Why I think UFP longer number big starships

[Cocytus]

Um, what was it that Sarina or the rest of the Jack Pack was going to do that would force the Federation and allies to surrender soon enough to keep the causalties down to 2 billion?
-Mike

As I recall, the Jack Pack knocked Bashir unconscious and restrained him while they left to deliver crucial intelligence to the Dominion. Weyoun was on the station again for some reason. Bashir convinced Sarina to untie him, and he and a security detail intercepted Jack and co. while Damar and Weyoun ran into Odo in the cargo bay.

[The Dude]

As I recall, the Jack Pack knocked Bashir unconscious and restrained him while they left to deliver crucial intelligence to the Dominion. Weyoun was on the station again for some reason. Bashir convinced Sarina to untie him, and he and a security detail intercepted Jack and co. while Damar and Weyoun ran into Odo in the cargo bay.

So they intended to betray the Federation to the Dominion to keep the casualties down? I'm honestly not sure if I should be disgusted or not.

Um, what was it that Sarina or the rest of the Jack Pack was going to do that would force the Federation and allies to surrender soon enough to keep the causalties down to 2 billion?
-Mike

You can actually decipherer his posts? I'm thinking of putting Word back on my PC so I can translate them.

[Mike DiCenso]

Um, what was it that Sarina or the rest of the Jack Pack was going to do that would force the Federation and allies to surrender soon enough to keep the causalties down to 2 billion?
-Mike

As I recall, the Jack Pack knocked Bashir unconscious and restrained him while they left to deliver crucial intelligence to the Dominion. Weyoun was on the station again for some reason. Bashir convinced Sarina to untie him, and he and a security detail intercepted Jack and co. while Damar and Weyoun ran into Odo in the cargo bay.

I appreciate your trying to be helpful, but I'd wanted to see if Jason was able to answer the question himself. I was then going to see how that justified his earlier thesis.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

You can actually decipherer his posts? I'm thinking of putting Word back on my PC so I can translate them.

I'am not sure "decipher" is a good word as "take a really good guess".
-Mike

[Jasonb]

LAUREN said 2 billion people killed if hand information over to the Dominion to smell a number planetary bombardments to be likely answer. Earth after all as a population of most likely more six billion people. It also sounds like all deaths she talks about mostly if not all Starfleet crew and foot Starfleet soldiers.

[User1366]

I think it was pretty clear that the 900 billion included civilian casualties. Not only that, but that it's likely that those casualties would form the vast bulk. There's no way Starfleet personnel number anywhere near that much. According to Memory Beta, the Federation has a population of 9.85 trillion. For the notion that Starfleet has over 900 billion personnel to be true, over 10% of the population of the entire Federation would have to be in Starfleet, which is insane.

Moreover, the notion presumes a far more discriminating Dominion then what were were presented with on tv. The Dominion has absolutely no problems whatsoever with incurring civilian casualties, and in many cases, they find incurring mass quantities of civilian deaths to be perfectly acceptable. And considering that they're invading Federation territory, trying to conquer and occupy those worlds, mass numbers of civilian deaths is not only believable, but it's to be expected.

In addition, according to Ron Moore, the writers on the show generally assumed that the Federation had a fleet of about 30,000 ships. Assuming each of them has a crewsize equal to a Galaxy Class Starship (Which clearly is a stretch), that's 30,000,000 personnel. Quadruple that number for the manpower manning various ground installations, multiply that number times ten for their ground forces, and multiply that by ten for the numbers manning their starbases, and that's still only 750 million personnel. So even after massively exaggerating the numbers, we still haven't cracked 1 billion. So yeah, there's no way that number was made up solely of Starfleet personnel, or that even the majority were Starfleet. That was mostly civilian casualties.

[Mike DiCenso]

I think it was pretty clear that the 900 billion included civilian casualties. Not only that, but that it's likely that those casualties would form the vast bulk. There's no way Starfleet personnel number anywhere near that much. According to Memory Beta, the Federation has a population of 9.85 trillion. For the notion that Starfleet has over 900 billion personnel to be true, over 10% of the population of the entire Federation would have to be in Starfleet, which is insane.

First off, welcome to the forum! First off, Memory Beta's information is usually not something we tend to use around here since much of it is considered apocryphal according to CBS/Paramount's statements on what is canon for the Star Trek franchise. It would be hard to justify a Federation population of 10 trillion given an average population for each world of 6 billion (the population of Vulcan in the alternate Star Trek 2009 timeline 2258 was over 6 billion ) and roughly 150 member worlds, which would give us just about 900 billion as the minimum average total population, not including associate members, protectorates and colonies. Even doubling or tripling those numbers, assuming perhaps tens of thousands of the later types of worlds, you still wind up with less than 2-3 trillion for total population.

