Ships, Classes, Registries, and Timelines

[kirk55555]

Well, since the Ross class does indeed look like it could be a refit of the Galaxy class, then it basically supports my hypothesis that SF simply turned the Galaxy class into the Ross class (much like they converted the Titan from Luna to Neo Constitution).

The Titan was not converted from Luna to Neo Constitution. Riker's Titan was (presumably) wrecked somehow after his time as Captain, but major systems were salvageable so they were removed and put into the Neo Constitution Class ship that would be the Titan-A (maybe it was just decomissioned and scraped, but the image makes it look damaged to me). One of the people who worked on the show even had done concept art showing this, and its as close to a canon explanation as you're going to get to explain the connection between the Titans. Even though the artist still calls it a "refit", thats obviously not what is happening.

https://twitter.com/DaveBlass/status/1633800104321712131
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarshipPo...itan_refit_to_titana_star_trek_picard_season/

A long while ago, after having seen my fanart that I posted, Dave Blass, production designer for Star Trek: Picard season 3, approached me to do some work for Star Trek: Picard, which led me to collaborating with him and John Eaves on the USS Titan to Titan-A refit concept!

I did the 3D modelling of the Titan-A using references, while the Luna-Class Titan and the Drydock are from Star Trek Online. I composited and lit the shot with guidance and feedback from Dave, before it was sent to John for a paintover.

Since David Blass had the image made, I'd say this is what they had in mind.

 

[Deks]

The Titan was not converted from Luna to Neo Constitution. Riker's Titan was (presumably) wrecked somehow after his time as Captain, but major systems were salvageable so they were removed and put into the Neo Constitution Class ship that would be the Titan-A (maybe it was just decomissioned and scraped, but the image makes it look damaged to me). One of the people who worked on the show even had done concept art showing this, and its as close to a canon explanation as you're going to get to explain the connection between the Titans. Even though the artist still calls it a "refit", thats obviously not what is happening.

https://twitter.com/DaveBlass/status/1633800104321712131
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarshipPo...itan_refit_to_titana_star_trek_picard_season/

Since David Blass had the image made, I'd say this is what they had in mind.

Yeah, I know what they did, but I still maintain that the Titan (original) could have been repaired.
The ENT-E suffered quite a bit of damage to its front saucer section (similar to what happened here) and was repaired.
If the major systems on the Titan were salvageable, all SF had to do was beam out the badly damaged sections of the saucer on the Luna class and use them as raw material to synthetize new sections by just adding more matter.
The process of salvaging systems and placing them into the Neo Constitution is not a bad idea... but WHY?
They have replicators, transporters, tractor beams and fully automated computerized systems... the Neo Constitution could have been its own ship fully upgraded with modern systems as opposed to 'cannibalizing' the Luna.

I still maintain that with UFP technology, 'beyond repair' is not really in their vocab, because all it becomes is raw matter that can be fed into the replicators and transporters for repairs - unless the ship is vaporized and you have nothing to work with, then the statement would have meaning.

For that matter, why hadn't they just did that by transferring the systems to a new Luna class ship?

Besides, the Luna class was a modern design vs the Neo Constitution which originated in the 23rd century.
Plus, what was that stupidity in S3 of PIC said about some parts of the Warp systems still being 20 years old?
Those systems should have been upgraded/replaced with brand new ones during the regular upgrade cycles in the first 7 years of Neo Constitution running.

I think the writers just end up doing nonsensical things for the sake of it to 'shake things up' without considering in universe circumstances or capabilities (but then again, what's new).

At any rate, it would still be possible for SF to convert one class of ship to another by the process I described, otherwise, you are left with the prospect that SF just decided to scuttle A LOT of TNG (and post TNG) era designs (which were very modern btw) and decided to rebuild their entire fleet from the ground up (which quite honestly makes no sense).

Though they were building 10 000 Warp transport ships to evacuate Romulus (which were destroyed when Utopia Planitia synths were programmed to destroy it by the idiot Zhat Vash romulans who ended up helping in the destruction of Romulus), so there's that.

 

[137th Gebirg]

I still maintain that with UFP technology, 'beyond repair' is not really in their vocab, because all it becomes is raw matter that can be fed into the replicators and transporters for repairs - unless the ship is vaporized and you have nothing to work with, then the statement would have meaning.

Mmm... I don't know about that. Depends on the era you're talking about.

