What if the PK won?

[Stofsk]

Yeah. Also, they destroyed Nomad. Actually no-one but Kirk could have killed Nomad, as his name was similar enough to fool Nomad's damaged memory cores to the point where it misheard Kirk say his name as Jackson Roykirk, the name of Nomad's original creator.

Had Nomad not been destroyed he likely would have gone on to sterilise many more worlds before someone powerful enough to destroy the probe came along. The entire malurian race was wiped out and they likely weren't the first to have had that happen to them.

I can see where Adam is coming from, after all the crew is not depicted as being supernaturally gifted nor do they have superpowers, they're just highly competent - a product of training and education more so than any other factor. Similarly the Enterprise is not a uniquely designed vessel, there's bare minimum twelve ships of the same class which would have identical capabilities or close to it at any rate. Other Constitution-class vessels would have similarly trained and competent crew onboard them. However, several times during the show we see how other ships fared when faced with extraordinary events: the Constellation was virtually destroyed, her crew wiped out, her commander suffering a nervous breakdown due to guilt; Captain Ronald Tracey of the Exeter thought he found the secret to eternal life on a planet and decided to break every law and oath he swore in order to seize that secret for his own profit; the vulcan crew of the Intrepid were wiped out by the amoeba, completely unable to respond to that threat; the crew of the Defiant were driven mad by being stuck in a pocket of space where dimensions intersected - they could not extricate themselves in time. In all these situations, the crew of the Enterprise also encountered the same threat that brought about the demise their fallen comrades, and yet they prevailed.

I can see what Adam means; if it weren't the Enterprise who responded to each of the above threats, and other threats for that matter, then it may have been some other ship and crew and they could do just as well assuming training and capability were the same (and given Constitution-class starships were supposed to be the flagship vessels of the Fleet, this might be considered a given). But at the same time, many of those instances were resolved through luck as well. The Nomad incident for example. Or Kirk gambling that Doctor Daystrom had also encoded into M5's computer core his own personal sense of morality. What about the Dikuronium Gas Creature? Only Kirk would have put everything, even a rendevouz with the Potemkin to get urgently needed medical supplies to a colony suffering a plague, on the backburner in order to hunt down that creature and kill it. Anyone else would not have been obsessed with doing so, or had a science officer who recognised that the creature actually was intelligent. The crew of the Enterprise were not only highly competent but they were also extremely lucky; it's that combination which made them legendary, where other ships and crews had their luck run out.

[Baffalo]

This is where I would've loved to see a series about the Excelsior. Commanded by Sulu, we would've seen a different crew without the Enterprise namesake take on the challenges of a hostile, unstable galaxy. And yet they gave us Enterprise.

[Stofsk]

I think he means the show, Enterprise. I'm on record as saying that they should have made the fourth show be Star Trek: Excelsior. But then B&B would have just messed that up too.

[CrateriaA]

If Excelsior would have been a go, hope it wouldn't have been similar to that Shattered Universe game. What a piece of garbage.

[Tsyroc]

Ok let's do a little logical analysis. The USS Enterprise is NCC-1701. The USS Constellation is NCC-1017, or roughly 700 ships in between. Now, let's use the statement from Admiral Morrow when he comes aboard the Enterprise, stating that the Enterprise is 20 years old. We also saw the Excelsior, which sits at NX-2000. That means that in roughly 20 years we've seen approximately 300 ships built. Now, that little number mentioned earlier, the 700, means that if we assume it takes 20 years to build 300 ships, it took 46.666 years, or roughly 45 years, to construct the fleet of 700 Constellation class ships. Considering they were being put out to pasture with the adoption of the Excelsior line, and given the earlier 20 year comment, that means the Constitution Class saw over 65 years of service before being replaced. The reason we never saw any in TNG when we did see the Excelsior line was because the Constitution Class was simply too old and that they simply settled on the Excelsior as a replacement because of advancements in technology.

An excellent analogy would be the Los Angeles Class submarines in use by the United States Navy. The Los Angeles Class was built from 1972 to 1995, but advancements in technology meant they were eventually too dated to keep up. So they were replaced with the Seawolf Class of submarine, and finally by the Virginia Class. The reason the ships were replaced was not because there was a problem with the design, but rather that the mission, equipment and technology had progressed, and so while refits might keep an aging fleet going, it's just going to keep getting more and more expensive. It's easier sometimes to just rip a ship apart and take what you can, melt down the rest, and build a new ship from scratch. The effort it would take to pull out the engines and replace them with something better just gets to be too much of a problem after a while.

That's a good argument for a lot more ships and for why the Connies aren't around during TNG. I would add that we hardly see any Constitution class ships during the TNG era and those came after the Connies.

Going by some of the books an argument could be made that a lot of the registration numbers were used up by all sorts of smaller ships. I think there was one book where what was essentially a construction tug boat in space had a starship registration number. Personally I think that is a big reach and would go with your logic instead.

[Baffalo]

I will also point out that not all ships decommissioned are sent to the breakers to die. Memory Alpha lists two ships at Wolf 359 as being Constitution Class, which suggests that some of the Constitution class were merely mothballed, a common enough practice even now. Taking a ship and removing most of its more valuable components out and just leaving the hull to float harmlessly out of the way. Most likely, Starfleet saw the value of stashing a few heavy cruisers out of the way for an emergency, which the Borg threat certainly was. So while not all Constitution class ships are destroyed, the majority are probably either in support roles far from the frontier or are empty hulls waiting to be drug out and used again.

[MKSheppard]

However, given that the Constellation is listed as NCC-1017, and the Enterprise was NCC-1701, leads some credence to the idea that there were indeed over 200 ships of a single class.

Better analysis.

