"My God, that's a big ship."
On Ship Design Longevity
- Thread starter Mysterion
- Start date
"My God, that's a big ship."
Good observation.
^ Exactly.
Case in point right now, in fact, to use a RL example. Out of a class of 12 ships (the High Endurance Cutter class), we're looking at decomming several of them during the next year.
The oldest one in service, is actually ranked #4 on the list to go out. The first three are all "younger" ships (anywhere from 3-6 years "younger"), but they're just in worse materiel condition.
Cheers,
-CM-
Case in point right now, in fact, to use a RL example. Out of a class of 12 ships (the High Endurance Cutter class), we're looking at decomming several of them during the next year.
The oldest one in service, is actually ranked #4 on the list to go out. The first three are all "younger" ships (anywhere from 3-6 years "younger"), but they're just in worse materiel condition.
Cheers,
-CM-
Saquist
Commodore
That's correct and believable.
The Constitution is the same platform function as the Excelsior. The Excelsior does it's job better. An impressive array of phasers on the Primary Hull Fore and aft torpedoes, two shuttlebays and much much faster. Bigger Impulse engines for it's size too.
But why run to designs with the same fuction.
The registry only suggest moderate building in the late 23rd century.
It's not until the first quarter of the 24th century that ships jumped DRAMATICALLY higher into the registry. 10,000 from 2,000's and 4,000 and that's just the Ambassador which if you ask me...makes no sense at all being that close to the 23rd century.
Ambassador in fandom is called the predessor of the Galaxy but apparently the Nebula came or was designed right along side but was constructed first. then going back in time Akira, Norway and all those other misfits from FC.
It think that's where the excelsior variants came from. NCC 42043...but it's well after the big jump in production during the time of the Tomed incident and the Romulan Invasion of Klingon Territories the so called period of isolation...
How do you get "unprecedentedly huge" from "God, that's a big ship?" Especially since this is, what, the sixth time he's seen the Excelsior up close and he's just NOW noticing it's big?
Anyway, it doesn't really imply Excelsior is the biggest ship of its time. Just that it's quite a bit bigger than the Enterprise, which we already knew.
While not canon, if you believe that the Enterprise's official designation was a "Heavy Cruiser" that means she was slightly above medium sized in comparison to the rest of the ships in the fleet. Going by the old American and British naval classifications of course. That would mean there were alway ships the size of the Kelvin in Star Fleet. Perhaps that was what the Excelsior was replacing, not the connies, but the aging Kelvins.
In TMP she was the most powerful ship in service, more powerful then the best the Klingons could dish out for example.
Her being a training vessel, that makes sense, they were upgrading the whole fleet and it would be nice to have people who actually know their way around their upgraded vessel, since the Enterprise was the first she would be logically needed to train crews for the next batch of upgraded or even new build vessels.
Enterprise was heavily damaged and being the first refitted Connie she probably wasn't entirely a standard ship which makes repairs and refits problematic.
As for the later era Constitutions, I have no doubt they are still in service just like the Miranda and Oberth classes, also there was one (or more) at Wolf359
Saquist
Commodore
Cruiser isn't so much a classification but a role and all of the Star Fleet ships fit into the role of Cruiser which is an independent single ship mission vessel.
Believe it or not the Galaxy fits the battleship Role
The Largest Hull, high "caliber guns" a show of force politically. I think the Galaxy is a Combat/ Defender because of it's high number of phasers and high crew capacity.
I'd say that the Constitution is literally a Battle cruiser, or a Combat orientation.
Sovrerign is hard to place in traditional military terms. It's original orientation was really quite benign now it's definitely a Combat orientation , I'd say it's the 24th century Guided Missle Cruiser like the Ticonderoga
Defiant is a difficult classification
Definitely Combat orientation, and doesn't fit the larger vessel classifcation and frigate is Fleet role vessel. I classify Defiant with the limited role Fast Attack Boat known as the Pegasus Hydrofoil.