Case in point: Admiral Morrow was ready to completely mothball the E in TSFS after the damage it took in TWOK because it was "20 years old" (actually, it was much older), despite its "almost entirely new Enterprise" TMP refit that was most definitely not 20 years prior to TSFS. We're never given much of a reason for this decision, other than they wanted to focus all their resources on getting Excelsior up to speed. Sounded more like a political decision than a practical one but, conversely, Starfleet sounded like it was considerably smaller back then, with the ubiquitous and contrived "only ship in the quadrant" plot device they always used, and didn't have the ability to split its focus on rebuilding an older ship while fielding a new one, despite the former vessel's legendary status.

 

[Guy Gardener]

They thought that the fleet was about to go %100 Transwarp.

Any ship that could not be retrofitted to transwarp capable is unwelcome in the fleet.

 

[137th Gebirg]

That actually makes a lot of sense. Government suits, bureaucrats and penny-counters love imposing half-baked tech upgrade mandates before they're ready for prime time, which invariably causes immense amounts of pain for the people who are actually forced to do the work to integrate. The people making the decisions and mandating policy don't actually know anything about what they're buying with taxpayer dollars. Once it's built, flip a coin to see if it actually works in the field or not and, by some miracle if it does, while under a heavy load. And yes, I sadly speak from a great deal of experience in that regard.

I guess corporate lobbyists are still alive and well in the 23rd century. A depressing thought...

 

[Guy Gardener]

That actually makes a lot of sense. Government suits, bureaucrats and penny-counters love imposing half-baked tech upgrade mandates before they're ready for prime time, which invariably causes immense amounts of pain for the people who are actually forced to do the work to integrate. The people making the decisions and mandating policy don't actually know anything about what they're buying with taxpayer dollars. Once it's built, flip a coin to see if it actually works in the field or not and, by some miracle if it does, while under a heavy load. And yes, I sadly speak from a great deal of experience in that regard.

I guess corporate lobbyists are still alive and well in the 23rd century. A depressing thought...

My head canon is that the trans-warp on the Excelsior worked perfectly.

However, no one figured out that that Scotty sabotaged the Excelsior, and afterwards, mistook his sabotage for failure of concept.

 

[Deks]

My head canon is that the trans-warp on the Excelsior worked perfectly.

However, no one figured out that that Scotty sabotaged the Excelsior, and afterwards, mistook his sabotage for failure of concept.

The fact that the thing failed pursuing the Enterprise and other security systems were overriden at the space dock itself should have been dead giveaways.

However, within the context of how the writers chose to portray SF sometime, this actually fits.
So the TW drive actually worked, but because no one talks to each other (Despite all the reports people are obligated to write), it just went down in history like a failure of concept, but the technology actually worked.

But people have maintained that the Excelsior TW drive was effectively the Warp drive of TNG - which would make sense to a degree, but kinda disappointing because in VOY, it was said 23rd century ships were about half as fast (which isn't a lot).

 

[Ithekro]

The TNG warp scale does that sharp uptake after warp 9 and especially after warp 9.9. With Excelsior likely flying herself apart in the warp 9.2 range and Voyager doing warp 9.975, twice as fast is not a unreasonable estimate by Captain Janeway.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

That actually makes a lot of sense. Government suits, bureaucrats and penny-counters love imposing half-baked tech upgrade mandates before they're ready for prime time, which invariably causes immense amounts of pain for the people who are actually forced to do the work to integrate. The people making the decisions and mandating policy don't actually know anything about what they're buying with taxpayer dollars. Once it's built, flip a coin to see if it actually works in the field or not and, by some miracle if it does, while under a heavy load. And yes, I sadly speak from a great deal of experience in that regard.

I guess corporate lobbyists are still alive and well in the 23rd century. A depressing thought...

You should see the M16 rifle debacle in Vietnam that was caused by government penny pinching.
Or the British SA80 debacle in the Gulf War that required almost a ground up redesign by H&K to fix the major issues.

The fact that the thing failed pursuing the Enterprise and other security systems were overriden at the space dock itself should have been dead giveaways.

Standard StarFleet crappy intenal security policies.

However, within the context of how the writers chose to portray SF sometime, this actually fits.
So the TW drive actually worked, but because no one talks to each other (Despite all the reports people are obligated to write), it just went down in history like a failure of concept, but the technology actually worked.

But people have maintained that the Excelsior TW drive was effectively the Warp drive of TNG - which would make sense to a degree, but kinda disappointing because in VOY, it was said 23rd century ships were about half as fast (which isn't a lot).

They had to update the Warp Factor scale between TOS and TNG, ergo the Excelsior TW drive worked, it was so fast that it needed a new scale to measure by.

