NuTrek's Starfleet
- Thread starter Crazy Eddie
- Start date
^ Inspired by a reference from Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, implying that a similar thing happened to the Constitutions in the primeline. According to that book, the reason we see so few Constitutions in the refit configuration is because by the 2270s only two of them were LEFT, and all the others were destroyed or lost on exploration missions.
A bit of background: most of these losses are fates occurred or almost occurred to the Enterprise herself:
Sutherland ran into Flint The Immortal, who then shrunk their ship and banished them as punishment for their science officer hitting on his latest android.
Hathaway was shut down and crashed when the crew went spore crazy
Exeter was destroyed by biological contaminants from the planet Omega
Bonaventure got stranded in Elysium
Intrepid was eaten by a baby space amoeba
Defiant interfaced into the Mirror Universe
Constellation made a Kamikaze run to take out the Planet Killer
Lexington, Enterprise, Yamato and Potemkin were zapped by the Organians
Excalibur is on a pilgrimage to find the Borg
Space exploration is dangerous business.
A bit of background: most of these losses are fates occurred or almost occurred to the Enterprise herself:
Sutherland ran into Flint The Immortal, who then shrunk their ship and banished them as punishment for their science officer hitting on his latest android.
Hathaway was shut down and crashed when the crew went spore crazy
Exeter was destroyed by biological contaminants from the planet Omega
Bonaventure got stranded in Elysium
Intrepid was eaten by a baby space amoeba
Defiant interfaced into the Mirror Universe
Constellation made a Kamikaze run to take out the Planet Killer
Lexington, Enterprise, Yamato and Potemkin were zapped by the Organians
Excalibur is on a pilgrimage to find the Borg
Space exploration is dangerous business.
Why the Borg?
Who knows? Those multitronic units are screwy.
Following this work with interest. Really enjoying this dangerous alternate history. Thanks for this!
Those poor people on U.S.S. Sutherland...
so what tactical system of the Constitution represents the blue ball torpedoes from star trek 2009?
will we see the d4 and warbirds as well?
so what tactical system of the Constitution represents the blue ball torpedoes from star trek 2009?
will we see the d4 and warbirds as well?
I never post in this section but wow these are great. I love that someone is giving some needed attention to the AR/JJverse, especially with something that reminds me of a hybrid of the Ships of the Starfleet & a chronology type reference book.
I'd actually prefer to leave that open to interpretation since in-film they represent nothing more specific than "the weapons." My personal feeling, for a variety of reasons, is that it's probably the ship's main phaser cannon.
I hadn't really thought about doing the Klingon ships yet and I'm not sure that I could until more information actually comes out about them.
Two more ship sheets before I start doing weapons and sensors. May add more ships later if I need to, but nothing comes to mind right this second.
The first one was so tasty, they came back for seconds.
In all seriousness, it's sort of a reference to Alan Dean Fosters' "Balance of Terror" novelization; that's the phrase he uses to refer to the Romulan incursion and Enterprise's interception. I include it here because (aside from the fact that I think it sounds cool) there are multiple descriptions of the Earth-Romulan War -- from the ENT/Novelverse, from TNG, from the TOS description, from other novels before ENT came out -- and they largely contradict each other. I realized that it can be explained nicely if Spock was actually referring to the Earth-Romulan Wars, as a series of conflicts of various size and intensity that began a century ago and never completely ended. Only the first was even a declared war, the others are "wars" that involved different Romulan sub-nations/colonies fighting with different Federation members/colonies at different times using different weapons and technology. This way you wouldn't have to reconcile contradictory depictions of the Romulan War; they're ALL accurate, they just don't always refer to the same event.
So when Spock refers to the "primitive atomic weapons and in primitive space vessels" of the era, he's mainly referring to the colonial militias and the Earth Cargo Service who wound up fighting the bulk of the Romulan force while Starfleet had its hands full defending Sol. That early debacle, more than anything else, explains Starfleet's longstanding policy of isolation against the Romulans: they've been known to come busting out from time to time and you never know when they're going to make trouble again.
It most likely did, but I make no assumptions. On the one hand, the current movie produces have ALOT of room to maneuver and could play that any way they like, even ways that will make most of us angry and confused. My goal in writing this was to leave "wiggle room" where new information could fit without too much editing.
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I think you meant "James Blish's 'Balance of Terror' novelization" there.
Yorktown and Lexington share a registry number. Is that intentional?
Is there a particular reason the ship names seem to be drawn from a very narrow pool of possible names? They mostly seem primarily drawn from London Treaty power navies.
I think you meant "James Blish's 'Balance of Terror' novelization" there.
Probably. It's been years since I read it.
USS Yorktown was originally just an engineering test article and refitted for fleet service when Lexington and Hornet were shot by the Romulans. I had been debating with myself whether or not to make the first ship in that series NX- or NCC and change the numbers accordingly. Come to think of it, I forgot to make a final decision on that.
Most of the Yorktowns built during the Romulan Wars were named after famous warships. These were followed by a "restart" of the production line which were named after famous generals or military leaders. Dallas, Chicago and Houston were built after the war's end.
The Poseidons were named after figures from greek mythology, which -- not entirely coincidentally -- also happen to be the names of asteroids and moons in the Sol system.
The first run of Proximas were named after major stars in the Earth astronomical catalog. The next five were named after famous warships.
The Eagle class ships were named after famous exploration vessels, except for Defiant and Farragut which are named after the first two manned spacecraft to explore the outer solar system.
The Solomon and Newton classes are named after well-known starships from the previous century, while the Constitution class are named after aircraft carriers.
I'm really enjoying this. It's a big twist on the traditional way of looking at Starfleet, and I really like the vibe that the fleet is doing its best to apply cutting-edge technology to both exploration and defense, rather than the way most timelines just portray earlier ships as more primitive versions of the Enterprise.
I just want to clarify: so the original, classic Constitution design would definitely have been non-transwarp capable, right? It would have been just a bigger and better version of the Bonaventure, filling the same role of exploring the vast stretches of nearby but uncharted space? So under this, in the classic TOS era there would have been transwarp-capable flagships, but due to their horrendous cost and defense priorities they weren't being used for exploration. Excelsior was supposed to be the game changer in that it was a smaller and presumably cheaper transwarp ship, and whether it succeeded or failed, by the time of TNG transwarp on smaller ships is commonplace (I assume, based on the Defiant and Voyager. The Ent-D certainly would have been big enough to support transwarp even in this time period). Does that sound about right?
I just want to clarify: so the original, classic Constitution design would definitely have been non-transwarp capable, right? It would have been just a bigger and better version of the Bonaventure, filling the same role of exploring the vast stretches of nearby but uncharted space? So under this, in the classic TOS era there would have been transwarp-capable flagships, but due to their horrendous cost and defense priorities they weren't being used for exploration. Excelsior was supposed to be the game changer in that it was a smaller and presumably cheaper transwarp ship, and whether it succeeded or failed, by the time of TNG transwarp on smaller ships is commonplace (I assume, based on the Defiant and Voyager. The Ent-D certainly would have been big enough to support transwarp even in this time period). Does that sound about right?
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