But to the extent any of these classifications tell you about size, one recalls that WW-II battlecruisers were by no means the largest ships in the fleet. In fact, neither were the battleships; they were eventually dwarfed by the larger Essex carriers, which in turn gave rise to the Midway and successors. Modern aircraft carriers are now something like twice the length of a guided missile cruiser with ten times the displacement. In fact, you could even extrapolate this into STXI continuity: if the original Constitution class could be interpreted as, say, a Long Beach class cruiser, the NuEnterprise could be interpreted as a supercarrier.
Maybe there's an alternate timeline out there where the fourth ship of the Long Beach class was named "Enterprise"?
Maybe there's an alternate timeline out there where the fourth ship of the Long Beach class was named "Enterprise"?
The American and to some extent British and int'l definition of heavy cruiser was a cruiser with 8in guns or bigger, without specific mention of length or displacement or any other dimension. And that was only the third-biggest gun combat type anyway, there being battle cruisers (never built) and battleships above it. Starfleet could have had those in TOS, too. So,
Not necessarily. At least nothing of the sort was ever mentioned in that movie, or in any other movie. Starfleet could well have had larger and/or more powerful ships at its disposal, only none of them anywhere near interception range (perhaps more powerful ships were slower, too?).
And while the Klingons in TOS typically wanted at least 2:1 odds or an inside man doing sabotage before daring to challenge Kirk's ship with their battle cruisers, the Klingons in TOS movies had fewer reservations. A single cloakship of theirs was a deadly threat in three movies; a single wounded battle cruiser was seen as a threat in one. Who knows how a single modern Klingon battle cruiser would have fared against the upgraded Enterprise in TMP, had a battle occurred?
Or one of the easiest. Starfleet calls her "escort", which matches historical precedent pretty well: poor spacekeeping (seakeeping), poor habitability, limited weaponry, a powerful forward-firing weapon unique to the type (hedgehog), general ruggedness, slow speed, lack of multimission capabilities...
Timo Saloniemi
True, but I'm mainly referring to the correlation between size and classification in the U.S. Navy. There are frigates larger than destroyers these days, for example, but not in the USN.
In the same vein, who's to say Starfleet classifications are anything like the USN? In the Babylon 5 universe, destroyers are the largest combatants, usually three times the size of cruisers. If Starfleet uses a system similar to that, a TOS-era destroyer could be the size of an Ambassador class.
Umm no, the Essex class was a measly 36.000 tons, Iowa's were around 54.000 tons, Bismarck was 51.000 tons even the little ones like King George V were around 42.000 tons and the Yamato class around 72.000 tons the Hood was almost 48.000 tons only Renown was smaller at only 30.000 tons, so were the Revenge class ships and Queen Elizabeth class.
So not even the Midway class was even close to be around the size of a Yamato, Midways tonnage at retirement was just shy of 70.000 tons which is still less then that of a Yamato and when she was build she was a measly 45.000 tons.
So yes battleships were by far the largest vessels afloat in WW-2.
Speaking in terms of displacement, which had alot more to do with armor plating and the mass of the weapons. The 70,000 ton Midway wasn't not THAT much larger--in terms of dimensions--than the Essex; heavier armor and weaponry drive up displacement as well as size.
No, they were the HEAVIEST afloat in World War-II, which makes sense because nearly half of their mass was additional armor plating to protect them from other battleships. Even modern guided missile cruisers, which have almost no armor to speak of, are half the displacement of WW-II era vessels of similar dimensions.
Either way, the original point stands. Cruisers are hardly the largest ships in any fleet, and even if you were right about WW-II era ships, it isn't the case ANYMORE, and even if the Iowas were still in service they're still dwarfed twice over by a typical super-carrier (as are missile-heavy battlecruisers like Kirov).
Just sayin.
OTOH, perhaps the modern definitions of cruiser aren't as relevant as an older definition.
Three hundred years ago, the term cruiser meant a warship that was acting independently from the fleet, assigned such duties as protecting merchant lanes on the high seas, patrolling coastlines, hunting down pirates and other hostile vessel, performing reconnaissance missions, etc. Such cruisers could be vessels of any size, from a sloop-of-war on up, and the role they played sounds a lot more like what we see a TOS-era starship do. (note: given the C. S. Forrester inspirations of TOS, this doubly makes sense to me)
So, perhaps, three hundred years from now, the term again has less to do with vessel size and regains some of its original meaning? With the prefix heavy meaning the largest of these vessels?
