The "First Contact" ships: Registry too low?

[t_smitts]

I just picked up the Steamrunner from the Eaglemoss collection. The accompanying magazine suggests, that, like the Defiant, that it was a newer design, created in the wake of the Borg threat. That makes sense because the four new classes we saw in First Contact all look like contemporaries of the Sovereign class.

The problem is the registry numbers don't really match up with that. The ships we saw in FC all had numbers in the 5xxxx to 6xxxx range, which makes them at least a few years older than the first Galaxy class ships and perhaps fifteen to twenty or more years old.

It's hard to imagine running into ships like this in the early seasons of TNG. It's especially too bad, since the Akira, if you look at it, kind of does look like an intermediate step between the designs of the Galaxy and Sovereign (a smoother, oval shaped saucer that's wide like a Galaxy instead of long, but lines and angles more like a Sovereign).

What do you think?

 

[Timo]

I really don't see the "contemporary" thing at all.

* The Akira has this round saucer just like the Galaxies and Nebulas that are her closest registry-mates.
* The Saber and the Steamrunner are their own distinct thing, down to having an all-new hull color.
* The Norway is very distinct from the Sovereign in almost every respect, too.

In addition, all have nacelles with the TNG style single-dome forward "ramscoop" and a neatly rectangular cross section; most also have the lateral "field windows" familiar from TNG.

I doubt any of these were intended to represent "new" starship design. Starfleet simply wouldn't have come up with anything new, and certainly nothing that worked well against the Borg - as having efficient Borg-killer ships would rather defeat the dramatic purpose of this fleet! Instead, we see especially Steamrunners drop like flies...

What these all ships could be is warships. From back in the days of the Border Wars, and having little to do in the peaceful years of TNG but float around starbases and wait for the next war. The ones with odd-shaped hulls would be dedicated combatants and therefore very distinct from the exploration ships of the heroes; the Akira could be sort of halfway militant.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

It's not really far fetched that ships like the Akira, Steamrunner and Sabre are of newer designs.

They could have been a direct result of Starfleet's defence fleet against the Borg which the Defiant was also supposed to have been a part of.
Sisko mentioned that the project was scrapped because the Borg threat was less imminent (though, with the idea that the Borg would keep on coming, you would think they would actually go through with the idea as fast as possible - and it wouldn't necessarily mean the Feds would have militarized themselves... only to shore up their defences in case a very powerful force like the Borg attacked - incidentally, one cannot help but wonder if these kinds of defence fleets could be roaming the Federation doing their own research and exploration using newest methodologies on previously explored areas during peace time).

As far as we were told on-screen, only the Defiant was ever seen as a 'Warship', and that was unofficially. Officially, its classified as an 'Escort'.

But is there such a thing as a 'warship' for Starfleet?
Their ship designs are oriented towards versatility in all fields (for a good reason).
And to that effect, any SF ship could conceivably end up being a 'warship' with sufficiently high weapon yields and shield strength.
Phaser coverage seems to encompass majority of angles (sans on the Akira for some reason).

Also, I don't think these designs are necessarily old.
We do know that phaser strips weren't really in use until at least 30 years before Enterprise-D was put into service, and that was executed in several disjointed strips along the saucer section, as opposed to a full strip running along the saucer (like on the Enterprise-D).

So, it is possible that these ships could be newer designs.
As for the low registries... well, those weren't entirely consistent, though it would be nice to know that by the time Voyager was launched, it was their 74656'th starship built to date... and conceivably, they'd have at least between 50 000 to 60 000 ships in service by then - lower numbers of say 10 000 to 20 000 for 23rd century Federation might work ok though.
The higher numbers in the 24th century could take into account advancement in ship construction (speed-wise) as well as the overall size of the Federation.

Remember that SF is an exploratory and defensive arm of the Federation... not a military.
I would imagine they might think they have enough ships for defence... which could work with TOS Warp speeds of 990 Ly's per 12 hours, and ST V's roughly 10x increase on that speed (taking Transwarp into equation).

