Lost Fed' ships.

[Braxton]

Robert Maxwell said:
One thing that always bugged me was the way the battle at Wolf 359 was considered a devastating loss, with 39(?) ships wasted. Several years later, losing a hundred ships sucks, but it's not the end of the world. It doesn't match up, and unless the Feds gathered a large number of allies with large fleets in the interim, or managed to build scores of large-scale replicators capable of making ships in a matter of days, it just doesn't make much sense.

Does anyone have an explanation for that?

We don't know what fleet Shelby was talking about exactly. Perhaps the fleet that is assigned to protect Earth was only 100 ships at the time, which this could then be considered as a devastating loss as nearly half of this fleet was lost in one engagement and would explain why the fleet would be back up to full strength by the end of the year.

Of course, you have the 'substantial reinforcements of 9 ships' line in DS9. How is that 'substantial'?

Not to mention The Way of the Warrior battle where under 20 ships is considered a good size fleet for Starfleet to have sent to DS9 to 'thwart off the Klingons'.

Once the war idea came up, they obviously thought about it in more realistic terms and realized that defending the Federation had to involve thousands of ships. Especially considering there are numerous hostile empires bordering the Federation. In order to be fully prepared for a war from either one, thousands of ships would be required to provide any sort of defense.

This is just like the 'speed of warp' debate.

 

[Hofner]

PKTrekGirl said:

MeanJoePhaser said:
The Federation didn't lose any ships. The Dominion War was just a holodeck simulation by Riker because he was struggling with his conscience after wrecking the Enterprise in GENERATIONS.

Now see....it is ideas like this that make me positively *terrified* of a DS9-based feature film.

I could EASILY see them going all TATV on us and making the entire seven years of DS9 to in fact be all about Riker.

Actually, they'll reveal the entirety of Star Trek is a cartoon drawn by Bugs Bunny which is why Daffy Duck doesn't appear anywhere in Star Trek. Daffy does appear in Babylon 5 as the God Of Frustration though.

Robert

 

[Timo]

Regarding the question "how many is enough?", we could still accommodate all the conflicting onscreen references, sort of.

From the early shows which couldn't afford to show many ships at a time, we know that

-eight ships can conquer an unresisting planet ("Errand of Mercy")
-one ship can destroy an unresisting planet ("A Taste of Armageddon")
-a fight between just two ships can drag on for a long time without lethal damage, and sabotage or other subterfuge is desirable for shortening the fight ("Elaan of Troyius", "Journey to Babel")

From TNG, which could afford to show multiple ships but not hundreds, we know that

-20-30 ships is way too small to be an invasion force ("Redemption")
-40 ships can be assembled on short notice to defend Earth, but no more than that ("BoBW")
-39 ships are a devastating loss to the peacetime Starfleet, but one that can be covered in a year, either through construction or more probably through reassignment ("BoBW", "Drumhead")
-single ships can still destroy undefended planets ("Survivors", "The Chase")

From DS9, which started out like TNG but slowly gained in VFX abilities and ambition, we know that

-six ("Way of the Warrior") or nine ("The Die is Cast") starships are a potent reinforcement to DS9 in a defensive fight
-hundreds if not thousands of ships were used by the Klingons to attack the Cardassian Union, with the first wave already comprising 150 or so ships ("Way of the Warrior")
-the defenses of a space station, let alone a fortified planet, can tear to tiny shreds an attacking fleet of hundreds ("Way of the Warrior", "Tears of the Prophets" etc.)
-battles between fleets of more than a thousand ships can be fought, but quickly devolve to unmanageable furballs ("Sacrifice of Angels")
-Starfleet likes to group its ships in fleets of a few hundred in wartime ("Favor the Bold" et al.)
-single ships can still destroy entire planets if they aren't properly defended ("Broken Link")

So the synthesis could be this: Even one starship is plenty for most applications, but the taking of a fortified planet is a bloody operation requiring hundreds of ships at the very least. The defender of the fortification will gain an advantage from even a handful of starships of his own. And if the attacker thunders in with the thousand ships required to conquer a star system, the defender also needs those thousand ships if his fortifications are not yet ready, or if he doesn't want to let the attacker close to those fortifications.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[bryce]

Another thing is how it's implied that all the crews of all these thousands of ships all train at Starfleet Academy...on Earth.

And when Wes Crusher wanted to apply, there were only a very few slots open that people competed for.

How do you staff a fleet of 10,000 with 100s of thousands of crewmembers like that?

 

[Timo]

By taking in 99% Harry Kim and 1% Wesley Crusher, I guess. And that's just for officers.

Wesley most probably was applying in a very narrow special quota, given that he was underage and all. At eighteen, he could have simply walked in.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Jono]

Actually we have two recorded cases of officers graduating from Starfleet Academy annexes on different planets. The Academy on Earth was the "main campus" as it were.

The thing is since the bulk of the main characters are humans and from Earth it is only natural that we would hear about the Academy campus on Earth as that is the one they would want to get into.

 

[Timo]

Which officers would those be?

It would make sense for Starfleet to process all its officers through San Francisco, as a form of display of fealty. Even if there are about ten thousand ships out there, each with a thousand personnel, plus the same number of shore personnel, that's only two million people put together. San Francisco could easily process ten thousand per year (that is, 40,000 studying at any given time if all took the officer course of four years), and still there would be a chance of the cream of the class knowing each other. And ten thousand per year should be plenty to keep a fleet of two million stocked with officers. Crew could be trained elsewhere, and in a shorter time.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Jono]

Lieutenant Darien Wallace, Ensign Lois Eckridge and Lieutenant Daniel Kwan (okay there were three not two) graduated from Beta Ursae Minor II, Beta Aquilae II and Psi Upsilon III

 

[Timo]

Ah, "Eye of the Beholder" stuff...

