What ships SHOULD they have used in the Dominion War?
- Thread starter Arpy
- Start date
Dreadnought is another classification that is often misused as a type classification as it's more of a naval history term rather than a proper naval classification. For instance, the US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa-class_battleship is a dreadnought in historical terms because it build on the innovations from the HMS Dreadnought, but was always known as a (fast) battleship officially.
The B5 wiki suggests "medium" which is a bit of a nonsense term, but I'd certainly go with it being a modern cruiser/destroyer.
I get that, basically any ship regardless of its size was seen doing the job of a Galaxy-class starship. So that would be the question, why build the Galaxy in the first place or any ship that large? What was the building of the Galaxy's purpose? Given what we have seen onscreen, it was because the other galactic powers have large ships with a powerful weapons system and the citizens of the Federation needs to be protected first and foremost.
Granted the ship designations mentioned may all be misnomers, but a defensive force still need ships that fill the roles of big guns whether its called battleship, battlecruiser, heavy cruiser to light cruisers, destroyers, frigates, corvettes, patrol ships. We still hear ships doing those roles despite being explorer and science ships.
Granted the ship designations mentioned may all be misnomers, but a defensive force still need ships that fill the roles of big guns whether its called battleship, battlecruiser, heavy cruiser to light cruisers, destroyers, frigates, corvettes, patrol ships. We still hear ships doing those roles despite being explorer and science ships.
The basic advantage of the Galaxy-class over earlier "cruiser"/"starship" designs is its significantly greater capacity to mission specialist/passenger capacity relative to the amount of crew required to operate it.
As far as parity with aggressor species, my reading is that Starfleet typically tries to have at least frontline "exploration vessel" (originally known as 'starships' but latterly as 'explorers') that can go toe-to-toe with enemy battlecruisers, though battleships might require some creativity to destroy rather than disable.
As far as parity with aggressor species, my reading is that Starfleet typically tries to have at least frontline "exploration vessel" (originally known as 'starships' but latterly as 'explorers') that can go toe-to-toe with enemy battlecruisers, though battleships might require some creativity to destroy rather than disable.
The Galaxy design may have been sold as an Exploration Cruiser, but was just as much a show piece, to show off the Awesome-ness of the Federation.
Supposing that you are willing to devote large resources for a show piece....how many ships do you need for that?
What I have seen mentioned online....
The initial batch of Galaxies numbered half a dozen. The components for another half dozen were produced, and went into storage. The idea being, if the Galaxy proved to be a disappointment, the stored components could be assembled into a version of a Nebula.
And within a decade three of the initial batch were lost. (Yes, I know that the Enterprise D was salvaged). Instead of building the War Galaxies, I would have used the stored parts to throw together some Nebulas.
Supposing that you are willing to devote large resources for a show piece....how many ships do you need for that?
What I have seen mentioned online....
The initial batch of Galaxies numbered half a dozen. The components for another half dozen were produced, and went into storage. The idea being, if the Galaxy proved to be a disappointment, the stored components could be assembled into a version of a Nebula.
And within a decade three of the initial batch were lost. (Yes, I know that the Enterprise D was salvaged). Instead of building the War Galaxies, I would have used the stored parts to throw together some Nebulas.
Last edited:
Maybe finishing the "War Galaxies" was faster than reengineering them into Nebulas? The second ship lost was lost to the Dominion. Yamato to an ancient computer virus. Enterprise to the Klingons around the time Starfleet would have started pulling up those Galaxies to bolster up the fleet. Though I assume they pulled one earlier to use as a replacement for Yamato.
The Galaxy-class was designed for long duration deep space exploration missions. Hense why it had families on board and massive technologies for sciences, defense, and entertainment. It was a small warp capable starbase. If the Enterprise wasn't constantly pulled back into Federation space for emergencies and showing off the flag missions, she would have headed out into deep space and not seen a Federation outpost for years at a time. The trouble is that her mission clashes with what the writers did to her after giving us her mission statement in "Encounter at Farpoint". USS Voyager more or less was doing what the Galaxy-class was designed for, just in reverse.
The Galaxy-class was designed for long duration deep space exploration missions. Hense why it had families on board and massive technologies for sciences, defense, and entertainment. It was a small warp capable starbase. If the Enterprise wasn't constantly pulled back into Federation space for emergencies and showing off the flag missions, she would have headed out into deep space and not seen a Federation outpost for years at a time. The trouble is that her mission clashes with what the writers did to her after giving us her mission statement in "Encounter at Farpoint". USS Voyager more or less was doing what the Galaxy-class was designed for, just in reverse.
A Nebula is just a nerfed Galaxy though. There are many examples of the Galaxy-class distinguishing itself during the Dominion War, and we don't see a single one being lost; the Nebula seems to be very average in comparison, and off the top of my head we see at least two getting destroyed.
