You shouldn't combine R&D & Construction times.
Those are seperate phases and needs to be kept seperated.
The Excelsior - uncovering the design
- Thread starter yotsuya
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Those are seperate phases and needs to be kept seperated.
On the model kit instructions, it says that the Galaxy-class, being twice the height, twice the width, and twice the length of the TOS ship, is only 8 times larger, not 25 times.
It seems like if it takes around 5 years to build a ship now, then it is likely that as technology increases, it would take less time to build the same tech, but I would expect that as new tech is developed and implement it will likely still take a target build time of five years to build a cutting-edge ship.
Thus, in the age of TNG it might be possible to build a Constitution or Excelsior in a few months, but they would instead take 5 years to build a New Orleans or Akira, with (very-roughly) the same size, but newer tech.
Perhaps this IS the reason we see so many Excelsior's in DS9? (After the Borg destroyed many Galaxy-family ships, they just built Excelsior's quickly--it would sort of match the real-life model building process...)
Maybe they got their Mass Automated Assembly & Manufacturing working?
We saw in ST:ENT in "Dead Stop" how one Alien Repair Station could repair all that damage with a bunch of Robotic Arms, Replicators, & Transporters.
Maybe StarFleet got their logistics & manufacturing optimized finally and could get mass production to go faster?
If properly setup, StarFleet should be able to mass produce StarShips as fast as we humans can mass produce cars out of a large assembly plant.
And with Assembly Plant Space Dry Docks in multiple Star Systems, you can have multiple units being manufactured simultaneously.
I would guess Shelby was talking about the reserve fleet and pulling some ships out of there for minor upgrades. The TOS to TMP refit took 18 months. She is talking about a much lower scale refit to older ships to bring them up to strength. And that is what we see in later episodes with so many Excelsior and Miranda class ships showing up. A few of them have registries which indicate they could have been built new very recently, but most have very old registries which place them 30-60 years earlier.
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That's because they're not using computer models to perform volumetric calculations in 3D modelling software. These ships are not cuboid blocks* and don't scale accordingly. The rounded convex shapes of the Galaxy-class add up to a LOT more volume than the skeletal concave shapes of the Constitution-class even on top of an increase in length, width and height; in fact each one of the Enterprise-D's nacelles has a larger volume than the original 1701.
*Apart from... well, you know.
Yes! It may sound it, and no doubt she's using a phrase provided by StarFleet PR to imply it, but she doesn't actually mean "in terms of fleet resources it will be as if W359 hadn't happened."
The TNG:TM mentions a number of Galaxy class ships being half-built and packaged up somewhere; I suspect that there are Excelsiors, Mirandas, etc. that are similarly half-built, and that a total of 25 (say) of those were bring completed, there were a few ships that would have had their construction completed within that year anyway. And yes, some retired ships would have been reinstated and some reserve ships "upgraded" to be part of the full fleet.
dJE
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The thing is, the 40 ships lost at Wolf 359, and Shelby's comment that they will all be replaced within a year, really doesn't make sense in the context of the larger picture of what we see later in DS9.
At the time "Best of Both Worlds" was being produced, 40 seemed like a pretty large number at the time. We were probably meant to assume that Starfleet had around 100 or so ships total, so the loss of 40 of them would be quite devastating (not to mention that the losses seemed to encompass their more advanced ships like the Nebula, Challenger, Springfield, New Orleans, Cheyenne, Freedom and Niagara classes). We were probably also meant to assume that the 'replacement' ships were the four new classes we saw in First Contact, along with the Defiant class, even though their registry numbers don't seem to jibe with this. I make this assumption based on those ships' attributes being similar to the brand-new Sovereign class, and the fact that they were the primary ships attacking the Borg cube in that movie, as if they were specifically built to do so.
But then we see multiple fleet shots in DS9 during the Dominion War, and the primary ships making up that fleet are three of the aforementioned FC ships, and the Excelsior and Miranda classes, with only a small smattering of Galaxy, Nebula, and Defiant classes. We also learn that there are at least ten different fleets engaging in the war, with the seventh fleet containing over a hundred ships. So if that's a general estimate of fleet size, we're looking at well over a thousand ships. The conclusion being that either:
1. Starfleet built a thousand ships to replace the 40 lost at Wolf 359 (including obsolete designs), or
2. Most of those ships (especially the Excelsior and Miranda classes) were already in existence at the time of BoBW, in which case both the 40-ship loss being so devastating and Shelby's remark about replacing them in a year makes little sense, not to mention: Where were all those ships during BoBW if Starfleet could only scrounge up 40 of them?