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Back on topic, there could be political reasons for the longevity of starships. After all, the heavy cruiser sized vessels of the 20th century themselves were not as much a consequence of naval evolution as they were the result of the tonnage limitation of the Washington Treaty of 1922. (The US didn't build any new battleships for nearly twenty years after that treaty.) It's not too hard to imagine similar treaties between the Federation and its competing regional entities having an equally-chilling effect on starship construction and retention.
edit to add this:
And we do know that later iterations of Trek would include treaties with limits, such as the cloaking device ban in the Treaty of Algeron.
Three hundred years ago, the term cruiser meant a warship that was acting independently from the fleet, assigned such duties as protecting merchant lanes on the high seas, patrolling coastlines, hunting down pirates and other hostile vessel, performing reconnaissance missions, etc. Such cruisers could be vessels of any size, from a sloop-of-war on up, and the role they played sounds a lot more like what we see a TOS-era starship do. (note: given the C. S. Forrester inspirations of TOS, this doubly makes sense to me)
So, perhaps, three hundred years from now, the term again has less to do with vessel size and regains some of its original meaning? With the prefix heavy meaning the largest of these vessels?
-----
Back on topic, there could be political reasons for the longevity of starships. After all, the heavy cruiser sized vessels of the 20th century themselves were not as much a consequence of naval evolution as they were the result of the tonnage limitation of the Washington Treaty of 1922. (The US didn't build any new battleships for nearly twenty years after that treaty.) It's not too hard to imagine similar treaties between the Federation and its competing regional entities having an equally-chilling effect on starship construction and retention.
edit to add this:
And we do know that later iterations of Trek would include treaties with limits, such as the cloaking device ban in the Treaty of Algeron.
And it continued to mean that in the World Wars era, even if it also stabilized to refer to a specific model or design of ship. Cruisers in WWI or WWII had very little to do in fleet actions, and were mainly employed in detached duty: raiding commerce or protecting it from raiders, scouting and shadowing, supporting amphibious raids, delivering supplies and personnel, and so forth.
Cruisers ceased to be employed in the Cold War era for two main reasons: global colonial powers like the British Empire ceased to exist, and the two surviving superpowers that could afford to build "cruiser-sized" vessels had doctrines that did not involve the concept. The US concentrated on protecting the all-important Atlantic convoys and, later on, the all-important nuclear missile submarines, plus hunting down enemy subs of that persuasion; the USSR concentrated on coastal defense and, later on, global hunting for US missile subs and carriers. But the concept of "cruising" survived in e.g. the British and French navies, and was pursued by vessels designated as frigates or destroyers - just like the original cruisers of the 17th, 18th and especially 19th century had often been frigates.
A "superpower" of UFP ilk could hardly afford not to utilize cruisers again, and indeed all of TOS and most of the other shows stand proof to the idea that Starfleet operates independent cruisers as a key element in its doctrine. OTOH, it's difficult to see how any power here on Earth could ever again benefit from the use of such solo ships. They are a bit too much for certain policing duties (lighter and faster forces of the airborne type can do that), and a bit too little to be risked where the enemy has any naval combat capabilities (convoy and amphibious warfare require a massive concentration of naval assets, or else the risking of losing the assets piecemeal).
One never knows for sure, though. The Soviet navy used "cruiser" as a definition of warship size (on a scale that ran from "cutter"/"boat" through "small" and "large" to "cruiser"), and accordingly designated its largest submarines and its aircraft carriers as "cruisers". Said giant submarines (such as the infamously lost Kursk) operated in ways that were very similar to the way Kirk flew his starship: they were independent hunters capable of assorted errands. Even the Soviet/Russian carriers are very cruiserlike, as they lack surface escorts that could keep apace with them, but OTOH sport heavy naval armament of their own, in addition to carrying the aircraft.
In any case, Trek has made a good case for cruisers already. Other kinds of scifi universes might feature different rules, where solo action was heavily in disfavor and only mighty fleets had any hope of surviving in interstellar space. But Trek has always been of the opposite persuasion.
