That's true, but I'll admit I'm very skeptical of some of the references to build numbers in the tens of thousands for some capital designs. That just seems highly unlikely, even in a galaxy like that of Star Wars.
Fleet construction
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That's true, but I'll admit I'm very skeptical of some of the references to build numbers in the tens of thousands for some capital designs. That just seems highly unlikely, even in a galaxy like that of Star Wars.
When you have potentally millions of star systems and planets under your control, 25,000 Imperial Star Destroyer would get lost and spread out so thin. Then you have the pontental of dozens of classes of thousands of smaller ships and maybe a few hundred larger ships of various classes.
The numbers of TIE Fighters just goes up as most Imperial starships carry at least four fighters. Carriers and some types of Star Destroyers carry well over 100 Fighters, while the Imperial-class only carries 72 each (six squadrons of 12 fighters, some of speciality types). Plus garrison, space bases, and other bases add even more TIE Fighters across the Galaxy.
The numbers of TIE Fighters just goes up as most Imperial starships carry at least four fighters. Carriers and some types of Star Destroyers carry well over 100 Fighters, while the Imperial-class only carries 72 each (six squadrons of 12 fighters, some of speciality types). Plus garrison, space bases, and other bases add even more TIE Fighters across the Galaxy.
Hi, Just wondering why you all call the "kit bashes". To me that term refers to specific thing tha is different than what you are takling about (I think)
That's actually the whole reason why building the Death Star was so damn important. Palpatine knew good and damn well there was no way he could field a military large enough to rule an entire galaxy through fear alone. If the ending scene of Ep3 is any indication, he didn't even bother to try.
I doubt that very much.
In fact, in terms of pure numbers, I think the Navy Chart is actually ALOT closer to what we would actually see both in terms of class distributions and numbers, especially if you consider that most of the auxiliary ships in the bottom row (cargo ships, hospital ships, oilers, etc) would ALL be various configurations of the Miranda-class, as would, I think, the patrol ships and minesweepers. The Excelsiors are also apparently versatile enough that you can keep shifting them around to all kinds of different mission roles, so they'd probably stand in for multiple types too.
In between we have Galaxies, Ambassadors, Nebulas, Steamrunners and Akiras, a certain number of Constellations still running around, and probably a handful of Intrepids and Novas. Maybe four hundred ships right before the Dominion War after months of feverish mothball-pulling.
The Air Force Chart, on the other hand, looks EXACTLY like I'd expect the Klingon fleet to look like. There's nothing much to them, they produce huge numbers of the same three or four ship types over and over again with only slight modifications to the design. I'd guess the F-15 would fit for the D7/K'Tingas and the F-16 would fit for the bird of prey (fighting falcon, lol). The Vorchas are relatively new, but the Klingons don't seem to have a shortage of them, and then throw in a couple dozen Negh'Vars as fleet command ships and you've got the KDF.
Which, again, is exactly why the Death Star was so important. Fear will keep the local systems in line, because the Imperial fleet doesn't have a chance in hell.
If I recall correctly The Galactic Empire is suppose to compose of something over 70 million systems. Even with generous estimation of number of even the cheap as dirt TIE fighters in service can't even set up one fighter per planet. And the Empire groups up TIEs since they require at least three to one odds to engage. Because the TIE fighter really is that bad.
The United Federation of Planets would, by comparison have a much easier task even with a 8,000 light year radius cylinder of the Milky Way.
The United Federation of Planets would, by comparison have a much easier task even with a 8,000 light year radius cylinder of the Milky Way.
Are all of those inhabited and economically viable systems, though? My brain's too tired at the moment to remember those sort of details, but I feel like one could make a similar argument for the Trek universe and others being similarly vast but not necessarily requiring so many numbers. I do recall from some of the maps that the Empire didn't control certain segments of the galaxy, no matter how much it possessed in technology, such as Hutt controlled space. And I think Eddie has an excellent point when it comes to needing superweapons like the Death Star for intimidation purposes.
I think it was 1.5 million member (or subjugated) systems and 69 million protectorates, colonies, and puppet states.
That's not including Hutt Space, the Unknown Regions, and other places the Empire does not hold. Though it likely includes the Corporate Sector as that might be considered a puppet state.
That's not including Hutt Space, the Unknown Regions, and other places the Empire does not hold. Though it likely includes the Corporate Sector as that might be considered a puppet state.
Complete and utter nonsense. I've already established a minimum fleet of thousands elsewhere just to cover the volume of Federation demarcated space, but there's a very simple, NON-speculative reason why a 400 ship fleet is utter garbage: if they only had that many ships, they'd've been forced to surrender within just a few battles if not after the first one because of the catastrophic losses they were taking.