And if TNG, DS9 and VOY are set in an alternate reality with slower propulsion, then one could conceivably see Warp 9.2 as shown in Season 1 of TNG as being over 15 000 time c. Which would allow for 'reasonable' travel times across Federation space in just over 6 months time. Couple that with a trip back, and... yes, that 'could' work (allowing you to go from one end of Federation space and back in 1 year)... especially if most ships in service by that time could push 16 000 times c consistently... which could be Warp 9.4 (if we take Tom Paris's statement of Warp 9.9 being 21 473 times c - and subsequent incremental increases yielding doubling in speed).

I don't recall that the Akira, Steamrunner and Sabre had low registries.
Though, if they did, perhaps SF classified them as lower registries because of being initially conceived as part of a 'battle fleet' (which might be counted as a separate task force compared to other ships in service that usually serve as a defensive and exploratory arm of the Federation).
Or they could be older designs which came out shortly before or during the 2360-ies - could have been launched with the Nebula class.


One thing I found a bit unrealistic was that SF never seemed to use automated R&D for new weapons.
The computers would be able to perform this type of research trillions of times better and faster and contrast the findings against the arguably massive Federation database.
At the very least, SF should have been more effective against the Borg with a fleet of about 10 to 20 ships.
That was one of the problems with writers... they could barely wrap their brains about technology as it was.

 

[T'Girl]

As far as we were told on-screen, only the Defiant was ever seen as a 'Warship', and that was unofficially. Officially, its classified as an 'Escort'.

An ship classified as a escort is "a warship."

A warship is a ship that is designed, built and intended for warfare. From the evidence of battle scenes during Star Trek this definition would include a large number of Starfleet designs.

 

[Dukhat]

It's my opinion that the four starship classes seen in FC were meant to represent Starfleet's newest ships, right alongside the brand-new Enterprise-E and the somewhat new Defiant. Yes, some of the ships have attributes from the older Galaxy class, but for the most part their designs evoke a newer lineage. Even the underside of the Norway class is taken directly from the Defiant's CGI mesh.

What most people don't know is that Alex Jaeger et. al actually drew up sketches for about 16 new ships designs, only four of which made it to the CGI modeling stage. All of the ships looked as "futuristic" as the FC ships (i.e. none had attributes of older ships like the Constitution, Excelsior, or Oberth classes, and looked wildly different than any ships previously seen in TNG).

As for the low registries? I'm also of the opinion that whoever gave them those registries was under the assumption that they were the highest known. The same mistake happened in VOY's "Message in a Bottle," where the brand-new Prometheus class starship had a 5XXXX registry on the ship itself, while its dedication plaque had a 7XXXX registry. In that case, there was a miscommunication between the VFX department (who built the CGI model) and the Art department (who made the plaque.) I'd bet that was the case in FC too.

How to rectify this discrepancy? Well, registries have never been canonically shown to be chronological, so we could get away with saying a brand new ship could have a registry of 5XXXX if we wanted. Or we could say that registry blocks are assigned based on certain factors (i.e. the shipyard used to produce the vessel in question, or registry blocks of 5, 6, and 7XXXX are all ships built under a specific contract, etc.)

 

[t_smitts]

I really don't see the "contemporary" thing at all.

* The Akira has this round saucer just like the Galaxies and Nebulas that are her closest registry-mates.
* The Saber and the Steamrunner are their own distinct thing, down to having an all-new hull color.
* The Norway is very distinct from the Sovereign in almost every respect, too.

In addition, all have nacelles with the TNG style single-dome forward "ramscoop" and a neatly rectangular cross section; most also have the lateral "field windows" familiar from TNG.

I doubt any of these were intended to represent "new" starship design. Starfleet simply wouldn't have come up with anything new, and certainly nothing that worked well against the Borg - as having efficient Borg-killer ships would rather defeat the dramatic purpose of this fleet! Instead, we see especially Steamrunners drop like flies...

What these all ships could be is warships. From back in the days of the Border Wars, and having little to do in the peaceful years of TNG but float around starbases and wait for the next war. The ones with odd-shaped hulls would be dedicated combatants and therefore very distinct from the exploration ships of the heroes; the Akira could be sort of halfway militant.

