The First 100 Years (Speculation)

[ryctor2008]

Because Enterprise was cancelled before we could really see past the Federation's founding, and TOS is 100 years after that, we can only speculate on Trek tech. I'd like to throw out there everyone's view's on ship types, classes (I already know about the Dadaleus) and whatnot. The Fed as a new interstellar power. What about the Klingons? The war with Romulus had to end in a positive area (of course!) as far as tech goes, or the Klingons would move on in. What about the difficulties of combining tech from four former independent powers.

If you really wanna go far out, you could think of the geo-political and social aspects as well. This new space nation might have had a few bumps in the road in it's first couple of decades as well. It's late and I'm kinda tired, so I'll post my thesis on this come sun up.

Ryctor!

 

[JNG]

You raise an interesting question, in that I really am curious about the outcome of the Romulan War. You're right that if they had been weakened, it is only reasonable that the Klingons could have taken advantage. This is just another reason I doubt the Romulans were in an especially bad position after the war, since the Neutral Zone business seems much more like an agreement drafted by equals who wanted to end conflict and less like terms forced on a defeated party by a victor.

As for ship types, I like to think the idea of generalized "starships" started early, meaning powerful multipurpose ships enabled by the combined technical expertise of the early Federation members. I'm a bit weirded out that the Vulcans seemed to be sitting on ships nearly as fast as NCC-1701 by the time the Federation came together, but maybe they hit some sort of limitation on the annular warp business (possibly just that it didn't integrate well) and development on the outboard-nacelles flavor took priority for a while. I don't want to subscribe to the idea that the Vulcans weren't sharing their best stuff with the other members; that's kind of hard on them and not really in the spirit of Star Trek, and I can't imagine they'd join up in name only and then not play ball.

Socially speaking, I wonder what female Tellarites look like.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Socially speaking, I wonder what female Tellarites look like.

They look and sound just like male Tellarites, beard and all, thus great social care must be taken when initiating mating to avoid any... embarassing incidents.

Back on topic, I imagine that the initial Federation would have been a very unstable power, and would go through multiple organizations of government, before settling on their current setup. The Federation would have probably been a relativley weak power throughout the 22nd century, militarily outclassed by races such as the Klingons and constantly plagued by Orion raiders. The Federation wouldn't become a superpower until around the 2260s, most likely influenced by a cold war with the Klingons.

The initial Federation Starfleet would have been formed out of the space fleets of the Humans, Vulcans, Andorians and Tellarites mashed together and given a unified registry scheme, command structure etc. The Federation Starfleet would have eventually started making its own new designs, which would incorporate elements from all the races (resulting the classic 2 hull and engines setup).

 

[Praetor]

Adding to what you guys have said, I imagine the modern multipurpose 'starship' probably rose out of the limitations of each of the members' fleets that initially made up the fleet and the limitations in juggling deployments based on capabilites. For example, the Tellarite ships are slow, the Vulcans are poorly armed, the Starfleet ships had no shields, the Andorians had no science labs, and so on. So Admiral Smartguy says 'We need a ship that doesn't have any limits!' and behold, the modern Class One Starship is eventually born.

I see the cooperation as limited at first - or rather, forced. I imagine the combined command structure is basically there from the joint war efforts and from the Coalition of Planets, it just required some post-war refinement. (I'm not sure what fleet numbers we could infer, but I'm guessing the combined UFP fleet would be around 500 at most.) We would then have joint fleets deployed to various locations based upon ship-ability, in turn defining mission roles such as cruiser, scout, and science ship. So when they begin commissioning ships at first, its new ships that fill the same roles originated by each race's ship's abilities and limitations, building towards having those AND the multi-mission cruisers.

I think shipbuilding probably slid back from the ambitious NX-era designs towards simpler, cheaper, more reliable ships such as Daedalus and then builds back towards more ambitious designs. I see Daedalus as being the first ship built of combined technology between all the races, and the template for modern ship design, if not nearly as capable as, say, Constitution class ships, and by no means a full multi-mission starship.

One nagging question is this: why does it seem like Earth starship design dominates Starfleet? If primary hull/secondary hull/nacelles is a human thing before the UFP, why does it seem to continue unimproved... advanced, but unimproved. I infer that it was the superior configuration (for various reasons of economy, efficiency, etc.), and that Starfleet simply combined all the technologies into and refined that basic form. I guess it depends on where you think Daedalus falls on the family tree too. You can justify it as a pre-UFP cooperation project, or it could in fact be an Earth ship. Maybe the Coalition of Planets solves that issue though... the Daedalus was a combined tech Coalition experiment commissioned as part of the war effort, before UFP founding, but is immediately absorbed into the interstellar Starfleet?

Where then do the Andorian ships go, and the Vulcan ships? I'd say they are retired as they are replaced, but constituent worlds also maintain small non-Starfleet reserve armadas, and in turn there are all-alien Starfleet ships such as U.S.S. Intrepid from TOS being all-Vulcan. There would also perhaps be an all-Andorian U.S.S. Shran.

I'd say that there was probably a bigger, better version of the basic Daedalus design commissioned in the 2180s that was maybe rated as a Warp Seven engine. (Let's call this the Horizon class.) I imagine that by 2210 the saucer design replaces the sphere of Daedalus with probably NX-1100 which I'll call Essex class for no real reason. By this time I'd also say that shuttles have been replaced as primary transit by multi-person transporters. Then by 2245 you have the first Constitution class ship. Phasers and photon torpedoes don't arrive until about 2260, completing the 100 years.

 

[ryctor2008]

I had wrote a nice elaborate reply to this post. But, I was on a wireless connection that timed out and dropped me! So, now I'll just shorthand it.

Basically, the Federation post 2161 is sorta like NATO in my view. The former powers are slowly learning how to work together and form a unified interstellar nation. As far as ships go, the NX class ships that are still in service by that time probably would have been upgraded because of the war. (Wars, unfortunately, tend to have the side-effect of advancement in military tech). Vulcan, Tellarite, Andorian, and Human ships would roam each respective's home sectors, and some General or Admiral would assign ships of various classes to interstellar space and the Klingon and Tholian border. I believe this would continue until about 2190-2210.

The powers would of course share technology in the young nation; however there would be bumps in the road that would slow down development for a few years.

Ryctor!