What stops Starfleet from building more ships?

[Stofsk]

You'd be wrong. In TNG the shuttle used in "The Outcast" had a phaser emitter on each of the nacelles IIRC.

[Isolder74]

You'd be wrong. In TNG the shuttle used in "The Outcast" had a phaser emitter on each of the nacelles IIRC.

Did they fire? If not we can't confirm it other then it looks like a Phaser emitter(which already look like lights.)

[Stofsk]

Yes, it did fire - it was part of the plot of that episode.

[seanrobertson]

[Stofsk]

Sean, you kick ass.

(But I'd say that anyway, because of your avatar)

[ExarKun]

I love how you walked us through your logic and proved each statement, building an insumountable argument regarding fleet sizes and how the massive fleet explosion makes sense in-universe.

I know this is picking on retards, but honestly; your scaling from that picture is laughable. You apparently make no effort to account for scaling; the fighters are CLEARLY very far in front of the Vor'Cha, and there is no way to tell if they're in front or behind of the BoP.

It's not supposed to be based on fact retard. I already implied it's all an assumption on my part on how Starfleet could go from the small feel fleet of TOS to the massive fleets in DS9 - in an attempt to answer questions from the first few posts of the topic. I apologize for trying that instead of going off on a tangent for 5 pages about the dictionary definition of "ship" There is no facts because writers don't give us any. You should provide your own theory on how they because so big

And I'm not going to reply to you point for point, because it's pointless, you didn't understand why I wrote it to begin with, and you missed out on some pretty important stuff, like you bring up 1000 fighters constantly, even though I never mention the number of fighters at all. Then you want me to prove that the shipbuilding process isn't bottlenecked, wow. Why dont we just delete this thread, no point in speculating, we should prove everything in an imaginary universe created by writers who didn't give a crap to begin with? Just close the thread

Others are ranting on about shuttles not having weapons wow, may be you should watch an episode or two before acting like an ass.

Then you have assumptions that fighters are the size of shuttles, despite the space difference in the picture, you can tell they're still bigger than a fucking shuttle from the window alone (let me guess what's coming here: prove that that's a window, right?). There is obviously different scaling through DS9, and so is the case with fighters, sometimes they are shown tiny, other times, at least the size of runabout. And I accounted for that plus I said that raiders could be considered fighters as well. The size is not an issues anyways, suit yourself, let them be 4 meters long I don't care, I just said that I think fighters are considered "ships", they obviously play an integral part unlike shuttles

[Stark]

You don't 'answer questions' by MAKING SHIT UP. People are talking about evidence and reference points and trying to rationalise them (and realising it's pretty damn hard to do). It doesn't help to just pull shit out of your ass. It's just sad that you found the thread interesting reading or whatever, and decided what it really needed was basically fanfiction.

It's sad that you respond to my criticism of your terrible 'look it's down near the vorcha' scaling by a) talking about the window, which you didn't even mention and I'm not disputing and b) didn't even point out I was wrong and the shuttles are clearly in front of the BoP. Your brain is so broken that you saw 'lol your scaling sucks' and you launched into a childish tirade about how it's so hard to prove anything you don't care anyway because you're petulant. Why'd you post a picture when you were never going to refer to it outside of 'wow fighters'?

Oh and how far in front of the Vor'cha are the fighters? Oh wait, you don't know!

[Darth Wong]

It's not supposed to be based on fact retard. I already implied it's all an assumption on my part on how Starfleet could go from the small feel fleet of TOS to the massive fleets in DS9 - in an attempt to answer questions from the first few posts of the topic.

I see you ignored the point again, about how you can't establish that an assumption is "reasonable" simply by saying so. If it's so obviously reasonable that no one would bother to dispute it, then fine. But if someone disputes it, then you need to be able to explain why you feel something is a "reasonable assumption".

[Alyeska]

I don't really see a problem in reconciling the TOS fleet with the DS9 one. Albeit, it's stretching it, it can be done. Here's how I see it:

I guess you haven't read this thread. The Dominion itself was said to have 30,000 ships after a year of fighting. How does that figure in your assumptions?

I've read most of the thread and I'm still in the process of reading the last couple of pages. I must have missed 30K though. Which episode was this stated in?

