...For the same reason Miranda outlasted Constitution? Three ways to apply pseudo-logic here: 1) The Nebula is the no-frills version, thus built in greater numbers, thus more likely to survive in decisive strength till such a point where Starfleet has to decide whether to produce another big batch or not. 2) The Nebula is the development of the Galaxy original, thus marginally newer, thus more likely to survive till such a point yadda yadda (although we have seen lower Nebula registries than Galaxy ones, actually suggesting the Galaxy is the bells-and-whistles spinoff of the Nebula original). 3) The Nebula, being the no-frills ship, has to embark modular gear in order to perform missions the Galaxy is already pre-equipped for - which makes it easier to keep the equipment up to date, with modular swaps, and thus allows the Nebula to serve on when the Galaxy gets outdated by virtue of her aging onboard equipment. Of course, it's equally easy to invent opposite arguments if we want to prove the Nebula will disappear first - which might be a good idea because we have seen "future" Galaxies but no "future Nebulas in flashforward episodes. Timo Saloniemi
During the Dominion War, especially during the battle to retake DS9 Sisko referred to Galaxy class wings...I actually found this odd that you would possibly group Galaxy class ships together and not form battle groups of ships each with a Galaxy class cruiser (its what I tried to do with ST Armarda, worked to a point as much as the game allowed). From the background books it was suggested that Galaxy class spaceframes were constructed quickly during the war with a large amount of their internal space empty for extra power plants and weapons. After the war I imagine any serviceable ships returned to the construction yard for completion and sent out for deep space missions. New build ships I would favour the newer and smaller designs to rebuild fleet numbers but I cant see the Galaxy class being phased out unless the Sovereign or something else made it truely obsolete and there would probably be limited production of an upgraded version well into the 25c.
Actually, that was just "galaxy wings". Might mean formations of Galaxy class ships. Might mean formations led by a single Galaxy class ship. Might mean formations that do not feature any Galaxy class ships but are dedicated to escorting and protecting those capital ships. Might mean formations codenamed "galaxy" as opposed to those codenamed "freehold" or "donovan". Might mean fighter wings launched from Galaxy class ships, as opposed to fighter wings launched from other types of carrier ship and possibly featuring different equipment. FWIW, we did see up to four Galaxy class vessels rush through the same gap in the Dominion formation (a gap probably of their own making) in the famous scene where one of the ships applies two simultaneous beams from her saucer phaser array on a Galor. Perhaps Starfleet decided that concentrating the most powerful battlewagons in a single formation would give decisive results? Timo Saloniemi
It's just the Trek franchise in the late 90's went OTT with space battles and borg encounters to impress the 14 year olds of the time - so you'd find smaller older ships (like the Excelsior and Miranda classes) getting more TV screen time so they can cheaply get blown up as part of the dramatic effect of space bourne war. I'm sure in the trek universe, Galaxy classes would be kept in service for what Starfleet like to do best and that is to explore and to expand their foothold. The Galaxy class is probably still the best sort of ship for long range exploration.
Thinking about this thread on the drive home today, I recalled Picard's line about the Borg kicking the Federation in their complacency (Q Who). Why would they be complacent at that point? Well, they have made peace with the Klingons, the Roms have retreated behind the NZ, and Federation policy has lead to a century's worth of relatively peaceful coexistence with the local powers. Some border skirmishes but mostly expansion through reason and relationships. So they would build a mobile starbase like the Galaxy-class, and take their families along, because they anticipate more of the same. (The Galaxy class certainly represents a design paradigm that says, "The Final Frontier? Phtt! We know how to do that. And safely,too!") Then the Roms pop back up with their Warbird superships (this is when the Sovereign is first conceived IMO, to answer the Warbirds) and the Borg threat appears; and it's clear that more fight and less frills is what is needed. And the Dom War ensures that the AQuad is a messy place for a while with no real exploring occurring until it is sorted. So yes I think the Galaxies get retired and when exploration became a priority again, it would be with a new class of ship.
In hindsight, was there really any onscreen claims of the Galaxy-class being a dedicated exploration vessel? Sure, we have TNG's opening title dialog of "to explore strange new worlds, etc., etc.," but that could be simply for the Enterprise. But if that's not the same mission for other Galaxy-class ships, then the design could be just a really big capital ship that has a role to play both in peacetime and wartime.
It's hard to compare Galaxy Class life compared to Excelsior and Miranda Class which are nearing 100 years active design life. Compared to the Galaxy which is less than 30 years. Even though it's debris in the debris field at Wolf 359 there is evidence to support that possible there are still a few Constitution Class vessels in service. It seems as if many designs from around the mid-late 23rd Century servive well into the the 24th Century. Oberth, Excelsior, Miranda etc.. Does this mean that the 24th Century Classes aren't as good no of course not, I would say it's the fact that Starfleet began to design new classes of ships to counter new threats and as a reaction to the the changing galactic political landscape. As it would appear that the era of the mid-late 23rd century was more stable than the mid-late 24th century.
