The Centaur is weirdly popular lol. Seems like a love it or hate it kind of ship. I can imagine a lot of them being pumped out during the Dominion War as a sort of fast interdictor, which would partially explain their proliferation in canon. Then again, it's mostly a fool's errand to try to make sense of fleet composition in the post-TNG era at this point.
Spoilers ST Prodigy - StarShips & Technology Season 1 Discussion
- Thread starter Kamen Rider Blade
- Start date
I don’t really see them as new ships Starfleet ‘pumped out’ during the war, because they all have components that date back to a century before. I can see them pumping out Defiant class ships, though.
Methinks we just saw them in PRO because whoever did the CG work was a fan of the ship, despite the fact that they stand out like sore thumbs compared to the other ships.
The Centaur class seems as if it was largely produced in the late 23rd century... around the same time the Excelsior was (the design of the ship is indicative of this era - so, no I don't think SF would bother building those ships from scratch in the late 24th century using design principles of 100 years ago - at least, not until something like Centaur II comes out and all previous Centaurs are say upgraded to the II version - which would happen around the same time the Excelsior II entered the scene most likely - aka, very late 24th and early 25th century).
We hadn't seen that many Centaurs during the Dominion war - in fact, I only recall seeing one on-screen - there could have been a few others as background ships which I missed though (but like any other older ship, SF would have upgraded those that have survived for 70+ years and just kept them around doing certain duties - possibly exploring or doing scientific surveys - depending on their capabilities - and similar to the USS Lakota, their shields, weapons and propulsion systems would have been upgraded to rival modern ships - can't have 70+ years outdated ships running around in potential combat or exploration or doing science effectively).
The idea here is that SF would build a given number of a certain class of ships for a period of time (say the first 5 to 10 years or so when the class of ships is introduced). When the desired number of ships reaches the culmination point, SF ceases production.
Existing ships of the class in the fleet are refitted over time, and given upgrades to keep them relevant... but SF wouldn't be making more of them (that is until perhaps the class undergoes an overhaul and a II version is released after about 120 odd years - at which point, all surviving ships of that class are upgraded to the II version and SF once again builds up the numbers of this class to a desired amount - appropriate for expanded UFP in the later era).
So, given the tech involved, starship classes and existing ships don't have to be retired... EVER.
If they survive in active dury, they can be internally/externally refreshed using replicators and transporters (same applies to upgrades), and given reshaping as required to accommodate technology evolutions - in this scenario exising hulls would be salvaged, decomposed into the matter stream to replicate or create NEW/state of the art hull or components in a desired shape, so its the same ship, just disassembled and reassembled over the years to look like it would 100 to 120 years later... or centuries more).
The only scenario I can see SF building MORE ships of a class that ceased production would be during a war... but that would only happen with fairly MODERN classes - aka those that ceased production relatively close to the war (say if a war happened shortly or a decade or two after a class of ship stopped being produced and SF had no other modern designs in the mix - but not 70+ years after production of a given class stopped with tons of modern classes flying about - no, because SF would have other modern classes of ships that can be built just as easily - do NOT assume that just because a vessel is a 100 years old design that it would be easier and faster to make than a modern starship - in fact, building times might not be different at all, but I just can't see SF building up 70+ year old designs for a war which would likely have to be fought with mostly MODERN designs - sure, the older ships are rivals of modern ships with upgrades, but design wise, they likely have some limitations that modern designs do not - and depending on what the class of ship was initially meant to do, it may be that if the Centaur is a science vessel first, its likely that the upgraded version won't have comparable firepower to the Defiant - the upgraded Excelsior on the other hand, would).
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Well, the only known registry number for the Centaur type is 42043. So that means either the class had a long life (like the Excelsior apparently had, with registries ranging from 2XXX to 4XXXX), or that the class started production around the 2340’s.
Close enough for government work.Someone said: Hey we have an Excelsior saucer and nacelles, but lost the engine section, what do we do...? And the rest is history
I’m leaning towards little Centaurs being a late-23rd century design (that, like its contemporaries, kept being produced well into the 2300s), with big Centaurs being a post-Dominion War design to quickly replenish the fleet using leftover and recycled Excelsior-I parts and tooling (thanks to the Resolute having a 90000-block registry, which is really high for 2380 no matter how you slice it, ships in the low-80000s were just coming off the line).
Call the little ones Buckner-class and the big ones Centaur-class (with the class ship being named in honor of the Centaur seen in DS9 after it was lost in the war).
Call the little ones Buckner-class and the big ones Centaur-class (with the class ship being named in honor of the Centaur seen in DS9 after it was lost in the war).
