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Missing ships in the fleet.

I watched a couple more episodes and do see a galaxy now and then in some parts. Season Six and whatnot the fleet formations have a galaxy in them and an oberth or whatever that ugly kitbash of a excelsior model is.
 
The Galaxy class seemed to be Starfleet's version of a Battleship.

I actually began to feel that Galaxy were nothing special, especially after seeing one get destroyed in minutes by the Jem Hadar.

Then I saw Sacrifice of Angels.

That scene where the Galaxys do a pass by and take out the Galor in a few minutes was a great one.

After that, they seemed more powerful and graceful.

It also seemed like the Mirandas were the backbone of the fleet- correct me if I'm wrong, but in Call to Arms, weren't they most numerous?

I think it was also the same case in Favor the Bold and Sacrifice of Angels.

Starfleet sure seemed to have had a lot of faith in them..
 
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^probably because they have been making Mirandas much longer than the Galaxies. Late in the 25th Century, there would be a lot more Galaxies than whatever classes of ships in production at the time.
 
At any rate, Starfleet went to war with the fleets it had not the forces it wished it had.

One ship, the USS Rumsfeld took a lot of flak for its performance, ha!
 
Ambassador Class ships (Enterprise C) weren't used. I can't remember why, IIRC there was a reason. Maybe.
A while ago, a poster here mentioned that they broke the model for the Ambassador Class starship not long after TNG's Yesterday's Enterprise before they had the chance to do good shots of it from various viewpoints.

The model was sold at the Christie's auction in 2006 - and quite unbroken. The CGI issues mentioned later in this thread are more relevant.
 
tng stated a couple of years earlier that there were only four of them in the whole star fleet

Nope, no such thing was ever mentioned. Some backstage books suggested that six would have been built initially, but this book material never was used in actual episodes or movies.

That said, I doubt Starfleet would ever mass-produce the Galaxies. There'd be smaller "backbone" types that would be more affordable for mass production: Akira looks like the smaller counterpart to the elite Galaxy, much like Excelsior could be the rank-and-line counterpart to the elite Ambassador.

But as "Sacrifice of Angels" showed, combining a few Galaxies into an elite unit gives you a breakthrough when you need one.

Timo Saloniemi
 
The honest reason why the Sovereign and Intrepid Class ships were not seen in the battles (this is from the Companion and an interview with the producers that is available online, I just don't have the link anymore):

Paramount Pictures told them they weren't allowed to use them. Paramount had defined several ship designs as "Hero Ships" and they were reserved for use on the specific shows that they were designed for only. This started with Roddenberry in TNG's first season during the episode "The Battle". Originally the Stargazer was going to be a Constitution Class ship but, because there were fears people would confuse the ship with the then Enterprise-A, Roddenberry and Paramount nixed the idea to prevent confusion among the fans (and the Constellation Class was born). This is also why we never see a Constitution Class ship on TNG (other than as an unidentified broken hulk in BOBWP2) because there were fears that it would be assumed that it was the Enterprise.

When DS9 began the Dominion War storylines it came up about having the Enterprise and Intrepid Class ships in some background scenes, but the producers nixed the idea because of this rule under the impression that people would automatically assume that Picard & Co were present (in the case of a Sovereign) and wonder why they weren't leading the fight from the Federation Flagship. The same was true of Voyager and they were worried there would be confusion about how Voyager was there. I remember reading that the producers thought it was a big deal they got approval to use the Intrepid model for the Bellereophon in Season Seven.

As for why we never saw Ambassador Class, Constellation Class, Norway Class, and Oberth Class ships in the war: that was because of CGI issues. There was never a CGI model built for the Ambassador, Constellation, or the Oberth Class ships and the Norway's model was lost due to a computer crash. Because they didn't want to waste money they never built them. Remember too that there were no Nebula Class ships in early battles either because of money issues.

So there are the real world reasons. In character maybe they were just in different fleets.

In other words, the producers believed the viewers were utter and complete human scum. That's pretty unpleasant. :(

"We can't use a Mustang! People will wonder why Steve McQueen isn't in this picture!"

On the other hand, if the producers wanted to preserve the intangible cachet of their hero ships, that's slightly more understandable, although personally I think it's nearly as stupid. I'm still wondering why Defiants weren't just omnipresent during the Dominion War. But at least they got to use and abuse a lot of Galaxies.

Weren't three Defiants seen in a couple episodes of Voyager? As a hero ship doesn't that break the rule of using hero ships in other shows?

Also I do have to admit that at the time of first broadcast I did think on seeing the first Defiant on Voyager that it was the Defiant from DS9, but of course I realised soon after that it couldn't have been.
 
