Size of the K'Tinga-class

[James Wright]

Hey people aren't you getting slightly off topic? Has anyone thought to ask Andrew Probert about the length of the K't'inga?
GR should've made the Enterprise a ship of the line because in the real world a heavy cruiser armed with 8 inch guns didn't stand a chance against a battlecruiser armed with 15 inch guns.

James

 

[Timo]

Then again, we've never really heard of any Star Trek ships heavier than cruisers. In absence of heavier units, cruisers would become capital ships in practice and probably also in parlance. For example the United States Continental Navy had frigates (or what we'd today call cruisers) as its capital ships for the longest time.

Today's European and Asian navies tend to have destroyers as their capital ships... Without feeling any sort of emotional pressure of redesignating them as "cruisers" or "battle cruisers" for prestige reasons, even though they would be perfectly justified in doing so, given that modern destroyers often are just as large and powerful as WWII cruisers, if not more so.

Also, "A ship of the line" is a rather nonsensical term for a vessel that doesn't fight in a line. It's no longer in naval use today - why should it remain in use in the far future?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Wingsley]

I agree that it would be interesting to hear the views of Mr. Probert and others involved in the making of TMP (if they wish to share any) as to what they expected the K'T'inga's size to be. Ironically, the ortho's showed on the Briefing Room's display in Act I of "The Enterprise Incident" always left me with the impression that the D-7 and the TOS Enterprise were about the same length and wingspan. FWIW, I always assumed that the Connie and the D-7/K'T'inga were toe-to-toe ships, the generally best and most powerful starships that their respective powers could muster in their day; as a corollary to that, I assumed that if the TMP refit Enterprise was improved/perhaps slightly upsized, the K'T'inga probably represented a corresponding change to the D-7 design, if not a "refit" to the D-7 platform. Pardon me if all that seems too doctrinaire.

Swerving briefly back to the "twelve like it" diversion in this thread, I would be wary of too closely linking the construction, refit and classifications of STAR TREK starships and classes to the practices of terrestrial navies. These ships depicted are starships, presumably built, operated and refit in outer space. Even TMP's "drydock" was thoroughly exposed to "the icy cold of space." As far as the refit issue is concerned, Captain Decker's protest to Admiral Kirk was "this is an almost totally new Enterprise" which always struck me as cementing into TREK lore that the TOS Enterprise had been, for all intents and purposes, torn apart, parts recycled, and reassembled in a thoroughly rejuvenated and redesigned vessel. If there's one thing about space travel today and on the drawing board that is carried through in TREK, it's the notion that in space, everything that can be recycled should and will be recycled somehow, at some point in time. Water, atmosphere, food/waste, equipment... why not spacecraft? Let's assume, for sake of argument, that the Constitution-class represented a link in a design chain, preceded by earlier starcruiser classes that represented an ongoing evolution of the starcruiser design. Let's assume the previous link was Magna Carta, and maybe before that it was Charter of Liberties and before that it was Declaration. As you would go back further in time from TOS toward ENT, each of these ship classes would represent a less advanced take on the starcruiser design. Maybe the Declaration would be too crude as a first-generation attempt to be recycled, so it would be scrapped. But if 1017 Constellation were originally a member of a supposed Charter of Liberties-class, and 1371 Republic were built as a Magna Carta, each of these ships and their respective classes might be torn apart and rebuilt once every generation to the newest spec. ( I never bought into the idea of a junkyard-in-space, like the one depicted in TNG's "Unification I".) If you consider how much the Enterprise changed as a result of her TMP refit, it should not be difficult to imagine ships of cruder specs being recycled into newer classes.

 

[Maurice]

If you want to know his intent, send a PM to Probert on here, and ask. My guess is he'll say the size in the TMP blueprints is the intended size, which would seem to agree with his sketch of hos the bridge fits into the dome...but who knows? He may surprise us.