Moreover, the notion presumes a far more discriminating Dominion then what were were presented with on tv. The Dominion has absolutely no problems whatsoever with incurring civilian casualties, and in many cases, they find incurring mass quantities of civilian deaths to be perfectly acceptable. And considering that they're invading Federation territory, trying to conquer and occupy those worlds, mass numbers of civilian deaths is not only believable, but it's to be expected.

The most of the rest of the participants of this thread would generally agree with that reasoning.

In addition, according to Ron Moore, the writers on the show generally assumed that the Federation had a fleet of about 30,000 ships. Assuming each of them has a crewsize equal to a Galaxy Class Starship (Which clearly is a stretch), that's 30,000,000 personnel. Quadruple that number for the manpower manning various ground installations, multiply that number times ten for their ground forces, and multiply that by ten for the numbers manning their starbases, and that's still only 750 million personnel. So even after massively exaggerating the numbers, we still haven't cracked 1 billion. So yeah, there's no way that number was made up solely of Starfleet personnel, or that even the majority were Starfleet. That was mostly civilian casualties.

The number of crew on a starship seems to vary greatly. A GCS could, in a pinch carry at least 15,000 (as per TNG "Ensigns of Command") and the warship E-D of the "Yesterday's Enterprise" could haul around 6,000 troops. in DS9's "Field of Fire", the somewhat smaller Excelsior class U.S.S. Grissom was carrying 1,250 crew at the time of her destruction in the Battle of Ricktor Prime. Oh the other hand, a runabout, or Defiant class starship is not going to be able to carry but a fraction of those numbers.

That being said, The Dominion, Breen, and Cardassians had around 30,000 ships based on statements made in DS9's When It Rains...", so the idea of the Federation having a total of 30,000 or so ships is not outside the stretch of realism, but obviously it cannot divert all of those vessels from their assignments to fight.

However, looking at your numbers, you are correct that an average of 1,000 crew per ship gives around 30 million Starfleet personel. However, quadrupling that number gives us 30,000,000 x 4 = 120,000,000. Multiplied by a factor of 10, you get 1.2 billion, not 750 million. This all assumes, of course, that Starfleet has indeed 30,000 starships at it's disposal.
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

This all assumes, of course, that Starfleet has indeed 30,000 starships at it's disposal.

Even if it does, from the fleet deployments we've seen in DS9, most of them will be Excelsiors, and while the Excelsior can carry over 1000 men and women, I do believe that would be the exception, not the rule...

[Jedi Master Spock]

First off, welcome to the forum! First off, Memory Beta's information is usually not something we tend to use around here since much of it is considered apocryphal according to CBS/Paramount's statements on what is canon for the Star Trek franchise. It would be hard to justify a Federation population of 10 trillion given an average population for each world of 6 billion (the population of Vulcan in the alternate Star Trek 2009 timeline 2258 was over 6 billion ) and roughly 150 member worlds, which would give us just about 900 billion as the minimum average total population, not including associate members, protectorates and colonies. Even doubling or tripling those numbers, assuming perhaps tens of thousands of the later types of worlds, you still wind up with less than 2-3 trillion for total population.

No, it isn't. It's terribly easy. All you're doing is assigning an average population of ~60 billion per member world, whether due to occasional high-population worlds or colonies.

It's also long-tailed distribution. A couple homeworlds with a very high population would make the mean population substantially greater than 6 without shifting the median substantially. A couple homeworlds with large numbers of colonies (e.g., Earth) would do so as well.

Let's take Earth. Earth's got hundreds to thousands of viable colonies - call it a thousand by TOS and you'd be within the margins of citation, assume exponential growth since the invention of warp drive and you could say 30,000. Most of those would have next to no population; if 90% had a population of less than a million (averaging 30,000), and 90% of the remainder less than a billion (averaging, say, 30 million in this group), and 1% of those had multi-billion populations - (with, say, typically 3 billion) then we'd have 980 billion humans.

Now, that may seem like a lot of heavily populated worlds, but even some pretty obscure worlds have large populations (Archer IV). There could easily be 900 billion humans alone running around. All you need is a thousand colonies like Archer IV, some assorted spacers/asteroid miners running around, a few thousand more tiny colonies that almost nobody cares about, and a handful of major worlds like Earth with billions of people.

We've talked about Gideon, but even having the case of a substantial minority of homeworlds with ~100 billion population attached to them (between colonies or high in-system populations) wouldn't be so strange. 10% of the Federation's members could easily account for half its population.

I would say 10 trillion is an upper-end conclusion, but given the fact that the Federation was expected to recover in a mere handful of generations, we can be dead certain that the population of the Federation wasn't exactly 900 billion, but rather, almost certainly over 2 trillion.