Mirandas and Centaurs were used quite a bit. Federation updates ships every now and then and it's more effective than building new fleets every 5-10 years. The way I see it look at the US navy even airforce. If we have a ship or plane that does it's job and pretty damn good we upgrade it when the tech gets better and keep it going. It's cheaper to keep things up to date than to constantly build new types. F-15's are pretty long in the tooth at this point and they are still one of the best planes around if you have the latest revision and updates. What about those bombers we have? That's some old gear indeed :).
 
The honest reason why the Sovereign and Intrepid Class ships were not seen in the battles (this is from the Companion and an interview with the producers that is available online, I just don't have the link anymore):

Paramount Pictures told them they weren't allowed to use them. Paramount had defined several ship designs as "Hero Ships" and they were reserved for use on the specific shows that they were designed for only. This started with Roddenberry in TNG's first season during the episode "The Battle". Originally the Stargazer was going to be a Constitution Class ship but, because there were fears people would confuse the ship with the then Enterprise-A, Roddenberry and Paramount nixed the idea to prevent confusion among the fans (and the Constellation Class was born). This is also why we never see a Constitution Class ship on TNG (other than as an unidentified broken hulk in BOBWP2) because there were fears that it would be assumed that it was the Enterprise.

When DS9 began the Dominion War storylines it came up about having the Enterprise and Intrepid Class ships in some background scenes, but the producers nixed the idea because of this rule under the impression that people would automatically assume that Picard & Co were present (in the case of a Sovereign) and wonder why they weren't leading the fight from the Federation Flagship. The same was true of Voyager and they were worried there would be confusion about how Voyager was there. I remember reading that the producers thought it was a big deal they got approval to use the Intrepid model for the Bellereophon in Season Seven.

As for why we never saw Ambassador Class, Constellation Class, Norway Class, and Oberth Class ships in the war: that was because of CGI issues. There was never a CGI model built for the Ambassador, Constellation, or the Oberth Class ships and the Norway's model was lost due to a computer crash. Because they didn't want to waste money they never built them. Remember too that there were no Nebula Class ships in early battles either because of money issues.

So there are the real world reasons. In character maybe they were just in different fleets.

In other words, the producers believed the viewers were utter and complete human scum. That's pretty unpleasant. :(

Sad, but essentially correct.

The CGI models used in the battle scenes were:

1. Galaxy
2. Excelsior
3. Miranda
4. Defiant
5. Nebula
6. Akira
7. Steamrunner
8. Saber

These do not include the small number of kitbashed model kits also used as background ships. Also, I'm sure the Norway class would have been used as well if it hadn't been accidentally deleted. The preponderance of Galaxy, Excelsior and Miranda class ships is because the detailed physical models were used to make scans for CGI conversion.
 
The Galaxy issue makes sense because by this time Galaxy was becoming the backbone of the fleet.

Also Nova class was missing.

Nova class is a science vessel, with limited combat capacity and relatively low speed. It makes sense that it's not in the frontline, it'd probably slow down the fleet.

Probably they've been affected to other missions during the dominion war, like guarding remote quadrants, patrolling borders with minor powers (eg, talarian) and so on, taking the place of more capable starships sent to the battlefield.

The thing that bugs me is that in Voyager "endgame", we see harry kim commanding a nova class starship, and this time (compared to equinox) , the nova seems to be a very capable warship, it can give a run for their money to TWO klingon battlecrusers !! (vorcha class IIRW)
 
^Why does it bug you? We don't even know for sure that the Nova Class starships weren't used. They could have been refit to be like Kim's Rhode Island. Maybe that's why the Rhode Island was like that.
 
To be sure, that's only consistent. A Starfleet shuttle in that time period was easily the match of two Klingon battleships - so why would Starfleet bother with anything bigger than a Nova variant for its combat needs?

Timo Saloniemi
 
Timo, I've found that you and I are often of one mind, but I don't entirely agree that the Galaxy-class being in limited production is necessarily the same thing as there being few of them. An organization as large as the Federation, with a Fleet the size of what you and I seem to agree Starfleet is, could easily say, "Yes, we're going a very limited run of Galaxy-class ships, merely 250. That really ought to do us."

For what it's worth, if it indeed is worth anything, my own estimate for the number of Galaxy's in service during the war was somewhere in the vicinity of three or four dozen, with perhaps a third to half being lost in action before it was over. For reference, I estimate the "authorized" strength of Starfleet at that time being near 12,000 starships, but due to underfunding, lame defence policies, myopic Starfleet leadership and conflicts with the Klingons, Borg and others, the real number of ships in service at the time might have been closer to 10,000.
 
