Implications of the fleet

[Jedi_Master]

It means that it is too easy to copypaste CGI ships.

This and only this - there is no need to delve into the imaginary world implications, unless we want to acknowledge that the Federation has ALWAYS had thousands of starships, just it was expensive and impractical to have them all show up on screen until now.

 

[DEWLine]

MC is a bit fan of The Culture and also has talked about how large the Federation is - I think it is as simple as that in the showrunner's mind, a massive polity would have no problem fielding hundreds of ships regardless of what was doing on-screen before.

Has he delved into much detail publicly about the reach of the Federation c. 2399?

 

[Racefuel]

This and only this - there is no need to delve into the imaginary world implications, unless we want to acknowledge that the Federation has ALWAYS had thousands of starships, just it was expensive and impractical to have them all show up on screen until now.

Well we know per Discovery that in the 2250's starfleet had around 7,000 ships

 

[Longinus]

Well we know per Discovery that in the 2250's starfleet had around 7,000 ships

Yet we all registries seen in the TOS era and before it are under 2000. That 7000 must have included all sorts of small craft.

 

[Racefuel]

Yet we all registries seen in the TOS era and before it are under 2000. That 7000 must have included all sorts of small craft.

As I've been frequently scolded many times...

"REGISTRIES MEAN NOTHING!"

so who knows

 

[Enterprise1701]

This may not be the appropriate place to directly speak about this, but I am still salty that Picard season 1 employed the ridiculous plot contrivance of long-range sensors only working when the writers feel like it. How did Starfleet arrive by surprise with no warning? Riker himself cited the Treaty of Algeron, implying that the anti-cloaking provision must still be in effect.

Frankly, I hate these stupid giant fleets. Like the scene would have worked just as well with five ships per side. Starships used to be a big deal, every one powerful and precious. Now they're some sort of TIE-fighters.

No it means it was too hard to build and photograph models in the 90's

Ha, tell that to the showrunners of the Discovery season 2 finale, which had the worst plot holes ever to give Discovery and Enterprise no Federation reinforcements against Control.

I'm curious as to where the Enterprise is and why it wasn't the flagship. Even if the E-E is out of service, or renamed, there could be an E-F out there that should be THE flagship. It should ALWAYS be the Enterprise.

Are you trying to be silly? The term "flagship" is not that limited. The Enterprise merely has a special designation as a symbol for the Federation.

The Enterprise-E Is still operating and is still the Federation flagship.

Riker was talking about the ship he was on being the flagship of that particular fleet. The Defiant acted as the flagship in several battles, including Operation Return, and Admiral Ross had his own flagship too. Flagship is just a term for the command vessel, usually has the Fleet Admiral on board, like in First Contact as well.

It is as Phily B says. Enterprise-D was not the command ship at Wolf 359 or Cardassia Prime. There is nothing wrong with Zheng He being the command ship at Coppelius.

 

[Longinus]

As I've been frequently scolded many times...

"REGISTRIES MEAN NOTHING!"

so who knows

They are just not sequential. But each ship probably still needs to have unique registry...

 

[fireproof78]

That Riker was able to gather a hundred ships in a few days, and mobilize them to the synths' planet suggests to me that after the Dominion War, Starfleet must have maintained a major war footing. Where else would those ships have come from?

A reasonable assumption that they would such a force in light of Wolf 359, the Klingon War, the Dominion War, The Battle at Sector 001, and Shinzon's aggressive stance.

I'm curious as to where the Enterprise is and why it wasn't the flagship. Even if the E-E is out of service, or renamed, there could be an E-F out there that should be THE flagship. It should ALWAYS be the Enterprise.

No, it shouldn't. That is a very limited position to take on what a flag ship actually is.

Time is non-sense in Star Trek

Fixed that for you. Speed of plot is a part of Trek's DNA and pretty much always has been.

 

[DEWLine]

Registry numbers mean something. And they are chronologically sequential. I'm going to stand by that.

 

[Longinus]

Registry numbers mean something.

Yes.

And they are chronologically sequential.

No. There is loads of evidence for them not being that.

 

[DEWLine]

I've been watching these series since I was a kid and I'm not seeing that argument standing up.

But that's a digression.

 

[Dukhat]

The Enterprise-E Is still operating and is still the Federation flagship.

