Biggest ships in fleets?

[Arpy]

What would be the biggest ships in military or civilian feets? Dominion (Super?) Battleships we saw guarding Cardassia Prime seemed to be the biggest military vessels we’ve ever seen. I think the Narada was the biggest civilian vessel.

Do you think planetary or asteroid mining vessels like that are the biggest? Strange shapes that spread around their target?

Maybe tanker ships like today’s oil supertankers that haul...I dunno...deuterium? I’m picturing great bulbous hulls capped with little saucers and a couple of heavy, if unsophisticated, nacelles.

How about carrier vessels that house fleets of fighters — for aliens who use those?

Not the most elegant vessel, but I remember the Jackill’s Kentwood Class bulk cargo carrier from his great Starfleet Reference Manuals.

 

[Timo]

That's the weird thing, I guess - in ENT, ore haulers are still big ships, but come TOS, the Woden is a featherweight. How can it be sensible to haul inert rock in penny packets?

That we never see large bulk freighters after ENT is sort of understandable: perhaps there is no point in hauling bulk from star to star when every star has the same stuff locally available anyway, and only high-credit-per-kilogram items get packed aboard warp vessels. The odd thing is that we hear of ore carriers nevertheless. But exotic ore is very much a TOS thing, with raw materials ranging from dilithium to pergium to zenite being only found at select locations, and being extracted from rock there. So perhaps the unseen ore carriers indeed are hundreds of kilometers long, and the Woden was an exotic exception so far in wait of a rational explanation.

We saw a very large, slow, multigeneration colony ship in VOY once, and now hear of a supposed other in the post-apocalyptic world of DSC. Might be those are useful in general. Or then most such vessels end up being intercepted by slave traders, and civilizations learn not to employ such? Cityships like the Voth one might still exist, but they could be extremely stealthy as a rule.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

With modern Replicators in the 24th century, only the stuff that isn't easily replicatable would need to be shipped around.

If you can still manufacture said items using Mass Production methods via Molecular Assembly and power generated or gathered from the Sun / Other Renewable Sources, then the amount of stuff that you need to ship lowers even more.

Certain things that are only Growable instead of replicatable should be shipped, but even then, that should be a relatively small list.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Cityships like the Voth one might still exist, but they could be extremely stealthy as a rule.

Generally, I would hope they turn off all their Stealth/Cloaking systems unless they are in combat.

Eventually, if multiple vessels stay cloaked and float around, they could potentially collide and that wouldn't be a good thing.

IRL example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Vanguard_and_Le_Triomphant_submarine_collision

Short of needing to be in combat or acting as a deterrent for certain Nations carrying WMD's and Saber Rattling all the damn time or probing our defenses.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I've been favoring an idea that there are civilian ships that probably would easily dwarf a Galaxy-class starship in volume, but that we never get to see them because they are likely rare and/or that they usually don't operate in the same circles as Starfleet ships do. Such ships could be deuterium tankers or the aforementioned ore carriers. I'd like to think that Kirk was referring to such a big ship visiting Delta Vega only once every twenty years in "Where No Man Has Gone Before."

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'll always think back to Diane Duane's miles-long Defender-class superships from her novels, crewed by elephant-sized nonhumanoids.

That's the crazy side of Starfleet I wanna see now we've got the tech to depict it.

 

[Tenacity]

only the stuff that isn't easily replicatable would need to be shipped around

Economics and practicality might come into play. Mining ore, refining and turning the metal into a product - verses - replicating. If it's cheaper to go the non-replicator route this could explain the frequent mentions of mines in the Star Trek universe.

Replicators would serve a purpose, but only if there was no other choice.

 

[Arpy]

I can see immense cruise ships of tens of thousands darting from city planet to singing asteroid belt to glowing comet to tropical planet etc. Think about how big modern day cruise ships are to the old Love Boat for example. They dwarf them by a huge amount. I imagine the trend to continue in space. Ice decks and tropical wings and water bays for Cetaceans and Xindi Aquatics, etc.

After all, the Galaxy Class, for all its comforts, was a “military” vessel, built for wartime when necessary too. Civilian ships would be free to just dazzle.

Heck, there might be mobile cities of hundreds of thousands or millions that go slower and are almost independent nations that people live their entire lives on. Maybe reaching a new Federation world every few years.

I see a lot more travel in the future with great masses of people in constant flux, working remotely wherever they may be if they work at all in our traditional sense.

 

[Dukhat]

Although the Woden was just stock footage of the Botany Bay, there was no measure of scale because the two ships weren’t shown together. Based on the dialogue, the Woden was supposed to be far larger than the Botany Bay, maybe even larger than the Enterprise herself.

 

[Doom Shepherd]

I imagine that colony vessels that are meant to carry populations that are large enough to start viable, self-sustaining colonies immediately would be pretty large.

Also if you have the resources, it just might be a good idea to keep one or two really, really big ships around for planetary evacuations, just in case.

 

[publiusr]

I remember the “billion ton super spacers” from the TMP novel...

 

[Arpy]

I remember the “billion ton super spacers” from the TMP novel...

By comparison, how many tons are other Trek ships?

 

[fireproof78]

Heck, there might be mobile cities of hundreds of thousands or millions that go slower and are almost independent nations that people live their entire lives on. Maybe reaching a new Federation world every few years.

I would imagine so. Massive ships just traveling from system to system.

 

[Relayer1]

After all, the Galaxy Class, for all its comforts, was a “military” vessel, built for wartime when necessary too. Civilian ships would be free to just dazzle.