I do believe it was the very next episode after the loss at Chin'Toka. The Klingons were said to have 1,500 ships modified to be resistant to the Breen energy weapon on the front lines defending against the Dominion. The Romulans commented the Klingons would be outnumbered 20-1. 20 x 1,500 = 30,000. The Dominion and its allies had 30,000 ships available after a year and a half of fighting. The war was 3/4 of the way finished by this point. How does that compute with your wildly minimalistic numbers with no evidence to back them up?

[ExarKun]

You don't 'answer questions' by MAKING SHIT UP. People are talking about evidence and reference points and trying to rationalise them (and realising it's pretty damn hard to do). It doesn't help to just pull shit out of your ass. It's just sad that you found the thread interesting reading or whatever, and decided what it really needed was basically fanfiction.

It's sad that you respond to my criticism of your terrible 'look it's down near the vorcha' scaling by a) talking about the window, which you didn't even mention and I'm not disputing and b) didn't even point out I was wrong and the shuttles are clearly in front of the BoP. Your brain is so broken that you saw 'lol your scaling sucks' and you launched into a childish tirade about how it's so hard to prove anything you don't care anyway because you're petulant. Why'd you post a picture when you were never going to refer to it outside of 'wow fighters'?

Oh and how far in front of the Vor'cha are the fighters? Oh wait, you don't know!

If you don't like a post full of assumptions which were rationalized from the limited evidence we have, you can skip it. It wasn't a post full of dry facts, nor is it what the OP wanted, he asked for speculation for a trek nation that he's doing, I did my best, and it's better than what some others have done which didn't help out OP at all. For some things there is evidence, for others, there isn't and we can only make assumptions, for obvious reason that it's a fake universe where the writers don't give us enough info nor do they care to keep things they give us consistent. I don't understand why I have to explain this. I mean, you want me to prove that there is no production bottleneck? Come on..I didn't just pull shit out of my ass, I attempted to reconcile the two fleet sizes from TOS to DS9, sort of like how you would do if you were a writer on DS9 and you wanted to provide a back story, so you have something to work off of when you write your stories. What I did is much better than saying "writers suck" "they wanted to compete with Babylon 5" etc, my fanfick as you put it is reasonable in the absence of facts, because you can't bring up any facts that can outright without any doubt contradict the fanfick.

I see you ignored the point again, about how you can't establish that an assumption is "reasonable" simply by saying so. If it's so obviously reasonable that no one would bother to dispute it, then fine. But if someone disputes it, then you need to be able to explain why you feel something is a "reasonable assumption".

You need to explain why is it unreasonable first. To me, when I say it's reasonable that the fleet doubled in size from TOS to TNG, it sounds reasonable given the story: Federation is significantly bigger from the Romulan conversation, we see more ships on screen than we did in TOS, many more. There are 40 ships assembled at a quick notice at Wolf 359 when in TOS you would never see a fleet like that etc there is ample evidence. So you need to tell me, why do you think that it would be unreasonable to assume that it could have doubled or more? To me it's reasonable. And you can see it backed up by fleets in DS9.

I do believe it was the very next episode after the loss at Chin'Toka. The Klingons were said to have 1,500 ships modified to be resistant to the Breen energy weapon on the front lines defending against the Dominion. The Romulans commented the Klingons would be outnumbered 20-1. 20 x 1,500 = 30,000. The Dominion and its allies had 30,000 ships available after a year and a half of fighting. The war was 3/4 of the way finished by this point. How does that compute with your wildly minimalistic numbers with no evidence to back them up?

I did address that in my long "fanfick." I think the Romulan was simple exaggerating and implying that the odds were not that good. Do you honestly think that if those numbers were correct, Dominon held back instead of simply rushing every key installation in the alpha quadrant? They have to be complete idiots if they didn't attack the core worlds, the station, shipyards, what have you. I mean they annihilate the entire fleet at Chintoka, and then do NOTHING! They don't send 10,000 ships to DS9 even though it's only a few light years away, they don't send 5000 ships towards Earth which probably didn't have many Klingons ships defending it, and how many Klingon ships are defending Romulus?, they could have conquered dozens of key worlds while Klingons did their little hit and run act and they just do little skirmishes on the border, They do one big NOTHING. Anybody else would have won the entire war there and then with that kind of crazy advantage that the magic weapon and the numbers gave them.

