They're the Ford Truck of the fleet, not an armoured people carrierI noticed the Mirandas getting creamed in the fleet battles. One hit and they were destroyed in some cases. I pity the crews assigned to these flying coffins.
Longevity of Classes
- Thread starter DarthTimon
- Start date
Posted this in another thread but apropos here:
It may be a question of warp profiles. Upgrades to the engines only matter if the ship can create a warp field able to push the engines that far, hence why ships are getting flatter compared to the Connie. The Miranda and Excelsior both are - and the Excelsior's partly successful "transwarp" capabilities may reflect the birth of the TNG warp scale. So both those classes would be easier to update to TNG warp standards. A Connie couldn't keep up. And perhaps that's why the less streamlined Ambassador couldn't either - it was an attempt at a "hotel in space" long-range vessel like the Galaxy would be, but less able to match the speed standards of the day.
It may be a question of warp profiles. Upgrades to the engines only matter if the ship can create a warp field able to push the engines that far, hence why ships are getting flatter compared to the Connie. The Miranda and Excelsior both are - and the Excelsior's partly successful "transwarp" capabilities may reflect the birth of the TNG warp scale. So both those classes would be easier to update to TNG warp standards. A Connie couldn't keep up. And perhaps that's why the less streamlined Ambassador couldn't either - it was an attempt at a "hotel in space" long-range vessel like the Galaxy would be, but less able to match the speed standards of the day.
While that theory might hold for the Connie, I'm not seeing it so much for the Ambassador. For one thing, if the 'flatness' of the ship determines how better and/or faster the engines are, then why build the Ambassador class in the first place? Especially if its primary function (albeit my theory) is for deep space exploration, wouldn't you want a very fast ship to be able to reach the boonies and back again in a realistic period of time, rather than just putting along leisurely? The Ambassador class was built after the Excelsior and Miranda classes, which presumably by that time already had the warp upgrades you're alluding to. There's no point in making a new ship that's intentionally slower than the older ships it's replacing.
I find arguments like this to be ridiculous. It's one thing to want to believe in continuity, but it's a completely different thing to believe ONLY in the continuity shown on screen. The only class around "for the most part" in TOS was the Constitution because that's the only class model built due to budget constraints. The variety shown in Disco is certainly around in TOS, and in fact I'm sure we'll see that in SNW.
Sometimes taking things too literally is not a good thing.
On the other hand, ITRW it's perfectly okay to build ships that are slower than their functional predecessors. Modern destroyers don't need 30 kn speed for anything, say: they can't outrun an air or missile threat, it won't make much of a difference whether they deploy to an area in sixteen days or twenty, and outrunning enemy ships or subs is not fruitful, either. So slouching around at 25 kt is just fine.
If the Ambassador is to defeat the final frontier, then speed is her main weapon, alongside the fanatical devotion and all. And perhaps more is better, so her near-sister Niagara even gets a third nacelle for the job. But it may also be that this is not the role of the Ambassador, and speed is not relevant for her.
Then again, the E-D follows the "tall ship" model rather than striving for "flatness", and she's the fastest animal in the savanna, the Prometheus notwithstanding. So I'd love to see the Ambassador as the Galaxy of her time, a rare and expensive ace-of-all-trades that outruns the Excelsiors and their putative nacelles-down counterparts and whatnot with ease - and even outperforms the workhorses of the next generation, due to all the resources pumped into this silver bullet project.
Hard to tell when no Ambassador on screen was actually seen doing much warping. (One was part of a four-ship armada going to warp in "Redemption", but that armada was already being dragged down by old ships, so that hardly helps...)
Tino Saloniemi
So here's another conundrum. Other than the few ships we saw at the battle of Wolf 359 and Sector 001, and the few ships in Picard's tachyon grid, the only major fleet scenes were in DS9, in which the bulk of Starfleet's forces consisted of these eight classes:
1. Galaxy
2. Nebula
3. Defiant
4. Excelsior (comprising the bulk of the numbers)
5. Miranda (comprising the bulk of the numbers)
6. Akira
7. Steamrunner
8. Saber
Why were these eight classes the only Starfleet ships in the fleet? Because the Enterprise-D, Nebula, Defiant, Excelsior (Greg Jein version) and Reliant filming models were still available to be scanned into CGI models, and the other three were already CGI models from First Contact which ILM handed over to be remapped.