In "A Time to Stand", O'Brien describes the situation thus:
Later, there's this exchange between Sisko and Bashir:
In "Favor the Bold", the plan for Operation: Return called for parts of three fleets to participate:
News of the impending destruction of the minefield required them to jump off early:
So they leave with just elements from two fleets (Second and Fifth).
When they are intercepted by the Dominion Forces, there is this exchange:
Elements of two fleets = over 600 ships (627 to be precise, which Bashir would be). And there are at a minimum 10 fleets.
From "In the Pale Moonlight":
In a much later ep ("When it Rains..."), we get an idea of the size of the Dominion fleet's strength:
That's 30 thousand Dominion, Cardassian, and Breen ships.
And Starfleet's yards weren't contributing much to the defence even after many months as Senator Vreenak observed shortly before that point:
Let's recap:
Elements of 2 fleets = 627 ships. That's 313.5 ships for each fleet's average contribution. Call it 313 because you can't send a "half of a ship".
Those fleets still need to have an effective combat force where they're at or they themselves get overrun, so that can't be the totality of their numbers.
Let's go with an estimate that keeps the total Starfleet size down to a minimum and say that half of each fleet was sent (which realistically is way MORE than any sane fleet commanders would send in wartime).
Thus: 313x2 = 626 ships/fleet.
@ 10 fleets minimum tthat equals 6,260 ships.
Let's take a high, but more reasonable estimate of each contribution equalling 1/3 of a fleet.
313x3 = 939 ships/fleet or 9,390 ships for 10 fleets.
And before you start jumping up and down yelling about "only" 114 ships in the 7th Fleet, I will point out AGAIN that such small numbers would see Starfleet wiped out with only a few encounters, given the scale of losses at that point in the war (over 89% in that one engagement).
So much for "400 ships" in Starfleet.
Re:Post War Fleet construction
Build up fleet numbers with increased Saber production. Actually, about the only new builds I would expect are Sabers, and perhaps a few Defiants.
The Sabers relieve the surviving Soyuz/Mirandas from patrol duties, which are switched to support roles.
The surviving Ambassadors are used to supplement the depleted Excelsiors.
The surviving Constellations are used in support roles.
The Oberths are used as glorified runabouts on milk runs.
Production of large new ships is delayed for years, because ship yards that can handle them are full of damaged ships.
Any ship with any viability left would be refit/refurbished.
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Build up fleet numbers with increased Saber production. Actually, about the only new builds I would expect are Sabers, and perhaps a few Defiants.
The Sabers relieve the surviving Soyuz/Mirandas from patrol duties, which are switched to support roles.
The surviving Ambassadors are used to supplement the depleted Excelsiors.
The surviving Constellations are used in support roles.
The Oberths are used as glorified runabouts on milk runs.
Production of large new ships is delayed for years, because ship yards that can handle them are full of damaged ships.
Any ship with any viability left would be refit/refurbished.
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We've been through this before. There is ZERO evidence for a "volume" of demarcated space that actually needs to be "covered" by anything. The core Federation worlds are all within about 20 light years of Earth and the space between them is patrolled sparsely enough that the arrival of the whale probe put them completely out of position (so maybe 5 or 6 ships in inter-system patrol in a "Coast Guard" functionality).
Omega Leonis -- now canonically identified as the location of the Klingon Homeworld -- is about 112 light years from Earth. If other Federation members are spaced out about that far or slightly closer, then the 23rd century Federation is "spread out" over about 5500 cubic light years. The 24th century Federation is almost certainly larger and has expanded to include some members farther out than Kronos. But even then, the Federation has never claimed to control every cubic inch of space within that sphere, because that claim would be laughable on its face.
Yes, in fact they WERE on the verge of surrender, which is exactly why the operation to take back Deep Space Nine so was crucial: they were ALREADY getting their asses kicked, and their small and dwindling possibility of victory depended on their keeping the Dominion from reopening the wormhole. And even after they accomplished this, and even with the full commitment of Klingon and later Romulan fleets, they were STILL getting their asses kicked up to a year later.
Even with that, though, you're overselling their situation by a fairly wide margin. The first battle was the battle for Deep Space Nine. They lost one station and no ships. Immdiately after this, Sisko joins a task force that is a combination of Federation and Klingon warships. In "Time to Stand" what's left of that same task force is shown in retreat, having just had the shit kicked out of it for three consecutive months. Elsehwere, the ninth fleet is also retreating, but it's in even worse shape, with 98 of its ships destroyed and only 14 surviving.
These losses are appalling and cringeworthy for a combined Federation/Klingon fleet that maxes out at around 1200 between the two of them. If the Federation had those kinds of numbers ON ITS OWN, loosing 98 ships in 3 months would be called "spring break."