Timo Saloniemi

I respectfully disagree.

Yes, the Akira has a more Galaxy-like saucer, which is why I said it had the look of something in between the Galaxy and Sovereign. Looking at the Akira and Steamrunner, they have some rather hard, sharp angles (especially around the nacelles and their struts), as opposed to the soft ones seen on a Galaxy.

So, it is possible that these ships could be newer designs.
As for the low registries... well, those weren't entirely consistent, though it would be nice to know that by the time Voyager was launched, it was their 74656'th starship built to date... and conceivably, they'd have at least between 50 000 to 60 000 ships in service by then - lower numbers of say 10 000 to 20 000 for 23rd century Federation might work ok though.
The higher numbers in the 24th century could take into account advancement in ship construction (speed-wise) as well as the overall size of the Federation.

Remember that SF is an exploratory and defensive arm of the Federation... not a military.
I would imagine they might think they have enough ships for defence... which could work with TOS Warp speeds of 990 Ly's per 12 hours, and ST V's roughly 10x increase on that speed (taking Transwarp into equation).

And if TNG, DS9 and VOY are set in an alternate reality with slower propulsion, then one could conceivably see Warp 9.2 as shown in Season 1 of TNG as being over 15 000 time c. Which would allow for 'reasonable' travel times across Federation space in just over 6 months time. Couple that with a trip back, and... yes, that 'could' work (allowing you to go from one end of Federation space and back in 1 year)... especially if most ships in service by that time could push 16 000 times c consistently... which could be Warp 9.4 (if we take Tom Paris's statement of Warp 9.9 being 21 473 times c - and subsequent incremental increases yielding doubling in speed).

Having that many ships is actually not unfeasible. Consider that for every ship not exploring the edge of known space or patrolling the Neutral Zone, there's a several more with far more mundane duties well within Fed space. There's vessels conducting scientific experiments (pretty much every Oberth class), testing new technologies (Pegasus), training cadets (Republic), supplying bases (Lantree), serving as transports (Jenolen), or holding vessels for surplus depots (Tripoli). Not to mention that runabouts and many other small ships like Data's scoutship from Insurrection have registries as well.

An "alternate reality" is a bit much. Apparently, it was simply a case of the warp scale being recalibrated between series because Roddenberry wanted Warp 10 at the absolute theoretical limit. It was likley a simple case of official forms of measurement being changed, like Daylight Savings Time or shifting to the metric system.

I don't recall that the Akira, Steamrunner and Sabre had low registries.
Though, if they did, perhaps SF classified them as lower registries because of being initially conceived as part of a 'battle fleet' (which might be counted as a separate task force compared to other ships in service that usually serve as a defensive and exploratory arm of the Federation).
Or they could be older designs which came out shortly before or during the 2360-ies - could have been launched with the Nebula class.

The registries of the Thunderchild, the Appalacia, the Yeager, and the Budapest are all considered sufficiently canon by the standards of Memory Alpha.

And as I explained about, they didn't really look that old.

It's my opinion that the four starship classes seen in FC were meant to represent Starfleet's newest ships, right alongside the brand-new Enterprise-E and the somewhat new Defiant. Yes, some of the ships have attributes from the older Galaxy class, but for the most part their designs evoke a newer lineage. Even the underside of the Norway class is taken directly from the Defiant's CGI mesh.

As for the low registries? I'm also of the opinion that whoever gave them those registries was under the assumption that they were the highest known. The same mistake happened in VOY's "Message in a Bottle," where the brand-new Prometheus class starship had a 5XXXX registry on the ship itself, while its dedication plaque had a 7XXXX registry. In that case, there was a miscommunication between the VFX department (who built the CGI model) and the Art department (who made the plaque.) I'd bet that was the case in FC too.

How to rectify this discrepancy? Well, registries have never been canonically shown to be chronological, so we could get away with saying a brand new ship could have a registry of 5XXXX if we wanted. Or we could say that registry blocks are assigned based on certain factors (i.e. the shipyard used to produce the vessel in question, or registry blocks of 5, 6, and 7XXXX are all ships built under a specific contract, etc.)

