Mr. Oragahn wrote:Of course his point was that the Russian had a BS system. Considering that some see the UFP as a communist gimmick in space...
Still, I think his point was just to say it can be anything. But on the other hand, he didn't really show how your arguments were bad.
While that's true, there was a reason for Russia to try and hide its numbers. When it was the USSR, they were locked into a cold war with us, so them switching it up isn't all that hard to understand. And in modern times, they constantly put up a tough poker face. I even pointed that out to Leo1, which he seemed to happily ignore.
Perhaps he doesn't like the reality that the UFP may have a greater concentration of firepower over its own territory. After all, a 600 meters long Galxy class seems to be more capable than an ISD: the more we keep going with the higher canon, the weaker the ships seem to be.
Well, he's kind of a nutter to begin with =p.
In any case, if we wanted to go with the registry numbers as silly, that wouldn't help him. I could simply point out then, several devistating points:
1) According to him, Voyager, their fastest ship, can only move at 1,000c. Older ships such as Excelsior, Miranda, Ambassador, Centaur, and so forth are probably up to 200c slower.
2) In both the Klingon Civil War and Wolf 359, Starfleet managed to assemble roughly 30-40 ships in a day.
Conclusion: Starfleet would have a massive fleet if spread over 8,000 light years, they can summon dozens of ships to meet with an enemy or a conflicting force. Even with far smaller concentration of ships, the mass of starfleet would be in the
hundreds of thousands.
So the large output/commission rate is because they schedule many works at once, even if it's going to take several years to complete them.
Correct, which is probably the case with larger ships like the Excelsior, Ambassador, Nebula, and the Galaxy class. That's probably why the Miranda's are still in service. They're faster and cheaper to build than the much larger ships and because at the time bigger = better, building the Miranda's didn't really hurt them much at all. That's also probably why we have ships like the Akira class, Steamrunner, and Defiant showing up more and more; they're much easier for Starfleet to build.
Well, if those small crafts do have NCC numbers, and since we saw a Galaxy-class have several of such ships as escorts during the Dominion war, probably at the beginning since they were surprised that the Jemmies would be kamikazes, there's still the possibility that those ships, easy to build, represent an appreciable fraction of the total ship count.
On the other hand, we rarely see them in large battles.
We actually don't see them at all throughout the Dominion War in terms of large scale battles. Given that runabouts are typically written off as SOL by the crew against a single Jem Bug, there's probably a reason for it.
I'm sure Starfleet had a great deal of them, but remember that they started around when DS9 started, probably produced a year or so before the show.
What about the Starfleet fighters? Those seemed to be used in larger quantities during the Dominion war, and if Runabouts and a few Delta Flyers can get their own NCC, why not the fighters?
Delta Flyers to my knowledge, did not have registry numbers. As for fighters, again, no. Runabouts and small range craft such as them were made to supplement starships, so that precious resources would have to be wasted on stations who needed a bit more range.
A Galaxy is a lot of wasted space when you want a purely military ship. But a Deridex? Are those science vessels? I doubt it. All those Talshiar and Obsidian Order ships were clearly going in for an operation of mass destruction, and by default they're warships. OK, Galors may suck a bit, though, but in TDiC, there had to be other mini fleets spread around the planet (no matter how you define the damage, the ships we saw could not have affected 30% of the crust on their own - otherwise we'd have to modify our understanding of the 30% figure).
I can easily imagine some concessions made to shields on multiple points (max strength, plus little power given to them at D-day considering they would put everything in weapons).
Supposedly they do have science labs. I can't imagine those take up too much room though.
But do consider that the Romulans are considered to be inferior to both the Klingons and the Federation, even if it's just by a bit.
The analogy I can suggest is like submarines broadcasting their registry number, along having it strapped to their hulls in full glaring neon. Since navies worldwide don't communicate on their submarines, and even accidents between submarines of opposed forces are quite embarassing and incredible to boot.
Seems pretty external to me.
Nothing forces you to display your name so openly when it's all for insider parperwork.
