Looking for an old quote

[Dark Primus]

I'm getting a bit tired seeing people guessing the Federation fleets numbers in the high tens of thousands of ships when there was a quote from Rick Berman/Brannon Braga/Michael Piller years back actually provided a canon figure stating Federation fleet numbers to be between 8000 - 12 000 ships in all.

I want to find that quote, but internet is too vast and the quote too old and I know these figures has been brought up here from time to time so I am hoping there was a source posted with it???

Anyway I am going to try for the search function and hope it might come up, but I posted this just in case if someone did saved the article where the figures were stated.

[Alyeska]

The figure was not canon. It was backstage information given by a producer when asked about the fleet size during the Dominion War.

There are some canon numbers.

1,500 Klingon warships protecting the front lines. Outnumbered 20-1 by Dominion Warships.

[Dark Primus]

Ahh okey, to bad. Hoped to use in future debates but that seems all pointless now.

[FTeik]

Well, most of the "solid" fleet-numbers are from DS9 and especially "Sacrifice of Angels".

There we have ~ 600 Fed-ships attempting to reclaim DS9 against a force of 1,200 Dominion/Cardassian-vessels. The re-enforcements of the Dominion "vanished" by the Prophets were said to be numbering 2,600 vessels => considered to be enough to bring doom and defeat to the Federation/Klingon-alliance.

[Uraniun235]

The 2,600 would have been a huge problem and, added into the post-wormhole-closure timeline, might have resulted in defeat for the Federation. That said, I think the bigger implication was that with that 2,600 arriving, there was no way control over the wormhole could have been maintained, and the Dominion would have been free to ship as many reinforcements and resupply ships through as they wanted. That would have meant certain defeat.

[FTeik]

The 2,600 would have been a huge problem and, added into the post-wormhole-closure timeline, might have resulted in defeat for the Federation. That said, I think the bigger implication was that with that 2,600 arriving, there was no way control over the wormhole could have been maintained, and the Dominion would have been free to ship as many reinforcements and resupply ships through as they wanted. That would have meant certain defeat.

Possible, but Dukat was behaving as if the war would be won the moment the mine-field was deactivated and the 2,600 ships were through. Meaning, that there wouldn't have been a need for even more additional ships.

[Baffalo]

Concentration is far more important than total numbers.

Agreed. A fleet of battleships heading for any single world would be trouble, but considering the Federation would be on the defensive trying to protect almost every planet, they'd be spread too thin to concentrate their numbers. And considering how pathetic the Federation is, if they didn't have every possible target protected by at least one ship, they'd immediately surrender.

"There's a ship on sensors!"

"Hail them and tell them we surrender!"

"We're surrendering! They say that's nice, but they're only here to deliver the latest subscription of Socialism is Great"