how big is starfleet?

[Timo]

How can you build ships faster? Today, they are built on a schedule. Trying to do it faster means the work will go slower, because of all the bottlenecks and jams. And trying to do it with people trained to do something else will mean even more delays.

Sending a half-built ship to space worries me on a rather fundamental level. Sending half-trained people in an airtight ship seems like the more survivable scenario, and of course the training can continue aboard.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gabriel]

How can you build ships faster? Today, they are built on a schedule. Trying to do it faster means the work will go slower, because of all the bottlenecks and jams. And trying to do it with people trained to do something else will mean even more delays.

Sending a half-built ship to space worries me on a rather fundamental level. Sending half-trained people in an airtight ship seems like the more survivable scenario, and of course the training can continue aboard.

Timo Saloniemi

you just get more people on the job and work around the clock also how can the crew operate the ship to acceptable level if they are only half trained. also if your building a galaxy class during wary don't build all the science labs or the civilian accommodations that the galaxy has.
ben sisko worked at a ship yard and he was a shipboard officer before
also in WWII they built ships much faster. so if they can do it in the forty then they can do it in the future
Also I doubt if on board training is on the same level as starfleet academy.
while having full built ships are important don't dismiss have well trained crew.
also today the shipyards average 2 ships a year however if they were to get more workers and have shifts working around the clock they could improve the rate. and starfleet as seems to do some impressive things in a pinch so I doubt making building schedules small is beyond their capabilities

 

[Sgt_G]

we don’t know how long enlisted courses are

USAF basic was six weeks when I went thru The Battle Of Lackland. It's eight weeks now. Navy boot camp is also eight weeks, Army is ten, and Marines is twelve weeks. I suspect Starfleet's would be within that range.

After that, there is technical school / advanced individual training where the basics of a specific job are taught. The length of this school can range from three or four weeks to several months, even a full year, depending on the complexity of the job. Mine was nine weeks, and a few years later I had to go back to "7-level" school for over six months.

Even after all that, there is another two to six months of on-the-job training and certification before someone is considered fully qualified at their job. Not sure about the other services, but the Air Force and I'm told Navy has mandatory correspondence courses (Career Development Course) with written tests as part of the certification process.

All in all, figure at least six months and typically a year from reporting at boot camp to become a qualified crewman.

 

[Ithekro]

Shelby estimated they would have the fleet back up within a year after Wolf 359. Maybe that's normal construction for replacements, maybe that was all the new anti-Borg/Cardassian War era ships they were already building. Maybe they can crank up the shipyards to high during emergencies? Or maybe that was just to repair the wrecks.

 

[Timo]

The underlying problem here is that if replacements can be built in a jiffy, how come Starfleet has a chronic shortage of ships? Why do they merely bring the fleet back "up" when they should be building six hundred such fleets to address the shortage?

Bottlenecks or hard limits in construction could well be the reason for the shortage, and I really can't see Starfleet not building to the max already. "Bring more people to work around the clock"? Why would Starfleet not work around the clock already, with the maximum number of people possible? But if there is surplus construction capacity, then the shortage must be due to either the costs of construction (abstract funds, concrete resources) or the costs of operating the required number of ships (abstract funds, concrete resources). One wouldn't expect this situation to improve much in wartime - to the contrary, there'd be less wealth to spread around, and few obvious things to scale back. We don't know of dilithium hogs other than starships, say.

But if there's one thing militaries are good at, it's dealing with shortages. Gaps are filled by any means available, and construction is seldom one of those means. Clever reassigning is far more typical.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Longinus]

The underlying problem here is that if replacements can be built in a jiffy, how come Starfleet has a chronic shortage of ships? Why do they merely bring the fleet back "up" when they should be building six hundred such fleets to address the shortage?

What makes you think that there's shortage?

 

[Nyotarules]

It's interesting, because you'd assume it would be very big (starships, local ships, star bases, etc), but then it's implied that you don't serve in Starfleet without having attended the Academy. And, last time I looked, the Academy seems a pretty manageable size.

To serve trillions of species the Academy should be the size of Shanghai. Being in San Francisco is absolutely stupid.

 

[Gabriel]

I don’t think there is a shortage in ships maybe manpower because i doubt people come to starfleet in droves

 

[Gabriel]

To serve trillions of species the Academy should be the cause of Shanghai. Being in San Francisco is absolutely stupid.

Yeah that makes sense except that would make the academy pretty far from command. Maybe they put it there when transporters weren’t the most reliable thing and remember Frisco was very beautiful when they made the movies and TNG, DS9 and remember they have shown that not all civilians like starfleet so I doubt droves of them join

 

[Nyotarules]

Yeah that makes sense except that would make the academy pretty far from command. Maybe they put it there when transporters weren’t the most reliable thing and remember Frisco was very beautiful when they made the movies and TNG, DS9 and remember they have shown that not all civilians like starfleet so I doubt droves of them join

Or SF city expanded to 10 times its size. The present day population of San Fran is 860000 estimate. The Academy which served a United Earth should be way bigger than that. The world building of the franchise is a joke.

 

[XCV330]

Or SF city expanded to 10 times its size. The present day population of ST is 860000 estimate. The Academy which served a United Earth should be way bigger than that. The world building of the franchise is a joke.

It's had a lot of hands in the pot. But its also known not everyone goes to Starfleet Academy. Engineers don't appear to, or at least had their own school during the Dominion War era. Prime McCoy went to Ole Miss so if he did also to to the Academy it was for some kind of officer training and not the long stint he did for some reason with Kirk in the Kelvinverse. Burnham didn't go, either.

The assembly hall didnt look like it was seating tens of thousands, either. My suspicion would be in terms of world building, just like ranks, theres just no consistency and its something that writers fall back on a lot.

