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Excelsior Technical Manual (Third Time's The Charm?)

According to Voyager the anniversary of (official) first contact between Earth and Vulcan is shortly after stardate 59898. It's possible that was chosen as an arbitrary starting date for symbolic reasons and the difference between 1000 stardates and one Earth year is why it has slipped a little off.
 
Eight-hour days on Earth are just as earth-centric as basing them on earth years!!

....

dJE

My point though is that an eight hour duty shift is a practical consideration given the location of SFHQ. Stretching it out with an extra 40-odd minutes to round it out to an even 1000 stardates to an Earth year would seem like rubbing alien's latex noses in it.

--Alex
 
My point though is that an eight hour duty shift is a practical consideration given the location of SFHQ.
Practical for Humans, other species would have their own circadian rhythms (like the Bajor 26 hour day) an a eight hour work shift likely wouldn't line up with their species typical work day.

Starfleet headquarters would be fully staffed 24 hours a day, with people coming and going continuously throughout the day, working their individual or species oriented shift duration. Instead of everyone working three identical 8 hour shifts that all begin and end at the same time.

A 15 hour shift might be the norm for Vulcans.

Androrians at SFHQ might working 11 days on and 4 days off, with a 7 hour shift.

Tellerites might require a half hour meal break every third hour.

Now figure in the rest of the Federation's 150 species.

Personally, I use to worked 4 days a week, 10 hours a day (40 hr week), with no set meal times, and 3 day weekends.
 
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I'm not referring to Human circadian rhythm. Eight hours works well because it evenly divides into the 24 hour day: a physical property of the planet itself.

Though, that said, all evidence points to the vast majority of Starfleet personnel being human anyway. So conceding to biology of the majority makes fine sense as well.

At any rate, we've done hijacked the Excelsior Technical Manual thread long enough with the stardate side bar. I've made my points and I see no need to beat the dead horse any further.

--Alex
 
Gotta wonder if they've abolished the abomination that is Daylight Savings Time by the 23rd/24th centuries. :lol:

I sure hope so. :eek:

I have a bit of progress to show. I spent way too much time on the after torpedo launchers today. Those little suckers are pretty detailed. It's my first adventure into rendering such tiny details on this particular set of drawings, so I wound up exploring some choices that I'm sure to refine with time. It was also one of the pieces still missing from the profile view that I needed to work on the cutaway, along with the fantail hangar doors... which are still missing. :rommie:

Excelsior_Schematics_V2_5_1.jpg

Excelsior_Schematics_V2_5_2.jpg


The amount of time I spent on the aft torpedo launchers was admittedly overkill, but while I was drawing all three views together I wanted to get it done. I believe I need to next focus on some of the dorsal and ventral details, as well as a few random fore and aft details that overlap such as the torpedo launchers. Once this is done, I think I'll be ready to start mapping out decks properly and see how things feel.

I also finished One Constant Star yesterday and I highly recommend it to anyone who is a fan of this era. Without bringing out the spoiler tags, I felt it was very well done. If anything, it felt too short. It also supplied me with three new Excelsior class ship names. More on that in a minute, though.
I like this. You got your axis reversed though. Year should be on the X (horz) and hull # on the Y (vert), as years are not a function of the number of starships completed.

Thank you! And quite right... I actually did reverse it and it's far more logical this way:
1.jpg


Generally I think I am happy with this overall flow as a guideline of where things should fall.. but since Starfleet seems to play with the registries a bit I am not going to feel overly beholden to force registries in-line with the others. I am mainly using this, combined with available facts, to ballpark when certain ships probably should have been launched.

I've refined my table of "notable" Excelsior class ships a bit, after culling Memory Beta and gathering some more chronological data. By no means do I think it is yet complete, but I feel I now have a pretty good grasp of ships noted on screen, in official graphics and technical publications, and in the novels. There are a good few more that were from FASA that I have omitted here, mostly because of how screenshot unfriendly that list is, but I have worked hard to fit them into blocks so whether I ultimately choose to include or exclude the FASA ships the block schedule still works. ("LA" is "Last Appeared" by the way... if a ship's fate is unknown I started keeping track of when we last heard of it. And an orange date is uncertain but likely.)

2.jpg


If anyone spots anything they find questionable, feel free to bring it up. This list is only 45 ships long, while when I include FASA's ships it grows to around 100. Problematically, there are a few ships with no canonical registry that I wouldn't dare speculate at. (For the Sarek and the Alliance I felt comfortable fudging using Sarek and Saavik's birth years, respectively.)

3.jpg

I'm curious if anyone has any feelings about the schedule of launch or the quantity of ships, too. I think in the previous version of the text I had settled on there being around 375 Excelsior class ships that fought in the Dominion War, many of which presumably were hauled out of mothballs to do so. The way the math has worked out here feels pretty alright to me.

