Spoilers The Ships of Lower Decks

[valkyrie013]

I'm sure most planets has a "home fleet" either home built ships, or older starfleet ships.
Each planet/government has there own agendas when it comes to space travel, sure some go to starfleet. But a planets government agenda may be different to what starfleet does/wants to do.
A planet like vulcan may be a bit zenophobic, or like some members of the federation, there life support standards aren't compatable with "Earth standard" Higher heat, greater presure, aquatic, etc. So some intrepid people may live an uncomfortable life to be in starfleet, but most would serve on a home fleet ship.
A planet may be looking for colony worlds, but starfleet may not have any ships available for years, or back burner. They may want to explore everything themselves, instead of the information being given to them.
Imagine, we finally get out into space, we want to go explore, but a "Federation" shows up and says Hi, we've been around for centuries, explored the 1000s of light years around, here's the the data. Well, okay, that would be deflating. We get all hopped up, want to explore alpha centauri, some aliens come by and say, meh, just a rock, no life, here's the data..

 

[Tuskin38]

I am still just a tad confused as to why Vulcan, being long-standing members of the Federation, would still have their own fleet.

They're not thinking of seceding, are they?

They had their own ships in DS9 and TNG.

This could just be a civilian scientific cruiser or something.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

Based on the Oberth and potentially the Nova I'd expect a science vessel to be smaller and less heavily armed.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

This could just be a civilian scientific cruiser or something.

I concur, and in the future, it makes sense to be well armed with the latest Tech on every aspect of your vessel.

When you're out in Deep Space, far from support, you never know what might happen.

Who would've ever thought that the "Pakleds" of all species would become a credible threat.

Yet it happened. If you were to take bets from StarFleet Officers after they first encountered the "Pakleds", that they would become a credible threat that would actually manage to defeat a StarFleet StarShip of all things; you'd probably have a "GooglePlex to 1" odds.

Based on the Oberth and potentially the Nova I'd expect a science vessel to be smaller and less heavily armed.

Not Necessarilly. Out in Deep Space, you never know what you might encounter, it's best to be as prepared as possible and live to tell the tale then be a lone weak little "Oberth" class science vessel and get obliterated and not live to share your findings.

 

[Tuskin38]

Based on the Oberth and potentially the Nova I'd expect a science vessel to be smaller and less heavily armed.

Voyager was a science vessel and was pretty heavily armed.

 

[UssGlenn]

The Federation of TNG and LDS might be full of "national" expeditionary groups and whatever in the research sense, with Starfleet still the only armed forces allowed.

There's no reason to prevent member worlds from having their own armed forces. If they want to expend resources on that, it's their business. Starfleet will be there if they get in over their heads. I'm sure the Federation has ways of dealing with member planets that are going around pissing off new species. Preventing member worlds from having their own Space Navy is a good way to prevent anyone new from ever joining the Federation.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

There's no reason to prevent member worlds from having their own armed forces. If they want to expend resources on that, it's their business. Starfleet will be there if they get in over their heads. I'm sure the Federation has ways of dealing with member planets that are going around pissing off new species. Preventing member worlds from having their own Space Navy is a good way to prevent anyone new from ever joining the Federation.

I concur, every UFP Member Species, Star System, or Colony can have their own local Militia that primarily creates their own Militia forces, Naval StarShip Vessels, etc.

As long as they work alongside & with StarFleet for the common defense of the UFP, I don't see what the issue is.

Their focus might be on the protection of their core Star System / Planets / Region, doesn't mean they won't do tour of duties else where within the UFP.

It's kind of like a mix of US National Guards from different states and NATO, but much more closely linked.

With StarFleet at it's core.

We can all co-exist together and work inter-operably.

That's also part of IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations).

Remember that in the Dominion War, one Klingon Ship had a change in Reactor design that made Klingon Ships immune to the Breen Energy Dampeners.

That kind of difference in a fleet could potentially help in the future with everybody being similar yet different enough.

We can all cross pollinate technology, tactics, crew, knowledge, experience, etc.

All in the name of co-operation, alliance, sibling-hood, and good will to all fellow UFP Members.

 

[Timo]

There's no reason to prevent member worlds from having their own armed forces. If they want to expend resources on that, it's their business. Starfleet will be there if they get in over their heads. I'm sure the Federation has ways of dealing with member planets that are going around pissing off new species. Preventing member worlds from having their own Space Navy is a good way to prevent anyone new from ever joining the Federation.

From what we see of UFP-internal interactions, the members are a rowdy bunch, often trying to pursue independent foreign policies. That's the greater factor in a decision whether to join: if you agree to being disarmed, you only get beaten by Starfleet at most once, on your way in - but if you disagree with that one, you get slaughtered every time, regardless of whether you are a member or not.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Lakenheath 72]

In the episode "Unification, Part II", there is a mention of Vulcan defense ships protecting the planet from the Romulan invasion.

