Internal politics and batch order quantities being assigned once the Ship building contracts gets fully authorized from above.
That would account for "Out of Order" numbering.
Ships, Classes, Registries, and Timelines
- Thread starter yotsuya
- Start date
That would account for "Out of Order" numbering.
Let's look at the Excelsior for a moment.
2285: Excelsior prototype NX-2000 launched.
2293: Excelsior refit class Enterprise-B launched.
Three Excelsiors with 2XXX registries in service in 2364 (Hood NCC-2541, Repulse NCC-2544, Roosevelt NCC-2573.) Presumably these ships were built during the 23rd century sometime after the NX-2000.
Six Excelsiors with 1XXXX registries (Berlin NCC-14232, Fearless NCC-14598, Okinawa NCC-13958, Potemkin NCC-18253, Tecumseh NCC-14934, Lexington NCC-14427.) No indication when they were built, but most likely after the turn of the century.
Four Excelsiors with 3XXXX registries (Crockett NCC-38955, Intrepid NCC-38907, Livingston NCC-34099, Malinche NCC-38997.) We do know that the Intrepid was in service in 2346, and that Sisko served on the Livingston in the late 2350's. Therefore these ships were probably built around the 2320's-2330's.
Ten Excelsiors with 4XXXX registries (Al-Batani NCC-42995, Cairo NCC-42136, Charleston NCC-42285, Frederickson NCC-42111, Gorkon NCC-40521, Grissom NCC-42857, the aforementioned Hood NCC-42296, Lakota NCC-42768, Valley Forge NCC-43305, Archer NCC-44278.) The is nothing to indicate when these ships were built, but going by the above info, they were probably commissioned around the 2330's-2340's.
The two anomalous high Excelsior registries are the Crazy Horse's (NCC-50446) and the Melbourne's (NCC-62043.) For the former, the 50446 registry was given to the ship when it was listed in the Star Trek Encyclopedia as a Cheyenne class starship before it was seen on screen later with stock footage of the Repulse. For the latter, the 62043 registry was taken from the Nebula class version of the Melbourne. I tend to ignore these two registries despite the fact that one was used on screen.
So I estimate that the last Excelsiors were produced around the 2330's-2340's. By the 2350's, there was a switch to the Galaxy 'family' of designs such as the New Orleans, Challenger, Springfield, Cheyenne, Nebula, Freedom and Olympic classes (all with 5XXXX or higher registries.)
2285: Excelsior prototype NX-2000 launched.
2293: Excelsior refit class Enterprise-B launched.
Three Excelsiors with 2XXX registries in service in 2364 (Hood NCC-2541, Repulse NCC-2544, Roosevelt NCC-2573.) Presumably these ships were built during the 23rd century sometime after the NX-2000.
Six Excelsiors with 1XXXX registries (Berlin NCC-14232, Fearless NCC-14598, Okinawa NCC-13958, Potemkin NCC-18253, Tecumseh NCC-14934, Lexington NCC-14427.) No indication when they were built, but most likely after the turn of the century.
Four Excelsiors with 3XXXX registries (Crockett NCC-38955, Intrepid NCC-38907, Livingston NCC-34099, Malinche NCC-38997.) We do know that the Intrepid was in service in 2346, and that Sisko served on the Livingston in the late 2350's. Therefore these ships were probably built around the 2320's-2330's.
Ten Excelsiors with 4XXXX registries (Al-Batani NCC-42995, Cairo NCC-42136, Charleston NCC-42285, Frederickson NCC-42111, Gorkon NCC-40521, Grissom NCC-42857, the aforementioned Hood NCC-42296, Lakota NCC-42768, Valley Forge NCC-43305, Archer NCC-44278.) The is nothing to indicate when these ships were built, but going by the above info, they were probably commissioned around the 2330's-2340's.
The two anomalous high Excelsior registries are the Crazy Horse's (NCC-50446) and the Melbourne's (NCC-62043.) For the former, the 50446 registry was given to the ship when it was listed in the Star Trek Encyclopedia as a Cheyenne class starship before it was seen on screen later with stock footage of the Repulse. For the latter, the 62043 registry was taken from the Nebula class version of the Melbourne. I tend to ignore these two registries despite the fact that one was used on screen.
So I estimate that the last Excelsiors were produced around the 2330's-2340's. By the 2350's, there was a switch to the Galaxy 'family' of designs such as the New Orleans, Challenger, Springfield, Cheyenne, Nebula, Freedom and Olympic classes (all with 5XXXX or higher registries.)