 

[T'Girl]

If Kirk ment "we have a fleet of twelve ships", why include the pharse "...like her." Sure he could of said 'out of a fleet of forty thousand ships, there are only twelve like her,' I think his original statement was a prideful one, he was bragging about his ship, and her kind. We know Kirk had a psych thing for his ship.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Okay so there are either 12 or 13 Constitution Class ships either 12 total or 13 if you count the Enterprise in that there are twelve like the Enterprise.

Regardless this actually says very little as there could have been 35 or 40 built and a lot got lost on highly dangerous deep-space exploration missions. Still that is a lot of speculation.

The question is how come the D-7's are considered equivalent in capability to the Constitution Class, and there seemed to be a LOT more than twelve of them around, and the Federation didn't seem to get it's ass kicked?


CuttingEdge100

 

[Longinus]

They presumably have other ships. Lesser in power but sufficient in numbers, so that Klingons can't just waltz through the Federation defences. Still, this necessarily does not mean that Federation is militarily exactly equal to Klingon Empire, only that it is sufficiently powerful that the Klingons cannot wish for easy and quick victory. After all, an all out attack on Federation would leave the Klingons vulnerable to a surprise attack by an another power, such as Romulans.

 

[Wingsley]

Agreed, but I think that reasoning should be expanded.

If you look at a purely military appraisal, Kirk's Enterprise did go toe-to-toe with Klingon D-7s on more than one occasion. In the Tellun star system ("Elaan of Troyus") the Enterprise defended herself against a D-7 and sabotage, and the D-7 displayed warp velocities that could put a Connie in a sweat for sure.

We do not know how large the fleets are of either the TOS-era Federation or the Klingons, but it is reasonable to assume that a galaxy as big as ours would require hundreds of ships just to begin to explore the vastness of deep space. Given the apparently high mortality rate of starships the Enterprise discovers routinely in her expeditions, the Federation would have to maintain a fleet of hundreds if they aren't going to sweat the losses we've seen just in TOS alone.

This doesn't mean all the ships have to be Connies or even that they would be cruisers. But there would have to be lots of starships "out there". This is where the idea of the Maggies comes in handy, and it does give a sense of implied history to the whole thing. (After all, Starfleet didn't just start exploring deep space a couple of years before TOS, did it?)

 

[Forbin]

Hey, here's a thought - how many starships were lost in episodes prior to Tomorrow is Yesterday? If some were lost, then Kirk's "twelve like her in the fleet" would exclude those lost, and would mean "twelve like her still left in the fleet," but the total built would be more than 12, including the lost ones.

 

[Timo]

Going either by airdate or stardate order, no sister ships were shown lost in episodes preceding "Tomorrow is Yesterday". Even the Exeter supposedly went missing only later on. So it's just a statistical assumption that numerous Constitutions must have been lost before that episode, because numerous Constitutions were lost after it.

If you look at a purely military appraisal, Kirk's Enterprise did go toe-to-toe with Klingon D-7s on more than one occasion. In the Tellun star system ("Elaan of Troyus") the Enterprise defended herself against a D-7 and sabotage, and the D-7 displayed warp velocities that could put a Connie in a sweat for sure.

Come to think of it, and retracting an earlier statement of mine a bit, that was the only time the Klingons dared confront a Constitution with just a single D-7, now wasn't it? In the reimagined "Friday's Child", the Klingon "scoutship" that effects a cowardly retreat at first sight of Kirk's ship is portrayed as a D-7...

So perhaps only two or three D-7 vessels could feel secure of defeating a non-sabotaged Constitution. And perhaps there weren't that many of those vessels to begin with - after all, Kirk ran into the same Klingon skippers and presumably the same ships over and over again if we accept TAS in addition to TOS as "real". So the Klingons wouldn't have had an overwhelming numerical superiority after all.

