The Sovereign, Akira, Intrepid, and Defiant Class

[Brainsucker]

I know that they are the result of the Federation project to answer the Borg threat. the question is why the Federation create 4 different classes and not just two like before?

Look at this

In the 23rd Century, We are introduced to Miranda and Constitution Class. the Constitution Class evolve to Excelsior, Ambassador, and then Galaxy, while for Miranda we have the Nebula, or at least in 24th Century, we have the economic version of the Galaxy, the Nebula Class.

But after the arrival of Borg, and then Cardassia and Dominion, The Federation seems to change their ship role habits by develop four classes at once. Started by the Defiant, a dedicated Warship, then Akira, Intrepid and at last the Sovereign.

Well, we can assume that the Defiant is in fact a replacement for the off screen destroyer class that belong to Federation. I just don't understand why they care to make a lot of Galaxy Class and put them into the battlefield while only put a Defiant Class (A destroyer) and make it their Flagship. Shouldn't Sisko take command of a Galaxy Class or at least Akira Class at the battle against Dominion that day if he was the commander of the invasion?

Then the supposely Akira and Intrepid. The two serve as Cruiser. So if they have already Akira, why build Intrepid, and while they have already Intrepid why build Akira?

If the Akira is a supposely dedicated to war and developed later than the Defiant, how could they have more Akira than Defiant in the Dominion war? Shouldn't the smaller ships cost less and usually mass produced while the bigger ships seldom to be mass produced?

Just look at the Sovereign Class. Well, looking at the spec and the size, we can assume that this ship could be put into the battleship role. But the Movie themselves contradict this by putting Jeanluc Picard (a Diplomat who can't even be trusted because has been assimilated by the Borg) as the captain.

Not only that, the Starfleet Command even put the Enterprise E far from the battlefield in two serious battle. At the First Contact they just put the Enterprise E (the supposely Federation Flagship and a battleship) to patrol the Romulan Border; while in the Dominion War they just having fun in a planet of 600 immortal people.

Looking at this I guess, it is natural for the Enterprise Crew if they are become restless and oppose the Federation when the Admiral want to transfer the 600 supposely immortal to another planet.

So why Starfleet give a person who can't be trusted to the most advanced battleship they have and then put it away from the most important battle against humanity? And why they choose a Diplomat and not a war hero to the command chair of this supposely the most advanced starship in the Federation?

Shouldn't Jeanluc Picard, a diplomat, given an Intrepid or Akira Class instead of the magnificient Sovereign? Sisko needs Sovereign more than Picard in his battle. Being a Diplomat, an Intrepid or Akira is more than enough for Picard and his crews. His roles doesn't need a big fire power isn't it?

So I think, Hell, the president of the Federation (Rick Berman) is crazy.

Can you enlight me so I can understand this?

 

[Belryan]

At the day you have to remember that Star Trek was a television program with a limited budget, and the Miranda was created for the second movie for something different. The later shows and movies had bigger budgets, and with CG it was way easier and cheaper to create multiple varieties of ships. Trying to pretend there is an in-universe explanation isn't a good idea.

 

[kitsune]

The Sovereign class is primarily for exploration.
The Defiant class was an experiment to make an easily mass-producible combat vehicle.
The Akira class is primarily for combat, but capable of longer-range operation and a greater variety of mission profiles than the Defiant.
The Intrepid class is primarily for scientific research.

 

[JNG]

I know that they are the result of the Federation project to answer the Borg threat. the question is why the Federation create 4 different classes and not just two like before?

I have no particular reason to think this is true of any of the ones you named except for the Defiant. The Akira registries we've seen suggest it is much older than that, as do the visual elements like curves and colors that resemble the Galaxy-era stuff. Mr. Sternbach's article has the Intrepid class being worked on many years before the Borg were ever encountered, as we would expect (Defiant was clearly a rush job, and there's no reason we should think any of these others would be, unmarred by severe design flaws). The Sovereign class being much larger and more complex, I expect it took much longer to work on, and since the prototype had probably been extensively tested before they decided to begin work on any others of the class, I wouldn't be surprised if she was already under construction by the time of the first Borg encounter. (Meaning the first TNG Borg encounter, of course, and not the Hansen one or the NX-01 one or anything like that.)

The Sovereign class is primarily for exploration.
The Defiant class was an experiment to make an easily mass-producible combat vehicle.
The Akira class is primarily for combat, but capable of longer-range operation and a greater variety of mission profiles than the Defiant.
The Intrepid class is primarily for scientific research.

