That's why they have Alynna Nechayev, to pick up the slack caused by the rest of them
Things Starfleet needs to fix already on its ships.
- Thread starter TheRoyalFamily
- Start date
Thousands of starships are a fact? How? What we get from the episodes and movies (including the apparent lack of starships near earth) suggests the opposite, a rather small starfleet. And in the 23rd century even more so than in the 24th.
I've never understood why the com badges are always worn on top of their clothing. People are constantly kidnapping crew members and stealing their means of communication with the ship.
You would figure a civilization that mastered warp drive would only have to encounter that situation ONE time before developing subdermal com badges.
You would figure a civilization that mastered warp drive would only have to encounter that situation ONE time before developing subdermal com badges.
You jokeing right?
The federation spans I believe afew hundred odd light years do you even understand how vast 1 light year is?
As I said in another post think of all the dutys:
VIP transport and escort
Exploration
Border patrol (must take hundreds or possibly thousands of ships seeing as it borders are huge)
Humanitarian aid and disaster relief.
Diplomatic missions
Anti Piracy and other policing duties
Monitoring and surveying natural phenomenon
Monitoring and spying on local and external threats
Guarding the frontier
Anti Terrorism
Dangerous cargo transport
Starfleet would need at least 1000 ships operational at any given time dureing a complete peroid of peace!
Saying starfleet would have a few dozen ships would be like saying the US navy could do its job with 6 Frigates and a couple of supply tenders
Also look at the registration numbers by DS9 they are up in the 20000's and its established they reuse some registration numbers. So your looking at most likely 1000 Miniumun right up to 25000 maximum.
To me its senisble to assume its around 5000-10000 including support ships.
DS9 showed us fleets consisting of hundreds of starships. IIRC, one such fleet was referred to as "Ninth fleet" suggesting a thous or more.
Then again, in "Best of Both Worlds" and "The Emissary", the best Starfleet could do to defend the heart of the Federation was 40 ships.
And in TOS, there was mention of twelve Enterprise-type ships, which were somehow extra special compared to everything else.
...erm... depends on the writer?
Well even though there was 12 Constitution class vessels it does not mean there was only 12 ships in the fleet. It just means only 12 of THAT class. As you said they are considerd speciel so if so not many will be made or they wont be "special".
As for BOBW I think they could only get 40 ships as the borg are so dam fast that they had only days to prepare and with most of the federation fleet on the frontiers they just could not get more than that together at such short notice.
Look at the falklands war. The UK has a pretty big navy but because it wasnt at the falklands at the time because we wernt expecting a attack there we lost the islands until we could mobilise a fleet and send it out to retake them.
Same principle in BOBW they feds were to ignorant to expect a attack dircetly at earth from the borg and just didnt have the ships handy there and then. By first contact though they seemed to have fixed that problem.
Isn't this the norm in real life?
If you think about it, Earth is probably better defended than it might seem at first glance. TMP said that V'ger deactivated Earth's defenses, so it might not in that case have been that Earth was undefended, just that Earth's defenses couldn't deal with V'ger's technology. It would have been a similar story with the "Whale Probe."
The Borg cube in FC didn't exactly approach Earth unopposed, the impression I got from the movie was that Starfleet was employing a defense in depth, and that they were fighting the cube over the course of certainly hours and perhaps multiple days. As ships were knocked out, new ones arrived to take their place.
The Breen (Breen?) attack upon Earth during DS9 damaged only one relatively small area and the attacking force was heavily hit themselves. The Breen force could have been attack on their way in, and this is why their attack was so "light."
Picard say "over" eight thousand light years (althought that might be at it longest dimention). A good case could be made that Starfleet ships exist in the tens of thousands, problem is many of those would be unsuitable for combat.
Well in DSN using elements of several fleets, they managed to pull together a fleet of 650 ships. They couldn't strip those fleets are so a fleet numbering into the thousands is hight probable.