The conundrum is this: While six of those classes represent modern mid-to-late 24th century ships, and two of them represent older designs that were either still in service or were recommissioned to fight in the war, the issue is that these were the only designs we ever saw in those huge fleet scenes. Starfleet has over 60 known different classes of ships by the TNG era, so where the heck were they all? I've heard the excuse that they were off screen, but I'm not buying it. This war, in this specific location was the Federation's make-or-break moment. So why only send those eight classes, two of which were outdated but comprised the bulk of the force?
1. Galaxy
2. Nebula
3. Defiant
4. Excelsior (comprising the bulk of the numbers)
5. Miranda (comprising the bulk of the numbers)
6. Akira
7. Steamrunner
8. Saber
Why were these eight classes the only Starfleet ships in the fleet? Because the Enterprise-D, Nebula, Defiant, Excelsior (Greg Jein version) and Reliant filming models were still available to be scanned into CGI models, and the other three were already CGI models from First Contact which ILM handed over to be remapped.
The conundrum is this: While six of those classes represent modern mid-to-late 24th century ships, and two of them represent older designs that were either still in service or were recommissioned to fight in the war, the issue is that these were the only designs we ever saw in those huge fleet scenes. Starfleet has over 60 known different classes of ships by the TNG era, so where the heck were they all? I've heard the excuse that they were off screen, but I'm not buying it. This war, in this specific location was the Federation's make-or-break moment. So why only send those eight classes, two of which were outdated but comprised the bulk of the force?
^Solution: Do an HD remaster of DS9, use the CG models commissioned by Eaglemoss to replace the '90s meshes and fill out the fleets with more variety. And no more blank ships! Everybody gets a name and registry number!
It seems absurd to me that there's now a huge library of CBS-licensed high-quality CG models of nearly every ship in Star Trek history, and nobody seems to want to use it for anything.
It seems absurd to me that there's now a huge library of CBS-licensed high-quality CG models of nearly every ship in Star Trek history, and nobody seems to want to use it for anything.
Unfortunately, while I like your thinking, the realist in me has to stop you right here: I sincerely doubt CBS will ever remaster DS9. And even if they did, after what I saw with TOS-R, I’m not a big fan of changing what was originally there to something completely different (although in the case of the DS9 fleet scenes, I would probably be ok with that, as long as the final battle wasn’t just recycled footage from the battle of Chin’toka like it was originally.)
Well, let's take the excelsior,
Launched in 2285, still around in 2265 so that makes 80 years. Now let's say that class of ship was made for 25 years, so 2310. So the last block of ships are 50 years old in 2265.
However, as aposed to what was seen in screen, a 2265 excelsior would look nothing like a 2285 version.
Take 5 year minor refits after each 5 year mission, and a major refit after 25 years.
After each major refit like the tos Connie to refit Connie. New engines etc. Would be installed for it to keep up to current standards. Granted there will be limits with the spaceframe.
So a 2265 excelsior would look more like a galaxy class on some ways, though styled like the excelsior longness.
Launched in 2285, still around in 2265 so that makes 80 years. Now let's say that class of ship was made for 25 years, so 2310. So the last block of ships are 50 years old in 2265.
However, as aposed to what was seen in screen, a 2265 excelsior would look nothing like a 2285 version.
Take 5 year minor refits after each 5 year mission, and a major refit after 25 years.
After each major refit like the tos Connie to refit Connie. New engines etc. Would be installed for it to keep up to current standards. Granted there will be limits with the spaceframe.
So a 2265 excelsior would look more like a galaxy class on some ways, though styled like the excelsior longness.