Actually, there is no evidence in the show itself that this is the case. No one directly mentions the Enterprise other than that Picard was captain of two of them and that he left the Enterprise-E to focus on the Romulan evacuation. We don't know if the Enterprise-E is still operating, if it's been destroyed or decommissioned, if there's a new Enterprise, or if there's even an Enterprise at all.

As for the topic, here are the facts as presented in PIC:

Spoiler

- Around the 2380's, Starfleet focused their resources on building a huge evacuation fleet to help the Romulans.

- The entire fleet was then destroyed.

- According to Clancy, Starfleet did not have enough active-duty ships left to replace them, besides the fact that after the attack, the Federation decided not to continue the effort.

- Immediately after the attack, Picard is even having trouble assembling a new fleet made up of mothballed ships with reserve crews.

(And I'm not even going to get into the whole Dominion war aftermath or Borg incursions and how that could have affected Starfleet.)

So the implication of all this is that Starfleet seems to be quite weak post-2386. And yet, by 2399 we see hundreds of ships, all the same design, seemingly new designs, seemingly super-fast and super-powerful, all in one fleet that was apparently very easy to assemble with very short notice. Hmmm.

 

[saladdays]

I've been watching these series since I was a kid and I'm not seeing that argument standing up.

But that's a digression.

I would actually think there's a lot of people that use this website who have been fans since they were kids.

 

[Timo]

MC is a bit fan of The Culture and also has talked about how large the Federation is - I think it is as simple as that in the showrunner's mind, a massive polity would have no problem fielding hundreds of ships regardless of what was doing on-screen before.

Then again, all the distances actually quoted in PIC are tiny. From Vashti to Freecloud, or Freecloud to the Artifact, or from the Artifact to Coppelius... The heroes are essentially just straddling the former RNZ and covering a few dozen lightyears, thinking it a big deal that they travel even that much / little.

So the sandbox appears as small as ever. And Starfleet generally seems to have significant forces available at hot spots, of which the Romulan disaster zone might be one. It just usually happens that the hot spot is in the wrong place for the adventure - Laurentius, say - and here for a rare once we don't need to think it would be.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[TPezz]

I was actually surprised we didn’t see the Enterprise-F. Eagle Moss have recently made the model available to buy, so I thought we may have seen it in the finale

I find it odd that we’re questioning how a massive military organisation like Starfleet could assemble such a large squadron of starships, but not questioning how the Romulans, who’s home planet was wiped out in a supernova, was able to do the same.

 

[Timo]

Then again, a fleet of starships wouldn't be on a planet...

(Except this particular fleet very well might, considering all the ships have wings!)

Mere decade and a half after the disaster, the ships might still be nicely in working order even if every single support facility was destroyed and was never rebuilt. Starships are durable like that. But I'd think there would be plenty of surviving support assets, too, as Romulans would probably believe in deep space starbases just as much as the Feds do.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[NCC-73515]

It could be that after having many specialized classes in all kinds of sizes for different tasks, they finally came up with a 'grand unifying design' that can perform all of these missions. It would be a combination of many previous classes' abilities in an intermediate-sized ship design. Faster and easier to build, since they're all using the same parts.

 

[valkyrie013]

Well, with the former Romulan Neutral zone and there former Empire being a hot zone of pirates, rogue nations that have former romulan technology and ships, and various other summgulars and others, I honestly don't have a problem with a 50+ fleet on standby for any funny business. Hell they were probably on patrol around the whole area, and they were pulled to head to Copellius. It was "only" 25 lightyears from whereever the other terminus of the Transwarp hole was, so it was probably around the same 25-30 ly from where the borg cube was to Copellius..
Hell they may have had like STO, short range quantum slipstream capablity, maybe like a 10 ly hop was possible.. maybe.. I'm sorry but after voyager, and Kristen beyer writing the voyager novels and is a head writer KNOWS about the darn drive..

 

[Dukhat]

I was actually surprised we didn’t see the Enterprise-F. Eagle Moss have recently made the model available to buy, so I thought we may have seen it in the finale

I think there may be two reasons why they didn’t show the Enterprise:

1. They don’t want to show it because they have no intention of making a CGI Odyssey class starship, or

2. They will be making a new design for the Enterprise-F but it was not necessary this season.

Either way, I doubt they will be using the STO design in the show. Remember, STO has nothing to do with this show. STO changes to fit with show canon, not the other way around.

 

[DEWLine]

Or they're sticking with Enterprise-E.
TBDL, clearly.