Hull numbers are assigned when the ship is authorized by the Federation Senate (or whatever the hell the legislative body is named).

So; the Federation Senate authorizes construction of such and such heavy cruisers, such and such destroyers, such and such transports, etc for that year's Shipbuilding Program.

The ships for that year's shipbuilding all get assigned sequential numbers.

This would explain the craziness of known Constitution numbers:

NCC-1017: Constellation

NCC-1631: Intrepid

NCC-1657: Potemkin
NCC-1664: Excalibur
NCC-1672: Exeter

NCC-1700: UNNAMED Constitution
NCC-1701: Enterprise
NCC-1703: Hood
NCC-1707: UNNAMED Constitution
NCC-1709: Lexington

NCC-1764: Defiant

Because the ships were not all authorized by the Federation Senate at the same time, but instead were part of a multi-year procurement plan; with the hull numbers in between being taken up by smaller ships or auxiliaries.

[Baffalo]

I really wish Starfleet would just adopt numbers similar to the US Navy. CV for aircraft carriers, DD for destroyers, etc. Would be a little bit harder to keep track, but it'd tell us right off the bat what type of ship it is. I think that holdover may come from TOS when the Enterprise was number NCC 1701 and then they decided EVERY ship had to be an NCC number.

[Stofsk]

The US navy categories are pretty arbitrary. What's the difference between a destroyer, a cruiser, and a frigate anyway?

Different missions/roles. Frigates for example are usually used for anti-submarine warfare, while destroyers have a bit of multirole aspect but can be specialised (Australia is working on getting a trio of air-warfare destroyers). Cruisers are also multirole but I think the cruisers of today are a different beast than what they were during the age of guns.

I heard somewhere that Roddenberry or someone early on wanted to make it so the first two numbers are the class.

So, 17xx = constitution class, 20xx = excelsior class, etc. Of course, they didn't stick to that much at all.

That really works for TOS. USS Grissom was NCC-638, USS Reliant was NCC-1864.

[Baffalo]

The US navy categories are pretty arbitrary. What's the difference between a destroyer, a cruiser, and a frigate anyway?

I heard somewhere that Roddenberry or someone early on wanted to make it so the first two numbers are the class.

So, 17xx = constitution class, 20xx = excelsior class, etc. Of course, they didn't stick to that much at all.

The problem is this breaks down even within TOS if we count the Constellation (NCC-1017) and Enterprise (NCC-1701). Both are the same class, but have different prefix numbers. I was going to point out the USS Galaxy (NCC-70637) and the other ships of the Galaxy line, such as USS Odyssey (NCC-71832). However, I am also in agreement with Stofsk, in that classifications for various warship types can vary. Especially considering Gene wanted to move away from a directly military role for Starfleet.

I guess, in the end, it doesn't really matter if you have a prefix designation before your ship's hull number. When you have a ship database capable of storing information on thousands of systems, hundreds of species and countless other data, having a simple registry number might just make it easier to find the data, though it'd be no more difficult to remember something such as DD-1865 or something. I don't know, I'm just guessing as to possible motives.

[Stofsk]

Yeah it's a shame that they went that route with the Constellation. I wish they'd reversed that trend because the idea that 17 = class and the next two digits = production order is a really nice one. They could have done it 1710 for example.

Exeter also messed it up. The first two digits for its NCC registry is 16. Oh well.

[lordroel]

If you used the US Navy classification as example would we classify the Enterprise as a cruiser and if so a light ore heavy one.

[Baffalo]

If you used the US Navy classification as example would we classify the Enterprise as a cruiser and if so a light ore heavy one.

Most references list the Constitution Class as a Heavy Cruiser.

The US Navy uses the following prefixes for each type of ship. For nuclear vessels, they add the letter N to the end of the prefix, so that a carrier (CV) with a nuclear power plant becomes CVN. Guided missile ships add a G, so for a destroyer (DD) it becomes DDG.

Aircraft Carriers: CV (Note: Most ships rely on nuclear power, giving them the designation CVN)
Amphibious Assault Ships (Marines): LHD and LHA
Battleships: BB (Note: all battleships have been retired from active duty.)
Submarines: SS (Note: Most submarines are nuclear, making them SSN. Ballistic missile submarines are designated SSBN)
Cruiser: C (Note: Only three countries use the designation cruiser, and that line is blurred between cruisers and destroyers)
Destroyer: DD
Frigates: FF

[lordroel]

Most references list the Constitution Class as a Heavy Cruiser.

Thanks for the repley.

So if we used the US navy classification as a example for cruisers in Starfleet we would have for the Constitution Class the designation C (number of the cruiser), now you need to figure out how many cruisers have entered service before the Constitution Class to get the number behind C or would it use HC as its classified a heavy cruiser.

[Tsyroc]

The US navy categories are pretty arbitrary. What's the difference between a destroyer, a cruiser, and a frigate anyway?

I heard somewhere that Roddenberry or someone early on wanted to make it so the first two numbers are the class.

So, 17xx = constitution class, 20xx = excelsior class, etc. Of course, they didn't stick to that much at all.

The US Navy has also been known to reclassify a ship's designation during it's active duty lifetime, and/or to call a ship by a more "prestigious" class type in order to make it easier for congressmen to accept the build price. It's much easier to pay for a nuclear powered guided missile cruiser than it is to pay for the same ship when it's called a frigate.

[Crateria]

I appreciate the discussion on US Navy ships, but is this necessary? It seems like a hijack.

[Baffalo]

I appreciate the discussion on US Navy ships, but is this necessary? It seems like a hijack.

Not at all. We're applying a real world analog to a fictional medium. It makes it easier to understand. I admit the original topic had nothing to do with this, but many threads wind up going off the established track. It's just something you get used to.