Shelby doesn't say they'll have part of the fleet replaced; she doesn't say they'll recommission mothballed ships. She says "We'll have the fleet back up in less than a year." This statement implies that those 40 starships made up the bulk of Starfleet's forces, and that they will all be replaced with brand-new ships in a very short time. Even if those hundreds of Excelsiors and Mirandas we saw in DS9 were originally decommissioned prior to BoBW, it still makes Shelby's statement nonsensical. If Starfleet can replace the bulk of their destroyed fleet (40 ships) in less than a year with 1,000 new ships, why did they even need all those old obsolete Excelsiors and Mirandas in DS9? And if those old ships were still good, why is the loss of only 40 ships so devastating?
And as an addendum: To add insult to injury, Admiral Cornwell in DSC states that in the 2250's, Starfleet had 7,000 ships. So Starfleet had 7K ships a century prior, but losing 40 a hundred years later is a big deal?
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Devil's advocate: most of the thousands of ships were too far away, too small or poorly armed to be useful (a lot of pure medical and scientific research vessels), or outdated (see all the older class ships you mentioned, possibly many without updated weapons/shields prior to wolf 359), so 40ish ships was a not insignificant chunk of the ships A) strong enough to fight such a powerful enemy and B) close enough to Earth to try to head them off.
Perhaps the "fleet" Shelby was talking about was the "Home Defence Fleet," or (or some similar phrase), but was made up of 50 ships out of the thousands which "the StarFeet" has.
Thinking about it, I think that solution circles quite a few squares:
It makes the loss of 40-ships significant, but replaceable within a year;
It ties in with references to a "7th Fleet" in DS9;
It kinda jibes with 40-ships being a lot at Wolf 359, against uncountable ships in DS9;
IIRC it matches (British) Royal Navy 18th Century organisation, on which StarTrek in general is largely based;
It matches with a new set of ships being in action at Earth in FC - these *were* new-build ships, built for the Home Defence Fleet to replace those lost at 359.
I disagree that Shelby's phrasing implies that there will be new ships built within the year. I suspect she'd actually agreed on the phrase in the hope that people would take that implication, which she very explicitly didn't say it.
dJE
The thing we don't really see is what constitutes a ship in Star Trek. What get's its own registry and what gets a sub registry (like the Enterprise's shuttles). The Enterprise is a large ship. In any given time period, it is the largest ship in the fleet. That means there are smaller ships. How many is the question. A shuttle is too small to have its own registry. But then there is the runabout. It is a more fully fleshed out ship, though small, and they have their own names and registries. So from there up to the full size starship would have names and registries. So long range shuttles, cargo vessels, transports, fuel ships, any Starfleet vessel that operates independently. There are likely to be far more small craft than large craft. FASA fleshed out the fleet with a variety of craft (probably far too many), with quite a number of smaller craft. When you consider how vast the Federation is, even in TOS, and the any named and registered ship would be included, it could be quite a large number. I think to get to 7000 you would have to be counting every shuttle registered to a ship or base. But when you get to the late movie era, it is probably getting close to that number.
Also, the reason that there are often so few ships in range is again that space is vast. Travel takes time and some emergencies happen fast and limit what ships can reach any area. Starfleet is about exploration so they have most of their main ships out in the frontier, exploring, mapping, and serving the region. So the size of the Federation, especially as it grows from TOS to TMP to TNG, is a good indicator of how many ships would be needed to properly explore and patrol that area.
Also, the reason that there are often so few ships in range is again that space is vast. Travel takes time and some emergencies happen fast and limit what ships can reach any area. Starfleet is about exploration so they have most of their main ships out in the frontier, exploring, mapping, and serving the region. So the size of the Federation, especially as it grows from TOS to TMP to TNG, is a good indicator of how many ships would be needed to properly explore and patrol that area.
Jackill had an interesting version of how the class categories work, in his view:
Class 1 vessels are ships with a range of flexibility in their designs, typically front line ships.
Class 2 vessels are for specific support functions and are generally less flexible, such as transport/tugs.
Class 3 designates habitable space stations and facilities, while Class 4 refers to installations that don't typically have large (if any) crews like dry docks and supply nodes.
Class 5 vessels are shuttlecraft and other small support units.
Class 6 are fully automated vessels and installations with little provision for a manned crew.
Class 7 are non-powered, non-crewed objects like cargo containers.
Class 8 are torpedoes, probes, and similar automated devices.
Class 1 vessels are ships with a range of flexibility in their designs, typically front line ships.
Class 2 vessels are for specific support functions and are generally less flexible, such as transport/tugs.
Class 3 designates habitable space stations and facilities, while Class 4 refers to installations that don't typically have large (if any) crews like dry docks and supply nodes.
Class 5 vessels are shuttlecraft and other small support units.
Class 6 are fully automated vessels and installations with little provision for a manned crew.
Class 7 are non-powered, non-crewed objects like cargo containers.
Class 8 are torpedoes, probes, and similar automated devices.