The Prometheus registry was a mistake (like the 1305-E for the Yamato), due to the guys who made the CG ship and the Okudas not being on the same page (the registry on the dedication plaque is much more appropriate).

They never explicitly said they were chronological, but there's enough anecdotal evidence for that assumption to be pretty reasonable.

In the 2160's you had ships in the low hundreds (the Essex in "Power Play" was explicitly said to be NCC-173).

In the mid-2260, you have ships in service in the low thousands. The Enterprise, launched around 2245, was 1701. The Excelsior, launched in the 2280's was 2000.

A century later, in the early 2360's, you have the first Galaxy class ships being launched. Setting aside the Enterprise-D, you have ships like the Galaxy, Yamato, and Odyssey with registries in the 70xxx to 71xxx range.

Ships commissioned around the 5th or 6th seasons of TNG like the Sutherland or the first runabouts have registries in the 72xxx.

Around what would've been the 8th season (or DS9 season 3 and Voyage season 1), we see new ships like the Defiant and Voyager with numbers in the 74xxx. Around DS9 season 6/Voyager season 4, we see the Prometheus, which, if you go be the number on the plaque, is in almost into the 75xxx, and the following season, you get ships like the Insurrection scoutship and the Sao Paolo which DO have numbers in that range.

 

[Dukhat]

The Prometheus registry was a mistake (like the 1305-E for the Yamato), due to the guys who made the CG ship and the Okudas not being on the same page (the registry on the dedication plaque is much more appropriate).

Yes, which was what I said in my post.

They never explicitly said they were chronological, but there's enough anecdotal evidence for that assumption to be pretty reasonable.

In the 2160's you had ships in the low hundreds (the Essex in "Power Play" was explicitly said to be NCC-173).

In the mid-2260, you have ships in service in the low thousands. The Enterprise, launched around 2245, was 1701. The Excelsior, launched in the 2280's was 2000.

A century later, in the early 2360's, you have the first Galaxy class ships being launched. Setting aside the Enterprise-D, you have ships like the Galaxy, Yamato, and Odyssey with registries in the 70xxx to 71xxx range.

Ships commissioned around the 5th or 6th seasons of TNG like the Sutherland or the first runabouts have registries in the 72xxx.

Around what would've been the 8th season (or DS9 season 3 and Voyage season 1), we see new ships like the Defiant and Voyager with numbers in the 74xxx. Around DS9 season 6/Voyager season 4, we see the Prometheus, which, if you go be the number on the plaque, is in almost into the 75xxx, and the following season, you get ships like the Insurrection scoutship and the Sao Paolo which DO have numbers in that range.

Yes, for about 80% of the time, registries look to be chronological. That doesn't mean they always are. Take the Ambassador class. The known ships (other than the Ent-C) have registries of 1XXXX to 2XXXX. Those registries are lower than the Excelsior class's 4XXXX. Yet the Ambassador class is clearly the newer design and came out after the Excelsior. There's also a huge number discrepancy between the first Excelsiors and Mirandas (1XXX and 2XXX) and later ones (3XXXX and 4XXXX.) How do we explain this?

 

[yenny]

I would assumed that the USS. Ambassador was commission about 20-30 years after the USS Excelsior commission. Which would mean that they were building Excelsiors some 20-30 years after the commission of the USS Ambassador. The USS Lakota NCC-42768 a Excelsior class starship which has the highest registry so far of her class. Which would put her being commission between 2325 and 2335. The USS Ambassador most likely was commission between 2305 and 2315. Which would put the USS. Lakota being commission 20 years after the USS Ambassador.

On the SF ships. I would assumed that they were commission before the USS. Sovereign was commission. Same as the Nova Class before the Defiant, the Andromeda before the Intrepid and the Nebula and New Orleans before the USS Galaxy. All those ships had basic the same design as the capital ships do. But that not always the case, sometimes they build new class ships after the capital ships that they are base off.