That works.
Not possible if you ask me.
The Centaur class doesn't have phaser strips. It has ball turrets... which are native to 23rd century era ship designs.
If you recall, the time gap between the ENT-C and D was 20 years.
D launched in 2363... that would put the ENT-C in 2343.
The Centaur class would had to have launched well before that time frame... most likely towards the end of the 23rd century (but likely AFTER the Excelsior class)... possibly the very early 24th century (if I'm being generous).
SF would not bother building older classes of ships using older styles of weapons (phaser balls) if the strips became available.
The Ambassador class still has an Excelsior style saucer, but it featured phaser strips.
If the Centaur class was native to the same era as the Ambassador, why not give it also Phaser strips?
Nope. If you ask me, the Centaur was launched in late 23rd century or very early 24th century (prior to the deployment of Phaser strips).
And because it looks like a mashup of Excelsior components largely, it stands to reason it was supposed to be a scaled down version of the Excelsior (similar to what the Nebula class is compared to the Galaxy class - same components, just without the neck and differently positioned nacelles).
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The problem with that theory is, IIRC, designs like the Excelsior and Miranda weren't modified to have strips instead of the original ball type turrets native to the models. They were just shown at times using more modern weaponry SFX, suggesting you can refit those parts without having to change the existing structure. So in that case, it wouldn't necessarily rule out the Centaurs being built in a modern era.
Well, actualy, there is no real issue with the theory in question.
The Miranda's and Excelsiors not having strips after being upgraded is likely the case because at the time it was faster to just upgrade the designs internally without changing the ship externally so that they would be (mostly) comparable to modern ships in terms of power output and save themselves time on redesigning those ships in the process (the war was looming over their heads, so it was likely faster to just upgrade them internally and give them more glowing nacelles).
The Excelsior (being much larger than the Defiant) was barely on an equal footing with the Defiant (and neither was going for the kill or using torpedoes - but in this instance, the Excelsior also didn't have ablative hull armor, but due to its size, it would have housed a larger warp core, which could have supplied more power to the shields effectively - aka, it compensated for the lack of ablative hull armor).
You can upgrade them yes, but I still doubt SF would bother building brand new Centaurs like that in the late 24th century with all the much more modern classes being available (such as the Sabre, Nova, Steamrunner, etc.).
If they were building them from scratch, it's more likely SF would have modified their design by now and given them phaser strips (the USS Titan has a combo of both balls and strips on its saucer and it seems to be the ONLY Constitution III running around - in fact, SF basically salvaged some bits from the Titan and moved them to the Connie III which was likely already there).
So its more likely the existing Centaurs we saw in DS9 and Prodigy are what's been left from the late 23rd century... just upgraded.
In the case of the USS Resolute we saw in the game, the ship suffered an engine problem which caused the vessel to be out of comission for 6 months - plenty of time for the ship to get an actual secondary hull with a deflector dish as we saw in the game... and in the game, its been suggested repeatedly its an old ship... just upgraded.
But games aren't considered canon, so....
At the time, though, the Excelsiors, despite their relative size and larger cores, were simply older and likely had comparatively outdated tech. Could they be upgraded? Sure. Were they? Maybe not. It was the Dominion War after all, and newer tech installations were probably less plentiful and reserved for newer ships being freshly built at Utopia Planitia for uniquely wartime mission profiles. Further, the Excelsior was always presented as more of a generic fleet workhorse that was never designed for prolonged combat. Before the DW, we only really ever saw them moving admirals and diplomats around, or tending to remote dilithium mines. If they ever engaged in tactical operations, they moved in large battlegroups, as no one ship could last very long on its own.
Enter the Defiant, a brand new (initially) one-off experimental design (hence the "NX" in the original registry) - designed purely for war (originally to go head-to-head and on its own with the most powerful of Borg ships) the only Starfleet ship to have a cloaking device and a power core that damn near shook itself apart every time they throttled-up in battle. O'Brien was constantly griping about doing insane things trying to hold that ship together, as it was way too over-powered for its frame. He kvetched more than Scotty did.
It really is like comparing apples to hand grenades.
The USS Lakota (an Excelsior class) was upgraded as it was noted in 'Paradise Lost' (its shields, weapons and engines underwent upgrades - internally) ... so, it stands to reason, all other Excelsior class ships underwent same upgrades prior to the war - otherwise, I doubt SF would be stupid enough to send technologically outdated and underpowered ships into combat against an enemy that would have otherwise thrown rather 'modern' ships at them.