So many problems could be easily solved by the posting of surveillance cameras!!! Especially in sickbay and turbolifts.
In the 24th century, Starfleet psychologists are too busy sitting on starship bridges and stating the obvious to captains to ever bother with piddling matters like psych evaluations.
You jokeing right?
The federation spans I believe afew hundred odd light years do you even understand how vast 1 light year is?
As I said in another post think of all the dutys:
VIP transport and escort
Exploration
Border patrol (must take hundreds or possibly thousands of ships seeing as it borders are huge)
Humanitarian aid and disaster relief.
Diplomatic missions
Anti Piracy and other policing duties
Monitoring and surveying natural phenomenon
Monitoring and spying on local and external threats
Guarding the frontier
Anti Terrorism
Dangerous cargo transport
Starfleet would need at least 1000 ships operational at any given time dureing a complete peroid of peace!
Saying starfleet would have a few dozen ships would be like saying the US navy could do its job with 6 Frigates and a couple of supply tenders
Also look at the registration numbers by DS9 they are up in the 20000's and its established they reuse some registration numbers. So your looking at most likely 1000 Miniumun right up to 25000 maximum.
To me its senisble to assume its around 5000-10000 including support ships.
No, I was in fact not joking. While what you say certainly makes sense when thinking of what a "real" starfleet would or should probably be comprised of, we´re talking about the information given in the Star Trek series/movies. It is of course your choice to conclude that Starfleet does a sloppy job, since earth is left defenseless time and time again. However, for me the logical conclusion is that they just don´t have enough starships to have them guard the core systems.
Since you spoke of "redshirts" in your original post, I assumed you were mostly thinking of the 23rd century. In TOS Kirk speaks of "12 ships". True, that he probably meant just the Enterprise-type, but it doesn´t make sense to assume that there are dozens of other classes of starships with hundreds of vessels, when the Enterprise still hardly ever encounters any - but plenty of Enterprise-type ones.
Also they frequently are performing duties like ferrying cargo/supplies, hosting diplomats or decontaminating planets. There would be no need to use an (exploratory) starship for that, if they had such a vast fleet of other vessels to draw on.
Finally, why would Starfleet go to all the trouble of completely reworking the Enterprise between TOS and TMP, if she was just one of hundreds of starships?
In the 24th century things look a bit different of course. I admit, I hadn´t been thinking of the huge fleets they could suddenly assemble during the latter seasons of DS9 (as compared to TNG!). But then again, in those (DS9) days Starfleet seems much more like a battle or defense fleet, than an exploratory one during the time of TOS and the movies.
Mario
If thats the case thats not sloppy that negligance! Haveing a dozen or so ships in ones primary defence fleet when you are surronded by many hostile empire is crazy! It would be akin to the US have a couple of Frigates to prorect it self in world war 2. Crazy!!!!!
And they use aircraft carriers to do mundane stuff too. Just because you are a top of the line ship does not mean you are excused from mundane crap.
Why do moden westen navys like the USA and UK refit there older ships even though new ones are in production? Because its cost effective and its good to recycle.
Seeing as they were on the brink of war with klingons and romulans its stands to reason they would still be a defence fleet.
Also look at its registry number. 1701 and with the Defiant being NCC 1764 we can assume there is at least 1764 ships flying about in the mid 23rd century and its seems that regsitrys are reused sthat registrys of ships that were built earlier and permantly decomissioned are reused.
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In fact, there could be many more Constitution class vessels. The Enterprise of the series proper differs noticeably from it's appearances in both The Cage and Where No Man Has Gone Before. The most reasonable in-universe explanation is that it has had a major refit, increasing the crew size, changing the rear ends of the nacelles, getting rid of the 'rockets' Spock refers to.
So when Kirk says 'there's only twelve like her in the fleet', he might be referring to that particular configuration, modified for a five year voyage of exploration. Other Constitutions may be configured for other roles.
This is, I freely admit, pure conjecture on my part, with no supporting evidence. It's possible, though.