Also, despite saying I wasn't going to, I have taken a stab at explaining Starfleet registries, which I may or may not include somewhere in the technical portion of the text. If it's incoherent, blame Daylight Savings Time and my desire to walk a fine line between specific and vague. :shrug:



Well past its bicentennial as of this writing, Starfleet has a rich history including as its fair share of historical oddities. Among the most confusing of these is Starfleet’s registry system. When studying any historical list of Starfleet vessels, one may struggle to understand the structure and evolution of Starfleet’s ship register.

The nomenclature currently in use dates back to the letter/letter-number/number system that was first employed by the Earth Starfleet. In this system, the starship class was designated by the letter prefix and the model number designated by the numbers. For example, Enterprise NX-01 was NX-class ship number one. Registry numbers were therefore unique to each class, with a potential registry of 01 to 99 for each class, which was more than adequate for the early Earth Starfleet’s small size. As time passed, use of the letter class naming fell out of favor, as personnel started to refer to the class either by the name of the first ship of the class or by the type of vessel. Increasing numbers of officers thought primarily of class names by one of these designations, regardless the official naming. This nearly eliminated the usefulness of the letters in the registry to distinguish the design, as very few people thought of the letter class name.

After the founding of the Federation in 2161, the newly reorganized Federation Starfleet revised its registry system both to reset it and to give the system more meaning by making it more strictly sequential. The amount of letter prefixes were abbreviated to simple few, based on the type of registry (Starfleet, scientific, merchant, civilian) instead of the ship’s class. All existing vessels were renumbered, with new ships following in sequence, and the numbering was soon extended to three digits. Starfleet would assign a list of names of several members of a class of starship, along with registry numbers comprising a block, to be produced at one of its shipyards.

Not long after this official revision, Starfleet planners began to employ an unofficial policy refinement in the system of their assignment of registries, wherein the last two digits of a registry would be the ship’s number in the series, and any additional digits to the left indicated the number of the design. For example, U.S.S. Enterprise was designated NCC-1701 to represent starship design 17, model 01. The class prototype, U.S.S. Constitution was likewise designated NCC-1700, starship design 17, model 00 (prototype). This was completely contingent on the way registries were assigned, however, and therefore inflexible. Maintaining it would ultimately prove impossible.

By the mid 2250s, Starfleet procurement orders and shipyard requisition orders began to grow complex and conflict. Initially, when Starfleet only had two shipyards it was easy to assign registries based on a block requisition for a certain quantity of ships of a given class. However, with additional facilities being opened, it became far more complicated to administrate the assignment of registries sequentially, particularly when ships were somewhat likely to be shuffled between shipyards if one fell behind and another needed work. The Admiralty determined the uniqueness of the registry its most valued attribute, rather than its ability to identify a ship by type or class. As such, by the late 2260s planners chose to begin assigning registry blocks to a shipyard without being attached to a class block requisition, except in certain special cases where registries were reserved for a specific ship as was done with NCC-2000 for Excelsior and in a few other instances. A requisition list for a block of a class of ships was then assigned to a shipyard, and as the class block was produced the shipyard would pull the next registry number from the list in sequence. As a result of this, two ships could have nearly the same registry, but be of entirely different classes and potentially even have been produced at entirely different shipyards. As an added complication, if one shipyard produced many small ships quickly it could go through its assigned registries and soon begin pulling from another, higher pool. Therefore one shipyard could be launching ships in the 2100s range while another is still launching ships in the 1800s range. Further, if one shipyard was producing a type of ship that used a different registry scheme, such as freighters, it might not use any of its starship registry numbers at all for months or even years before suddenly going back into starship production and launching ships in a much lower pool.

Many immediately agreed that this new system was no less confusing, but an unexpected benefit was soon discovered: it confused Threat spies trying to gather intelligence on Starfleet shipbuilding just as much. Starfleet began to use this to their advantage and increased the disorder with which they assigned registry blocks to shipyards. Entire registry ranges would be arbitrarily skipped and held to be used later, or not at all, and since the importance in the Admiralty’s mind was in the uniqueness of the registry code, nothing was lost besides an ability to tell at a glance whether Ship A preceded Ship B in construction.
 
Makes sense to me! Similar to my own thoughts on the whole Starship/Constitution/Enterprise class debacle, where I assume that different class naming conventions were employed (and retconned in-universe ) over time.
 
Vary nice! I agree about skipping blocks of registry numbers it's the only way to make any sense of things. I didn't see it on your list but don't forget about the USS Melbourne NCC- 62043 which in my mind was the last Excelsior class starship built since it's the only one we've ever seen with a registry number that high.