We could argue whether those are their places of graduation or rather their entry quotas. "Starfleet Academy" or "Starfleet Technical Services Academy" would be the place of study, while "San Francisco" or "Psi Upsilon" or "Mars" would be where they enrolled for their studies at San Francisco.

OTOH, we could do without that argument. Those annexes are a cool idea that makes sense.

OTTH, we could argue that those records (from a dream!) make rather little sense overall, because apparently all these fine people enrolled at the Academy at the tender age of five years.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Robert Paterson]

About the Starfleet personnel, is everyone forgetting that not everyone aboard a starship is an officer? in fact the vast majority will be enlisted personnel so therefore will not go through the years of study at Starfleet academy! The dominion war was a massive cock-up for the federation, the strategy was crap!

 

[JirinPanthosa]

In TNG they act like 24 ships is a medium sized fleet. I'd guess the figure more in the low thousands.

 

[diankra]

We can add into this, if we accept NCC numbers, that between 2285 and 2370 Starfleet has built up to 30,000 ships (up to on the assumption that some 50+ numbers were unused as new classes skipped to the next XX01/00).

 

[Robert Paterson]

24 ships would nominally be a squadron under either a commodore or rear admiral, so why is a mere captain in charge of an entire task force during operation return? You've also got Admiral Hanson leading 40 ships at wolf 359 - 2 squadrons? inconsistent.

 

[Blamo]

One thing that always bugged me was the way the battle at Wolf 359 was considered a devastating loss, with 39(?) ships wasted. Several years later, losing a hundred ships sucks, but it's not the end of the world. It doesn't match up, and unless the Feds gathered a large number of allies with large fleets in the interim, or managed to build scores of large-scale replicators capable of making ships in a matter of days, it just doesn't make much sense.

Does anyone have an explanation for that?

I could maybe handwave one, but no, it doesn't make any sense. Up until that point Star Trek had gone out of it's way to say/show that fleet size wasn't a massive unrealistic number (for any species/faction). Hence the "only ship in the sector" being the cliche.

Of course the real world reason is DS9 seemed to be aiming for more Star Wars like big space battles.

 

[Timo]

Braaaiiins.... Braaaiiiinnnnnsssss...

Or then just an effort to read through the ancient thread one is resurrecting? Pretty please? TNG tried hard, through won't-cost-a-penny dialogue, to tell us that Starfleet is big, and that even 24 ships is nothing (Romulans are flabbergastered that Starfleet would be sending so few) and certainly any number of ships TPTB could afford to show on screen would be less than nothing. Any fleet worth the name would be big, indeed bigger than the show by definition.

Losing 39 ships in peacetime? To a single adversary vessel to boot? Bad. Losing 390 ships in wartime? Expected. How is this surprising?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Robert Paterson]

What you say about peacetime and wartime navies is true of course. My point was about the confused command structure a captain (and not a terrifically senior one) leading a fleet of hundreds of ships and an Admiral leading about 40 against the Borg. In the Dominion war Starfleets strategy was awful - you abandon your most strategic position DS9 for a raid on a shipyard, only to launch a massive fleet action to retake it months later, that's what really got me! Awful, awful tactics by Starfleet.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

It seemed to me when they left DS9 there was no chance of holding it at the time. If they tried to hold DS9 they would have given more resistance but lost, so instead they decided to cede an easier fight to the Dominion in order to get a tactical victory elsewhere.

@diankra Are you getting that number from a canon source or supplementary materials?

Starfleet is referred to as being huge but also a single ship has always been treated as a big deal. A ship takes years to manufacture. Maybe a case of inconsistent writing because they both want Starfleet to be huge and for the main characters' actions to bear a lot of weight. But in both TNG and DS9 characters seem to know the name of almost any Captain mentioned in the show. If there were really 30,000 ships out there with 30,000 Captains, a lot fewer of them would just happen to be Picard's or Sisko's old academy buddy.

 

[diankra]

My slip. Defiant is 74205, so that would be about 72,000 ships since Excelsior, IF numbers are roughly sequential and all numbers are used.
Former is a big if, and the latter almost certainly not the case. Still, that would possibly be an upper ceiling for ships built in that 90 year period.
If (again, a big if) we take Enterprise as typical, where four ships were lost or retired in that period, 80% of ships built might have come and gone over those years (which would be a massive ongoing loss).

 

[kkt]

It wouldn't surprise me at all if not all numbers are used. Assign a block of numbers one class of ships, but the class ends up being smaller than originally anticipated -- peace comes, or an improved design calling for a new class of ships.

 

[diankra]

It wouldn't surprise me at all if not all numbers are used. Assign a block of numbers one class of ships, but the class ends up being smaller than originally anticipated -- peace comes, or an improved design calling for a new class of ships.

Yes. assign a number for a class, but unless that class goes into on going production (Miranda, Excelsior?) there won't be any beyond 12. Unless the vacant numbers are then assigned to large run classes that get past 99... which is the best (only?) way to match the on-screen random NCCs with any form of class-based sequential numbering.
All patch and mend retcon, obviously.