And why do you think they would know the exact numbers of Dominion fleet anyways? We know the fog of war was in full strength, they couldn't really see beyond the border. In Operation Return, they have no idea how big Dominion fleet is until they are right in front of it.

There is no way I can accept an offhand remark like that as a straight up fact given what happens afterwords, no way.

[Darth Wong]

I see you ignored the point again, about how you can't establish that an assumption is "reasonable" simply by saying so. If it's so obviously reasonable that no one would bother to dispute it, then fine. But if someone disputes it, then you need to be able to explain why you feel something is a "reasonable assumption".

You need to explain why is it unreasonable first.

Bullshit. An assumption can be considered unreasonable by default. If you could derive it through reason, then it would be a deduction, not an assumption. A "reasonable assumption" is one that, if it was challenged, one could provide some kind of supporting argument for, but don't want to bother for the sake of brevity.

[Stark]

Holy shit, did he just use the size of fleets in DS9 to support his made-up numbers that are supposed to explain the size of fleets in DS9? Whoa.

He needs to say 'to me it's reasonable' more, as is anyone should give a fuck. Remember, when he MAKES SHIT UP and ADMITS IT, we have to PROVE HIM WRONG.

[Alyeska]

I did address that in my long "fanfick." I think the Romulan was simple exaggerating and implying that the odds were not that good. Do you honestly think that if those numbers were correct, Dominon held back instead of simply rushing every key installation in the alpha quadrant? They have to be complete idiots if they didn't attack the core worlds, the station, shipyards, what have you. I mean they annihilate the entire fleet at Chintoka, and then do NOTHING! They don't send 10,000 ships to DS9 even though it's only a few light years away, they don't send 5000 ships towards Earth which probably didn't have many Klingons ships defending it, and how many Klingon ships are defending Romulus?, they could have conquered dozens of key worlds while Klingons did their little hit and run act and they just do little skirmishes on the border, They do one big NOTHING. Anybody else would have won the entire war there and then with that kind of crazy advantage that the magic weapon and the numbers gave them.

And why do you think they would know the exact numbers of Dominion fleet anyways? We know the fog of war was in full strength, they couldn't really see beyond the border. In Operation Return, they have no idea how big Dominion fleet is until they are right in front of it.

There is no way I can accept an offhand remark like that as a straight up fact given what happens afterwords, no way.

What you do is examine the possible meaning of the statement. The Klingons have 1,500 frontline warships ready. The Dominion has 30,000 ships. Ships. Cruisers, destroyers, attack ships, support ships, etc. The Federation and Romulans themselves aren't entirely defenseless. While the dampening weapon is dangerous, they can still utilize their own ships until hit by the dampening field. So Romulan and Federation ships (and Klingon ships not so equipped with the modifications yet) can operate behind a wall of the Klingon ships that can defend against the Breen.

[seanrobertson]

Sean, you kick ass.

(But I'd say that anyway, because of your avatar)

Thanks, broski

[seanrobertson]

You need to explain why is it unreasonable first. To me, when I say it's reasonable that the fleet doubled in size from TOS to TNG, it sounds reasonable given the story: Federation is significantly bigger from the Romulan conversation, we see more ships on screen than we did in TOS, many more.

Why do you take that Romulan's vaguerisms to heart, but you regard his DS9 countryman's more precise statement as an "exaggeration"?

There's nothing from "The Neutral Zone" to make any meaningful size comparisons between the Federation of the 23rd and 24th centuries. All the Romulan prick said was this:

Captain Picard, because your actions are those of a thoughtful man who is neither rash nor easily provoked, I tell you this. More urgent matters have caused our absence, and witness the results. Outposts destroyed, evidence of the Federation everywhere. We have been negligent, but no more.

He never said the Federation expanded everywhere, which would still be meaningless for quantifying how many ships Starfleet's built. (How much is "everywhere," let alone to a Romulan commander?)

No: he said there's evidence of the Federation everywhere. In the last fifty years or so, there's "evidence" of the U.S. throughout most of the world in the form of McDonald's and Pizza-Hut restaurants. Does that mean the U.S. military has doubled in size since?

Moreover, we don't know how big Starfleet was in Kirk's day. We've always assumed it was much, much smaller. The implication seemed to be that individual starships represented an enormous expenditure of resources -- and why not? Superficially, it makes sense. Ships were fast and powerful, capable of devastating a planet's major cities. And we only see a handful of Starfleet ships onscreen simultaneously, true enough.