But SF also decided to upgrade some (if not all) of it's older class ships just before the Dominion War ensued. The biggest example of this being the Lakota - my theory on it would be that SF needed to bring it's fleet into fighting shape, and since it takes a lot less resources to upgrade older ships than it does to build new ones (I mean, come on, transporters and replicators being used to replace old internal systems/designs with new ones by recycling the old as well as being used in construction of new ships too). I would surmise that Q in 'Q Who' mentioned complacency because he saw potential in the Federation, but they DID get a bit relaxed after majority of the past 80 years probably being spend in relative peace. They did get a kick in the rear after that Borg cube defeated the Enterprise so... completely - but to their credit, the Borg were far more advanced by comparison. Hm... it's possible he wanted to see how well will SF adapt to the Borg threat even if they were a lot more technologically advanced. The Dominion on the other hand was more or less on par technologically with the Federation. I find it idiotic that Ds9 writers felt the need to dumb a lot of aspects of Trek, it's technology and everything else to portray the Dominion War. To my understanding, given the size of the Federation, it probably should have been able to go 1 on 1 against the Dominion - but as it turned out, it was apparently felt that both the Klingons and Romulans were needed (both EMPIRES) to team up with the Feds and take on the Dominion along with the Cardassians (initially - and later on, the Breen who were a relatively minor power). A lot of things went out of whack really.
Well, according to Rick Berman, if the producers had planned on having the Dominion War in Deep Space Nine, then they never would've had the Klingons and Federation break up (for a season or so). Thus, if they had planned a Dominion War it would've been against a Federation closely allied with the Romulans all along. and though the Breen were never featured prior to the end of the Dominion War, they did make a couple of appearances earlier in Deep Space Nine and were first mentioned in ST:TNG as having cloaking technology (in the episode where the little boy is the sole survivor of a starship disaster and starts to mimick Data).
I thought that the Dominion was much bigger than the Federation in the Gamma Quadrant and was the main reason why the entrance to the wormhole was mined--to prevent a full-scale invasion of the Alpha Quadrant. With the bulk of their forces still in the Gamma Quadrant, the Dominion turned to the Cardassians and the Breen to reinforce what they had.
Sternbach said much the same thing in one of his interviews in a ST magazine article IIRC a few years ago. That was why they scaled back the Sovereign's amenities. BTW, in the same interview, he said Sovereigns were meant to replace Excelsiors as the "workhorse" class for the late 24th century fleet.
The Lokota defending rebellious admirals plotting against starfleet on earth IMO was a bit of a joke, after all her so called upgraded it still was slapped up by a glorified 24th century shuttle craft. The use of Excelsior classes in DS9 was that it was cannon fodder for the baddies to appear threatening on TV , and an upgraded Excelsior was just fodder to show how great the Defiant is to the audience. Had Berman and braga got their way they would have put 20 uprated connie class ships against the Defiant. All of them would have been humiliated on TV as another slap in the face to TOS and Captain Kirk sentlements.
Riiiight, its clearly part of a conspiracy by B&B, who weren't even involved in the episode, the insult TOS/TMP. Or maybe its just because the Excelsior is a well-recognized ship with a good model, and not so big that the Defiant beating it would be completely implausible like the Galaxy.
The Excelsior class is cannon fodder, it was an old TMP/Kirk era ship model that the studio can afford to re-use over and over. It looks nothing like the Enterprise or the Defiant - so casual viewers wouldnt get confused. Just what you need for something that is frequently bitch-slapped each and every so episode where there is some battle. The in-universe reasoning is shocking, why go through all that planning to usurp the Federation and use an old ship that cant even stop a trigger happy shuttle craft with a crew of 5 people. Same reason why every villan of the week in most action TV shows hire armed goons who cant aim, its to make the heroes look good.
Given recent TrekLit developments regarding slipstream drive, wouldn't it be sensible to slipstream a few Galaxy-class ships, with small fleets trailing them, out to the perimeters of unexplored areas of the Milky Way? The fleets could then explore out to all points of the compass, covering a few hundred light-years radius in a year or so, using the Galaxy as a mobile Starbase, then everyone comes home (or moves in a few thousand light-years or so closer to the Federation). In this manner, they could put eyes in remote parts that had only seen outdated probes, if anything at all. Spoilers aside, they're doing something similar to this in the current crop of Voyager novels, and this sounds like Galaxy-class work.
AAAND there goes the last of your credibility. The Defiant was a purpose built warship armed with the most advanced defensive and offensive systems the Federation had at that time (remember who she was built to fight). Replying to an earlier bit of nonsense on your part: 1) B&B mostly left DS9 alone (thank God). 2) It was Berman's bright idea originally to destroy the Defiant in First Contact, but the line producers of DS9 caught wind of it and pretty much said "Oh no you don't!"
IIRC, Galaxy class ships aren't slipstream-capable because of their unfavorable geometry (or something like that).
You are forgetting numerous things here. The Defiant was unofficially a war-ship. It was designed with battle in mind and to practically match large ships in terms of firepower. The Lakota was likely a regular Excelsior class that was regularly upgraded during it's lifespan, but it's tactical systems probably required an overhaul. If you recall, Voyager essentially behaved like a downsized Galaxy class. Size of the ship matters little if you can pack as much firepower into smaller ships - and this is exactly what SF managed to do with Intrepid and Defiant class ships. If you noticed, the Intrepid class has only the bare essentials compared to the Galaxy class, 2 holodecks, maybe 1 gym and a smallish mes hall (but it can still get away with those bare essential amenities for the crew given it's still a medium-sized starship). It's life support requirements are at least 8x lower given the crew size, it's able to travel at faster Warp velocities, and combat-wise it demonstrated to be very apt (on par with the Galaxy class - except in torpedo count, but it's likely that 36 photons is what it can carry... I would probably imagine the number to be close or over 100 - it was low for Voyager due to the nature of the original mission that launched it - was supposed to last 2 weeks and track down a small Maqui ship - explains practically 0 provisions and torpedo count). The Defiant on the other hand has practically 0 creature comforts by comparison and amenities that other larger ships can enjoy hence why it's tactical systems are on par with larger ships. The Lakota's tactical systems were up-rated in order to match newest/large ships. Hence why it was a standoff.