I kinda see the situation as analogous to what is now in the United States. The US has a federal defense force and each state can have its own defense forces. My state, California, has an active state defense force, while a state like Florida does not have an active force. (State defense force - Wikipedia)

 

[dupersuper]

Well, we know that Starfleet and the Vulcan Expeditionary Group were still two separate organizations in 2250, when Sarek made the wrong decision as to which child let join the group.

At least one Vulcan science ship went into the gamma quadrant to poke around in 2369.

 

[Timo]

In the episode "Unification, Part II", there is a mention of Vulcan defense ships protecting the planet from the Romulan invasion.

And as far as we know, the long and short definition of "Vulcan defense vessel" is "Starfleet vessel tasked with defending Vulcan".

Earlier in that very same episode, a weapons merchant claims that Vulcans are pacifists and that since he sells warships, he has no interest in Vulcan vessels. It would appear to follow that Vulcan can't be defended by ships of Vulcan make (no guns) or even allegiance (no guts for firing guns), then.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[matthunter]

Warship and Defence Vessel aren't necessarily exclusive when it comes to guns. PT Boats would not be considered warships by our standards, because they could never survive a direct hit from a genuine warship. But they had weapons capable of hurting warships.

 

[Lakenheath 72]

Whose standards are those? Wikipedia lists them as warships of the late modern period and one of their sources is titled Pt Boats in Action (Warships, No 7).

 

[Timo]

We might trust a weapon merchant's standards when it comes to Vulcan ships. Sure, he has an agenda there, but he also wants to convince Starfleet with it. If Vulcan back in "Unification I/II" had something comparable to the Sh'vhal, no dice.

Our saving grace here is that the folks the Pakleds were fighting toe to toe were rather inferior: a tiny Klingon BoP, and a second-rate starship that has played the damsel-in-distress role before. When a Vulcan survey ship joins the fray and similarly has her ass handed to her, until exotic super-shields are applied, we indeed have little reason to think that this survey ship has combat capabilities worth anything.

The Titan warping in and suffering likewise would in turn be proof of a single clumpship being a worthy adversary. Yet elsewhere, we actually find out that the Titan can easily deal with those, and thus that the Sh'vhal is demonstrably inferior to a Luna in combat.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

Voyager was a science vessel and was pretty heavily armed.

Voyager is a mid-sized, medium endurance, multi-role exploration vessel (a "cruising vessel" in Age of Sail terms), not a short range, single mission science vessel like the Nova or Oberth, the former of which is explicitly called out as less capable than the Intrepids on screen.

 

[Timo]

Indeed so. Yet it's interesting that Janeway's ship was never compared to larger Starfleet ones - how to approach her pride in objective terms? Is an Intrepid still of relatively low combat worth in general Starfleet terms? Better than a California? Not quite up to the high standars (for a second-rate ship) of California?

All starships have phasers. We very seldom get any indication of "caliber", though. "Type" numbers are mentioned in backstage books, and on rare occasions also in onscreen graphics (the E-B had "Type 8"), but is that caliber, such as in hand phasers, or degree of modernity or kind of model, such as in shuttlecraft types? Might be the Voyager is armed to the teeth with peashooter-caliber phaser strips (and the Equinox just has fewer of those), while the Cerritos has three strips of moderate caliber, and the Titan has two that really hurt.

Or then all phasers are equal, and it's just a matter of how much power one allocates to them. A Nova might squeeze out half a shot of the sort that a Galaxy fires with abandon from multiple strips simultaneously. But if so, Ransom probably would have tried to take that half a shot...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vale]

Rick Sternbach has stated that the Intrepid class has Type 10 phaser arrays – the same as the Galaxy class. One might therefore reasonably imagine that shot for shot Voyager could match the Enterprise-D for firepower – the Enterprise-D was just capable of more shots simultaneously though having much larger arrays.

 

[Timo]

Then again, that's not mentioned on screen. And while the E-D makes big craters on the side of a Borg Strategic Cube, the Voyager barely dents a mere Tactical Cube...

This I guess is the fun part of all these spinoff rehashes of old opponents: we finally get a chance to compare how different sets of heroes and their ships deal with them. So far, no Intrepid vs. old threat, alas. Unless we count her making short work of an old D7.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vale]

Then again, that's not mentioned on screen. And while the E-D makes big craters on the side of a Borg Strategic Cube, the Voyager barely dents a mere Tactical Cube...

If you're going strictly by what we see on screen then there's no such thing as a Borg "Strategic Cube"; and a Tactical Cube has more extensive armour than a regular Borg Cube.

 

[Timo]

Well, it's way smaller. Give it one of those craters we saw in "Q Who?" and it's essentially gone.

Timo Saloniemi