Two outs:
1) This is the exact mix you need for invading planets. Galaxies and Nebulas are the modern heavyweights that decide battles, and Akiras provide the supporting bulk; they are the newest representatives in their respective categories. For the first wave of invasion, you also need assault carriers, and the Steamrunners are those, there being no totally new counterpart because Starfleet isn't all that hot on assaulting and has dragged its feet in developing that particular category of ships. The Excelsiors tag along because they remain relevant - the Akira hasn't completely replaced them yet. But the respective predecessors of Galaxy and Nebula are from such an important category that Starfleet took the time, effort and funds to totally and swiftly upgrade that category, and the Ambassadors and their putative down-nacelle sisters are scrap now.
Now add outriders, which in these particular battles happen to be the slightly older Sabers here even though a Galaxy era counterpart perhaps exists; all other ancient junk is left home to rot because Starfleet only fights with the finest gear. Oh, and with Mirandas, even though they are far less relevant in comparison with Saber than the Excelsior is with Akira. But the Miranda is the only concession to using non-optimal older hardware.
In addition to leaving the older warships behind, Starfleet also leaves modern ships from non-optimal categories behind: there's no role there for a Nova or a Freedom or a Bradbury because the mission does not involve surveying, <insert role> or <insert role>. And <insert role> may well involve fighting - it just isn't planetary invasion, so the elite formation shuns those modern warships for their inapplicability.
(There may also be a second wave, but it has no business intruding into the first wave formation and ruining everything.)
2) Starfleet indeed brings along everything it has. But none of the fights of the 9th Fleet are deemed important, because Bajor is a sideshow, an only theoretically strategically important spot nobody will ever fight over because the strategic importance is already and permanently under lock and key. And thus when the 9th does get dragged into an important fight once in its sorry service history, it fights with the scraps it was given. Just two screens to the left, the 2nd is a much more modern affair, but it's only realistic that the camera cannot see that far. It's space, after all. And the 2nd wouldn't be caught dead mixing with the 9th.
Timo Saloniemi
Actually, there’s a third option: most of the ship classes from the Galaxy family were only recently constructed, say in the 2350’s and ‘60’s, and they were only small production runs. Which would explain why, in those DS9 fleet shots, there were so few Galaxies and Nebulas, and no New Orleans, Cheyennes, Springfields, Challengers, Andromedas, Bradburys, Chimeras, Freedoms, Korolevs, Niagaras, Olympics, Rigels, Sequoias, Yorkshires, Zodiacs, or any other ships with registries of 5XXXX or higher. Conversely, any ships with registries of 4XXXX or lower were represented by both the numerous Excelsiors and Mirandas, and the Excelsior/Miranda kitbashes like the Curry, Centaur, Raging Queen, etc. which by the TNG era would have had much longer and more numerous production runs.
As for the discrepancies: I’m sticking by my theory that the bulk of the Ambassadors were on deep space missions and weren’t available. As for the prevalence of the FC ships, I theorize that they had larger production runs but for some reason we just never saw much of them in TNG (although there’s no reason not to assume that there were many of them at Wolf 359 retroactively.)
This is the issue when you have a huge time jump of 70 years between the end of TUC (2294) and the start of TNG (2364), with no real advances in starship technology in that stretch of time. Unrealistic to be sure, but Star Trek is full of unrealistic scenarios.
As for the discrepancies: I’m sticking by my theory that the bulk of the Ambassadors were on deep space missions and weren’t available. As for the prevalence of the FC ships, I theorize that they had larger production runs but for some reason we just never saw much of them in TNG (although there’s no reason not to assume that there were many of them at Wolf 359 retroactively.)
This is the issue when you have a huge time jump of 70 years between the end of TUC (2294) and the start of TNG (2364), with no real advances in starship technology in that stretch of time. Unrealistic to be sure, but Star Trek is full of unrealistic scenarios.
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Andrew Probert's SotL 2015 painting of the clean-up after Wolf 359 shows a wrecked Nova-class ship, and Sovereign-style escape pods like you'd find on an Akira. The Nova-class is a little weird if you applied the fact that it was an out-of-universe re-use of the Defiant prototype from the DS9TM to its in-universe history, but I don't think that connection was ever drawn in anything official, and never on-screen, and there are ways around it even if you want to keep the Defiant Pathfinder around (the way MB paraphrases the text allows for the idea the design to have already existed, and Starfleet was just stuffing it full of torpedo launchers as their first draft at an anti-Borg ship, in which case the ship in the painting could be the Nova itself, still in the "NX" stage). The painting also seems to show two Constitutions. The saucer and engineering section are separated (just as the real TSFS model was spilt for the episode), but each has two matching warp engines attached or nearby, implying that they were individual ships and not one ship that was separated.
