Why angled nacelle struts on the Enterprise refit?
- Thread starter JonnyQuest037
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We also see that in Star Trek; in the differences between the Enterprise and the Constellation.
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Well, they had to keep on patching them up after those severe but not immediately lethal hits from the Romulan atomic weapons...
Timo Saloniemi
agreed, although the differences plus much lower hull number has always suggested a previous class vessel to me
Real World, not Romulan War
The fact the Nimitz "class" is 2 classes and about 4 subtypes inside a single hull frame?
Yup, it can be weird. But given how warp drive works and the volatile nature of how it always blows up so easily, taking a sledgehammer to it routinely sounds like a job no one would want...
That's something the old fan-published manuals made the most of. Ships of the Star Fleet and similar works fleshed out every concept art phase of the Enterprise (and a few of their own creation) as it's own subclass, all under the Constitution umbrella.
Hmm. I don't remember an umbrella: the Enterprise class was the Enterprise class, the Tikopai was the Tikopai, and the Constitution (II) class (or the Phase Two design) was only called that because the lead ship was the old Constitution.
Doesn't mean we couldn't read it otherwise, though.
Timo Saloniemi
Doesn't mean we couldn't read it otherwise, though.
Timo Saloniemi
Some old 70's books had about 4-6 variations that externally had little or no variance. Or tried to pass off the 3 configurations of the Enterprise between 2254 and 2269 as part of the line. And that was for the "original" class we know, the refit also had about 4 subtypes.
Starfleet Command the game had a thick booklet that I remember reading with some of it in the late 90's
It even went on to list major Excelsior, Miranda, Oberth variations etc
Within reason, I don't think that's entirely bad. It's pretty consistent with RL ship design. That being said, I think one has to be careful about taking a given design and changing one or two things and claiming it's a new design, even if it's intended to be a variant or subclasses. I've seen some of that with modern fan works intended to pick up the FASA Trekverse, and in many cases the designs don't look good. Granted, FASA's artwork wasn't stellar either, but... 
Excessive sub-classes is something navies do. Take the 24 Essex-class aircraft carriers built for World War II. They came in two configurations at the start ("long bow" and "short bow"). By the end if their respective careers, the US Navy had reclassified them into six classes based on the various modifications, rebuilds, and job classifications they had by the time the last one was retired in 1991.
Yorktown-class (8 ships)
Intrepid-class (1 ship)
Hancock-class (5 ships)
Franklin-class (6 ships)
Lexington-class (1 ship)
Boxer-class (3 ships)
Note that by the end, none are classified as "Essex-class" anymore until after they are all retired. Than they regained their original class name to unify them again for ease of finding them in the historical record.
Yorktown-class (8 ships)
Intrepid-class (1 ship)
Hancock-class (5 ships)
Franklin-class (6 ships)
Lexington-class (1 ship)
Boxer-class (3 ships)
Note that by the end, none are classified as "Essex-class" anymore until after they are all retired. Than they regained their original class name to unify them again for ease of finding them in the historical record.
Did not know this. I love the kind of theory that brings different fan theories together, and yours does it. 4-5 different classes that look the same to most fans, but also would later all be called Constitution-class by people like Picard. Certainly explains how a ship could have a lower registry than its class ship, given that it was refit to the specs of that class. Maybe that also lets the ships whose registries start with 16 versus 17 mean something about their original equipment, too, like I've been saying on other threads.
For hull numbers I had a theory that Starfleet used a system where the first digit or two gave the star system the ship was built in as part of her hull code, thus making the number useful while also keeping the NCC part intact for unknown reasons. Thus you could have ships built at the same time in different star systems with widely different hull numbers and still make sense of it.
Say the 6xx starships are built at Antares, and in the 23rd century they have low construction numbers, thus you could have a few ships built there from before the 2240 and then later some built in the 2270s.
Say a 9xx starship is built at one of the former Andorian Empire's other star systems, thus USS Eagle is built there while the rest of the Constitution-class is being built.
The 16xx starships are built at a Vulcan shipyard while the 17xx starships are built at a shipyard in the Sol System.
(This works fairly well until Star Trek Discovery came out and the USS Discovery was built at the San Francisco Fleet Yards, the same as USS Enterprise, since Discovery is NCC-1031 and USS Enterprise is NCC-1701. Prior to that I would have had the 10xx series build at Izar so that USS Constellation could be built just after USS Constitution.)
Cool theory! I like it.
You must be the one who put forth his theory that I read before and quite enjoyed. You or someone else said that the last two digits in TOS might refer to "100 front-line vessels," meaning that Excalibur NCC-1664 was replaced by Defiant NCC-1764 that was replaced by Reliant NCC-1864.
Maybe it has something to do with role in the fleet. 00 is a prototype; 01 serves as the flagship/main exploration vessel; maybe 64 is for scientific research. (I know that the Enterprise was not the flagship in TOS, I'm just suggesting a framework for such a system).
Are there any ships in non-remastered Star Trek with registries that end in 01? Assuming that in TNG there are more than 100 "front-line" vessels, how many repeats are there in the last 3 (or 2 as needed) digits?
That doesn't count anyway, so your theory still stands.
Someone else did the last digits theory. Not sure how it works by the 24th century (USS Defiant is NX-74205 and USS Galaxy was NCC-70637). On the other hand mine probably doesn't work as well in the 24th century either, though as a shipyard uses up all its potential numbers, it gets assigned a new set, it may still be two digits, but it could also be three to take into account the various places all the different 74xxx ships are built (USS Voyager and USS Defiant were supposedly not built in the same star system...though I do wonder how USS Defiant wasn't built at Sol given that Sisko was assigned to Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards during the project). However all the Galaxy class ships (aside from Galaxy and Enterprise) seem to be 71xxx ships..in fact all the named ones aside from Challenger are 718xx ships (Challenger is NCC-71099 to reflect the space shuttle's OV-099 number). Galaxy was the prototype and built earlier than the others. All were probably built in in the Sol System, and Enterprise's number would still fit that since she's a 17xx ship. So it is possible that USS Challenger was built later in a different star system from Sol since the early ships of the class were built at Mars, making the hull code system up to three digits long for the system producer, but they only get 100 ships per code before they get a new code (00-99). That would mean that wherever USS Challenger was built would get a new code after getting her contract. Thus low number construction yards, emergency yards, or wartime production facilities could have lower hull numbers than much of the rest of the fleet because they haven't built many ships over the years, or haven't built a starship in a decade or two.
I've experimented a bit with trying to include the numbered elements in my personal "batch" system, but the fact that the canon numbers tended to be all over the place at times makes it a bit wonky. 
It's certainly interesting to think of one component being a base production number, since Jackill's system has a list of specific shipyards.
It's certainly interesting to think of one component being a base production number, since Jackill's system has a list of specific shipyards.A strong argument for the first THREE digits representing yard or class, with the next two representing ship. What I like about this is that it lets the numbers stay more or less chronological without discrediting fans that want the opening digits to have something to do with class. It makes sense for a facility to build mostly ships of the same class for a while and then switch after >100 units or so.
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