If that were the case, we likely would have seen them during the M5 trials. Why only have one ship type when you could have a variety?
Longevity of Classes
- Thread starter DarthTimon
- Start date
If that were the case, we likely would have seen them during the M5 trials. Why only have one ship type when you could have a variety?
Don't forget that Mercenaries have always existed throughout history and I'm sure the UFP has their own band of Mercenary Companies and outlier fighting forces like the "French Foreign Legion" -> "UFP Foreign Legion".While @KamenRiderBlade made an excelent case I still think that 100 years of service wouldn't be all that long for a starship that get its scheduled maintenance as for updates and upgrades, when needed and I don't think that spare parts will ever be a problem since they can be replicated, heck, we're doing that today already with 3D printers and the like.
And indeed, if your starship isn't suited for a task anymore then it can go and do something else, I think a Miranda class ship would be good at hauling cargo for example.
But I think this might be a case of to agree to disagree.
I wouldn't be surprised if some Mercenary Companies or equivalent gets "Hand Me down" 100-200 year old ships with "Obsolete StarShips" relative to Current Era StarFleet.
Imagine 1000's of private little companies running ex-StarFleet StarShips.
Each company gets it's own CEO/Captain and their own ship.
Kinda like "FireFly", but on a nicer StarShip, bigger, and Ex-StarFleet lineage.
I have no idea why the Excelsior lasted as long as it did. Even if it's a good, solid design that, in fanon, ushered in the 'New Warp Scale' down the road instead of Transwarp, by 2340 it would be half a century old. That's when the Ambassadors were introduced but didn't catch on.
Maybe the Ambassadors were seen as colossal huge failures, (and I've seen that they were Galaxy class testbeds) and thus the Excelsiors stood around to be retained as the mainline Cruiser? It's not Galaxies nor Sovereigns were pumped out either. Maybe the Excelsiors hit the sweet spot: good enough size, not too demanding on crew or *for* crew, and can be upgraded.
Maybe if 2360+ Excelsiors had phaser strips and the new nacelles and windows, as a refit, we might believe it more, same with the Mirandas. It's not like they're BAD designs, the Mirandas even have more space than a Connie. They should however *look* updated to the times. That does mean, eventually, Mirandas and Excelsiors with Sovereign class finishings...ooo.
Maybe the Ambassadors were seen as colossal huge failures, (and I've seen that they were Galaxy class testbeds) and thus the Excelsiors stood around to be retained as the mainline Cruiser? It's not Galaxies nor Sovereigns were pumped out either. Maybe the Excelsiors hit the sweet spot: good enough size, not too demanding on crew or *for* crew, and can be upgraded.
Maybe if 2360+ Excelsiors had phaser strips and the new nacelles and windows, as a refit, we might believe it more, same with the Mirandas. It's not like they're BAD designs, the Mirandas even have more space than a Connie. They should however *look* updated to the times. That does mean, eventually, Mirandas and Excelsiors with Sovereign class finishings...ooo.
That one's easy - it's a test. In a test, you eliminate variables. It would be much more difficult to discern the exact role of M-5 in the relative performance of the Enterprise if she were unevenly matched to begin with.
Operationally, it's more difficult to explain away random encounters with fellow ships. But thankfully, the same economic-practical measures that meant there only ever existed one shooting model for "starship" also resulted in there typically being zero shooting models used. So we have no real reason to think that the unseen Yorktown or Intrepid would have been of Constitution class, say.
That encounters with fellow frontier scouts would involve the Constitution model are again easier: if it's Starfleet policy to send an old warhorse to exploration duty before sending her to pasture, then multiple examples from a particular generation of old warhorses are likely to be out there at any given time. So we can accept the Constellation, the Exeter and the Defiant. And, this being the frontier, we can also accept Kirk basically never met anybody else anyway, save for these special occasions.
Timo Saloniemi
I'd respectfully disagree with this one. It's a pressure test, one where the results could possibly make changes to the entire fleet. What happens if there is a design flaw that when a Horizon class enters scanning range, it creates a feedback loop that shorts out the M-5? It sounds extreme, but in the real world extensive tests like this happen all the time.
Then it's time for Round Two. Nothing helpful about confusing Round One with extra variables!
...Not that I'd like to imply that this was the first-ever test of M-5. No doubt there had been hundreds if not thousands of simulations of all sorts, some involving practical hardware in addition to virtual playgrounds. But this was the first one where the ability of the computer to boost the practical performance of a starship was being tested, and by all rights should have been a baby step.