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Dukhat,
You missed a ship - the USS Archer (NCC-44278). It is classified as an Excelsior-class ship in the latest edition of the Star Trek Encyclopedia.
The USS Lexington (NCC-30405) is a Nebula-class ship. There is the USS Lexington (NCC-14427) from the Star Trek Encyclopedia.
The USS Grissom is a mess. It is either an Oberth or an Excelsior. In the latest edition of the STE, it is listed as the former with the registry given to it when it was classified as the latter.
We have the case of the USS Atlantis, a starship mentioned in "Conspiracy". One of its mission orders has the picture of an Excelsior-class starship, implying that it might be of this class. The current understood registry of this ship is NCC-72507.
According to Doug Drexler's Facebook page, decals were made for the USS Malinche, giving it the registry of NCC-42577. The link for the page can be found at this page from Memory Alpha.
Talk:USS Malinche | Memory Alpha | Fandom
Then there is the USS Ajax from "Brothers", which was classified as an Excelsior-class starship with the registry NCC-13554.
You missed a ship - the USS Archer (NCC-44278). It is classified as an Excelsior-class ship in the latest edition of the Star Trek Encyclopedia.
The USS Lexington (NCC-30405) is a Nebula-class ship. There is the USS Lexington (NCC-14427) from the Star Trek Encyclopedia.
The USS Grissom is a mess. It is either an Oberth or an Excelsior. In the latest edition of the STE, it is listed as the former with the registry given to it when it was classified as the latter.
We have the case of the USS Atlantis, a starship mentioned in "Conspiracy". One of its mission orders has the picture of an Excelsior-class starship, implying that it might be of this class. The current understood registry of this ship is NCC-72507.
According to Doug Drexler's Facebook page, decals were made for the USS Malinche, giving it the registry of NCC-42577. The link for the page can be found at this page from Memory Alpha.
Talk:USS Malinche | Memory Alpha | Fandom
Then there is the USS Ajax from "Brothers", which was classified as an Excelsior-class starship with the registry NCC-13554.
However, that registry is almost certainly a goof given that the above is from TNG S1 and would imply that it's considerably "younger" than the almost brand new Galaxy-class.
More likely options would be 12507, 7250 or 2507.
Complicating this is the appearance of a different USS Atlantis in Measure of a Man with a registry of NCC-52716 which is still a bit out of range, but at least puts it in the correct order relative to the newer Galaxy-class.
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Another possibility is that Excelsiors were decommissioned and mothballed yet later brought back into service with new names and registries because the old names have passed on to newer class vessels.
Something like this happens in modern navies all the time, the renaming of vessels to free up names.
For example, a century ago, all of the US Navy's armored cruisers*—which bore state names—were renamed for cities in the respective states so the state names could be used for newer battleships (The armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania became USS Pittsburg, for example, so that BB-38 could have the name.)
*(well, Maine went boom in Havana harbor.)
Something like this happens in modern navies all the time, the renaming of vessels to free up names.
For example, a century ago, all of the US Navy's armored cruisers*—which bore state names—were renamed for cities in the respective states so the state names could be used for newer battleships (The armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania became USS Pittsburg, for example, so that BB-38 could have the name.)
*(well, Maine went boom in Havana harbor.)
Fearless, Okinawa, Tecumseh and Potemkin and the like, I assume were built in the 2310s, but may have been slightly later.
All 41-45000 registries presumably from the early to mid 2330s...
There is also the possibility, however likely or unlikely, that Starfleet could have changed the registries within a given class for some reason. The Excelsiors with the higher numbers in TNG+ could, theoretically, have been built with lower numbers more fitting to the class range and then it was changed later.
Jackill's revised books have Sisko's Saratoga becoming the lead ship of its own class, complete with the unusual registry in such a case, and my personal head canon is that it was originally the USS Saratoga seen in TVH. FASA has the Reliant/Miranda class being a descendant of the older Anton class vessels, but all of the new build Reliants have a much higher registry range (26000s) compared to the 1800s series carried over from the refitted Antons.
Yes.
Ship added...thanks!
Added the 14427 Lexington to the list. I have a big issue with Dave Blass giving the Nebula Lexington from DS9/PIC the registry of the "Measure of a Man" Lexington when it's obvious that it's not supposed to be the same ship, but that's another story unrelated to the Excelsiors.