Well, no cosmetic advances, the interior systems could've been (and judging by the fact that every Excelsior and Miranda we saw the inside of had modern LCARS, were) completely different. And it helps if we back-fill the BoBW and FC ships where their registries suggest they go.
While I’m a big fan of Probert’s work, I don’t count things like that painting as canon. And as for cosmetics:
Exactly. There’s no way that the interior of a 2000 Ford Mustang would fit into a 1920’s Ford Model-T, which is analogous to the interiors of a 2360’s starship fitting into a 2280’s Excelsior frame. Sufficient advances in technology would only allow Starfleet to upgrade old ships so far, and then either their outward components would need to be upgraded accordingly, or the ship just has to be decommissioned. Like a home computer, there’s only so many hardware and software upgrades you can do before it becomes obsolete and you have to buy a new computer. That’s what I believe happened to the Niagara class Princeton. Based on its hull configuration, I think the ship originally had Ambassador nacelles, which were then upgraded to Galaxy nacelles, at least on the Princeton.
Exactly. There’s no way that the interior of a 2000 Ford Mustang would fit into a 1920’s Ford Model-T, which is analogous to the interiors of a 2360’s starship fitting into a 2280’s Excelsior frame. Sufficient advances in technology would only allow Starfleet to upgrade old ships so far, and then either their outward components would need to be upgraded accordingly, or the ship just has to be decommissioned. Like a home computer, there’s only so many hardware and software upgrades you can do before it becomes obsolete and you have to buy a new computer. That’s what I believe happened to the Niagara class Princeton. Based on its hull configuration, I think the ship originally had Ambassador nacelles, which were then upgraded to Galaxy nacelles, at least on the Princeton.
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That works fine, too, although one then wonders how there would still be so many Nebulas and Galaxies around, but none of the smaller and supposedly easier-to-build ships to be seen.
We should probably note that LDS is doing its damnedest to canonize the idea of a "second-rate ship" with a narrow mission profile despite appearances - that is, despite the ship being just as big as those "general purpose" ships we are accustomed to seeing. Might be only the narrowest tip of Starfleet is truly multipurpose. It would then trivially follow that we wouldn't see warship types before DS9, regardless of their age or design age, and that ST:FC would be our first introduction to their existence.
While our usual heroes in their ace-of-all-trades ships would have non-zero chances of meeting ships of other types, Captain Freeman might run into other types of ship extremely seldom, and even then would largely encounter types Picard basically never bumped into. And when invading Cardassia Prime, Starfleet would make doubly sure to leave all the Californias home, along with the other possibly ill-suited types, whereas the actually suited types would have to include some old-timers like Mirandas in the mix.
Well, there's plenty of development in the sense of the gap getting filled with all sorts of "new", "newer" and "newer still" nacelle and hull designs. Since we don't visit the gap, we have plenty of excuses for not seeing great numbers of those things (although we then agonize over seeing some visibly older things).
"Advance" in general is something Star Trek has to steer around, because there has been none in its pseudohistory of late. And I don't mean after Archer - I mean in the past 2,000 years or so. Apparently, there's little left to be invented, until some sort of a giant quantum leap is made. And since we don't really see anybody else making those inventions, either, this quantum leap is probably defined by ascension into lightbulbs and abandoning of starship-related stuff altogether.
Timo Saloniemi
Take aircraft carriers. There was a few ww2 carriers that lasted till Vietnam because they were overhauled with the latest stuff like angled runways, steam catapults etc.
If you install a more powerful warp reactor, you would have to possibly gut and replace the nacelle and all the piping so that it could withstand and use the new greater power.
While it could possibly "look" the same, that would just be cosmetic like how a tos Connie looks like a refit Connie. Similar. But upgraded.
If you install a more powerful warp reactor, you would have to possibly gut and replace the nacelle and all the piping so that it could withstand and use the new greater power.
