Starship Platform Lifespans

[Tuskin38]

Terry Matalas established the refit as the Constitution II class starship.

The Constitution-II designation dates back to the Fan Fiction 'USS Enterprise Officer's Manual' Geoffrey Mandel and Doug Drexler created back in the 70s. It then later appeared in Sternbach's Spaceflight Chronology released in the 1980s.

It was probably Doug Drexler that pushed for the name, and Terry just approved it.

But I guess it is just as easy that Terry got the idea from either book.

Since the USS Enterprise-F was not destroyed in the battle, it would still have been decommissioned by 2402 to be replaced by the USS Enterprise-G. However, the Constitution III-class does not seem like the type that could maintain the prestige of the "Federation Flagship" for very long. So there is a possibility that the decommissioned Enterprise-F gets put through a long overhaul that takes nearly a decade before it is ready to return to service around say 2409. At which point the either the USS Enterprise-G has been destroyed or retired for some reason. Or it reverts to one of its pervious names. If they have not replaced the USS Titan with a USS Titan-B by that point, the starship could return to being the USS Titan-A to free up the name for the Enterprise-F to be recommissioned. Or, if there is a USS Titan in service, the starship might return to whatever name it was going to have before it was gifted the Titan name in the first place. Perhaps it is the USS Constitution (III) and which is why we haven't seen any others of that class even at the massive fleet review were there were like six or more of every other class in the fleet.

The confusion for future generations as to why the line of the starship Enterprise goes from A-G then back to F then to H will be its own class at the academy.

STO is currently ignoring what happened (lore wise) in Picard Season 3, there's no need to headcanon why the -F was in service twice, because it wasn't. So far the events of that season haven't been referenced at all IIRC. Seven isn't even in Starfleet, Paramount asked them to not make her an officer for some reason.

While they are adapting some lore from the post-Nemesis shows, they're not taking everything. They've even altered lore, like Hugh didn't die in their version of Picard Season 1.

 

[Boo-khat!]

We don't actually know what happened to the Enterprise-F. Some display that we could barely read stated that it was going to be decommissioned, and the next thing we see is the crew apparently killing Shelby. Was the ship ultimately damaged and/or destroyed on Frontier Day? Guess nobody bothered with that past actually showing the ship on screen to make some video game players happy.

 

[Ogrebear]

I would rather have seen the Enterprise-E being sent off to retirement than the F we got.

My head cannon at the moment is the E was decommissioned after the battle with the ProtoStar which was "not my fault"

I don't want to acknowledge the Enterprise-G and stealing the Titan-A's name.

 

[Boo-khat!]

I would rather have seen the Enterprise-E being sent off to retirement than the F we got.

Ditto.

My head cannon at the moment is the E was decommissioned after the battle with the ProtoStar which was "not my fault"

Well, which E? Every Sovereign class shown had the registry of NCC-1701-E

I don't want to acknowledge the Enterprise-G and stealing the Titan-A's name.

I think it would have worked much better had the ship been the last vessel that Riker commanded before he retired, rather than his first command which now looks like a completely different ship than what we saw in Lower Decks. Give the ship a generic name and then rename it the USS Picard later. But Matalas needed to have his link to Nemesis so badly, and a bunch of Enterprises when only the Ent-D was needed.

 

[BK613]

During their time in service the Essex-class ships had a bunch of different subclass names to identify them on records and in books. Aside from the "short hull" and "long hull" classification they got when they were built during World War II, after they got refits of various types (or none at all) they got six or seven "sub-class names".

Subclasses has not been something the US Navy recognizes. The Essex class, long hull or short, was just that, the Essex class (well, until they weren't)*. And the Ticonderoga cruisers were all the same class, despite the switch from rail launchers to VLS from the sixth ship on. Same with the Arleigh Burkes, with the decision to include a helo hangar. Same class.
Because the Navy generally doesn't wait for the next class of vessel to incorporate life lessons or new tech in their ships.