Timo Saloniemi
...Not that I'd like to imply that this was the first-ever test of M-5. No doubt there had been hundreds if not thousands of simulations of all sorts, some involving practical hardware in addition to virtual playgrounds. But this was the first one where the ability of the computer to boost the practical performance of a starship was being tested, and by all rights should have been a baby step.
Timo Saloniemi
No doubt Kirk could lose this round already. That M-5 would win would be a different issue, to be decided later on. But Round One was perfectly fine for deciding the game already, and M-5 lost fair and square; Rounds Two through Fifteen would simply have been further, subsequent opportunities for M-5 to lose, just like in any real-world testing.
That Kirk never faced another test is just plain unfair, but this human-favoring chauvinism has been grandfathered into everything humans do anyway.
Timo Saloniemi
That Kirk never faced another test is just plain unfair, but this human-favoring chauvinism has been grandfathered into everything humans do anyway.
Timo Saloniemi
The Constitution class surviving for very long into the 24th century... not necessarily seeing it... as the Connie seems to PREDATE the Excelsior class by at least several decades.
Its also possible the Constitution class ended up retiring completely (the remaining ships in operation being pulled from active duty) by the time the Ambassador class entered production.
The Connie would be nearly 100 years old design by then (maybe less if you take into account the retrofit).
Similar thing would apply to the Excelsior... it would probably end up mothballed entirely by the time it reached 100 years... unless of course Starfleet could continue to upgrade the design internally (which is definitely possible and doable for the few remaining ships in active service - but as we've seen in TNG and beyond, there are plenty of new classes of ships to bring to the forefront).
Its also possible the Constitution class ended up retiring completely (the remaining ships in operation being pulled from active duty) by the time the Ambassador class entered production.
The Connie would be nearly 100 years old design by then (maybe less if you take into account the retrofit).
Similar thing would apply to the Excelsior... it would probably end up mothballed entirely by the time it reached 100 years... unless of course Starfleet could continue to upgrade the design internally (which is definitely possible and doable for the few remaining ships in active service - but as we've seen in TNG and beyond, there are plenty of new classes of ships to bring to the forefront).
Honestly, the availabilty of the HQ movie model for the Excelsior is IMO the main reason why the Ambassador didn't "catch on".
Frankly, IMO a good half or more of the Excelsiors (and all the DW Excelsiors) should have been Ambassadors, except maybe the Lakota, whose name sounds like it should a Cheyenne-class (even if that wouldn't have worked as well for the battle scene).
I don't really see the Ambassador as the successor to Excelsior. More like a stablemate, a contemporary, a battleship (or, as Starfleet so nicely puts it, "explorer") to Excelsior's workhorse heavy cruiser. Every generation of ships would supposedly have those, including the TNG one (Galaxy to the workhorse Akira) and the TOS one.
Except the "TOS generation" would really be dead by the time of TOS, only Kirk's ship and a few others surviving as relics. And the respective top ships of each generation would be not just much less numerous than the workhorses, but also far more short-lived, due to being chief champions in the rat race. So we never got to see the kingpin ship to the fleet that left behind Kirk's little ship for us to admire.
Would there be a generation in existence during TOS (that is, during the 2260s), one more modern than Kirk's relic? If so, it would probably be the one that begat the Miranda and, as its last hurrah, the Constellation. But only fandom has produced big ships for that era.
Would there be a generation in existence before TOS but after the "TOS generation proper"? If so, this is where the Abramsverse ships would fit. Plenty of candidates for kingpin classes there... And fewer candidates for workhorses!
Would a generation exist between the Excelsiors and the Galaxies? If so, this is where the dark and angular Steamrunner and Saber would fit. Neither of them would be the kingpin of that era, but if Ambassadors are basically gone by TNG, then the dark and angular kingpins have an excuse for absence, too; random factors just make that latter absence more complete than the former.
Of course, even kingpins might have peers. The Galaxy has the Nebula, another relative giant. The Ambassador would be entitled to a similar peer, too (and as we know, Sternbach almost gave us one in "The Pegasus"). These would be distinct from the peers of the workhorses, which also would tend to come in nacelles up / nacelles down pairs. But on screen, we already have the Niagara, which is an Ambassador peer sizewise, uses the same secondary hull, and alluringly comes in two batches of registries, the former of which might have sported "original" Ambassador style nacelles where the higher-registered batch is seen mounting Galaxy style ones.
Basically, the pegs fit, even without a Mjolnir for assistance. We'll just have to wait and see whether TPTB dare give us a ship that would be kingpin to Sovereign (which really is a fairly modest ship by dimensions) or to the oddly homogeneous workhorse stampede of PIC...