The resulting upgrades put that Excelsior effectively on par with the Defiant... had it NOT been upgraded, there would have been NO CHANCE at all that the battle between the Lakota and Defiant would have ended like it had (in a tie)... it would have most decidedly been in Defiants favour otherwise... and the battle would have been over far faster if the Lakota wasn't upgraded.
The Defiant had the extra benefit of ablative hull armour... but it was also overpowered for its size. The Excelsior however had a much larger frame (FAR larger), and even if it lacked ablative hull armor, it likely made up for it in shields and better power distribution systems that were able to support a large/more powerful/modern warp core which was able to maintain shields for longer periods than what the Defiant could (comparatively speaking).
We also saw other Defiant class ships in some of the fleet scenes during DS9... so the Defiant wasn't the only one.
Plus, SF pretty much abandoned working on the Defiant when the Borg threat became less urgent... so it was mothballed. Sisko was the one who pulled it out and over time, the ship was 'stabilized'... also, they never really found a solution to the overpowered factor of the ship... all they did was basically keep the ship under Warp 9 at most of the times to prevent issues.
At any rate, for SF to be able to bring up an ageing class of ships all the way up to the Defiant's level in tactical ability was nothing short of superb with nothing more than internal upgrades mostly... I actually wonder how powerful the Excelsior II is in the early 25th century.
This is a flawed argument, as the Lakota was the only one that had this newer configuration. It clearly didn't cut the mustard, as literally every other member of the Excelsior class seen since that time was of the original configuration. If it was all that and a bag of chips, every new Excelsior off the line would have the E-B/Lakota configuration. This was not the case.
Remember the multitude of creaky kitbashed ships that they threw at a single standard Borg Cube at Wolf 359 that got literally every last one's ass handed to them? Or the DS9 Frankenfleet made of a hodgepodge of ship parts thrown together to serve more as white noise against an oncoming aggressor than a viable battlegroup? Yeah, I 'member...
SF did that all the freakin' time if they didn't have the resources - It was almost state-sanctioned mass suicide! 
Again, if the newer Lakota design was so awesome, why was no other Excelsior shown with this configuration? Because of this, there is more evidence to demonstrate that it was a failed experiment than it was the first of future plans. It was a sad victim of mission scope creep, retrofitted to engage in mission profiles that it was never originally designed to do.
Agree.
Yes, later on, proving my other point that, since the Defiant was a more successful design, it was worthy of duplication. The Lakota ultimately was not. I also suspect that such a comparatively vessel took too much resources to build, when they could easily build more Defiant types for an equal "bang for the buck", as it were, probably at around a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio (much like 20th century pocket battleships). Abandoning Lakotas for Defiants during a time of war made good economic and resource sense.
Sadly, this proved how short-sighted SF was to the Borg threat - which never really ceased being a threat (until, ostensibly, PIC S3). Q bent over backwards to warn them what was out there, and they really didn't listen. The Dominion was just another in a long line of bullies to rattle SF's cage. The Federation's high-minded goal of exploration is all well and good when the wolves aren't at the gate ("It's easy to be a Saint in Paradise" -Sisko), but they seemed to be in a quasi-denial state as to what threats existed out there. It's always been their biggest blind spot. They always assumed (naïvely, IMO) that, if a species is intelligent enough to master interstellar travel, they must obviously embrace diplomatic principles first before resulting to war. Should diplomatic principles always be the first step to establishing a relationship with other such powers? Most certainly! I would never advocate otherwise. But when it is proven that said power is openly hostile, I might recommend a quicker pivot to a defensive posture, lest the Federation be perceived as weak (which has happened countless times in Trek history).
Agreed - it was an interesting strategy, probably to serve as a stop-gap measure to massively upgrade existing platforms to stem the tide of a threat until such time that enough mission-specific platforms like Defiant could be moved to the board to decisively turn the tide and finish the job.
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That seems to be the main flaw with the UFP's Civilian Government's Upper Echelon who have never had any StarFleet Exploration under their belt and just assumed that everybody is peaceful.
Those who have been on the front line of Exploration have generally dealt with hostile forces and are a bit wiser to the danger out there.
That's why I think StarFleet / UFP shouldn't hide it's military aspect.
I think the experimental upgrades were a stop gap to implementing the new Excelsior Mk.2 and Constitution Mk.3 variants.
They were modified to see how far they can go with just updates and then compared to the brand new full redesign from the ground up. The New redesign from the ground up ended up winning out in the long run as we can start seeing them fill in the 25th century fleet ranks.