On the other hand, the tallies for fleet numbers also include fighters and small craft of various designs (Jem'hadar bugs, Cardassian Hidekis, Starfleet Peregrines and Ju'days) and pretty much always have, going all the way back to "The Die is Cast" when the combined Cardassian/Romulan fleet got jumped by 150 "Jem'hadar fighters." Or even earlier, when the computer Rio Grande's computer tells Jake "Three ships coming out of orbit." Those three ships being a Galaxy-class starship and two runabouts.
A tally which evidently includes nine waves of attack fighters on the Federation side. If we assume some of those "waves" are fighters that regrouped, then that's a minimum of four separate groups of the little bastards (third and fourth being on hot standby). Which also means there's an upper limit to how many Cardassian ships can be in the opposing fleet before this tactic completely stops making sense, e.g. "Let's try to lure one hundred of their destroyers out of position so we can dive right through the other six hundred ships that don't bother to move at all."
OTOH, the Dominion ratio of attack ships to cap ships is usually in the neighborhood of 100 to 1. If they brought 800 battle bugs, then they have between 60 and 80 cap ships in that formation. That's about the size of the fleet that took Deep Space Nine the first time; close enough in size that it's probably the SAME fleet combined with Cardassian reinforcements.
Of which, if Dominion building practices remain consistent, around 28,000 of them are Jem'hadar attack ships. The Cardassians sure as hell never had anything like those kinds of numbers, especially after the thumping they got during the Klingon invasion.
But considering that Martok is referring to the number of ships that can quickly make a small adjustment to their warp engines to compensate for the Breen zapper weapon, he's inadvertently given us a solid figure for the size of the Klingon fleet. 1500 ships, around two thirds of which are birds of prey. The bird of prey which is shown in most cases to be equivalent to the Jem'hadar battlebug in terms of size and firepower but slightly superior in overall capabilities.
The Federation, which never got around to mass-producing the Defiant, doesn't have anything equivalent to the bird of prey or the battlebug it can crank out in those numbers. They'd be lucky to have half that at their peak.
Realistically, it's closer to a tenth of that. We've already seen in all previous conflicts that groups of 20 to 40 ships is seen as strategically significant in most conventional engagements, to the point that Admiral Hansen once referred to his fleet at Wolf-359 as an "armada." Those normal conventions get tossed out the window in the face of the Jem'hadar Zerg Rush (as the Obsidian Order found out the hard way), but that also means that PRIOR to the Dominion War, it was those conventions that informed Starfleet's (and everyone else's) procurement policy.
Vreenak's point clearly went over your head: a large portion -- as much as half -- of Starfleet has been destroyed by this point of the war and isn't going to be replaced any time soon. They DEFINITELY don't have more ships than the Klingons do, and the Klingons have at least 1500 available.
6200, though? The human race hasn't produced that many naval vessels in two centuries of building. You think the Federation was going to build them in a year and a half?
Actually he was probably pulling SPECIFIC elements from those fleets that had what he wanted for his plan. Namely, the fighters and their support ships (the Akiras) and the heavy Galaxy class starships. The rest of his fleet is probably drawn from his original task force in "Call to Arms" except that the Klingon portion of that unit didn't arrive until later.
I'm not sure what forces Sisko was pulling in from the 9th fleet, but considering we never saw another Defiant class during the war until Starfleet bought them a replacement, I think we finally have an answer for what kind of ships those fourteen die-hards actually were.
Well, no, it sees the 9th fleet wiped out over the course of three months. Sisko's task force didn't take those kinds of losses and probably neither did any of the others.
The ninth fleet SPECIFICALLY had it the worst, which is probably why Bashir went out of his way to break the news to Sisko: everyone in the Federation was watching for them, hoping for good news.
For the record: there's nothing to suggest that any OTHER fleets besides Sisko's group were even engaged at that point. For all we know, the 9th fleet was THE frontline unit on the Cardassian border and Sisko's force -- arguably, the same joint Federation/Klingon task force that had just won the battle of Torros -- was just a support unit.
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Re: Post War Fleet construction
I'm thinking Starfleet tried to do its usual "blind them with science" approach and put its best innovation into the Sovereign class starships before the war, maybe even at the expense of the Galaxies. Three or four sovereigns would have become the flagships of major task groups, including possibly the ill-fated ninth fleet.
I really think that's pretty easy to do with spacecraft, much more so than naval vessels. Starships, in particular, do not rust and do not suffer the natural decay of their structure when exposed to the elements. You can replace whole sections of them like a Ship of Theseus and slap them back into fighting shape, and small enough ships can probably do this without the need of a major drydock (Deep Space Nine could probably handle the repairs to the Defiant after First Contact).
It's just that Starfleet always goes for quality over quantity, so those upgrades would take a lot of time and cost a lot of whatever-they-like-to-pretend-isn't-really-money.