Yeah, I don't know if Akira is primarily for anything in particular, given that heavy cruisers probably get lots of assignments; I might expect she'd have more than three phaser arrays, not be so huge, have less of an emphasis on shuttle launch and recovery, or perhaps have fewer windows if she were supposed to be combat-oriented. [To clarify, I don't think any of the ships before Defiant, or probably after, are specifically combat-oriented.] Probably a standard multimission ship, the designer's fantasies to the contrary. As for the Intrepid class being primarily for scientific research, its relatively large size, emphasis on speed, in-house description as "troubleshooter," placement by its designer in the Explorer category, its noted design contrasts to a contemporary ship (Nova-class Equinox) that was stated to be designed for research, and the fact that it was sent on a thoroughly nonscientific mission against Maquis in the Badlands in the pilot episode all suggest otherwise.

 

[Praetor]

I think the problem with this whole line of reasoning is the rather refutable notion that all of these ships came about as the result of the same big anti-Borg research project. Some of the latter designs may have benefited from technology designed to fight the Borg, but I doubt they were commissioned expressly for that purpose. ('Starship Spotter' does suggest that the Akira was a testbed for various technologies that was never actually meant to see widespread use.) Still, the Defiant is the only one we expressly know was developed to do fight the Borg.

The Sovereign class has been said (by John Eaves I believe) to be a replacement for the Excelsior class, which makes loads of sense given its appearance and the types of missions we've seen the Enterprise-E assigned to. I doubt seriously it is a replacement for the Galaxy class.

I can't help but feel like the Akira is similarly at least a spiritual replacement for the Miranda, given its apparent shuttlebays and 'roll bar' weapons.

Also, I believe the in-mind 20th century design logic around the time VGR was in development was that the Voyager was a destroyer to the Enteprise-D's aircraft carrier - explaining the darker interiors creating a more cramped feel. I'd hate to class the Defiant as a destroyer per se.

The Defiant (and indeed the 'escort' type designation) might be a better analog for 20th century attack submarines... in particular, since the cloaking device of the Romulans was meant to be analagous to German U-boats disappearing underwater in 'Balance of Terror.'

 

[Tomalak]

The Sovereign class has been said (by John Eaves I believe) to be a replacement for the Excelsior class, which makes loads of sense given its appearance and the types of missions we've seen the Enterprise-E assigned to. I doubt seriously it is a replacement for the Galaxy class.

Makes sense. I don't know the numbers, but the habitable volume of the Sovereign must be much smaller than the Galaxy or indeed the Nebula. She looks big, primarily because of the elongated nacelles and saucer, but there can't be much room in the engineering hull, once all the warp systems and shuttlebay bits are taken into account. There don't appear to be families or as many home comforts either, suggesting she isn't a long duration explorer type.

Besides, why replace the Galaxy so soon?

 

[Praetor]

Exactly my thinking, Tomalak.

 

[seekertwo]

Politics....like Cmdr. Shelby's admiral said, every Admiral and his aide had a take on the Borg problem....I imagine several projects were going at once...resulting in four different ships....just look at military development and procurement today...

 

[SoM]

Politics....like Cmdr. Shelby's admiral said, every Admiral and his aide had a take on the Borg problem....I imagine several projects were going at once...resulting in four different ships....just look at military development and procurement today...

Well, we know that Defiant-class was stopped, and Sisko and his staff reassigned to other duties, once the prototype was made and the scale of the problems became evident (most of which appear to have been ultimately worked around rather than resolved once Sisko pulled his pet project out of storage - for instance, by limiting systems such as propulsion to well below their ultimate capacity - at least on the Defiant itself). Probably a new Admiral being put in charge of the R&D division and wanting something more to his tastes to replace it in its' intended niche had something to do with that.

 

[BenRoethig]

The Sovereign class has been said (by John Eaves I believe) to be a replacement for the Excelsior class, which makes loads of sense given its appearance and the types of missions we've seen the Enterprise-E assigned to. I doubt seriously it is a replacement for the Galaxy class.

Makes sense. I don't know the numbers, but the habitable volume of the Sovereign must be much smaller than the Galaxy or indeed the Nebula. She looks big, primarily because of the elongated nacelles and saucer, but there can't be much room in the engineering hull, once all the warp systems and shuttlebay bits are taken into account. There don't appear to be families or as many home comforts either, suggesting she isn't a long duration explorer type.