One might well assume that the Organian treaty also imposed limits - one result of which was that Starfleet had to pretend it was "refitting" its earlier heavy units, instead of building all-new ones, in TMP. This even though NCC-1701 was essentially completely destroyed and a new ship built on her ruins.
If there were limitations like that on cruisers, one can imagine Starfleet would wish to keep very low profile on its possible heavier units such as dreadnoughts or battleships. No wonder we heard so little of them in those movies...
Timo Saloniemi
^ There's also the "cruiser gap" to consider. The USN redesigned alot of ships that previously would have been destroyers and frigates and called them "cruisers" just to make it look to the voters like their navy was as powerful as the Soviets.
Suppose "cruiser" is one one four possible translations of a Klingon word that also translates to "warbird", "bomber", and "battle axe." There are obvious reasons for not using the other two, and the second--to human-sounding ears--doesn't directly imply a warship, so "cruiser" might be used in civilian press to describe Klingon ships. Suddenly there's an uproar as to why the Klingon Empire has such a huge number of heavy cruisers and Starfleet only has a few dozen; Starfleet responds by slightly redesigning the Constitution Class patrol ship as "heavy cruiser," in a fleet where the "cruiser" designation properly refers to ships the size of, say, Harry Mudd's "Aurora."
That might also explain the use of the word "battlecruiser" despite the lack of the traditional features (thin armor, heavy weapons, high speed) that defined the term. A battle cruiser might simply be a cruiser capable of engaging in combat, where a regular "cruiser" is just any large vessel that operates autonomously (even the Hansens' "Raven" would fit that definition).
Suppose "cruiser" is one one four possible translations of a Klingon word that also translates to "warbird", "bomber", and "battle axe." There are obvious reasons for not using the other two, and the second--to human-sounding ears--doesn't directly imply a warship, so "cruiser" might be used in civilian press to describe Klingon ships. Suddenly there's an uproar as to why the Klingon Empire has such a huge number of heavy cruisers and Starfleet only has a few dozen; Starfleet responds by slightly redesigning the Constitution Class patrol ship as "heavy cruiser," in a fleet where the "cruiser" designation properly refers to ships the size of, say, Harry Mudd's "Aurora."
That might also explain the use of the word "battlecruiser" despite the lack of the traditional features (thin armor, heavy weapons, high speed) that defined the term. A battle cruiser might simply be a cruiser capable of engaging in combat, where a regular "cruiser" is just any large vessel that operates autonomously (even the Hansens' "Raven" would fit that definition).
Quite so. Yet regardless of the designation, these vessels were built as, and remained, anti-aircraft escorts for carrier groups, and never were expected to perform any of the classic cruiser missions.
Although admittedly, anti-aircraft escort was a mission assumed by many a cruiser in WWII already, up to and including the construction of specialized AA cruisers...
One might also argue that "cruiser" could be used even if it weren't a translation of any Klingon word at all.
Many a Soviet vessel was considered a "destroyer" during the Cold War, even though the USSR never built any destroyers; for the Soviets, "destroyer" was a flotilla torpedo attack type and nothing else, and the very last of that sort were retired in the early 1960s. That never stopped NATO from using the destroyer designation in a manner that was systematic with its own use of the word.
Klingons seem to consider "Bird of Prey" a description of a warship mission type, applicable for many designs over the years. "Warbird" seems to get the same consideration - or at least we hear of Klingon warbirds in ENT and STXI alike, and of perhaps three different types of Romulan warbirds in TNG and ST:NEM. We might argue that early humans accepted the correct Vulcan intelligence on the right name for the Klingon type, but later TOS humans preferred intelligence or terminology of their own. Post-TOS humans again had direct access to Klingon sources and reverted to the use of proper Klingon terminology.
For all we know, these Klingon vessels indeed had these exact features. They always inflicted significant damage on the hero ship, but it's quite possible their shields were woefully inferior. Their speed was supposedly sufficient for pursuit of the heroes, though, as in "The Enterprise Incident".
To be sure, though, there were battle cruisers in Earth history that were characterized by heavy protection but light weaponry - the Nazi Scharnhorst class. Some sources considered these battleships. Yet the British, the very inventors of the battle cruiser concept, opted for the battle cruiser designation for these ships.
Timo Saloniemi