A technological superiority is a different issue. In ENT, Klingon warships were significantly ahead of the best UESF ones in terms of propulsion and protection (e.g. Duras' D-5 cruiser flew at warp 6), but their weapons were at most on par with the phase guns and photon torpedoes introduced in the 2150s. Perhaps Klingons lost that edge in the following century, so they absolutely had to engage two-on-one or three-on-one even when using battle cruisers only slightly smaller than the Constitution.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

Connie comes from constitution, from what do we get "maggie?"

 

[Wingsley]

Magna Carta

 

[Forbin]

Which comes from where now?

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Makes sense from a logical "naming sequenced" standpoint... since the US Constitution does descend in many ways from the Magna Carta. The idea (spun off as a sort of off the wall suggestion) was that the "Magna Carta class" might be a name for a "Pre-Constitution-class Constitution class cruiser." Something which would be very similar to the TOS ship but not "exactly" the same.

I don't necessarily object to the idea, but as far as I'm concerned, the Constitution class existed in three forms... the Pike form, the Kirk/Delta-Vega form, and the TOS form... and the three versions were significantly different. They "cheated" with the TMP "refit," but this was really a new ship (and should have been called "Enterprise Class"). For me, the prior ship to the Constitution was the Baton Rouge class.

But it's not "unreasonable" to assume that the Constellation, for instance, may have been of some earlier class that just sort of "looked like" the Constitution but was a different class entirely.

 

[Wingsley]

Which comes from where now?

I originally mentioned it here, just a page back...

 

[T'Girl]

I'll name my next "Manny class", for manifesto.

 

[Wingsley]

Pedantic? No, I don't see it that way. Controversial, definitely.

The only way I could see Kirk's "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" brag to Capt. Christopher of "there are only twelve like it in the fleet" meaning that the entire United Federation of Planets had only 12-13 Constitution-class starcruisers as of the mid-2260's would be if an older, pre-Constitution-class fleet of starcruisers had already been in service in the 2260's for a considerable period of time, and the "new" Connies were being built as the very first of "the next wave" while the older starcruisers, still in flight, are either slated to be decommissioned or to be rebuilt/recycled to the new Connie spec. For sake of argument, let's call this previous class of starscruiser the Magna Carta-class. (I believe Warped9 is coming up with some ideas on what my "Maggie" idea might look like, although I would personally prefer something a little closer in appearance to a "Cage" Connie.) Taking cues from Matt Decker's Constellation, let's assume the Magna Carta-class starships were very structurally similar to the up-and-coming Connies, but maybe not as refined. Maybe the last spec for the Maggies gave them a sustainable top speed of Warp 7 for 24 hours, whereas the Pike's Connie could sustain Warp 7 for 72 hours and Kirk's revised Connie could sustain Warp 8 for 24 hours; again, for sake of argument. (I'm suggesting that Pike's Enterprise was a fairly new vessel when the ship visited Talos IV; whether Capt. April's command of the ship was to simply launch her or for a shakedown cruise before handing her over to Pike remains unclear.)

In this scenario, there could be 100 or more Maggies in flight during the 2260's, but only 12-13 Connies as of the "time" of Kirk's pronouncement/brag. This would mean that there would be 112 or more heavy starcruisers in the Federation's service, but that when you consider Kirk's point-of-view, he being in command of one of the relatively few Warp 8-capable heavy starcruisers at that moment in time, and in contrast to a much larger fleet of Warp 7-capable Maggies (presumably Decker's Constellation undergoing refit at that "time") Kirk could still brag "there are only twelve like it in the fleet".

<SNIPPAGE>

Makes sense from a logical "naming sequenced" standpoint... since the US Constitution does descend in many ways from the Magna Carta. The idea (spun off as a sort of off the wall suggestion) was that the "Magna Carta class" might be a name for a "Pre-Constitution-class Constitution class cruiser." Something which would be very similar to the TOS ship but not "exactly" the same.

I don't necessarily object to the idea, but as far as I'm concerned, the Constitution class existed in three forms... the Pike form, the Kirk/Delta-Vega form, and the TOS form... and the three versions were significantly different. They "cheated" with the TMP "refit," but this was really a new ship (and should have been called "Enterprise Class"). For me, the prior ship to the Constitution was the Baton Rouge class.