Timo Saloniemi
Except the "TOS generation" would really be dead by the time of TOS, only Kirk's ship and a few others surviving as relics. And the respective top ships of each generation would be not just much less numerous than the workhorses, but also far more short-lived, due to being chief champions in the rat race. So we never got to see the kingpin ship to the fleet that left behind Kirk's little ship for us to admire.
Would there be a generation in existence during TOS (that is, during the 2260s), one more modern than Kirk's relic? If so, it would probably be the one that begat the Miranda and, as its last hurrah, the Constellation. But only fandom has produced big ships for that era.
Would there be a generation in existence before TOS but after the "TOS generation proper"? If so, this is where the Abramsverse ships would fit. Plenty of candidates for kingpin classes there... And fewer candidates for workhorses!
Would a generation exist between the Excelsiors and the Galaxies? If so, this is where the dark and angular Steamrunner and Saber would fit. Neither of them would be the kingpin of that era, but if Ambassadors are basically gone by TNG, then the dark and angular kingpins have an excuse for absence, too; random factors just make that latter absence more complete than the former.
Of course, even kingpins might have peers. The Galaxy has the Nebula, another relative giant. The Ambassador would be entitled to a similar peer, too (and as we know, Sternbach almost gave us one in "The Pegasus"). These would be distinct from the peers of the workhorses, which also would tend to come in nacelles up / nacelles down pairs. But on screen, we already have the Niagara, which is an Ambassador peer sizewise, uses the same secondary hull, and alluringly comes in two batches of registries, the former of which might have sported "original" Ambassador style nacelles where the higher-registered batch is seen mounting Galaxy style ones.
Basically, the pegs fit, even without a Mjolnir for assistance. We'll just have to wait and see whether TPTB dare give us a ship that would be kingpin to Sovereign (which really is a fairly modest ship by dimensions) or to the oddly homogeneous workhorse stampede of PIC...
Timo Saloniemi
What the poster is referring to was a reuse of a pre-TOS DSC starship as a background ship in the Short Trek that features Admiral Picard...a difference of 130+ years. They most likely used the ship because they didn't have their own PIC production assets ready in time, so they just used what they had available. Therefore, the ship in question really wasn't meant to represent the same class ship from DSC, but rather a newer late 24th century ship that just happens to coincidentally look like the older ship. Basically it was the same situation as the ENT episode "Unexpected," where they didn't have a 22nd century Klingon ship asset in time, and had to reuse a K'T'inga class ship originally built for Deep Space Nine in the late 24th century!
As for the topic at hand, the in-real-life reason why classes like the Excelsior, Miranda, Oberth, K'T'Inga and Birds of Prey seemed to last so long and were seen all the time, while other newer classes weren't, was because of the time jump between the TOS films (2280's) and the start of TNG (2360's), and both the availability of the movie models, and the loathing of the producers to spend money on new models. In-universe, this makes absolutely no sense. If those classes were really that reliable that they survived for almost a century (and in some cases were even still in production), then there would be no reason for Starfleet or the Klingons to build new designs. The Enterprises C and D might as well have just been Excelsior classes if that were the case.
Thanks for the insight into the situation on the newer CBS shows.
As for the D-7 in "Unexpected," I'm actually totally comfortable with that. It fits right in with one of my favorite fan tech publications, the Strategic Design Star Fleet Dynamics which describes (on page 179) that Klingon ships are retrofitted on the regular and that there were some ships in the Klingon fleet that were already over 300 years old by the 2290s.
--Alex
...Certainly the DSC Klingon ships would benefit from being described as centuries-old collections of improvements, augmentations and other barnacles!
Several alien vessels in Trek have been credited with long lifespans, sometimes millions of years long. Why the Federation should lag far behind is not easy to understand.
Timo Saloniemi
Several alien vessels in Trek have been credited with long lifespans, sometimes millions of years long. Why the Federation should lag far behind is not easy to understand.
Timo Saloniemi
In my head canon, the Ambassador-Class is still very active during the Dominion War just not on the front lines. With so many ships being pulled from other assignments and duties to fight the Dominion, Starfleet tasked its fleet of Ambassador-Class ships to act as a stopgap in these areas, having the size, power and resources to handle several missions at once, continually flying the flag so other races knew the Federation was still present and able to respond to whatever might crop up--similar to what we see the E-E doing in Insurrection.
We might do well to remember that what we saw of the Dominion War was supposed to be a mere sideshow.
That is, it seldom turned out to be that way. But Starfleet for most of the war would have been assigning second-rate ships to the 9th Fleet which just sort of hung around the strategically insignificant wormhole that no longer accommodated Dominion traffic or otherwise posed a threat or an opportunity. The attack to retake DS9 earlier on in turn had been done with a ragtag collection of available ships, rather than with the cream of Starfleet, while the bookend moves against the Dominion in "Call to Arms" and "What You Leave Behind" featured such massive fleets that any given class could be lost in the crowd.