They're certainly small enough that Starfleet might have tried to use them to offset the Zerg Rush. But we don't see nearly enough of them for me to think they were built specifically for the war. I actually think the Sabers were a type of patrol craft that you'd normally only see along the neutral zone or on the borders of contested space and got pulled into frontline duty out of desperation. There wouldn't be alot of them, just enough -- initially -- to keep eyes and ears on the border.
I'm thinking Starfleet tried to do its usual "blind them with science" approach and put its best innovation into the Sovereign class starships before the war, maybe even at the expense of the Galaxies. Three or four sovereigns would have become the flagships of major task groups, including possibly the ill-fated ninth fleet.
Hey, don't look down on the Excelsiors. They're very upgradable and, they can still throw down in their old age.
I really think that's pretty easy to do with spacecraft, much more so than naval vessels. Starships, in particular, do not rust and do not suffer the natural decay of their structure when exposed to the elements. You can replace whole sections of them like a Ship of Theseus and slap them back into fighting shape, and small enough ships can probably do this without the need of a major drydock (Deep Space Nine could probably handle the repairs to the Defiant after First Contact).
It's just that Starfleet always goes for quality over quantity, so those upgrades would take a lot of time and cost a lot of whatever-they-like-to-pretend-isn't-really-money.
A misunderstanding, Crazy Eddie. I meant that the Ambassadors would be pulled from exploration, as substitutes for destroyed Excelsiors.
The Prometheus would be an example of "blind them with science", quality over quantity. It was an over complicated, one trick pony.
Which brings up a question-what kind of ship would you design to quickly augment the fleet?
The Prometheus would be an example of "blind them with science", quality over quantity. It was an over complicated, one trick pony.
Which brings up a question-what kind of ship would you design to quickly augment the fleet?
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I know what you meant. I'm saying the Excelsiors are a lot harder to kill than most people give them credit for. But yeah, I could see the Ambassadors being pulled in from exploration duties in time of crisis.
If I was a Federation planner who suddenly had to deal with a beehive enemy like the Jem'hadar? I'd take the Ju'day class -- the Maquis raider -- beef up its shielding and arm it with quantum torpedoes. This because we know they're not particularly expensive to build (even the Maquis can obtain them on their shoestring budget) and that they have the "troublesome in groups" quality of the Jem'hadar battlebug. May not be enough to tip the scales numerically, but enough to keep the Jem'hadar from coordinating swarm attacks and give the capital ships a chance to catch the bugs in a crossfire.
If I was a Federation planner who suddenly had to deal with a beehive enemy like the Jem'hadar? I'd take the Ju'day class -- the Maquis raider -- beef up its shielding and arm it with quantum torpedoes. This because we know they're not particularly expensive to build (even the Maquis can obtain them on their shoestring budget) and that they have the "troublesome in groups" quality of the Jem'hadar battlebug. May not be enough to tip the scales numerically, but enough to keep the Jem'hadar from coordinating swarm attacks and give the capital ships a chance to catch the bugs in a crossfire.
BTW, a pair of Defiants appeared in "Message in a Bottle" (Voyager, fourth season), in formation with an Akira.
True, but the Dominion War was over by then.
I'd like to think so. If the Maquis were able to do it, Starfleet wouldn't have a problem. Especially since they've probably captured a fair number of Maquis survivors who already have EXPERIENCE with those retrofits and could be talked into overseeing the project in exchange for a reduced prison sentence.
The Maquis raider appears on charts that compare Star Fleet vessels. The raider seems to be smaller than the Defiant. A comparison that comes to mind is the Serenity (Firefly), which is a smaller ship that can carry cargo and land on a planet.
I suspect that the raider is about as small a ship as can be and still be an effective combatant.
I suspect that the raider is about as small a ship as can be and still be an effective combatant.
Incorrect. Deep Space Nine was in it six season when that episode air.
Star Fleet has small numbers of charismatic/high profile, bleeding edge vessels.
Can't afford many of those vessels, they are resource intensive even if the Federation no longer uses money.
Certain ship classes, however, become the workhorses. Mirandas and Excelsiors, for example.
I think that an updated Ju'day might also become a workhorse.
Can't afford many of those vessels, they are resource intensive even if the Federation no longer uses money.
Certain ship classes, however, become the workhorses. Mirandas and Excelsiors, for example.
I think that an updated Ju'day might also become a workhorse.
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I don't see the Raider as anything but a combat ship from scratch.
The Raider and Peregrine may be ships richer colonies buy, or they are given by Starfleet to colonies in dangerous locations. Aren't the interfaces in Chakotay's Raider blue LCARS style like from the MOV era? If not, then maybe they're just Federation built, but not Starfleet, where as the Peregrine is something Starfleet uses.
