Can't believe some people are still seeing 1831. It's 1631 as that HD screencap makes clearer than ever.
Starbase 11 registry chart
- Thread starter Kenny
- Start date
Not to me, especially when contrasted to 1672 below it. The upper registry definitely looks like 1831 as does 1864.
Hey! I've got a great idea!! Why doesn't someone run it frame by frame on a blu-ray and let us know what the numbers look like. That might help....
Frame by frame would indeed be intriguing. An older, non-HD screencap I've seen may have a fleck of dust or grain or something that makes the 6 look like an 8. But in the Trekcore caps it looks to me like there's not a solid connection in the upper right corner of the digit compared to the other three sides. And while there's no reason we have to take Greg Jein's word for it, remember that when he wrote that fanzine article he was probably working from an actual film clip that could be blown up much bigger than a digital screencap with defined pixels can be. Plus he somehow had access to the "Tribbles" phaser display, so I'm inclined to trust that he got a better look at the chart than any of us. But as I said, even with my own eyes from that screencap it looks like a 6 if you look carefully in comparison to the other numbers.
Also, it's very unlikely 18xx numbers would have been devised for TOS. The Enterprise and her sister ships were considered the state of the art, top of the line models of the fleet and there wouldn't be any suggestion of them being supplanted or succeeded by a new design.
Also, it's very unlikely 18xx numbers would have been devised for TOS. The Enterprise and her sister ships were considered the state of the art, top of the line models of the fleet and there wouldn't be any suggestion of them being supplanted or succeeded by a new design.
I agree with your theory and envision something very similar. I was thinking the Eagle, Republic, Constellation, etc are all refits from an earlier class(es) brought up to relatively TOS-era Constitution specs. All would look very similar to ordinary non Trek people (IOW, saucers and nacelles) though us geeks would notice numerous minor detail differentiation, from the main sensor dish on the secondary hull to to the needles and grills on the nacelles to the bridge modules, etc.
Course, I still roll my eyes at "Constitution Refit" and think of it as "Enterprise-class."
IIRC, FJ used 17xx for the Connies in the TM, with some later numbers and 18xx registries for the minor variants of the class (Endeavor, Achernar and Tikopai). This was mainly because his system would sometimes run between classes, so that the scout/destroyer registries included both 5xx and 6xx numbers. FASA had 17xx numbers as well since it only included the Constitution class ships.
My theory about the wonky NCC's -- The Four Years War. The first of the intentionally-vaguely-named "starship" class were wartime builds, but there was a problem: Klingon agents had penetrated certain logistics offices, to better target new ships (Alec Peters fans will additionally say they didn't want to be surprised a second time after the Ares-class). In order to disguise the number of new "starships" being built, roughly half of them were given NCC's that had been allocated for older ship classes but never actually used. The tactic worked! Ships in the "official" NCC range tended to be located and destroyed, unfinished and uncommissioned, in the shipyards. Only ships with disguised NCC's, or late builds like the 1700+ series tended to survive to commissioning.
Oh, and as far as I'm concerned, Constitution isn't NCC-1700. It's NCC-1685. Revisiting the Greg Jein interpretation of the TOS Starbase 11 list, and removing ships with other canonical numbers that don't appear on that list, gives me room to give Connie a slightly lower number. Jein's reverse-alpha list ordering works if we give 1700 to Bonhomme Richard. Can't give 1708 to Endeavour or Defiant, pick your own name in the right part of the alphabet.
Oh, and as far as I'm concerned, Constitution isn't NCC-1700. It's NCC-1685. Revisiting the Greg Jein interpretation of the TOS Starbase 11 list, and removing ships with other canonical numbers that don't appear on that list, gives me room to give Connie a slightly lower number. Jein's reverse-alpha list ordering works if we give 1700 to Bonhomme Richard. Can't give 1708 to Endeavour or Defiant, pick your own name in the right part of the alphabet.
The Four Years War was from the FASA RPG booklets and that debacle of an aborted fan film project. In canon, the Klingon/Federation war lasted less than a year and the Enterprise was already in service when war broke out.
It's likely there was a major war (a la Four Years War) at some point, pre-2256. It might've been against the Axanar.
How this would correspond to registry numbers is beyond me. I've hypothesized that Starfleet simply allocates a select number of registries (construction contracts) to the various shipyard companies every year, and some of them may have resource depletions and/or decide to hoard these contracts until a more elite ship design is undertaken.
1664 was backlogged from Beta Antares Shipyard, and didn't begin in earnest until after San Francisco constructed the 1700 and 1701. So they decided to amend the contracted ship class. 1031 and 1032 were mothballed prototypes that failed before build stage, but the shipyard held unto the contract for a rainy day, and the Klingon War presented itself with a quick need for ships.
Of course, I don't expect many replies before this thread is locked for the usual annoying reason.
At the moment, I don't see any need to lock the thread. I will admit that under some circumstances, I would have locked it because it had been dormant so long before it was bumped. And since the poster who replied seems to post rarely, I didn't take any action in case it either faded back into obscurity or people wanted to revive the conversation legitimately. I'm generally pretty lenient towards the latter approach. 