It wouldn't be difficult to argue, then, that most of Starfleet's fighting forces at that time in fact consisted of, say, those "BoBW" study models of Galaxy relation, and fought the big battles wherever the war was actually being fought. Ross would get leftovers for his passive vigil, ships incapable of modern high speeds but still useful for sitting around the campfire and giving the enemy pause with their sheer numbers.
Timo Saloniemi
That is, it seldom turned out to be that way. But Starfleet for most of the war would have been assigning second-rate ships to the 9th Fleet which just sort of hung around the strategically insignificant wormhole that no longer accommodated Dominion traffic or otherwise posed a threat or an opportunity. The attack to retake DS9 earlier on in turn had been done with a ragtag collection of available ships, rather than with the cream of Starfleet, while the bookend moves against the Dominion in "Call to Arms" and "What You Leave Behind" featured such massive fleets that any given class could be lost in the crowd.
It wouldn't be difficult to argue, then, that most of Starfleet's fighting forces at that time in fact consisted of, say, those "BoBW" study models of Galaxy relation, and fought the big battles wherever the war was actually being fought. Ross would get leftovers for his passive vigil, ships incapable of modern high speeds but still useful for sitting around the campfire and giving the enemy pause with their sheer numbers.
Timo Saloniemi
Also, it should be considered tjat their may be economies involved in cranking out classes (albeit updated versions) that have established design, production and parts supply and that these classes have guaranteed proven levels of performance.
It's economics, that's ending the 747 now after 62 years and the B52 will probably still be serving at 100.
It's economics, that's ending the 747 now after 62 years and the B52 will probably still be serving at 100.
Indeed, the real world offers a nice example of the old serving alongside the new, and the long-lived serving alongside the mayflies. This has always been true to some degree: certain sailing ships rotted away faster than others, due to the quality of timber involved, and at times it was better to build expendable fleets out of fir even if there was some oak available for making sustainable individual ships.
Diversity became a Starfleet thing in, oh, "Redemption" or so, when our VFX wizards finally could afford to portray a fleet more than four ships strong (even though they ended up never showing more than four ships per shot anyway). They could have shown four Excelsiors there, but in an iterative reality, were tied to a script that dictated another ragtag fleet scraped together, this writing in turn resulting from the writers well recognizing the shortcomings in VFX budgets and means.
Until then, we probably could have believed in a Starfleet where old ships are the extremely rare exemption: the Constellations were explicitly derided as rare relics in two of their three previous appearances, say. But after "Redemption", we have been facing a certain fictional reality that quite accurately reflects real-world realities.
Except, that is, in the sense that real militaries rarely hobble their modern units by sending them out with older ones that are slower, more vulnerable or otherwise inferior to them. Then again, most of the mixed fleets in TNG and DS9 weren't on time-critical slashing raids: Picard wanted to look harmless, Sisko's forces often just trundled to a target that was fully expecting an assault anyway, and other attacks simply called for every available phaser bank and torpedo tube.
Time-critically hitting Dominion shipyards with fleets hobbled by Mirandas in "Call to Arms" did seem odd, though.
Timo Saloniemi
Diversity became a Starfleet thing in, oh, "Redemption" or so, when our VFX wizards finally could afford to portray a fleet more than four ships strong (even though they ended up never showing more than four ships per shot anyway). They could have shown four Excelsiors there, but in an iterative reality, were tied to a script that dictated another ragtag fleet scraped together, this writing in turn resulting from the writers well recognizing the shortcomings in VFX budgets and means.
Until then, we probably could have believed in a Starfleet where old ships are the extremely rare exemption: the Constellations were explicitly derided as rare relics in two of their three previous appearances, say. But after "Redemption", we have been facing a certain fictional reality that quite accurately reflects real-world realities.
Except, that is, in the sense that real militaries rarely hobble their modern units by sending them out with older ones that are slower, more vulnerable or otherwise inferior to them. Then again, most of the mixed fleets in TNG and DS9 weren't on time-critical slashing raids: Picard wanted to look harmless, Sisko's forces often just trundled to a target that was fully expecting an assault anyway, and other attacks simply called for every available phaser bank and torpedo tube.
Time-critically hitting Dominion shipyards with fleets hobbled by Mirandas in "Call to Arms" did seem odd, though.
Timo Saloniemi
I noticed the Mirandas getting creamed in the fleet battles. One hit and they were destroyed in some cases. I pity the crews assigned to these flying coffins.
