phaser, phaser, converter....never seen one of these.
- Thread starter tachibana
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All Seeing Eye
Admiral
Because Starfleet design ships specifically for their tasks, an example being a Galaxy is built for families and exploration, a Defiant is built for battle, a Nova is built for Scientific studies and is an upgraded version of a Nebula class etc, the Klingons etc simply build multipurpose ships which arnt as advanced as starfleet ships which are built for specific tasks.
That's only from what we've seen on screen. Klingons have at least 5 active starships (Nehg'Var, Vor'Cha, 2 types of Bird of Prey's, and the K'T'Inga(?)), Romulans have at least 2 (the D'Deridex Warbird and the Valdore). I'm sure their fleets are as varied as Starfleets. Except that they are more war oriented so of the ships Starfleet encounters most are warships, to show strength, and not a lightly armed scout.
^ Indeed. The FASA RPG created a pretty nice variety for the Klingons and Romulans for the TOS/Movie era, and with less problematic designs than many of their Federation ships. There have also been nice ships in some of the Trek games.
The real world explanation is that it's very time-consuming and expensive to produce TV series, let alone do all the work to create them. The production staff has no easy way to create new designs on a rapid basis, and that's why designs get recycled and sometimes seem to have unusual longevity.
The real world explanation is that it's very time-consuming and expensive to produce TV series, let alone do all the work to create them. The production staff has no easy way to create new designs on a rapid basis, and that's why designs get recycled and sometimes seem to have unusual longevity.
In STAR TREK, the United Federation of Planets is a very large, very diverse organization with many member-worlds contributing to Starfleet. As a result, many technologies are shared and combined. I have always thought that a diverse Federation would encourage competition to "improve the breed", thus, multiple approaches to designing spacecraft and stations, various devices, and so on to make sure they don't put all their eggs in one basket.
This is in contrast to other entities, such as the Klingons or Cardassians. They may each have multiple worlds and races under their respective umbrellas as well, but they are probably nowhere near as diverse as the Federation. Hence, limited resources, less diverse pool of ideas, less internal competition... you get the idea...
This is in contrast to other entities, such as the Klingons or Cardassians. They may each have multiple worlds and races under their respective umbrellas as well, but they are probably nowhere near as diverse as the Federation. Hence, limited resources, less diverse pool of ideas, less internal competition... you get the idea...
The classification system we got in the Technical Manual is really very general, and the term "starship" carries the general connotation of a large, multipurpose vessel. In TOS it seemed to be, in fact, a rather specific technical term. Starfleet ships of the line serve many duties: they explore, carry out scientific investigations, transport passengers and cargo, defend Federation members and allies, and so forth. Such a diverse mission profile, as well as warp physics, calls for the large, complex and heavily crewed starships we see.
I suspect the variety in design we've seen chiefly has to do with the fact that viewers encounter Federation starships more often than those of other powers. We really don't know if Romulans, Klingons and others have such a diversity of designs, and I'm sure the creators would have loved to give us a dozen Romulan warbird types instead of what we got and encourage us to have fun with such ideas.
In-universe rationalizations aren't too tough; considering the great diversity of cultures and technology within the Federation, diversity in technology and aesthetics and frequent updating in the state of the art are probably the norm. Remember, though, that several designs of Federation starship have evidently remained in frontline use for a century or more, whereas some newer designs are only seen once or twice and may represent unsuccessful paths of development (example: Sovereign-class starship). Perhaps many small runs of new, different types of starship are "tried out" until highly successful classes are hit upon, representatives of the class then being built in much greater numbers (such as the Excelsior class). This seems a sensible approach as long as the technology has a lot of modularity at the "nuts and bolts" level.
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