Starship Construction Timeline

[Unicron]

I might be able to look up some of Jackill's designs; I know some of those were intended to be movie-era refits of some of the older FJ designs, and so keep the same registry numbers. But I'm sure there are some that probably have unique registries.

 

[Praetor]

The ironic thing is, they added the extra parts to the original Excelsior model to make it into the Enterprise-B because they didn't want to damage the model, but later found that the parts couldn't be removed without damaging it! And then, when they needed the original Excelsior for VOY's "Flashback," they couldn't use it, so Greg Jein had to build a new model of the Excelsior.

Wouldn't it have been easier to just have built a new model/design for the Enterprise-B? Then they could have still used the original Excelsior in "Flashback."

Yes, and frankly it nauseates me that was the way it all turned out...

 

[Unicron]

You might consider FASA's registries for the Excelsior class, as they're the only set I know which actually follow the original series number (2000+). Most of the canon numbers are somewhat nonsensical in my view because Mike Okuda made them up from thin air.

 

[Praetor]

I tend to agree, yet the ones that were shown are technically canon. Still I'd be interested in the FASA list.

 

[Unicron]

Most of what I have is from the TNG Officer's manual. I'll admit that's one of my big irks regarding the TNG era registries, and I know it was partly because GR by that point had no interest in any of the tie-in sources and Okuda had a free hand to make registries that contradicted the work of FJ and others. I think in doing so he (Mike) only made the system worse and more confused than it needed to be.

 

[Unicron]

Okay, here is the FASA list from the TNG Officer's Manual. I've omitted the Excelsior (listed as a training vessel) and the 1701-B (described as being destroyed in battle with rogue Klingon and Romulan warships in the NZ). Some vessels were named for real battleships in history, while others were clearly meant to succeed older Constitution and Enterprise class cruisers. Since the OM was meant to be in accurate in TNG's S1 (2363) it can be assumed that some or all of these mothballed vessels could have easily been put back into service.

USS Achilles II - NCC-2011 - active
USS Agincourt II - NCC-2014 - lost/missing
USS Ajax II - NCC-2010 - active
USS Alamo - NCC-2035 - active
USS Aquila II - NCC-2028 - active
USS Arizona II - NCC-2012 - destroyed
USS Bearn II - NCC-2027 - lost/missing
USS Brisbane II - NCC-2030 - active
USS Challenger II - NCC-2023 - active
USS Chikuma - NCC-2008 - lost/missing
USS Columbia II - NX-2002 - mothballed
USS Constitution II - NCC-2025 - active
USS De Mayo - NCC-2029 - destroyed
USS Eagle II - NCC-2031 - active
USS Excalibur - NCC-2004 - mothballed
USS Exeter II - NCC-2016 - active
USS Farragut II - NCC-2021 - active
USS Fearless II - NCC-2036 - active
USS Fuso II - NCC-2019 - destroyed
USS Galacta II - NX-2003 - lost/missing
USS Hancock - NCC-2006 - destroyed
USS Hood II - NCC-2017 - active
USS Intrepid II - NCC-2020 - active
USS Kitty Hawk II - NCC-2007 - mothballed
USS Kongo II - NCC-2009 - active
USS Lexington II - NCC-2026 - active
USS Potemkin - NCC-2005 - mothballed
USS Proxima - NX-2001 - destroyed
USS Royal Oak II - NCC-2013 - decommissioned as training vessel
USS Ryujo II - NCC-2022 - destroyed
USS Sussex II - NCC-2024 - destroyed
USS Thunderer II - NCC-2032 - lost/missing
USS Ticonderoga II - NCC-2034 - active
USS Valiant II - NCC-2018 - destroyed
USS Yamashiro II - NCC-2015 - active
USS Yorktown II - NCC-2033 - active

 

[Dukhat]

I own this book as well, and although it's chock full of typos, wildly inaccurate with it's ship diagrams (their Constellation class drawing is horrible) and insanely contradicted later in TNG's run, at the time it was considered the most "official" technical manual out there.

One thing I found amusing was that during TNG's first season, the writers of the manual didn't know there was a correlation between the Ambassador class and the Enterprise-C. They had the Enterprise-C as an "Alaska" class battlecruiser (without an accompanying design), and had the Ambassador (Hardin) class as a Connie saucer and Excelsior nacelles attached to an angular, hand-drawn secondary hull (which was usually the norm with FASA designs). They also had a similar design for the frigate Thomas Paine (the "Paine" class) before it was established that the Renegade and the Thomas Paine were New Orleans class vessels.

 

[Unicron]

That's because when the book was printed, the only pictures of the Constellation were from "The Battle" and were almost exclusively front or side views. That doesn't excuse some of more odd problems with their version, like the nacelle orientation, but it's understandable. The Ambassador class didn't exist in any visual capacity until "Yesterday's Enterprise" several seasons later, and was built because they didn't have enough time to accurately build Andrew Probert's concept. FASA took their info from the dialogue in "Conspiracy" and created an original design, which I'll agree is a typical Frankenstein.

Personally, I tend to take the route mentioned in Ships of the Star Fleet in terms of reconciling the FASA Ambassador with the canon version: the FASA version is the Ambassador (I) and was sort of a test bed design, which accounts for the small number of operational vessels. The canon class, Ambassador (II) was derived in part from other design systems and is clearly a lot more successful, so the older design is not as well remembered. SotSF did a similar thing with an early design for the movie Enterprise (seen on some of the control panels in TWOK) being dubbed the Constitution (II) and used as a bed for testing some of the refit technology used in the heavy cruisers.