 

[t_smitts]

Yes, for about 80% of the time, registries look to be chronological. That doesn't mean they always are. Take the Ambassador class. The known ships (other than the Ent-C) have registries of 1XXXX to 2XXXX. Those registries are lower than the Excelsior class's 4XXXX. Yet the Ambassador class is clearly the newer design and came out after the Excelsior. There's also a huge number discrepancy between the first Excelsiors and Mirandas (1XXX and 2XXX) and later ones (3XXXX and 4XXXX.) How do we explain this?

Easy. Just because they introduced a newer class, doesn't necessarily mean that they stopped building ships of the old class, especially if it's a highly successful and adaptable design like the Excelsior apparently was.

It's not strictly canon but Ron Moore said of the Enterprise-E:

"My working assumption was that the Enterprise-E had her keel laid sometime during TNG's last season and was probably going to be given another name. When the Enterprise-D was destroyed, that Sovereign-class ship was nearing completion and was then christened Enterprise."

Presumably at least one other ship of that class (the USS Sovereign) was built around the same time or sooner. Yet we saw DOZENS of Galaxy class ships in "Favor the Bold" and "Sacrifice of Angels". Odds are at least some of them were built more recently than that.

 

[Dukhat]

Easy. Just because they introduced a newer class, doesn't necessarily mean that they stopped building ships of the old class, especially if it's a highly successful and adaptable design like the Excelsior apparently was.

So then apply that logic to the FC ships. You say they have low registries but they look to be newer designs. I gave the example of the Ambassador class with the same issue.

 

[Tim Walker]

Easy. Just because they introduced a newer class, doesn't necessarily mean that they stopped building ships of the old class, especially if it's a highly successful and adaptable design like the Excelsior apparently was.

It's not strictly canon but Ron Moore said of the Enterprise-E:

"My working assumption was that the Enterprise-E had her keel laid sometime during TNG's last season and was probably going to be given another name. When the Enterprise-D was destroyed, that Sovereign-class ship was nearing completion and was then christened Enterprise."

Presumably at least one other ship of that class (the USS Sovereign) was built around the same time or sooner. Yet we saw DOZENS of Galaxy class ships in "Favor the Bold" and "Sacrifice of Angels". Odds are at least some of them were built more recently than that.

As a big exploration cruiser with the latest tech, the Ambassadors would have become the premier ships of Star Fleet. But if the Excelsiors had proven to be work horses, along with the Mirandas, I can imagine continued construction over several decades.

I presume that the Sovys were named after the U.S.S. Sovereign, being the first ship of the class, so I would assume that that particular ship appeared before the Enterprise E.

 

[t_smitts]

Easy. Just because they introduced a newer class, doesn't necessarily mean that they stopped building ships of the old class, especially if it's a highly successful and adaptable design like the Excelsior apparently was.

So then apply that logic to the FC ships. You say they have low registries but they look to be newer designs. I gave the example of the Ambassador class with the same issue.

But that doesn't make sense. If those ships are 15-20 years old, than they're older than ANY Galaxy class, which came out around the early 2360's.

 

[Deks]

An "alternate reality" is a bit much. Apparently, it was simply a case of the warp scale being recalibrated between series because Roddenberry wanted Warp 10 at the absolute theoretical limit. It was likley a simple case of official forms of measurement being changed, like Daylight Savings Time or shifting to the metric system.

I am aware of the real world reasons, however, TOS seemed to have been using high warp figures like 990 ly's per 11 hours more often than the lower figures (which would explain all the zipping around the galaxy and getting to the galactic barrier in small amount of time, as opposed to decades - among other things).

TNG in Season 1 however used lower figures of just over 15 000 times c at Warp 9.2 (Ent-D extragalactic trip), which were progressively lowered throughout the show.

Though Tom Paris's statement of Warp 9.9 being 21 473 times c is more consistent with those early TNG figures - which is one of the reasons I don't buy the Technical manual (Which is not canon to begin with - heck, even the novels show faster Warp velocities of 24 ly's per day which equates to 8760 times C - which is definitely faster than what the TM implies at Warp 9 and above).

However... both figures have relatively little in common with TOS massive differential in speed (and subsequent Star Trek V film which indicated roughly 10x increase in speed via Transwarp that SF incorporated on the Excelsior).