One that gets updated from Warp Factor Scale 1.0 -> 2.0 between TOS & TNG.

one that I intend to update between TNG and my 26th century head cannon to 3.0 by getting rid of that stupid hand drawn curve to infinity between Warp 9.0 to Warp 10.0

As far as TOS era ships being "Half as Fast".
The Refit Connie or Connie II class was capable of a top speed of Warp Factor 7 on the 1.0 Wf scale, that amounts to 343c.
On the TNG scale Warp Factor 7 was the upgraded Galaxy Class cruise speeds which was 656.14c, that's a ~91.3% faster than the TOS scale in speed for the same given Warp Factor value. So they were "Slightly exaggerating", but remember the TOS Connie's WF 7 was it's "Top Speed" that was sustainable for a limited amount of time before engines need to cool down. In the TNG era, WF 7 was their indefinite cruise speed while higher warp speeds were their limited Top Speeds that can only be maintained for a certain amount of time before needing to cool down.

 

[Dukhat]

My head canon is that the trans-warp on the Excelsior worked perfectly.

However, no one figured out that that Scotty sabotaged the Excelsior, and afterwards, mistook his sabotage for failure of concept.

Actually, I think you're on to something (with the transwarp drive.)

There was never any problem with the transwarp drive. Afterwards, newer ship classes such as the Miranda, Oberth, Constellation, etc. were all given transwarp drive along with the new Excelsiors, but the Constitution class, Soyuz class, Shangri-La class, etc. were too old to be upgraded. That's why we saw the former ship classes in TNG & DS9, but not the latter. So any ship with a registry under 2000 was decommissioned, or relegated to mundane tasks such as freighter or supply ship.

 

[BK613]

My head canon is that the trans-warp on the Excelsior worked perfectly.

However, no one figured out that that Scotty sabotaged the Excelsior, and afterwards, mistook his sabotage for failure of concept.

They knew.

FEDERATION PRESIDENT: As you wish. ...The charges and specifications are. Conspiracy. Assault on Federation Officers. Theft of Federation Property, namely the Starship Enterprise. Sabotage of the U.S.S. Excelsior, Wilful destruction of Federation Property, specifically the aforementioned U.S.S. Enterprise. And finally, disobeying direct orders of the Starfleet Commander. ...Admiral Kirk, how do you plead?​

 

[Tuskin38]

Going back to the Syracuse for a second. I’m pretty sure it was just because he wasn’t finished yet. The scorch marks from reentry were still on the saucer for example. The paint job was probably the last thing to do, and that would probably include replacing the Syracuse’s name and registry.

I’m STO lore the Ross Class was not a replacement/refit for the Galaxy class. But obviously STO lore isn’t canon, so that can’t be applied to the Ross Class in the show.

There’s already a USS Gregory Jein NCC-103145, if you can make anything out of that random blob that’s supposed to be the ship:

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/USS_Gregory_Jein

I have a feeling that assigned retroactively, why else choose such an out of focus ship to assign it to.

 

[Lakenheath 72]

I think it was also Dave Blass' reaction to what was happening on Memory Alpha. He identified ships by name, registry, and class; however, on Memory Alpha, if there was no clear association between the named ship and the class, by image, information on the ship's class was relegated to background information.

 

[Dukhat]

Going back to the Syracuse for a second. I’m pretty sure it was just because he wasn’t finished yet. The scorch marks from reentry were still on the saucer for example. The paint job was probably the last thing to do, and that would probably include replacing the Syracuse’s name and registry.

I’m STO lore the Ross Class was not a replacement/refit for the Galaxy class. But obviously STO lore isn’t canon, so that can’t be applied to the Ross Class in the show.


I have a feeling that assigned retroactively, why else choose such an out of focus ship to assign it to.

I'm sure that was the case. I doubt any of the ships seen on screen were individually labeled with any of the names and registries from his supplemental artwork.

Also, I am not a fan of the idea that the Ross class is a refit of the Galaxy class. Why would they have renamed the class? Or at the least, why wouldn't they have called them "Galaxy II's" like they did with the Constitution II and Excelsior II?

 

[yotsuya]

My head canon is that the trans-warp on the Excelsior worked perfectly.

However, no one figured out that that Scotty sabotaged the Excelsior, and afterwards, mistook his sabotage for failure of concept.

My head canon is that it worked perfectly and they did find the sabotage and fixed it, but that incident in TSFS was so public that the perception was that it failed. Meanwhile Starfleet quietly made the Excelsior class the new premier posting in the fleet and focused on a long term construction program that produced 80 years worth of ships. That makes it, in terms of longevity, much more successful than the Constitution Class.

Also, the legend of the failure come from the Ingram plans, published shortly after TSFS.