Hello..Look, one thing I notice in the two NuTrek movies, WHY is the Earth Always defensless ? after being attack by Romulans then Admiral Marcus and Khan, how come the Enterprise get swatted around like a fly while the rest of the fleet "explores" Where are Earth defenses ?(they had them in TMP) How many ships are in this Star Fleet and where are they when Earth is Under Attack ? who has the best answer ?
Well...the First movie shows a fleet of I think eight ships warp off to Vulcan. Seven of those ships were crippled or destroyed over Vulcan and Enterprise eventually returned home to defend Earth (the rest of the fleet was engaged in another star system, which was where Spock was heading before Kirk and Scott arrived to turn the ship back to Earth). The Second movie has several starships at the spacedock when Enterprise leaves. None respond fast enough to intercept Enterprise and Vengence, probably because both are Federation ships and the Admiral was pulling something when they came out of warp. By the time there is a problem, it should be solved with tractor beams to keep the ships from crashing into Earth.
Nero tortured Pike to get Starfleet's defence codes in ST'09, and in ID Marcus was pulling strings to ensure no-one interfered with his plan - remember he told Kirk what the official story was, that Kirk had gone rogue and allied with John Harrison leaving him no choice but to destroy the Enterprise.
1. Nero's ship was a century more advanced than the 23rd century Starfleet. He obviously took out Earth's defenses just as easily as he destroyed the Starfleet ships over Vulcan. 2. Marcus was C&C of Starfleet. He could have easily ordered any other ships away from Earth if he wanted to.
And who knows what else locked into the dockyards for maintenance, ships tied down on border patrol re: the Romulan and Klingon territories (among others as yet undisclosed), deep-range exploration projects...
While "The Star Trek Encyclopedia" generally sticks with canon, or acknowledges when not - especially when dealing with classes and registries of Star Ships, combining it and a listing of Wiki "Lists of Starfleet Starships" I total approximately 300 in Classes, from A to Z, including "non-starships", refits, support ships and non-canon ships referenced in paper publications...if it is reasonable to calculate an average of 20-40 ships in each class, a VERY rough estimate, i freely admit, than I think there could be 8000 or more ships total... ...excluding the non-canon, non-star ships, support ships, and the like, the total is approximately 220 ships in each class, A to Z... ...these totals are not definitive, but I did spend some time with the sources listed below, culling novel- mentioned and alternate timeline ships...the totals do include both NCC and NX...In the canon totals, I did my best to include truly canon ships... http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starfleet_starships_ordered_by_class The Star Trek Encyclopedia: A Reference Guide to the Future / Updated and Expanded Edition by Michael; Okuda, Denise; with Debbie Mirek Okuda (1997) I also found a source, lists below, that estimated 30,000, but I think that is a little high...IMHO http://www.ditl.org/searchdisplay-page.php
Depends on the writer, really. In TOS, we were led to believe, perhaps because of budget limitations, or perhaps because the Enterprise was in deep space, that ships were few and far apart. The problem didn't really show until the movies, where Earth began getting threatened, I guess for "wham" effect. Right up until Best of Both Worlds, getting several ships at the same spot was a huge deal. But in DS9, it seems like Starfleet is brimming with ships. What was it ? Over 600 UFP and Klingon ships at the battle to re-take the station ? That's an order of magnitude above Wolf 359.
Well Star Fleet does go from NX-2000 being finished in Star Trek III to ships in the 74000s by the time USS Voyager is launch, and the early Galaxy-class ships from at most a decade earlier are in the 71000s. But for the NuTrek fleet? Unknown. The hull numbers are all over the place as here are ships in he 1700s that are obviously older than the brand new USS Enterprise (NCC-1701). Unless of course the Enterprise was ordered around the same time as it was in the Prime Universe, but delayed by over ten years due to technology changes. The hull number being assigned when ordered In this case, allowing for some of the other ships to have higher hull numbers that the brand new starship.
One thing to note is that it's hardly just nuTrek -- the movies follow the rather dependable trope of leaving just the Enterprise as the only real option. TMP, TFF, and Generations come to mind. At least this time, the nuTrek movies actually explained why that was the case. Generations was just ridic (a crisis 3 light years away, and the Enterprise, docked at Earth, is the only ship in range? And its good stuff won't be coming till Tuesday?).
Ships are one thing, a fully trained staff to run it is another. It makes you wonder how bad the Starfleet bureaucarts are when determining if a ship is ready for service? My thoughts drift to that scene in one of the DS9 mirror eps where Bashir notes they have plenty of captains but few ships.