Besides, why replace the Galaxy so soon?

Internal volume doesn't necessarily equate to mission systems volume. The needs of the civilian population of the Galaxy or Nebula would have been much more than Starfleet personnel and have taken up a significant portion of the saucer section.

Why replace it so soon? The city ship concept was a failure. You had spectacular loses of civilians from being in situations they had no being in. From several episodes of TNG, the civilian popular looked like a major headache from being in places they were supposed to be in and getting in the way during emergency situations. Lastly, you end up with a ship that is compromised in combat performance to a degree in because its much bigger than it would much been with only its starfleet complement.

 

[Cyke101]

The Sovereign class has been said (by John Eaves I believe) to be a replacement for the Excelsior class, which makes loads of sense given its appearance and the types of missions we've seen the Enterprise-E assigned to. I doubt seriously it is a replacement for the Galaxy class.

Makes sense. I don't know the numbers, but the habitable volume of the Sovereign must be much smaller than the Galaxy or indeed the Nebula. She looks big, primarily because of the elongated nacelles and saucer, but there can't be much room in the engineering hull, once all the warp systems and shuttlebay bits are taken into account. There don't appear to be families or as many home comforts either, suggesting she isn't a long duration explorer type.

Besides, why replace the Galaxy so soon?

Internal volume doesn't necessarily equate to mission systems volume. The needs of the civilian population of the Galaxy or Nebula would have been much more than Starfleet personnel and have taken up a significant portion of the saucer section.

That's assuming a policy of families on Starfleet vessels again. It can't be that hard, i imagine, to turn the Galaxy class into a pure combat vessel or pure science vessel or, as we've already seen, a hybrid with customizable parts.

Why replace it so soon? The city ship concept was a failure. You had spectacular loses of civilians from being in situations they had no being in. From several episodes of TNG, the civilian popular looked like a major headache from being in places they were supposed to be in and getting in the way during emergency situations. Lastly, you end up with a ship that is compromised in combat performance to a degree in because its much bigger than it would much been with only its starfleet complement.

But who says the concept was a failure? If we go by TNG, the Galaxy class could handle almost every mission that Starfleet threw at her. The ship's appearances in DS9 and Voyager have been rather complimentary as well, to the point where the Odyssey had to be a Galaxy class to emphasize the threat of the Dominion. Beyond that, on screen action shows the Galaxy performing pretty dependably in battle. Voyager had the Galaxy as one of the first ships to respond to the Borg as well. I'm not completely buying the argument that the city ship was a failure.

 

[JNG]

Why replace it so soon? The city ship concept was a failure. You had spectacular loses of civilians from being in situations they had no being in. From several episodes of TNG, the civilian popular looked like a major headache from being in places they were supposed to be in and getting in the way during emergency situations. Lastly, you end up with a ship that is compromised in combat performance to a degree in because its much bigger than it would much been with only its starfleet complement.

The concept of families on ships is not canonically a failure; Ron Moore expressed his opinion that it might have been in a web Q and A, but evidently didn't feel strongly enough about it to try and push that into an episode. We saw families on a Miranda-class ship as well, so the whole concept is not tied up in the Galaxy-class ships. However, the latter are designed to separate and hence alleviate this difficulty, a capability which I think addresses most of the downsides.

I don't think it makes any sense to say "the ship got too big from supporting civilians or it would have been better in combat." I rather expect it was engineered to be the multimission platform they wanted and then deemed suitable to carry teams of families and civilian specialists when assigned to certain missions. There's no reason to think that they were subject to any particular pressures that could have overriden the desired performance of the design in favor of carrying non-Starfleet personnel. The interior is all swappable pressurized modules anyway, and Probert was thinking it could easily carry 5,000 as a standard complement, so it isn't as if the extra civilian complement is leaving her bursting at the seams.

I believe the civilians numbered only a couple of hundred on the Enterprise-D, correct?

 

[Praetor]

I don't buy the failure argument either. Indeed, we didn't see the Enterprise really go where no one had gone before as a city ship and the early seasons promised. Who's to say that the other four originals (excluding the ill-fated Yamato) didn't do just that prior to the destruction of the Odyssey?

And good points JNG. I do believe the civilian complement only numbered a few hundred. I want to say 300 but I can't find a corroboration.

