’re old and built for Exploration hence their smaller compact design, should have the oldest construction number. The Crossfield class being built sepcifically for the sporemdrive project were built after the Constitution class which Started with Enterprise ar NCC1701 so logically the Glenn and Discovery should be numbered after Enterprise.
Any thoughts.

 

[Cyrus]

1031 is in honor of Section 31.

 

[Campe]

The registry numbering has not been consistent. Ever. The Constellation from “The Doomsday Machine” was the same class as the Enterprise but had a registry of 1017. Best not to worry too much about these things.

 

[cultcross]

1031 is in honor of Section 31.

Nah - it is the date of Halloween, Bryan Fuller works Halloween references into his stuff, like his girls with a boy's name thing.
It's now been fully debunked that Discovery is a section 31 ship as some speculated early on.

Registration numbers have never been strictly in order of production, so while broadly higher registry numbers imply later construction (eg the five digit ones in the 24th century), they aren't perfectly sequential when you get down to the detail.

 

[SPCTRE]

there have been attempts to unify all the NCC-numbers in a Grand Theory, but the authors have usually ended up drawing madly on the walls of their cells, sometimes with their bare, bloody fingers

 

[SJGardner]

Starship registry numbers are anything but consistent. The Defiant was issued NX-74205 when it was commissioned in 2371, and the USS Prometheus, supposedly the most advanced ship in the fleet, was launched in 2374 as NX-59650, which is even lower than that of the USS Melbourne (NCC-62043), the original configuration Excelsior-class that Riker was offered command of in 2366. A mission operations readout from Conspiracy (TNG) even showed ships with registries in the mid-to-high 80000s range all the way back to 2364. And let's not talk about the Oberth class that somehow has registries ranging from NCC-602 to NCC-53911.

 

[Cyrus]

And TNG's Enterprise which was built long after TOS Enterprise has the same 1701 registry number. Weird.

 

[Blamo]

It wouldn't surprise me if sometime there was a change to the registry system aswell. New ship types. Probably drove administration staff mad dealing with all the inconsistent numbering.

"NCC 1071 is requiring some maintenance to their warp nacelles."
"I'll allocate some warp coils, I think we've got some spare Crossfield coils in storage."
"It's a Constitution class."
"What? That doesn't make sense? I thought those were in the 1700 range."
"They changed the numbering system. Again. Also they didn't need as many crossfield's as they first thought, so you know."
"Don't they realise how much stress this is going to cause us?"
"They don't care."

 

[Timo]

Let's see if I have my straitjacket straight... Okay, here's my attempt, al fresco from the cell walls:

NCC-1031 is an ancient ship. She was not built for spore work in the slightest. Rather, she was available for spore work because she was so badly out of date. This work involved, among other things, converting the old massive hangar of this ex-shuttlecarrier into all sorts of labs plus a new, tiny shuttlebay.

NCC-1226 is a bit newer, but still one of those "venerable" ships that skip engine upgrades, just like NCC-1701 later does. Most of the rest have been deemed worth a refit that installs the brand new, boxy nacelles.

As of the 2250s, the registries for new ships are probably up to NCC-1900 or thereabouts, but we really learn of no upper limit. As of the 2270s, NCC-2100 is still pretty hot. But then comes the big cold war with the Klingons, and in the next few decades, we get close to the five-digit range; shipbuilding is a matter of alternating creeps and jerks, is all.

A big jerk would come right after the founding of the UFP Starfleet, with lots of war surplus ships adopted. This would mean mass retirement at some later timepoint, with a long creep in the meantime.

DSC fundamentally isn't an additional burden on us registry madmen, not a great offender or even much of a repeat offender. Really, no particular show is. All we ever get in the way of offenses is individual odd registries in every spinoff, usually no more than one or two per each. And it's difficult to argue there wouldn't be a general attempt at making the numbers slowly get higher as time passes - it's their very function for the writers and VFX folks and backstage continuity nerds, after all.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Agony_Boothb]

Truth is registry numbers are nonsense, fans have just given meaning to them that they never had in the first place.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Truth is registry numbers are nonsense, fans have just given meaning to them that they never had in the first place.

But a smaller registry number would be an older ship, or at least an older class that maybe had some reserved #'s left over.

The Discovery and Glenn could be old ships refit to be as modern as the rest of the fleet, or new builds of an old class that fit the needs of the spore drive project.

I think the only time the #'s even tried to be super-consistent was the 1700's for the Connies and I could see the Constellation being an earlier but similar enough ship that was converted or refit to be a Connie class. Or it was a leftover registry number they decided to use, but of course we know the real world reasoning for NCC-1017.

 

[Cpt. Kyle Amasov]

Registries from TNG onward were more or less sequential (the 70k range being the newest ships), but the same logic didn't apply during TOS. Some fan sources in the 80s instead went for 'batches' (a block of registries being given to a specific classes).
When writing the Encyclopedia, Okuda adopted the random NCCs on the operations chart seen in an episode of TOS as the registries of the other Constitutions (which is consistent with some earlier fan speculation, but doesn't really make sense). In consequence, it strengthened the "TOS=non-sequential" argument.

 

[Longinus]

Easy answer: the registries are not sequentioal, at least not in TOS era.

A better question is how can the fleet have 7000 vessels if all registries we ever see are below 2000?

 

[Blamo]

A better question is how can the fleet have 7000 vessels if all registries we ever see are below 2000?

That probably includes shuttles and such. 7000 starships is a bit much even for the late TNG era.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

That probably includes shuttles and such. 7000 starships is a bit much even for the late TNG era.

This is how I always chalked it up. The runabouts in DS9 had registry numbers, which seemed to be a dime a dozen. That’s why the numbers are so high despite only seeing few ships in Starfleet, especially in the 70k by 24th century.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

This is how I always chalked it up. The runabouts in DS9 had registry numbers, which seemed to be a dime a dozen. That’s why the numbers are so high despite only seeing few ships in Starfleet, especially in the 70k by 24th century.

TOS had it right with 1701/7, etc for the shuttles. Good thing they didn't use letters though, or the second Enterprise would've been 1701/1

The Enterprise D & E shuttles seemed to have just had the ship registry and a name.

Runabouts must be more important to need registry #'s of their own.

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

We had a similar discussion about registries in the DS9 forum - how could there only have been 8 deep space stations in the Federation prior to DS9, and the conclusion was that they make it up as they go, or they do it based on sectors.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

We had a similar discussion about registries in the DS9 forum - how could there only have been 8 deep space stations in the Federation prior to DS9, and the conclusion was that they make it up as they go, or they do it based on sectors.

Most of them were probably designated as "Starbase". Maybe the DS is used for ones the Feds don't own but lease?

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

Most of them were probably designated as "Starbase". Maybe the DS is used for ones the Feds don't own but lease?

Could be. It was a geocentric name, in any case. The Bajorans would’ve regarded it as a condescending name like Middle of Nowhere 9. Kira said as much to Bashir.

 

[SpocksOddSocks]

Most of them were probably designated as "Starbase". Maybe the DS is used for ones the Feds don't own but lease?

Or possibly those that are outside Federation space.