Let's consider for a moment. As I've mentioned before, Starfleet took a great deal of inspiration from the USN. Another thing is that we can probably be sure that Starfleet is a science and exploration power first--defensive force second. Purely from a political standpoint, them trying to hide their registry numbers would pretty much spit in the face of the image that we know Starfleet holds pretty dear to them (ie, Kirk, Picard, Sisko, and Janeway all insisted heavily upon the concept of Starfleet being about science and exploration).
During peace time. But the UFP was at war, and not only against the Dominion, but against the Klingons and the Romulans before that.
Giving free information such as this to your enemy when you could actually hide it, and gain from hiding it, is simply silly.
But then, again, not all militaries in the world are perfect, and the fact that the UFP refused for whiles to develop pure military ships is just going along that road. It's no surprise to me.
Well, the Defiant is a pure military warships--more or less. The Sovereign and the Akira probably aren't that far behind. And the Akira has been around for some time. But they do definantly seem to keep those ships on the back burner most of the time.
The headcount isn't really the only important part of any strategical intelligence. Knowing about the status of a ship you engaged is a great plus. Now imagine the ships have no NCC. Suddenly, your enemy doesn't know if the Nebula it's fighting against is the same one that's been spotted or engaged or even successfully damaged a few days/weeks/months ago.
That's a fair point.
The gaps in NCC numbers mean ship production capacities around a thousand a year.
The question is if they can build a thousand ship a year, that is, they begin one in 2000 and it's finished in 2001, or if they can order several ships (a thousand across the entire UFP), even if takes several years to build.
Both. Ships like the Defiant are about 120 meters long and are cramped. Not very big. The GCS is like 72% larger in length, dozens of times in height, and are spacious and roomy. It probably only takes half a year to complete a Defiant class, where as a Galaxy would require years of building. Hence again, why Starfleet probably built so many bloody Miranda.
Let's see, we know that the Sovereign was built between 2370 and 2373. Let's assume one year was spent on research, planning, and so forth. That gives us say, 5 years of construction for the Sovereign, assuming that the Enterprise E had just been released.
Let's look at what Starfleet was looking at. In mid 2366, the Enterprise D encountered a hostile and powerful enemy. Logically, they'd start ramping up production. We'll assume this is all started by 2366.8. Assuming it takes five years to build a GCS, these ships wouldn't see service until late 2371. And then of course, the scare Starfleet got in 2367 no doubt sent the orders for ships skyrocketing.
However, we're also told that Starfleet stopped mass production when the threat died away. So let's assume a 2.5-3 year freeze, until the growing Dominion threat. Therefore, Starfleet would only have continued production in 2372.5ish and 2373ish, during the growing Dominion threat.
Let's assume the following:
Defiant: .5 years
Miranda: 1 year
Excelsior: 2 years
Akira: 3 years
Nebula: 3.5 years
Galaxy: 5 years
Sovereign: 5 years
Runabout: 1 month
Let's also assume Starfleet made the following orders:
15 Defiants in 2371 and 10 more in 2372 and 25 more in mid 2373
300 Miranda in 2366 and 150 more in 2367
150 Excelsior in 2366 and 100 more in 2367
150 Akira in 2366 and 200 more in 2367 (assume a 3 year freeze, 80%)
100 Nebula in 2366 and 50 more in 2367 (assume a 3 year freeze 90%)
50 Galaxy in 2366 and 50 more in 2367 (assume a 3 year freeze 90%)
500 Runabouts in 2369, 500 more in 2370, 1,000 more in 2371, 500 more in 2372, and 200 more in 2373 (freeze due to Dominion-Federation Cold War)
2367.5
300 Miranda are put into service in preperation of the Borg threat
2368
150 Excelsior ships are finished.
150 Miranda ships are finished
2369
100 Excelsiors finished
500 runabouts built and comissioned
100 Akira finished
100 Nebula finished
2370
500 runabouts finished
40 Akira are finished
10 Nebula are finished
2371
Mid year, Starfleet produces 15 new Defiant class ships.
1,000 runabouts finished
5 Galaxies are finished
2372
10 Defiants finished
500 Runabouts finished
5 Galaxies are finished
2373
25 Defiants finished
Remaining hulls continued
2374
Remaining hulls completed
Mith seems to think it's the later, if I got it right. Are you saying it's actually the former?
I admit I have no data to work from for either suggestions.
I think he's suggesting more of a mixture.