Estimating Dominion fleet strength and industrial ability
This will be my own feeble attempt to try and roughly gauge what in theory the Dominion could field. I would classify it at best "thinking out loud" and no doubt riddled with errors and logical mistakes. Okay enough with the babble and with the whole estimating thing. Due to the Dominion largely being unseen, we saw relatively little of their holdings during DS9 I'll attempt to gauge a rough bracket through examples of other races/organizations which are equal too or less than the Dominion.
1.The human rebels from the mirror universe
While from an alternate reality the example is still impressive enough and the rebels pathetic enough to warrant mention. We know in Shattered Mirror (DS9 obviously) Sisko is taken back to the mirror universe where a Defiant class starship is has been created at the mirror Terok Nor. The plans were stated to have been stolen O'Brien when he crossed over in the episode through the looking glass (DS9) in late 2371. At that time the rebels consisted of a rag-tag band struggling to even get a man on board the station. An actual assault on the station, simply to capture a human scientist and not to hold it for any length of time, in 2371 was dismissed as unlikely to succeed. Yet from late 2371 to mid 2372 the rebellion had managed to overtake the station, hold it and began construction on the Defiant replica with what at best could be described as limited resources and personal. Even assuming O'Brien launched and captured the station perfectly intact and functional with abundant resources to manufacture one of the more advanced warships in the Federation arsenal the moment Sisko left back to the Trekverse the most you could stretch this out would be 365 days to construct, assuming starting at the start of 2371 and ending with a complete warship at the end of 2372. When you consider that forces had to be built up to take the station, the damage inflicted in such an assault and simply moving the resources to the station needed to build the ship you could easily reduce the estimated construction time to half or a quarter and all this canonically from a bunch of rebels on the borderline losing end of a war. While projections upwards from such tiny source would be problematic at best it does imply that a dedicated Dominion shipyard should be able to churn out the mass equivalent of the Defiant on a yearly basis at least.
2. Cardassia's Obsidian order
In the Episode Defiant(DS9) Tom Riker leads the aformentioned vessel against a Cardasian system believed to be a military build up. During the course of the episode it is revealed that thier is such a buildup by the Obsidian order which even Gul Dukat wasn't aware of until the ships exited the system to attack the Defiant. While we were not privy to the actual system, it's shipyard(s) or actual number of ships we learned later in TDIC that the vessels were in fact meant for a first strike against the Dominion and the total Romulan and Cardasian were twenty warships. Assuming the two intelligence agencies split the ship count equally this means the Obsidian order built ten ships. While this is hardly an imposing force it was against Cardasian law for the Obsidian order, their gestapo equilivent, to build or operate such vessels and had to keep it's construction a secret from all but the select few possible in on the secret which considering the races involved and their paranoia was a short list. This in turn implies that while devoting enough resources to cripple both organizations with their destruction was not the grand sum of resources otherwise the respective governments may have "officially" noticed. We can also safely assume the Cardassian empire, a third rate power, would have a much, much larger rate. As to the production rate we can only guess as no mention that I am aware of concerns when this deal was formed. We could assume this was hatched in late 2370 or early 2371 with the offical reveal of the Dominion and it's military might which means in less than twelve months the entire operation was set up, built and carried out as TDIC (DS9) was not quite at the end of the season. If we assume the Obsidian order built for eleven solid months, the first spent setting up operation, we would have nearly a Keldon per month, .91 to be precise, comparable if superior to what the rebels did with the Defiant.
Conversely the plan may have been started back in Rules of Acquisition(DS9) when the Grand Nagus was aware of the Dominion existence, but nothing else, back in early 2370. This would give the the order nearly two full years to prepare and build through it seems slightly over kill for such an operation for two races with almost zero contact with the Gamma quadrant to go jumping after what could have been at that point ghost stories and rumors. However assuming this anyway we get five vessels per year or .42 ships per month for a clandestine secret police force.
Federation rebuilding after wolf three five nine.
shelby wrote:We'll have the fleet back up in
less than a year...
(to Riker)
I... imagine you'll get your choice
of any Starfleet command, sir
The losses in question were 39 vessels lost at wolf three five nine. Now the initial problem is less than a year is an imprecise term since 364 days and 1 days can be truthfully described as that. For this purpuse I am making the arbitrary assumption that Commander Shelby meant 6+ months on the arbitrary assumption that she would have said something to the effect of "in half a year" "quarter of a year" etc had the time been less. From this we can estimate how many ships the Federation, at peace time and not gearing for war, can build. First we can assume it would take eleven months to replace the 39 vessels, the fleet being back up to pre-battle conditions, which would imply 3.5 ships per month, unknown what class, with a total year production of 42 vessels. That should be the low end of the statement in my opinion as I can't see going much farther. The upper hand, within my arbitrary assumptions, would be taking seven months which would be 5.5 per month for a total build of 66 starships.
The seventh fleet
We know the seventh fleet had 112 in early 2374 and lost all but 14. The fleet was rebuilt and fought in the Sybaron system also in 2374 and was at half strenght afterwards when it was sent to Tibor Nebula also in 2374. Reference Reckoning (DS9). If we assume that between the first and second known battles they were merely built up to half strength, implying zero losses in the second battle, would require 42 vessels. Since this was during a massive war the Federation was losing, with similar battle results as the seven fleet experienced, it is highly unlikely the federation devoted nearly their yearly output to a single fleet much less in a time vastly smaller than the full year used for the previous estimate. If we assume the fleet was rebuilt to full strength for the second battle and than made to soldier on with half strength after Sybaron would require over thirty more ships than my "high" estimate for the federation peace production rate and still have similar issues that a single fleet is likely to receive only a fraction of the Federation resources. We can estimate with some confidence that the Federation, on a war economy, can produce 66+ vessels per year. A high, but not unreasonable, assumption would be 98 ships per year as minimum.
The Dominion fleet
Like everything else we can only make rough guesses. We know only a fraction of the Dominion forces were present in the Alpha Quadrent and the exact numbers we can only estimate. Our chief tool would be the 30,000 for the Dominion-Breen-Cardasian fleet from Tacking on into the wind IIRC (DS9) which had rough parity with the RFK alliance. We can't know the exact division between the three races, on either side :), but I think it is not unreasonable to divide it evenly. In all likelihood Cardasia, shown to be outmatched by the Federation one on one roughly a decade or two ago and generally a minor power of the trio, would have the smaller weaker fleet rather than the all powerful Dominion. We should also remember this came late in the war after both sides, save for the breen and Romulans, had pounded each other and could easily have lost hundreds of vessels, maybe thousands which could not be part of the 30,000. In addition to this estimate we can't forget the two thousand vessels the Dominion were sending through the wormhole in Sacrifice of angels (DS9) which were "displaced". That brings us to 12,000 as minimum for the Dominion assuming they sent absolutely everything they had. Considering the Federation has roughly 10,000 vessels, control a mere fraction of the Alpha quadrent compared to the Dominion's entire Gamma, and consider the Dominion are very good at building ships quickly it is likely they had additional reserves in the Gamma quadrent through how many are unknown.
Final tally Dominion should have twelve thousand plus vessels at it's disposal from the start with an annual shipbuilding of at least 66+ and likely higher.