I'm ignoring that last edition of the STE and going with the Excelsior.
None of those graphics in Conspiracy were meant to go with the text. They were just randomly thrown in. So I do not consider the Atlantis to be an Excelsior, much less one with a registry that high.
Wow, I never knew the Malinche was going to have its own registry added to the model! That creates a conundrum: What's more official, the printed registry decals that most likely weren't added to the model, or the STE entry with the 38997 registry?
That was later changed. I usually consider overwritten canon to be invalid, like how the Trieste was originally listed as a Yosemite class starship but later retconned to a Merced class starship. But even if we took the Excelsior class NCC-13554 as gospel, we know that the Ajax was operating in the year 2327, so it would presumably have been built in the 2310's-2320's, which would be consistent with a 1XXXX registry.
Again, there is no correlation between the text for the Atlantis and the graphic displaying the top view of an Excelsior class, so there's no need to come up with justifications for the registry number.
I will not say you're wrong. However, again I tend to go with Occam's Razor, which would imply that the registry is the one the ship always had and would determine when the ship was built. But...
Another possibility, rather than the registries being chronological, is that they are 'batch' registries, i.e. that, say, the ten 4XXXX Excelsiors were built as a group under that five-digit range, but is not indicative of what time period they were built. For all we know they could all have been built in 2295, just at whatever shipyard was using those numbers. Of course, this scheme would make registry numbers completely useless in determining a ship's age, and the evidence for this isn't really borne out with how registries were given in TNG-DS9-VGR-PIC, which was far more chronological than not.
In principal, I'm with you, in that I want the numbers to progress in a logical manner of some form.
But, IMO, Occam's Razor say that a bureaucracy will be a bureaucracy, and let's be real; what bureaucracy would leave a numbering system alone for two centuries, much less the nine or so we get in DIS?
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@Unicron A ship keeping its name but its classification and hull number changing also has real world examples. The Farragut class, for example.
In principal, I'm with you, in that I want the numbers to progress in a logical manner of some form.
But, IMO, Occam's Razor say that a bureaucracy will be a bureaucracy, and let's be real; what bureaucracy would leave a numbering system alone for two centuries, much less the nine or so we get in DIS?
Well, this is a completely fictional show not bound by IRL rules (and not written by military persons), so to me Occam's Razor for Star Trek is WYSIWYG, what you see is what you get. Registry numbers have some sort of reasoning behind them (Otherwise we would just have random stuff like NCC-4D87FG12, or NCC-09*/H#), so if the majority of the numbers seem to be chronological, then it stands to reason that that is their intent.
Well, let's look at another class - Constitution. Construction from 2245 to 2286 (or maybe even 2293). For this and for the Excelsior, Oberth, and Miranda/Soyuz the real reason is the model. But the best in universe reason is that these classes were exceptional. Constitution is shorter because the Excelsior took over and was better in the same role. But what we see is that each class had a role that it was good at. Excelsior morphed from being the top of the line ship to a durable midline ship. Miranda was a good patrol and scout. Oberth was designed for science and scouting and that is what we see it continue to do for another century. Even in the modern world, science vessels are often old. The Calypso, Jacques Cousteau's ship, served from 1941 to 1997 (and is currently being restored). It was originally a minesweeper.
So the ability to change roles is why these 4 classes would continue to be in service and even in production for so long. What would happen along the way is new classes would be designed and tested and if they didn't outperform these older designs, they wouldn't get used.
The F-4 Phantom has just been retired from some air forces after over 60 years of various service. The U-2 is still in service and it first flew in 1958 with no signs of retirement. So there are plenty of real world examples of designs in long term production and use. They either are very specific to a specialized role or very adaptable to various roles.
I've come to prefer the batch system overall for my personal head canon, as it seems the least problematic of the available options.
Certainly not perfect, but it's reasonably flexible when trying to incorporate numbers from various sources. 
I've also seen some where specific batches were built at different times by separate contractors or shipyards, as both FASA and SotSF have a number of businesses who specialize in starship design and construction, with Starfleet awarding contracts for a new class based on submissions.The FASA supplements in Stardate Magazine included an interesting example, the Indomitable class battleships. Essentially an alternate design for many of the advanced technologies that were used in the Excelsior, Starfleet agreed to fund the project after the V'Ger incident and the awareness that both the Klingons and Romulans were developing their battleships, which could potentially match and even outfight designs like the Constitution and other heavy cruisers. Initially the contract was for 10 vessels, but the project was seemingly shelved with no explanation when the fourth vessel was completed. It turned out that Starfleet was working on transwarp as one of its new technologies and had decided to make the Excelsior its primary focus, with the thought that if it performed correctly, Starfleet would already have a cutting edge transwarp battleship.