I would counter that the Nebula-class came first and the Galaxy are just a stretched Nebula. Nebula-class starships were used enough against the Cardassians that Gul Macet knew their capabilities against his own fleet. We have only seen Galaxy-class starships do within the border missions with rare exceptions. Yamato and the Enterprise were lost in and around known space. The Odyssey was sent as a don't-mess-with-the-Federation mission (it was a military mission).
So ended up being used as one. There may have been a need for such. If the Federation kept expanding, there may have been a tendency for established star bases to be left far behind.
If I recall correctly, in the novels the exploration mission was given to the Luna class.
Last edited:
We don't know Nebulas came first, and it seems likely to me that even if they were built first the Galaxy was designed first as the "family archetype" from which derived ships descended.
Actually, I believe the opposite is true. Based on registry numbers, I believe ships like the New Orleans, Challenger, Cheyenne, Springfield, Olympic and Nebula classes came first, and the Galaxy class was the last ship to incorporate the design elements of those older classes.
While the USS Melbourne study model was built to the same scale as the Galaxy class, the actual filming model of the Nebula class Phoenix that it was based on was supposed to be a smaller ship, scaled like the rest of the BoBW kitbashes. But the budget only allowed for the Enterprise-D molds to be used for it.
Like I said – the Galaxy-class was designed first as the pinnacle of the next technological generation of ships, but all those ships that have obvious design similarities with the Galaxy while being smaller were part of the development process to test specific features or manufacturing techniques before the final construction of the Galaxy-class brought all of those new technologies together in one place. This would explain why the Galaxy-class seems to have had such a long build time.
That's very interesting, I'd never heard that the Nebula was originally supposed to be smaller (New Orleans-sized, perhaps?), though that would certainly explain why the Nebula saucer seems to be missing a lot of windows compared to the Galaxy. I always felt the Nebula scaled to the same size as the Galaxy was too bulky to be a sort of "Galaxy-fied Miranda". Then again a Nebula is about 75% the volume of a Galaxy and a Miranda is about 93% the size of a Constitution II so...
One can imagine Starfleet slapping in a second warp core into a partly built Galaxy-class starship with room to spare. Not for more warp speed, but for more power for weapons and shields. Might have even been part of the design lineage for the Ross-class, by having the extra core in the saucer section.
Gotcha. I might have misunderstood you before.
That's very interesting, I'd never heard that the Nebula was originally supposed to be smaller (New Orleans-sized, perhaps?), though that would certainly explain why the Nebula saucer seems to be missing a lot of windows compared to the Galaxy. I always felt the Nebula scaled to the same size as the Galaxy was too bulky to be a sort of "Galaxy-fied Miranda". Then again a Nebula is about 75% the volume of a Galaxy and a Miranda is about 93% the size of a Constitution II so...
From Memory Alpha’s article on the Nebula class filming model:
If the Nebula was supposed to be considerably smaller than the Galaxy design....
Could a secondary goal of Project Galaxy have been to create a multi-role cruiser....to replace the Excelsior class?
Could a secondary goal of Project Galaxy have been to create a multi-role cruiser....to replace the Excelsior class?
I don’t think so. I think the intent was that the Galaxy class was just the pinnacle of the earlier Galaxy family of smaller ship designs, and after a small production run, would end, and the ‘next-next’ generation of ships based on the newer Sovereign class would be produced (and the Sovereign would take the place of the Excelsior class.) Of course that all goes out the window with LDS and PIC showing the Obena and Excelsior II classes, respectively.
(BTW, I hate those designs. The Obena is just sloppy and lazy, and the Excelsior II is an unnecessary tribute.)
I like the Excelsior II, but it would make more sense if the Excelsior hadn't been around until comparatively recently without any obvious external modification from its 23rd century look. I'd still take it over any of the STO ships PIC canonised though, up to and including the Constitution III.
It did always strike me as odd that the Galaxy-class only had one warp core when it had plenty of room for more, especially once it was revealed that the Intrepid-class had a spare core. It seems like one big central point of failure, especially when we consider that the Galaxy-class was supposed to go on multi-year exploratory missions alone. It's not like it didn't have space for all that extra plumbing.
Given the relatively lower registry number on the Excelsior IIs, I can imagine them having been built a while ago as an enlarged Excelsior and since modified to look how the do in the 25th century. That would fit with some of the incorrectly scaled Excelsiors we saw in TNG and DS9, since several of those were also in the 42000s hull numbers.
I dunno. I'm not really feeling the whole 'two differently scaled Excelsiors that look identical but are different sizes' hypothesis. I mean, it's not like when the Defiant magically changed scale depending on which episode it was in, that it was actually a different Defiant. Scale is just...off, in Star Trek, and always has been. And anyway, it's not like the Excelsior NCC-42037 is a refit of the Excelsior NCC-2000. I got every impression (other than the registry numbers) that the Excelsior II was a new design as of the 2400's.
Maybe, but the same couldn't be said of the Klingon Bird of Prey... I've seen analysis of that that suggest as many as three different sizes for the Bounty just in The Voyage Home.