But it's not "unreasonable" to assume that the Constellation, for instance, may have been of some earlier class that just sort of "looked like" the Constitution but was a different class entirely.

Your thinking is not exactly the same as mine, but we're at least in the same room on this one.

I'm suggesting, based on the lore of TOS, TMP and a little logical deducation, that the Constitution-class heavy starcruiser, as seen in TOS, was a link in a multi-generational evolutionary design chain. Every so often, the design gets updated. New ships are built based on the new design. (Kirk's "twelve like it in the fleet" brag would make sense here, as we can assume the spec his "Connie" Enterprise is based represents the newest, most refined starship to date, often referred to as "the finest ship in the fleet".) But I am also postulating that the Federation doesn't just have only 12 starships in its entire fleet, period. For a Federation that's been in existence for about 100 years, that would be pretty lame. I'm suggesting that earlier links in the design chain resulted in starship construction as well, but these ships were based on earlier designs. They may be fundamentally similar/the same as Constitution-class heavy starcruisers, but they would be starcruisers of an earlier, less refined starship class. Hence, I proposed a succession: Declaration-class starscruisers (the "Deckies") would have been the first generation of these ships, presumably first designed and built immediately after the founding of the Federation. Then, a generation or so later, came the Charter of Liberties-class heavy starcruisers (the "Libbys"), no doubt followed sometime in the early 23rd century by the Consitution-class' design predecessor, the Magna Carta-class heavy starcruisers (the "Maggies"). This would represent a succession of evolutionary starship design, presumably with the TMP-refit Enterprise representing yet another chapter in that evolution.

The TMP refit also suggests to me that the Federation starship design and construction philosophy strongly emphasizes recycling and rejuvenation of existing ships and components. Think about it: starships and space stations seen in TREK must routinely recycle the air, water and even food/waste and equipment, so why wouldn't they recycle spacecraft as well? If they didn't do that, then they would not have refit the Enterprise; the venerable 1701 would've been retired at the end of Kirk's five-year mission. Extending the philosophy through the history of Starfleet only makes sense: those older starships of previous starship-classes would be prime candidates for refit/recycling. (This might also explain why Matt Decker's Constellation looks very similar to the Enterprise, but has minor hull configuration differences; perhaps 1017 Constellation was originally built as a "Libby", then refit later to be a "Maggie" and maybe Constellation was being put to dock to be refit yet again to become a "Connie" when Kirk's ship hit the black star leading to his "twelve like it" brag.)

 

[T'Girl]

GR should've made the Enterprise a ship of the line because in the real world a heavy cruiser armed with 8 inch guns didn't stand a chance against a battlecruiser armed with 15 inch guns.

James

PT boats made of plywood but armed with four massive torpedoes did on several occasions sink and damage battle crusiers. It's not the machines, it's the men.

 

[James Wright]

Does anyone know if any Nebula class ships had the large impulse engines like those on the Enterprise-D? All the pictures of the Nebula class ships I'xe seen show the smaller impulse engines.

James

 

[Timo]

PT boats made of plywood but armed with four massive torpedoes did on several occasions sink and damage battle crusiers. It's not the machines, it's the men.

But it is the machines - without the invention of the self-powered torpedo, those boats would have been incapable of denting a battleship, no matter how heroically piloted.

Star Trek really has no weapon analogous to the torpedo. The photon torpedoes play the same role in ship-to-ship battles as cannonballs did until the early 19th century; one has to lob lots of them at the enemy, and hope that the enemy doesn't lob back even more. There is no weapon that could break the keel of an enemy capital ship with a single shot, certainly not one that could be carried by a small boat. And there are no aircraft that could maneuver around the big ships at high relative speeds; there are merely small boats, which are only marginally faster and more agile than the big ships at sublight, and apparently vastly slower and less agile at warp.

Timo Saloniemi