The only thing that makes marginal sense in the equation is that TNG, DS9 and VOY are set in an alternate timeline with similar histories/events to TOS, but different propulsion development.

Plus, for a group of civilizations that span 8000 Ly's in the 24th century... 1000 times c seems too slow to effectively cover that large an area (even with the Federation having tens of thousands of ships - most of which would be out exploring).
The novel-verse speeds make a tad more sense by allowing ships to traverse 8760 ly's in 1 year for example.

This is easily explained as Voy simply suffering too much damage in the initial transition to the DQ by the Caretaker, preventing the ship from achieving high sustainable warp factors that would have usually been possible (and cut the trip to about a week).
After all, at the time, it was the only ship class capable of going that fast... or at the very least, no other vessel was stated to be able to go past 9.9 for any appreciable amount of time.

 

[Tim Walker]

The FC ships might be somewhat older compared to the Galaxies, but newer than the Excelsiors and Mirandas.

 

[t_smitts]

The FC ships might be somewhat older compared to the Galaxies, but newer than the Excelsiors and Mirandas.

My argument was that they DON'T look older than a Galaxy.

 

[Deks]

They don't really look older than the Galaxy class.
The Akira in particular has a saucer section and a long phaser strip on the front and bottom of it covering most angles on the saucer.
It seems more streamlined and in line with post Galaxy class starships.

The Steamrunner has a similar look to it. Only the sabre class has a bit of a more sharper look to it without smoothing that 'might' place it in a timeline before Galaxy class - though SF might just have taken a different direction with smaller ships for it.

 

[Tim Walker]

One web site suggested that the Saber was built during the border wars with the Cardies.

 

[Timo]

The underlying assumption here seems to be that a certain "looks" is associated with a certain era.

It sort of follows, then, that there must have been distinct design "eras" preceding the Galaxy one, too. The timeline can accommodate much more there than a putative direct slide from Ambassador to Galaxy (a slide we never see incarnated in any design anyway). Isn't it natural to assume that these ships we see, representing this era by virtue of their registries, also represent it by their distinct looks?

We don't have any pressing reason to interpret those distinct looks as relating to some other era, not really. Strip phasers spell "more modern than Excelsior", but that's it. Things like bow notches come and go in Starfleet history, and lifeboat shapes vary a lot, too. These things don't "lead" anywhere - they just are.

Say, "sharp" or "smooth" aren't particularly distinct characteristics for the "Sovereign era", which instead is best characterized by those triangular ramscoops and tapering nacelles and apparently only represented by the Sovereign herself, the Nova and possibly the Prometheus...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[David cgc]

One web site suggested that the Saber was built during the border wars with the Cardies.

Are you thinking of D.M. Phoenix's site, talking about his hypothetical TNG-style Saber? He supposes that the more familiar version is a redesign meant to be easier and faster to build.

 

[Dukhat]

Easy. Just because they introduced a newer class, doesn't necessarily mean that they stopped building ships of the old class, especially if it's a highly successful and adaptable design like the Excelsior apparently was.

So then apply that logic to the FC ships. You say they have low registries but they look to be newer designs. I gave the example of the Ambassador class with the same issue.

But that doesn't make sense. If those ships are 15-20 years old, than they're older than ANY Galaxy class, which came out around the early 2360's.

But while the Galaxy class itself was new, its design was not. That class was based on older classes of ships such as the Nebula, New Orleans, Springfield, Freedom, etc., which had registries from 5XXXX to 6XXXX and in some cases were at least 20 years old. The Galaxy class might have been the largest vessel of that family, but it was probably meant to be the swan song of that particular design lineage, since newer designs such as the Sovereign, Nova, Intrepid and Prometheus classes were coming into age near the end of TNG.

The underlying assumption here seems to be that a certain "looks" is associated with a certain era.

Not necessarily. In the span of only a few years between the TOS and TMP eras, we had four design types (TOS Constitution, TMP Constitution, Excelsior, and Oberth) that were contemporaneous with each other but looked nothing alike.