Eventually, and perhaps in no small part due to Kirk's successful theft of the Enterprise and the disabling of the USS Excelsior, Starfleet agreed to reactivate the original contract and built the Indomitables. The counter argument was that they would be needed to deal with enemy vessels of the same class, and their similarities with the Excelsior's new systems would make it easier for the two designs to complement each other. The Indomitable class uses the same 2000 series registries of the Excelsior class (2010-2019).
Speaking about 'roles,' TNG seemed to strongly imply that the Excelsior class had by that time been relegated to mundane transport duty, ferrying VIPs and officers to the Enterprise-D. That's literally all we saw them do (thanks to all the reuse of stock footage of the Hood and Repulse.) The only times we ever saw a guest ship actually do anything in TNG other than ferry people or just float next to the Enterprise doing nothing was when we saw the Enterprise-C and the Nebula class Phoenix.
As for the Oberth, the only roles they seemed good at as a guest ship was either the aforementioned ferrying of personnel, or getting destroyed. Of course if we had gotten a more contemporary science vessel model for the Tsiolkovsky like what was originally intended, it would be that ship that would be getting destroyed all the time, so I suppose being a Grissom-type had nothing to do with its fate.
As for the Miranda (and its relation to the Constitution), we know from dialogue in TWOK that the Reliant was faster and has more weaponry than the Enterprise. We also know that Morrow's comment about 'we feel her day is over' about not refitting the Enterprise also implies that Starfleet as a whole felt that the Constitution class has been overshadowed by newer ship classes such as the Miranda and Excelsior. But as far as its role in TNG? We saw it twice, once as a supply ship with an extremely minimal crew of 26, and once as a science vessel also with a minimal crew of 35 (again, because in both instances the scriptwriters envisioned a completely different type of vessel than the old studio model the VFX guys ended up using.) So by the 2360's these ships were no longer front-line. And we have no idea what type of mission Sisko's Saratoga had before it was called up for Wolf 359. For all we know it was just a science ship with minimal crew as well.
Granted, though I'd argue that the issue was mainly which "old study model" they ended up using as a crew of 26 to 35 would be fairly plausible for an Oberth, and arguably more plausible than the "standard complement" of eighty for the Oberth given in an episode or two (which would actually be more plausible as a low-end for the Miranda IMO).
You bring up a good point, because like the Defiant, the actual size of the Oberth class has always been in dispute. Is it 120 meters? Is it 150 meters? Is it 300 meters? etc. Whatever the true size of the ship is would determine how many people you can cram into it comfortably
But the point still remains that 25-35 crewmembers on a ship with a volume meant for at least 430 (Miranda) is massive under-utilization, unless either the ship was mostly automated, converted to freight/supply space, old and past its prime and is now being used for extremely light missions with minimal crew, or simply that the wrong model was used 
We have seen that even the larger starships can be run with few handful of people for short missions. Ones were you don't need to maintain or man all the various sensor arrays, or the weapons systems, and barely need to maintain even the warp core. All of the maintenance intensive stuff would likely happen at a Star base at missions end.
Starships like Constitution-class might be overly crewed for five year missions due to attrition and possible long periods between Starbase visits. It could be that depending on mission a starship like Enterprise could have a crew of 203 for some more routine duties, 99 for JAG work (ferry people around) and 430 for five year missions.
Starships like Constitution-class might be overly crewed for five year missions due to attrition and possible long periods between Starbase visits. It could be that depending on mission a starship like Enterprise could have a crew of 203 for some more routine duties, 99 for JAG work (ferry people around) and 430 for five year missions.
Just trying to provide real world examples for inspiration of ideas to explain the discrepancies. Not claiming that anybody was following RL when they made the shows.
And FWIW, in real life, all ships have what is called the UIC (unit identification code) that never changes and is used to track all the fiscal aspects of the ship (stores, repairs, maintenance, etc.)
So a hull number, name or classification can be changed on the ship without losing track of which ship.
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Another thought, that might have been mentioned. Would Starfleet take two surviving hulks of ships and combine them into a third ship with a new registry? The secondary hull of one Connie mated to the primary hull of another Connie, for example.
