Starships larger than heavy cruisers?

EJA

Fleet Captain
The original USS Enterprise NCC-1701 has been designated as a heavy cruiser in all Trek media. I just wondered, are there any starship types larger than heavy cruisers?
 
I think this would probably get better responses in the Tech Forum. Prepare for transport...
HappyTrans.gif
 
dont think they are canon but in the tos era there were the dreadnought class think they were bigger.
 
There is the USS Inaieu, a Defender class starship, well over 1,600 meters.
But she existed in the fictional Duane-verse.
 
dont think they are canon but in the tos era there were the dreadnought class think they were bigger.

Right.

Star Fleet Battles had the dreadnought, a 3 nacelled monstrosity. And later they had the battleship, a 4 nacelled, even bigger monstrosity.

And those were obviously bigger than the heavy cruiser or command cruiser.

Diane Carey's book Dreadnought shows the 3 nacelle ship on the cover, though I never read that one.
 
The dreadnought on Diane Carey's book cover is different enough in the story not to be the dreadnough that Franz Joseph designed, but they are outwardly similar.








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Definitely. The art on the cover was very...arty.

But a d'nought is still a d'nought and that means big & bad, though I think the term is somewhat vague when referring to naval ships.
 
Franz Joseph (who came up with "Heavy Cruiser" for the Enterprise) postulated the Federation-class dreadnought in his Star Trek Technical Manual (the USS Entante mentioned in TMP is from the manual). Other sources have classified other ship types, like Explorer for the Galaxy-class, from the TNG Technical Manual and the bogus designaton "escort" for DS9's Defiant, from "The Search". According to A Vision of the Future, Voyager was concieved as a Frigate (but that idea never reached the screen - we got a Voyager with all the E-D's luxuries).

FASA and several old videogames classifed the Excelsior-class as a battleship. The videogame Starfleet Command came up with the even-more-mighty Proxima-class battleship, which inspired the USS Newton in STXI.

There is the USS Inaieu, a Defender class starship, well over 1,600 meters.
But she existed in the fictional Duane-verse.
"Fictional":lol: 'Coz the rest of Star Trek is all real, right?
 
I always kind of liked the idea that the Excelsiors did start out as battleships (as FASA's system named them) and were later downgraded as heavy cruisers.
 
In the DS9 Technical Manual, the Excelsior-class was listed as an explorer. Overall, I tend to favor the more neutral classifications for ships there and in the TNG Technical Manual. On other fansites, almost everything is listed as a super-duper ultrabattleship or mega-omni-attack carrier or something like that...
:wtf:
 
40+ years of great sci-fi aside, I think a lot of us have a hard time imagining there could be a "military" who's primary purpose is exploration & science.
 
Heavy cruisers and other classifications have been mentioned in a couple of different places within the canon, such as the Ambassador-class heavy cruiser in "Conspiracy" (TNG), but Starfleet obviously isn't big on them, otherwise we would've seen and heard more. The most specific classification is usually "starship", further clarified by naming its class. This is what I would use in any text that strives to be consistent with the official canon. (I'm not commenting on "fanon" since I'm not interested in it.)
 
I think that since pages from Franz Joseph's Technical Manual were used as background graphics in the first three movies, "Heavy Cruiser" for the Enterprise might actually have made it on-screen - although on-screen graphics can hardly be cited as indisputable canon. They're more like easter eggs for die-hard fans.
 
^ What with all the refits, they just forgot to update the LCARS graphics.

That kind of blooper wouldn't have been a problem in the (somewhat) pre-internet era, with everyone looking at every little detail ad nauseum.
 
It's also a point for consistency: Kirk's TOS ship had out-of-date graphics as well.

http://www.shawcomputing.net/racerx/trek_stuff/dod_areas.jpg

It seems clear enough that Explorer is the biggest thing in Starfleet books that we know of: this designation goes for the Galaxy class, which is the biggest starship design witnessed, whereas Heavy Cruiser in that same era goes for the Ambassador class, which is slightly smaller. Doesn't mean there couldn't exist a classification for ships larger than Explorer, of course; we just haven't seen such a ship yet. Perhaps the Terraformer on that Okudagram of "Field of Fire" is bigger still?

It's also possible that Explorer is not a size-related term, but onscreen it's exclusive to the Galaxy class, which allows us to argue that it's exactly as size-related in relation to Heavy Cruiser as Battleship is today. Perhaps a politically correct change in terminology? "Cruising" isn't violent and offending... but "battling" can't be mentioned out loud.

Timo Saloniemi
 
^ Tasha Yar's reference to the Enterprise-D as a "Galaxy-class battleship" in Yesterday's Enterprise seems to agree with that idea.

Regarding earlier large ships, the dreadnought USS Entente was mentioned communications chatter in TMP. The Kelvin's class is also fairly large - roughly 450 meters long, IIRC, as is the Excelsior-class - roughly 700 meters long (required by the hole in the Enterprise-B in Generations, and supported by the MSD, some design irregularities if the ship were of a smaller size, some side-by-side appearances with other ships, and the Enterprise-B's MSD). (The Nebula-class and Sovereign-class are also fairly large)

On screen, we've seen or heard ship classes described as follows:

Explorer/Battleship/Dreadnought:
(Entente)
Galaxy

Heavy Cruiser:
Constitution
Ambassador

Light Cruiser:
(Drake)

Destroyer:
Saladin
(Centaur)

Frigate:
Thomas Paine
Renegade

The Deep Space Nine Technical Manual also describes the Nebula class and Excelsior class as explorers.
 
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