 

[Timo]

We could argue indirectly and say that the Hera of "Interface" fame, of Nebula class and thus identical in size to a Galaxy, went down with 800 crew; if she was a ship without families, then some 200 slots are left for dependants. That is, 200 dependants would bring the figures up to E-D standards, but that ship could have carried 2,000 rather than 1,014 people aboard for all I know, and was merely loaded relatively lightly during the TNG missions.

The Hera argument ain't particularly airtight, tho. I'm not aware of direct canon mentions of the crew/passengers ratio of the E-D - although many episodes suggest that the ship could operate with zero crew if necessary, and that basically everybody is aboard as an optional extra.

I don't think the families disappeared from Starfleet ships at any point. Indeed, I don't think they were that new an idea in TNG, either. All sorts of civilian hangarounds might have been aboard ever since Archer's days, and every now and then a starship or two might see service as a "cityship". Picard had apparently managed to steer clear of ships that had lots of children aboard until "Encounter at Farpoint", but he never clearly states the kids were a new feature. For that matter, he never clearly states he hadn't served on a daycare center starship before - merely that he didn't like doing so. Perhaps he did have such experience from his early days, all of it unpleasant?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[darkwing_duck1]

The whole thing comes back to original design intent. The Galaxy-class, according to the TNG "bible" was designed for a 20 year autonomous deep space mission. Probert designed her features with this in mind. She was supposed to be a home, a fortress, even a trading post (she originally was supposed to have a Promenade-style "mall" onboard).

I've said it many times: the best analogy for what such ships were supposed to be would be the Army fort from the mid/late 1800s.

 

[ShinRa Actual]

Why replace it so soon? The city ship concept was a failure. You had spectacular loses of civilians from being in situations they had no being in. From several episodes of TNG, the civilian popular looked like a major headache from being in places they were supposed to be in and getting in the way during emergency situations. Lastly, you end up with a ship that is compromised in combat performance to a degree in because its much bigger than it would much been with only its starfleet complement.

But who says the concept was a failure? If we go by TNG, the Galaxy class could handle almost every mission that Starfleet threw at her. The ship's appearances in DS9 and Voyager have been rather complimentary as well, to the point where the Odyssey had to be a Galaxy class to emphasize the threat of the Dominion. Beyond that, on screen action shows the Galaxy performing pretty dependably in battle. Voyager had the Galaxy as one of the first ships to respond to the Borg as well. I'm not completely buying the argument that the city ship was a failure.

Depends if you put much stock in some of the behind the scenes info; Roddenberry put forth the idea that the Galaxy class consisted of 6 ships, which the Tech Manual further expanded into 6 ships built, and 'space frames' for 6 more.

Then you come around to Generations; Of ships that are meant for 20 year missions and a hundred-year service life, 3 of those 6 ships have been destroyed before the first decade is out.

As for the Galaxy's seen in DS9, RDM's opinion (backed up by the DS9TM) was that the additional Galaxy class ships were those spare spaceframes rushed into service without most of the science/habitation facilities because after the Borg and Dominion threats, Starfleet wanted as many hulls in service as soon as possible. It's also worth noting (since you bring it up), the Galaxy seen in Voyager's finale was...loitering around Earth. Not out and about braving the unknown and all that.

In short, the Galaxy class had high hopes, but it's first decade in service seemed to show that they weren't doing so well. The Sovereign class was likely not meant to replace the Galaxy class, because it likely went back to a bit more priority on survival as opposed to being a mobile starbase. Likewise, the Intrepid was not a replacement for the Galaxy class, but a something on the order of a cruiser; smaller, faster, and cheaper.

 

[cwl]

maybe starfleet were trying out loads of different designs to be more flexible?

however for production purposes it would be best to keep number of class types to a minimum.

 

[RobertVA]

I'm wondering if propulsion system changes to reduce or eliminate subspace damage associated with higher warp factors required completely new nacelles and hull designs. If the existing classes were troubled by a warp "speed limit" that didn't apply to the new designs starfleet might want to mothball the old ships (reserving them for the occasional war) and use new ships for peacetime use that could travel at higher speeds with less environmental damage.

 

[Rarewolf]

Given that the Defiant's phaser pulse cannons were certainly effective against most ships it went up against, why not install them on existing ships?

 

[Tomalak]

Because they obviously aren't very accurate. They are almost point-and-shoot, so they work on the small, nimble, manoeuvrable Defiant. On a big Galaxy class ship, a Jem'Hadar ship could run rings around them.