But as the staff have said on that topic before, one reason we monitor older threads is to prevent troublemakers from just necro spamming old ones. It's not overly common but it has happened before. And when necessary, if an issue with a thread comes up, we'll talk and get advice on it before taking an action. But I don't want anyone to think it's just an arbitrary decision to annoy good posters. It's always based on the needs of the forum.
But as the staff have said on that topic before, one reason we monitor older threads is to prevent troublemakers from just necro spamming old ones. It's not overly common but it has happened before. And when necessary, if an issue with a thread comes up, we'll talk and get advice on it before taking an action. But I don't want anyone to think it's just an arbitrary decision to annoy good posters. It's always based on the needs of the forum.
As long as it isn't against the Klingons, it's fine and well...
While the "bogus numbers to fool the enemy" trick is both cute and unrealistic, it's also far from the only possible registry consequence from a big war.
1) Shipbuilding might get accelerated, resulting in a jump of sequentially assigned numbers.
2) Older ships might get reactivated, resulting in number confusion
3) Long-idled ship categories might be built again, and number ranges allocated to those might see unexpected use
Since we see Starfleet using individual ships for a century in the worst case, there really is little problem in deciding that a NCC-1017 is a much older ship than NCC-1701, only receiving more attention to keep her working for said century. The narrow range of numbers at SB11 really looks anomalious in that respect!
Timo Saloniemi
Also, its uncertain on what all the registry number is used for. Presumably, just identification, at which point reused registries should be no big deal if the old ship is verifiably replaced with a newer one. We see this onscreen with the 1701s, although they amend a letter. Whether this is necessary or stylistic is unknown.
Perhaps, in the earlier age, letter add-ons were less common, and the Constellation 1017 may have succeeded an earlier Constellation 1017 (itself in the same series as the first versions of Discovery 1031 and Glenn 1030). The Kelvinverse comics imply something similar with an earlier Enterprise 1701.
If it's a contract number, then it would likely not be repeated (although questions still raised on the letter add-ons), as looking up old contracts would be easier without the confusion of reused names and numbers.
It could be something as simple as many, many gaps appearing, because they reserve large blocks of numbers, but only end up with a few working starships. The designer of the Discovery may have actually been alluding to Halloween (with Glenn numbered to match), the Constellation may have been someone's birthday, and the USS Eagle may have been designed for use by the 956th Fighting Squadron. They chose their own number from the list of unused or never completed designs.
Perhaps, in the earlier age, letter add-ons were less common, and the Constellation 1017 may have succeeded an earlier Constellation 1017 (itself in the same series as the first versions of Discovery 1031 and Glenn 1030). The Kelvinverse comics imply something similar with an earlier Enterprise 1701.
If it's a contract number, then it would likely not be repeated (although questions still raised on the letter add-ons), as looking up old contracts would be easier without the confusion of reused names and numbers.
It could be something as simple as many, many gaps appearing, because they reserve large blocks of numbers, but only end up with a few working starships. The designer of the Discovery may have actually been alluding to Halloween (with Glenn numbered to match), the Constellation may have been someone's birthday, and the USS Eagle may have been designed for use by the 956th Fighting Squadron. They chose their own number from the list of unused or never completed designs.
Hey newcomer. Welcome.
As Unicron's post indicates, the moderators generally prefer we not revivify threads that haven't been posted in for over a year, and this thread had been inactive for 7.
Just for your future reference, you might want to review this post about the board rules and especially the part Resurrecting dead threads (click this link).
Welcome aboard!
There are many theories what the registry numbers mean. For Jefferies it was pretty simple. 1701 mean the first ship of the 17th design. Then we have that wall of numbers including 1700, and Greg Jein (just a fan at that point in time) came up with a way to match it to the list. That one of the numbers was in the 1800 range was unknown until the newer high resolution release. Franz Joseph stuck to the 1700 series (and some 1800) for the Constitution Class. FASA came up with yet a different set of numbers. Until the remastered version, only the Republic and Constellation had registry numbers. They used the numbers Greg Jein had come up with (and by that time he had been involved in Trek productions). There is no canon explanation or obvious pattern to the NCC numbers. Only that they get higher from the founding of the Federation through Voyager. Many fans have come up with explanations, but nothing official has ever been put into canon.
What is there to discuss following TOS-R? It’s a starship status chart. A starship is the Constitution class. They probably weren’t all at the same starbase, but it was important to keep track of progress in case the interstellar repair schedule needed revision.
Huh? The implication of the chart was that they were all at that Starbase undergoing repairs. There’s also no indication that the intent was for all the ships to be Constitution class, per Jeffries’ registry number classification for the first two digits.
That’s the implication without proof, and we already know it takes 430 to crew a TOS starship, which would later become known as the Constitution class. Jefferies’ ideas can be retrofitted into canon as Constitution subclasses (17xx would be the MK IX subclass according to that phaser diagram which inspired FJ).
There’s no more proof to what you said. There’s more proof that all ten ships were at the starbase because the chart doesn’t list things like sectors or possible other locations of said ships.
What does the crew complement have to do with the chart?
Whether the first two registry numbers denote class or subclass, it still has nothing to do with the idea that all the ships were intended to be at that starbase.
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Does it make any sense, that 10 Constitution class ships are all undergoing maintainable at this starbase At the same time? What about the logistics to repair 10 of those ships simultaneously? Any thoughts as to the loss of patrolling large amounts of space?