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There's also the question of size of federation.
In the DS9/Voy era, a high-tech starship can do 1000 lights years a year, it's stated several time in Voy and once in DS9 (they said the other side of the wormhole is 70 kly away, it would take 70 years to get there)

If the federation really streches across 8000 lights years as picard said, then many starfleet ships didn't take part to the was, because they were several years away.

But the general impression during TNG and DS9 is that a ship can get anywhere in the federation in a matter of days. For instance, DS9 should be quite far away from core federation worlds, or it wouldn't be called a "deep space" station. But even a runabout (muich slower than a starship) can easily go to earth.

My guess is that the federation has a "mainland" which streches across something between 200 and 500 light years, and a few isolated members worlds outside.
 
Matt: How do you define a starship, might I ask? Is it anything with a warp drive? Anything that gets its own NCC number?
 
It's always been hard to estimate how many ships starfleet has...

TNG always made it sound as if 40 or so ships represented the entire fleet..

Shelby : 'We'll have the fleet back up in less than a year.'

It seems that the fleet assembled was something of a mishmash of ships put together, including the Klingons and Maybe Romulans, to confront the Borg.

That could explain the relatively low number of ships.

But then Shelby uses the words " The Fleet" as if to mean to mean the entire Starfleet.

The Dominion war started about 7 years later, and if that figure was taken literally, that would mean at least 280 more ships could have produced by that time.

I know of course, that couldn't really be the case, but it's why it's guessing Starfleet's fleet size is fun/confusing.
 
Nightdiamond: It's always seemed probable to me that Starfleet would main some form of tactical response group in/around Sector 001. Call it the Core Sector Defence Fleet or something. I presume that's what Shelby was referring to, but obviously that's utterly non-canon.

Penta: Any Starfleet vessel capable of carrying out full-spectrum operations, from small scoutships right up to the Sovereign. I would define them as any Starfleet combat vessel, but that would open up a whole new can of worms as to whether Starfleet HAS combat vessels, per se, so to be more clear, I think somewhere around 10,000-12,000 armed starships capable of independent sustained operations and with permanent chains of command, probably at least that number over again of NAR-registry support vessels, and God only knows how many fighters, shuttles, runabouts, etc. I believe in a large Starfleet, with billions in uniform, potentially. I've always figured that the starship crews might only make up 30-40% of the Fleet's personnel.

Ra'min: I favour a large Federation — while I don't feel that it's an 8,000 ly across sphere or ovoid, I accept that Federation space might span thousands of light years in sort of an "ink blot" shape, with numerous tendrils and blobs detached from the main mass scattered out in such a way necessary to account for the 8,000 ly figure.
 
I would have liked to see Ambassadors, Constitution Refits, Constellations, Enterprise-B-like Excelsiors, Intrepids, Norways...maybe a few Olympic hospital ships and Sydney troop transports in the back...the occasional huge sensor-dished Nebula, and admiral Ross's ship at least be a Sovereign. Lots of little Defiants too. And more variants of the Miranda too - Brittain versions without the roll bar and Saratoga versions with the side extensions. Maybe some saucerless ships too...Galaxys that needed to ferry off personnel (though most would keep theirs for troops and materiel) and the occasional Constitution that lost its in battle. How about some far-in-the-background Cheyenne and New Orleans Class ships? Only in post battle shots, given the original physical models are battle-damaged.

That would have made sense.

Though, I'm still annoyed they still use ships from far distant eras. And don't give me rationalizations - okay they didn't include the hero-ship pre-refit Constitution; why not some D-7 Battlecruisers or Romulan Birds-of-Prey? If it were up to me, there'd be nothing before the Excelsior era, including old K'tinga Class battlecruisers.

Another thing, I wish they explained where the Talarians, Gorn, Tholians, Sheliak, Tzenkethi, and all those other powers were during the war...maybe they could have been their own little League of Non-Aligned worlds in the background...afterall, Dominion conquest of this half the galaxy would have effected them too. So there were no Tzenkethi or Gorn ship models...say the Tzenkethi were dealing with their own civil war and didn't want in and the Gorn went extinct between TOS and TNG - maybe they pissed off the wrong superbeing our heroes seems to come across often enough. But the Talarians and Sheliak have models used on screen. The Breen didn't. Oh, add some Ferengi Marauders in there too and some Tamarian (TNG's "Darmok") too - they were rare: aliens with equal/superior weapons that weren't baddies.

And what were all those superbeings doing? Okay so the Metrons wouldn't be bothered to take sides, but can we get a scene where Ross is running off the list of why the heck all these different super-powerful Trek aliens are not an issue here? Rene Auberjonois (Odo) said the writers got pre-occupied doing WWII in space, and I think that's right and they couldn't think about these other in-universe aliens that didn't fit into that mold.

And they really should have given us something in the Romulan fleet between a warbird and a scout. Harumph.
 
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