Not really. It could just as easily be viewed as a cruise ship with uprated phasers and shields. It had all the recreational facilities plus school, civilians, families etc.

With inertial dampers, artificial gravity etc. manovrability and combat effectiveness are not compromised by size and large mass.

I'd say some of both, with Starfleet personnel being somewhere between military and merchant seamen.

 

[Arpy]

Not really. It could just as easily be viewed as a cruise ship with uprated phasers and shields. It had all the recreational facilities plus school, civilians, families etc.

People go on cruise ships to get away from work. Starfleet ships are all about work. There were families of crew members on board because the ships were to be away on twenty-year missions not as visitors sightseeing. It was comfortable because of the “technology unchained” principle where we’re technologically sophisticated enough to morph our surroundings to what we need, not adapt to what’s most utilitarian or inexpensive. Plus, again, twenty-year missions. The Enterprise was described as the most sophisticated piece of technology ever created and as a fortress, and that fits for a Starfleet ship of the line.

During peacetime there were civilians on board, when the Odyssey went specifically into danger, it unloaded its extraneous personnel on DS9. There’s certainly enough room on a Galaxy Class to double as a troop transport/planetary invader.

 

[Relayer1]

That's kind of my point though. It's use, not the ship that counts.

The Ent. D could operate as a recreational vessel, science/exploratory ship or troop carrier with relatively little modification.

You could hardly say that about a current say cruise liner, research vessel or capital ship.

 

[Arpy]

That's kind of my point though. It's use, not the ship that counts.

The Ent. D could operate as a recreational vessel, science/exploratory ship or troop carrier with relatively little modification.

You could hardly say that about a current say cruise liner, research vessel or capital ship.

Except it never operates as a recreational vessel. People don’t visit it to enjoy themselves. Crew could be having far more comfortable and luxurious lives on the afore-mentioned super space-cruisers, planet-side, or where have you. Life isn’t hard on a Galaxy Class vessel, but one imagines it’s not all that 24th Century life might be.

 

[XCV330]

The ECS freighters in the ENT era looked very big. In the DISCO era, the Nimitz class USS Europa definitely looked huge, but it was absolutely dwarfed by the Klingon clever ship.

I always thought the Ptolemy class ships would be large with their mission modules/cargo pods attached but the Ptolemy-esque things shown in Brother were not that big at all, really.

By TOS at least some freighters are automated. These slow boats still fly at the speed of the earlier ECS freighters. Since we see the wreckage of one in Lower Decks, they're not really very big, either.

Considering the number of times they've shown freighters attacked or hitting mines in star trek, maybe big lumbering ships fell out of favor, to be replaced with smaller, but often still lumbering ships. Risk reduction.

Crew transport has often been shown by shuttle. One known by name is the Astral Queen. How big and fast she was, is hard to tell but she must have been up to the requirements of the job as the ship was in use in both the TOS and TNG eras.

The forest ship in the 32nd century Starfleet might be their largest from that era. .

 

[Timo]

Eventually, if multiple vessels stay cloaked and float around, they could potentially collide and that wouldn't be a good thing.

In this case, the potential would be a flat zero.

If you have only two automobiles in existence, odds are that they will collide. After all, they did, in that amusing anecdote about, was it Pennsylvania? But that wasn't due to Pennsylvania being too small for them both. It was about that particular spot being attractive to automobiles.

Take a million billion starships. Spread in the space of the Milky Way, moving randomly, they would never come within sensor range of each other. The odds of a collision would be zero. But take a hundred starships, and have them do what starships actually do - visit planets. Two will collide eventually.

Cityships would not do what starships do. They would steer clear of planets, of stars, of basically everything. A million billion of them running blind in the Milky Way would never collide.

By TOS at least some freighters are automated. These slow boats still fly at the speed of the earlier ECS freighters.

We never learn what freighters fly at warp two in TOS exactly. The one from "Friday's Child" was not specified to be automated, at any rate...

Since we see the wreckage of one in Lower Decks, they're not really very big, either.

We actually see wreckage of at least two, both hulls sporting the registry NCC-502. For all we know, the registry applies to a formation, not to an individual hull. And the hulls were associated with rows of containers in that debris field - not just one or two, as in speculative presentations of the Ptolemy, or even half a dozen pairs, as in ENT, but in a line of dozens. So fairly big in the end...

Crew transport has often been shown by shuttle. One known by name is the Astral Queen. How big and fast she was, is hard to tell but she must have been up to the requirements of the job as the ship was in use in both the TOS and TNG eras.

I'd assume there to exist 1701 ships by that name at any given time!

Whether the ship in "Conscience of the King" was a passenger carrier at all is debatable. Daily's ship there was supposed to do a "pick-up" on the Karidian troupe, but was told to skip that. What sort of a ship can skip a planet on her itinerary? Not a liner, obviously. Not a supply ship delivering needed things. A pleasure cruiser? A tramp (but would one of 'em make a living by stopping for a theater troupe, without arranging for the transfer of at least some goods on the side)? Certainly the Astral Queen's association with passengers appeared impromptu at best...

The forest ship in the 32nd century Starfleet might be their largest from that era.

Difficult to tell much about sizes yet. But the forest donut did not seem to dwarf the vessels around her.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tim Thomason]

By comparison, how many tons are other Trek ships?

Starship Spotter has the Enterprise-E at about 3.2 million metric tons.