Edit, I just saw the Melbourne on your top list just not the bottom one. I would change the fact that you have the Melbourne as JP Hanson flagship at the battle of Wolf 359, The Melbourne was the first ship destroyed at Wolf 359 and we know Hanson talked to the Enterprise in the middle of the battle so he couldn't have been on the Melbourne IMO anyway.
 
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That's a great explanation for registries. I like that it even acknowledges the MJ concept of registry=class+production number. Though for my money, I would have pushed back the dropping of that well into the 2280s. (though I get why you might have done it earlier to account for various oddity Connies.)

But number blocks assigned to shipyards and occasionally skipped makes good sense to me.

Well done!

--Alex
 
Indeed, the only connection between Hanson and the ship is that she is his to give to Riker - until DS9, we had no good reason to think she was anywhere near Wolf 359.

But having Hanson command from aboard a ship of the Excelsior class makes sense, as he did seem to like traveling on one, and Admirals in TNG do this as a thing. Why transfer to another type just before the battle? It seems unlikely the Excelsior would be chosen as the taxi for her speed or luxury, so it does seem likely that she has command ship attributes to compensate.

Timo Saloniemi
 
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Nope, just on "a battle bridge". It's the same set used in the following scene as the E-D battle bridge, except with a TMP-era "red alert" graphic going in the background, hinting at the age of his ship. It's never mentioned in any publication what ship he was on. Some fans put it as the Melbourne, as she needed a captain at the time; but "Emissary" (plus various two-Melbournes an theories) invalidates that for me.

http://www.st-minutiae.com/resources/scripts/175.txt

Mark
 
Makes sense to me! Similar to my own thoughts on the whole Starship/Constitution/Enterprise class debacle, where I assume that different class naming conventions were employed (and retconned in-universe ) over time.

That's a great explanation for registries. I like that it even acknowledges the MJ concept of registry=class+production number. Though for my money, I would have pushed back the dropping of that well into the 2280s. (though I get why you might have done it earlier to account for various oddity Connies.)

But number blocks assigned to shipyards and occasionally skipped makes good sense to me.

Well done!

--Alex

Thank you both! :D

I may indeed bump it back a bit... it would help explain why Starfleet would be launching 2000s and 2500s in the 2280s/2290s. I also kind of think there are ships in the 2100-2400 range already in service by this time, perhaps even higher, that were assigned registries based on the design/serial model.

Praetor, wherever you're hosting your images, it's blacklisted by PrivacyBadger.

Sorry about Privacy Badger disliking the images and thanks for the head's up. I've been using ImgBB since I got sick of Photobucket and didn't realize anything blocked it. I've actually been considering switching to Imgur or TinyPic anyway. Since I was thinking of changing anyway, is there a particular one that Privacy Badger is ok with?

Vary nice! I agree about skipping blocks of registry numbers it's the only way to make any sense of things. I didn't see it on your list but don't forget about the USS Melbourne NCC- 62043 which in my mind was the last Excelsior class starship built since it's the only one we've ever seen with a registry number that high.

Edit, I just saw the Melbourne on your top list just not the bottom one. I would change the fact that you have the Melbourne as JP Hanson flagship at the battle of Wolf 359, The Melbourne was the first ship destroyed at Wolf 359 and we know Hanson talked to the Enterprise in the middle of the battle so he couldn't have been on the Melbourne IMO anyway.

Sorry, the Melbourne is in Block "M" and I put "SP" for the registry rather than the actual number. Interestingly, I found a few game sources that indicate other Excelsiors in the 60000 range, but I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable turning Block "M" into a full block... yet.

Indeed, the only connection between Hanson and the ship is that she is his to give to Riker - until DS9, we had no good reason to think she was anywhere near Wolf 359.

But having Hanson command from aboard a ship of the Excelsior class makes sense, as he did seem to like traveling on one, and Admirals in TNG do this as a thing. Why transfer to another type just before the battle? It seems unlikely the Excelsior would be chosen as the taxi for her speed or luxury, so it does seem likely that she has command ship attributes to compensate.

Timo Saloniemi

Good points all around about the Melbourne and the way Excelsiors are used. According to MA, regarding the ship Hanson arrived on:
This ship was described in the script as a "transport class," indicating that no specific vessel was intended to be used for this appearance.

And actually, this page of unnamed Excelsiors that I got that from is rather interesting. Admirals do seem awfully fond of them, thanks to those stock rendezvous shots. In my research I realized there are actually three "anonymous" Excelsiors used by Admirals in a few different episodes:
  • Haftel's transport in "The Offspring," a re-use of the Repulse stock shot
  • Henry's transport in "The Drumhead," a re-use of the Hood stock shot
  • Nechayev's transport in "Preemptive Strike," I believe also a re-use of the Hood
Interestingly about the latter...
This ship was identified as the USS Cairo in the Star Trek Encyclopedia (3rd ed., p. 471). This identification was not carried into the fourth edition. In the script, this ship was described as Admiral Nechayev's ship.