Building off the fact that 40 ships, when close to Earth, may have been a big deal, perhaps what is going on is that the fleet was built up with older designs alongside newer ones. Any Excelsior's, Miranda's etc., that could be reactivated, or built from existing parts, could have been put into service alongside the Steamrunners and Akiras. In other words, knowing the Borg were coming, they chose to build up an even bigger fleet than what they started with.
Of course, if DS9 had just shown more current ships it would have helped a lot. I almost wish they had taken stock footage of the Wolf 359 ships before destroying them. Or, they could have built them again from the same commercially available parts. Knowing that the team used UV paint and lights to make unwired models appear lit, seeing the New Olreans or Cheyenne in this format could have been stunning.
Anyway, I have always wondered: if the Borg read Picard's thoughts, and thus the Galaxy-family ships saw less use because the Borg would know how to defeat them, what was Starfleet doing using even older ships even more often?
There was no stock footage of the Wolf 359 models intact. They were battle damaged before they were ever filmed (except for the Firebrand and the Princeton, which were built already damaged.)
1994-1995 were banner years for Star Trek model kits. The Excelsior, Enterprise-B, Reliant and Voyager kits came out in these years, and DS9's producers used these models (and parts thereof) as a cheap way to have background ships for season 6's "A Time to Stand" Frankenstein fleet and for the Starbase 375 establishing shots, the latter of which used intact Reliant, Excelsior and Enterprise-D kits. With the transition from physical models to CGI (which happened five episodes into the sixth season), CGI models were made of those three ships to keep continuity with the physical models shown previously. They also received the CGI meshes of three of the First Contact ships from ILM for remapping, to pad out the fleet. So that's why we only saw Excelsiors, Mirandas, Galaxies, Akiras, Steamrunners & Sabers in those fleet shots, even though Starfleet supposedly has around 50 different ship classes.
The problem was that they simply didn't have time to come up with all-new CGI ship designs. It was quicker and easier to just scan the physical models they already had available, and get the FC ships from ILM.
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Yeah, they probably only felt like taking the time to make CGI models of the ships that had used recently, but I wish they had made more.
There was no stock footage of the Wolf 359 ships, but they took pictures, some of which have been made public since, like in the Star Trek Encyclopedia. I was saying that I wish there had been stock footage.
I don't have a problem with the Excelsior and others being common in the fleet, it just would have been cool to see more supposedly-almost-current-era ships.
The main problem I had with it was that using a ton of Excelsiors, Mirandas, Klingon BoPs and K’t’ingas made Starfleet and the Klingons look weak and outdated against their far superior opponents. I also didn’t like that they used the Regula One model first used in TMP for Starbase 375 (and then upscaled it to ridiculous proportions, since the actual Regula One space station was supposed to be very small.) I felt like decisions like that made Star Trek look cheap.
If anything, once they had the physical models scanned into CGI, they could then have made changes to those CGI models so that they didn’t look exactly like the same ships used a century before, if they didn’t want to outright make new ship designs. Give them updated nacelles, or add TNG style phaser strips. Or anything that would have made them look a little less outdated.
And build a new Starbase, for crying out loud. Starbase 375 was used prominently for several seasons. Seeing that 100-year old Regula One model as a TNG era station was just annoying.
If anything, once they had the physical models scanned into CGI, they could then have made changes to those CGI models so that they didn’t look exactly like the same ships used a century before, if they didn’t want to outright make new ship designs. Give them updated nacelles, or add TNG style phaser strips. Or anything that would have made them look a little less outdated.
And build a new Starbase, for crying out loud. Starbase 375 was used prominently for several seasons. Seeing that 100-year old Regula One model as a TNG era station was just annoying.
You mean the space office complex from TMP? And I agree, how they played so loose with scale always bothered me.
Except for the Norway.
It still boggles my mind that these CG artists never seem to make back-ups of the digital models. It’s easy to do and takes little-to-no time at all. It’s not like a physical model that gets dropped and destroyed, never to be in its original configuration again (like the Balance of Terror Romulan BOP). Digital loss in that industry happens way too much and it really just mystifies me, when it really shouldn’t.
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As I understand it, it's because the 3D models are regarded as the studio's property and the artists are not allowed to make separate backups. Everything has to be saved centrally, or stored on physical media which can then be archived – and then of course they get deleted, or saved over, or lost, or improperly stored so they degrade.
I know this happened with Babylon 5, and all assets were turned over to Warner Bros at the end of production – who then managed to "misplace" them, so when they needed to revisit Babylon 5 ships for The Lost Tales they had to use fan-made models instead, which did at least have the advantage that the models were much more complex than the originals. Then it came out that one of the original CGI artists had created illegal backups, so yay some of the original CGI assets still exist after all, but Warner Bros were not happy.
That makes a kind of sense, but it kind of surprises me that a production company would be so slipshod with its assets that it likely invested quite a lot of money and time in developing. Oh well. I guess I’ll never understand the corporate executive mindset. I don’t consider this a personal flaw or liability, for the record… 
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