Which was the point of my post. Ships in a class are never exactly the same and they are never static. There's always repairs, upgrades, or modifications ongoing.

*(Advances in naval aviation—it went from this to this in twenty years, after all—obsoleted some of the Essex class from being front-line carriers quicker than others and those were regulated to trainer and anti-sub duties. So the Navy divvied the Essexes up into new classes near the end of their service life and they would retire under these classes.)

 

[StarCruiser]

There are inconsistencies with that tradition though...

The Sumner and Gearing class Destroyers in WW2 were basically the same design, with the Gearing's being longer for additional fuel and extended range.

The Arleigh Burkes are sub-divided into "Flights" and there are significant differences between them.

 

[Tuskin38]

We don't actually know what happened to the Enterprise-F

It's just one of those things they shoved into a social media post instead of explaining it on screen.

Well, which E? Every Sovereign class shown had the registry of NCC-1701-E

But also the registry of the USS Sovereign on the saucer, lmao

I don't want to acknowledge the Enterprise-G and stealing the Titan-A's name.

I don't see the issue.

But we're getting off topic.

 

[Tim Walker]

Excelsior gets the latest tech, and Hathaway gets simpler, proven tech.

I recall a thread that suggested this. The Great Experiment, the Excelsior, got all the shiny new, risky tech. But in case the ship proved a disappointment, the Constellation class was built with proven technology, doubling up components to get higher performance.

I can imagine some of the named but unseen classes were similar to the Constellation. Most of the effort, resources, and fancy new tech would go into the big new exploration cruisers. But smaller ship-frigates in size, perhaps-were built as a back up, doubling up modern-but-not-cutting-edge components.

 

[Boo-khat!]

I don't see the issue.

But we're getting off topic.

Alright, then let's talk about the topic of starship platform lifespans and how that pertains to the Titan-A (and all other PIC-era ships, for that matter.)

PIC S1 gives the impression that Starfleet is spread very thin in the 2390's, mainly because of Utopia Planitia's destruction, but probably also as a result of the Dominion war. Admiral Sheerfuckinghubris can't spare any ships for Picard to use, can't get any older ships out of mothballs, and she can barely get together a 'squadron' of ships by the end of the season, but luckily Riker helps out. Regardless, for some in-universe reason they can only get ships of one class, which if one were to try to explain this, they might think that post-war, Starfleet decided to just mass-produce one type of ship to replace all of the multiple older classes lost during the war, making it easier on their shipyards to consolidate for just one design (or more specifically, one design with two types of nacelles, for whatever reason that needed to happen.)

But then PIC S2 shows at least 15 classes in service, the oldest type only being the Akira class. Where did all these ships come from, if Admiral Pottymouth couldn't get them?

Then later in PRO, we find that the bulk of Starfleet's forces in the 2380's only consist of the Sovereign, Akira, Defiant and Centaur classes (with one Dauntless class and one Protostar class.)

And finally PIC S3 (filmed back-to-back with S2) shows all the ships from S2 and more, adding more STO designs and the Odyssey class for the Ent-F. But now there's a discrepancy: We see a display for the Pathfinder class Voyager-B, but we are just introduced to the brand-new Lamarr class Voyager-A in PRO (and there's no indication that the Voy-B was brand new as of 2401.) So the Voy-A can only be in service for probably ten years. And the Ent-F, whose launch date we are unaware of but had to have been at least after the 2380's, is being decommissioned in 2401, after at most maybe 18 years. So either Starfleet is completely fine with their ships only lasting a decade or so, which contradicts S1, or they can easily replace them, which also contradicts S1.

And finally, the Titan-A. We are all aware of the convoluted mess with its backstory. But the reasoning behind renaming it from Titan-A to Enterprise-G (despite the original intent to rename it the USS Picard NCC-81701, whose registry would make more sense for a new Enterprise in 2402 than the continued use of the letter suffix) really is silly. If they can easily make new ships, then there's no reason to rename the Titan. They can just build a new Enterprise, especially since they already knew a year before that the Ent-F was going to be decommissioned.