Now for my purposes, I have made this the Crazy Horse and not the Cairo, since the books have Nechayev making her career aboard her. But as to the other two? Is it possible that it's actually the Repulse and Hood that were employed? I'd say sure, but it doesn't necessarily have to be them either and since I'm speculating there are around 450 Excelsior class ships built over the years there is plenty of room for other ships to fill those roles.

We do see Excelsiors transporting people quite often, just like we see them used as Admiral's flagships a lot. Perhaps it's a combination of speed and size that yields them to these roles? They're big enough and fast enough to make both effective transport and effective command ships.

Doesn't the script for BoBW have Hanson on the Fearless?

Nope, just on "a battle bridge". It's the same set used in the following scene as the E-D battle bridge, except with a TMP-era "red alert" graphic going in the background, hinting at the age of his ship. It's never mentioned in any publication what ship he was on. Some fans put it as the Melbourne, as she needed a captain at the time; but "Emissary" (plus various two-Melbournes an theories) invalidates that for me.

http://www.st-minutiae.com/resources/scripts/175.txt

Mark

I think I'm convinced. I'll remove Hanson's command from that ship. He must have been aboard a slightly older ship, so it can't be the other Melbourne either.
 
Excelsiors make perfect sense as rides for the brass at this time - they're quick and plentiful, but not perhaps frontline explorers, having been superseded by larger Galaxy, Nebula and Ambassador class ships.

Even if an Admiral doesn't necessarily get to choose her own ship, an Excelsior is probably never too far away to be assigned for the courier role. The Hood seems to be permanently assigned to ferry dignitaries to the Enterprise based on 100% of her TNG appearances!
 
What's weird is that the Ambassador class and her contemporaries seem to be a lost/failed generation of starship designs. There were tons of Excelsiors and Mirandas flying about during the dominion war, and a bunch of Galaxies and enhanced Galaxies (like the Odyssey and the Venture) in the fleet. Outside of Wolf 359, no Ambassadors or any others of that early 24th century lineage made any significant appearances. Maybe it was more of an exploratory testbed leading up to Galaxy-class engineering.
 
Actually that's almost exactly what I think.

There are two relevant paragraphs that I may not have shared in a while:


By 2315, the design for the Ambassador was finalized, and construction well underway. In 2322 U.S.S. Ambassador, NX-10521 was launched and began her space-worthiness testing and shakedown. Many Starfleet officers were astonished by the mere sight of Ambassador; at 526 meters long and 3,700,000 metric tons in mass, she was massive, and highly advanced. The techniques used in her structural design built upon the advances developed to build the Excelsior, utilizing a simple monocoque hull structure reinforced by powerful structural integrity fields while no longer using any pressure compartment structure. The class introduced a number of other technological advances, including collimated phaser arrays rather than turret phaser banks, and was among the first Starfleet ship classes designed to accommodate families (although only in limited capacity). While the design was deemed a success, in historical perspective, the class was more a stepping stone in starship design rather than a pioneering benchmark. With well over one hundred Excelsior class starships in service or under construction, the Ambassador class was in no position to endanger Excelsior class’s proliferation. Mathematically, Starfleet could build two Excelsiors for one Ambassador, and more conservative elements of the fleet favored Excelsior. More often than not, that thinking won out.


...and a couple paragraphs later:


No matter the historical significance of the incident, the loss of the Enterprise-C also cast a questionable light on the Ambassador class program. The Enterprise was, by all subsequent accounts, far more maneuverable than her Romulan counterparts. Klingon intelligence indicated the Enterprise was outnumbered six to one, but tactical simulation indicated the Enterprise should have been able to survive the assault. Some questioned the new structural integrity technology used in the construction of the Enterprise. Starfleet review boards were unable to concretely assign blame to man or machine, but this and other factors would later be used to reinforce the CinC's previous determination that the Ambassador-class production run would be limited, and Enterprise-C would be among the last of her class constructed in favor of more proven ships such as the Excelsior class. Starfleet had finally realized, however, that a large multi-role Explorer-type ship such as the Ambassador could easily double as a battleship, while still having something useful to do in peacetime. Starfleet had already begun initial design work on a true Explorer starship anyway: the Galaxy class.
 
I agree that the Ambassador was less plentiful than the Excelsior (though who knows what the DS9 battles would have looked like if the Yamaguchi model had been turned into CGI rather than the Miranda!), and they were stepping-stones to the Nebula/Galaxy programme.

However, I think it's a little unfair to say the Enterprise should have held out against six Romulan ships. Those are some harsh critics in the Admiralty. ;)

I'm guessing that's the lay the land for those later Excelsiors? It makes sense.
 
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