My personal opinion is that if you wanted to construct a ~90% confidence interval on the population of the Federation, you'd have to say something along the lines of "2 to 10 trillion." I'm comfortable working anywhere in that range.

[Mike DiCenso]

This all assumes, of course, that Starfleet has indeed 30,000 starships at it's disposal.

Even if it does, from the fleet deployments we've seen in DS9, most of them will be Excelsiors, and while the Excelsior can carry over 1000 men and women, I do believe that would be the exception, not the rule...

We really do not know if that is the exception or the rule one way or the other. In fact, as far as I can recall, that is the only hard and fast crew size statement ever given for an Excelsior class starship.
-Mike

[The Dude]

We really do not know if that is the exception or the rule one way or the other. In fact, as far as I can recall, that is the only hard and fast crew size statement ever given for an Excelsior class starship.
-Mike

As much as I would approve of such a number (ST ships are seriously undermanned given what happens in RL), it doesn't much mesh with what we see in the shows in regards to other ships. The Big E had only around 450 and the GCS had a mere thousand-ish. It's actually a wonder we saw so many folks int he halls as we did.

That must be one lonely ass ship to serve on.

[User1366]

However, looking at your numbers, you are correct that an average of 1,000 crew per ship gives around 30 million Starfleet personel. However, quadrupling that number gives us 30,000,000 x 4 = 120,000,000. Multiplied by a factor of 10, you get 1.2 billion, not 750 million. This all assumes, of course, that Starfleet has indeed 30,000 starships at it's disposal.

Apologies if I wasn’t clear. I meant taking the original number and multiplying it by four to get number of ground installation personnel. Then taking the original number, again, and multiplying it by 10 to get ground forces. And taking the original number, again, and multiplying it for starbase personnel, and so on. In other words (Y x 4) + (Y x 10) + (Y x 10) + Y, not Y x 4 x 10 x 10.

[Mike DiCenso]

Ah okay. But even still most of this is working off of one assumption and then another. We know very little of how many personel are required to man a massive 14 km space station like Starbase 74, or the dozens of smaller lattice frame drydock stations, or anything else we've seen. At minimum thousands. And then there are the ground based starbases, shipyards, numerous outposts and so on. It's all guesswork. But I doubt we're looking at more than low single digit billions for the entirety of Starfleet.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

We really do not know if that is the exception or the rule one way or the other. In fact, as far as I can recall, that is the only hard and fast crew size statement ever given for an Excelsior class starship.
-Mike

As much as I would approve of such a number (ST ships are seriously undermanned given what happens in RL), it doesn't much mesh with what we see in the shows in regards to other ships. The Big E had only around 450 and the GCS had a mere thousand-ish. It's actually a wonder we saw so many folks int he halls as we did.

That must be one lonely ass ship to serve on.

With the GCS, we have to bear in mind that a portion of that 1,014 or number of people onboard were also non-Starfleet families. A number that probably fluctuated over time since not everyone desires to, or has a family to lug around with them.

That being said, the number of people on a starship has always struck me as oddly undermanned for certain situations. Mainly because many of the newer writers just never had the ability to wrap their minds around the numbers in the first place. Same thing with Star Wars. Only 37,000 total crew, pilots and Stormtroopers combined for an ISD compliment? A GCS, never mind an ISD, have enourmous amounts of volume. Granted a good portion of that has to be devoted to things like propulsion, fuel storage, support services, weapons and shields. But you still have enough left over to support easily tens of thousands of people in the saucer section of a GCS. For a good real life example, the famous oceanliners RMS Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, each easily more than ten times smaller than a GCS in volume, were each able to hold up to nearly 16,000 troops and crew during transport runs in WW II. Although it should be noted that normally the Queens in peace time would be operating with a maximum of 3,240 passengers and crew. Modern aircraft carriers operate with similar compliments (about 4,000-5,000) though it tends to be divided fairly evenly between crew operating the ship, and the air wing crews.

Now translating that to a GCS, while I understand that we want to show that the ship is highly automated and all, the crew does not have to be necessarily devoted to running and maintaining the vessel. Given the massive internal habitable volume we've seen for these ships, one would think that there would be a substantial amount of crew devoted towards security. At least a thousand. Scientists would make up another substantial amount, followed by engineering and shuttle crews. The command and ops crews would only need be a couple hundred at most. So all total, not including familes, we should see no less than 2,500 Starfleet personel on a ship the size of a GCS, SCS, or NCS.
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

Nothing in the modern boats even approach the size of Warp Necelles.
Also keep in mind all the laboratories, sensor equipment, fusion plants, flight decks, storage, fuel, Phaser systems, Torpedo bays and launchers (which we don't see on cruise ships yet) and let's not forget that the crew quarters, even for lower ranking officers (Robin Lefler and others), seem pretty big compared to the passenger cabins of a cruise liner.
All of this may take up a lot of space...