While it could possibly "look" the same, that would just be cosmetic like how a tos Connie looks like a refit Connie. Similar. But upgraded.
there are a hint of what some of those Lost Era ships were, like Constellation types, and the Apollo class, as well as the aforementioned Ambassador class. Starfleet might have went through such a building boom in the early days of the movie era they just didn't need many more ships for awhile, with it being easier to upgrade.
An example (not in terms of ships) that comes to mind is the U.S. infantry rifle situation after the Civil War. The government had built hundreds of thousands of muzzle loading Springfield rifles, but they were already outdated by the end of the war. A muzzle loader was needed. They could have went with a new modern design like Remington Rolling Block or one of the new lever rifles, but instead came up with a clunky refit, the Allin Conversion, then continued to make even more of these "Trapdoor" Springfields, using them into the turn of the century in some cases, a mix of conservative doctrine and sunk cost fallacy.
As Starfleet command has never been shown to have an overabundance of common sense, this might be an explanation. As to WHY so many Mirandas and Excelsiors were made, maybe they got tired of that "She's the only ship in the quadrant" scenario or the cold war tensions with one of the neighbors required it. Maybe the Galaxy/Nebula types were a response to the lack of modern ships during the Cardassian war.
You bring up another good point. Why did the TOS Connie get such a drastic refit into the TMP Connie, but the Excelsior and Miranda classes didn't get refit similarly by the TNG era? Not to mention, why did a Miranda-variant class get decommissioned 80 years before TNG, but the Miranda class itself survived to the late 24th century, to boot?
Other 'Lost Era' ships include the Deneva, Hokule'a, Istanbul, Mediterranean, Merced, Renaissance, Surak, & Wambundu classes based on their registries, which I conjecture all contain components of the Excelsior and Miranda classes. I would like to note that there isn't a canon design for the Apollo class. I would like to think that some of the DS9 kitbashes like the Curry, Centaur and Raging Queen represent some of these classes.
I conjecture that the Cardassian war was a recent event, most likely taking place right before the start of TNG or a decade prior, and your theory would make sense if the newer Galaxy-family of ships started production around that time.
Because she was a special test case? The general rarity of ships of the TMP configuration, as compared with the witnessed and indicated abundance of the TOS "original" (or 47th refit, take your pick), might suggest there was basically zero utility value to the refit, but quite a bit of prestige involved.*
Missteps like that happen often, both when refitting old things into pathfinding new configurations and technologies, and when refitting old things to standards already upheld by more modern sister designs. We still don't know which sort the TMP refit was (or when exactly it happened), but in both cases, Starfleet might soon have seen there was no real point to it.
DSC "Battle of Binaries" might suggest Starfleet previously loved to bolt the newest warp engines to ships of all ages to keep them up to date. Perhaps this would be a peacetime thing, something the Federation no longer could afford when the Klingons again became bellicose? And perhaps the 24th century never gave much of a breather for such things, either. OTOH, if the Princeton is a re-engined piece of older tech, we might just as well say the New Orleans is, too, having previously had marker pens on those pylons.
Because the special bits didn't stand the test of time? Special conversions are getting scrapped all the time ITRW.
Perhaps the Miranda would be too small to endure the ripping out of the special bits and conversion back to standard specs. Or then the Soyuz died exactly via being converted back.
Timo Saloniemi
* Of course, the "special case" and "prestige" arguments could be extended to explain nearly constant back-and-forth refits on NCC-1701. But we then face the problem of whether to accept the ship as special even before Kirk gets her; TOS gave almost zero indication of such, bits of "Errand of Mercy" notwithstanding. Yet NCC-1701 could also be special in the Ralph Wiggum sense, famed for having been subjected to cruel experiments for her entire service career... Perhaps she came out of the slipways already bent and unfit for regular service, so Starfleet decided to try some Trilion Dollar Man stuff on her.
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The DSC era of ships with it's Metallic Hull Colors really remind me of WW1 / WW2 BattleShips with it's Metallic Hulls.
The TOS connie reminds me of 1960's US Navy ships with it's single color paint job.
The TOS connie reminds me of 1960's US Navy ships with it's single color paint job.