Since there are human-centric crews, vulcan-centric crews, and it follows presumably Andorian and Tellarite primary crews as well as more diverse ships like Discovery within Starfleet, its not impossible they have their own accredited training facilities for Starfleet at their home worlds. This isnt to retcon it and say suddenly humans don't make up the bulk of Starfleet. It's pretty clear from ship names alone that they do. Maybe they pay more into the system with ships and materials than the other members are willing to handle, so you have a somewhat lopsided NATO type organization, that has become content over time with using their exploration group Starfleet sucessfully as a rapid-reaction force instead of spending extra on their own stellar navies.

I just don't think those kind of discussions in detail would work in a non-boring way. I'm boring myself writing this.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

Since there are human-centric crews, vulcan-centric crews, and it follows presumably Andorian and Tellarite primary crews as well as more diverse ships like Discovery within Starfleet, its not impossible they have their own accredited training facilities for Starfleet at their home worlds. This isnt to retcon it and say suddenly humans don't make up the bulk of Starfleet. It's pretty clear from ship names alone that they do.

My take on that, which was certainly implied by some dialogue in late ENT and maybe the post-Destruction of Vulcan status quo for the Vulcans is that the population of most Federation member species are located either in their home system or at least within low-warp travel distance of it (particularly during the late 2100s and 2200s, whereas humanity is a lot more dispersed (ST09 somewhat implies that >90% of Vulcans lived in the Vulcan system if not on Vulcan itself, whereas it wouldn't susprise me if >90% of humans lived away from the Terran and Centauran systems by the late 2200s so the pool of candidates is a lot larger).

 

[Nyotarules]

Unless the galaxy's human population has shrunk to millions, having 90% of billions of humans living on Earth style planets with 23rd century infrastructure starting from scratch is laughable even in 2200s Federation.
One can reboot the franchise with more species diverse ships, a Starfleet that's not a lopsided human NATO, an Academy with galactic campuses and an HQ where if still needs to be San Francisco the whole city is ran by Starfleet and expanded after WW3. And none of the plots need to be boring.
As for Paris being the HQ of the Federation, that would take up half the city and it only has 2 million humans in reality so another city that grew after WW3?
I'd move the Federation HQ to Tokyo.

 

[Chronos]

I always assumed that it was somewhere in the hundreds or low thousands of ships, most of which are mainly scientific and exploration vessels.

 

[Gabriel]

I always assumed that it was somewhere in the hundreds or low thousands of ships, most of which are mainly scientific and exploration vessels.

Yeah but post dominion I bet they will increase the warship fleet a little bit

 

[Gabriel]

Unless the galaxy's human population has shrunk to millions, having 90% of billions of humans living on Earth style planets with 23rd century infrastructure starting from scratch is laughable even in 2200s Federation.
One can reboot the franchise with more species diverse ships, a Starfleet that's not a lopsided human NATO, an Academy with galactic campuses and an HQ where if still needs to be San Francisco the whole city is ran by Starfleet and expanded after WW3. And none of the plots need to be boring.
As for Paris being the HQ of the Federation, that would take up half the city and it only has 2 million humans in reality so another city that grew after WW3?
I'd move the Federation HQ to Tokyo.

Ohh great island that’s also a mountain. Barely any room to expand. Yeah no keep Paris it looks better. And you know some thing if it wasn’t for earth There wouldn’t even be a federation

 

[Ithekro]

San Francisco would have been rebuilt after either a large earthquake in the 21st century or World War III (or both) and with Earth no long having a need for the business districts as they once were in the 20th century, all the skyscrapers and even larger buildings we see in 23rd and 24th century San Francisco would be for Star Fleet and other Federation uses.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I’m just wondering does Starfleet use fleets during peacetime. Knowing how they operate they probably don’t. Because fleets is mostly military thing and remember they believe they are purely explorers

They may have fleets for Organizational / Book Keeping purposes, but I bet every single one of them is either exploring the frontier or doing some sort of important scientific work / triaging a local domain issue.

No ship should be sitting on their butts twidlling their thumbs.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Unless the galaxy's human population has shrunk to millions, having 90% of billions of humans living on Earth style planets with 23rd century infrastructure starting from scratch is laughable even in 2200s Federation.
One can reboot the franchise with more species diverse ships, a Starfleet that's not a lopsided human NATO, an Academy with galactic campuses and an HQ where if still needs to be San Francisco the whole city is ran by Starfleet and expanded after WW3. And none of the plots need to be boring.
As for Paris being the HQ of the Federation, that would take up half the city and it only has 2 million humans in reality so another city that grew after WW3?
I'd move the Federation HQ to Tokyo.

In my Head Cannon, StarFleet Academy is spread throughout Federation Territories with multiple schools spread across many member worlds.

San Francisco is just one of many Academies.

Also most of the UFP governmental buildings / facilities aren't planet side anymore, but situated on mobile orbiting space colonies that can move as needed.

UFP is a large diverse place, we can't have everybody sit around.

 

[Stoo]

...And then followed that up with the Romulans going "Starfleet is sending 24 ships - why aren't they sending a fleet?". Little steps from the practical to the plausible: show four, display a dozen, speak of two dozen, and then establish that this is a fraction of the real deal.

The exact line is " Twenty ships aren't enough to wage a war". That would still hold as a sensible statement if every major power had a total strength of several hundred, as opposed to many thousands.

(Picard explicitly refers to it as a fleet, even if it's not as large a one as he would have preferred.)

24 ships was all Picard had to work with. More would have come with time, for sure, but if you're saying we;'re meant to infer there were another thousand waiting just around the corner, that seems deeply unconvincing.