But then, when did anything in TOS call for a fleet action a'la Wolf 359? Fleets are assembled for a reason, and with one exception*, I can't recall an occasion in which a large fleet of ships was needed. Did the M5 computer test really and truly need more than 5 starships to test its efficacy?

*It would've been peachy for a fleet to engage the "planet-killer." IIRC, once the thing was identified, the E's long-range communications were somehow jammed. She couldn't call HQ to send more ships.

I'm sure the Federation expanded significantly before TNG started. Maybe the fleet size did double in that time. It's not that I don't appreciate your effort to reconcile things; rather, I'm asking you to take a harder look at your approach.

[AirshipFanboy]

Returning to the original topic, if a huge industrialized Federation has so much trouble building ships, then how can we rationalize lonely Voyager building the Delta Flyer in a week?

Granted the Delta Flyer is *tiny*, but its still a new design and it has many of the gadgets larger ships have (phasers, shields, warp drive, subspace radio). And if it was radically easier to build gobs of smaller ships, why would major powers bother building so many huge ships?

Also, I have a problem with the dilithium hypothesis - were dilithium the main production bottleneck in TNG/DS9, I would expect to see more attention put on it.

The Federation-Klingon alliance's opening moves against the Dominion were attacks on shipyards, not dilithium mines or convoys. They even sacrificed DS9 to mount such an attack. And when the Enterprise-D found a sector with planets that were exploding because of too-much-dilithium in TNG: Pen-Pals (I know... it doesn't make sense), they didn't immediately send for a mining ship to suck up all the valuable crystals.

Granted, Coridan's dilithium mines were a strategic target for the Dominion (DS9: One Little Ship). But the importance assigned to shipyards during the Dominion war suggests that yard capacity is a limitation too. If dilithium was the main bottleneck, I'd expect every planet with dilithium on it to be rapidly strip mined and heavily fortified, and for nations to binge on shipbuilding whenever they found more magic crystals.

My guess is that expensive industrial replicators may be a major capital bottleneck; they make major fusses about small numbers of industrial replicators in DS9, which can be used to make factories and power plants. Shipyards might use big replicators to make large ship parts, and capital ships like Voyager might use small ones to make Delta Flyer parts.

-hypothetical fleet numbers-
and
-other stuff-

Stark may drop more flame-bombs than a bomber fleet piloted by Kissinger-clones over a Cambodian village, but he did give a couple good reasons to doubt your model (beyond default skepticism).

First, the Federation at best stalemated a war against the Cardassians. Why wouldn't the Federation ratchet up their shipbuilding efforts in a period of constant tension with another great power?

Second, If Starfleet had a thousand ships at the end of the Dominion war, 400 of which had been built in the last few years, then we should see more new ships later in the war and more older ships earlier. Paging through screencaps, the fleet-mixes from the early Dominion War and the attack on Cardassia aren't all that different (the DS9 finale even uses stock footage from Sacrifice of Angels).

So, for your model to work, the Federation has to: A) Keep building Mirandas throughout the TNG-DS9 era and B) have some reason to not build gobs of ships while fighting the Cardassians.

[Alyeska]

Post War, the fleet composition was significantly biased towards newer designs. In Voyager End Game, the number of older designs was far lower then it ever was in DS9.

[AirshipFanboy]

That probably just means they retired their older ships to mothballs after winning the war.

[Alyeska]

That probably just means they retired their older ships to mothballs after winning the war.

And likely re-retired some as well. We know the Federation had a fair number of Excelsior and Miranda class ships in the Boneyards. They likely sent them back.

[AirshipFanboy]

That reminds me; in First Contact, we see mostly newer ships fighting that Borg cube. Maybe after Wolf 359 Starfleet decided it was a good idea to keep a combat force of its most advanced types near Earth. The Wolf 359 armada was a little more ragged-looking.

Or, then again, maybe there were gobs of Mirandas and Excelsiors fighting the cube earlier; only the newer ships managed to survive.

[Stark]

Depends. If you're in the EU, there was an hours-long running battle before First Contact and piles of ships were destroyed or left behind as the cube beelined for Earth.

[Alyeska]

We know that it took the Cube time to reach Earth. Hours. Its likely the older ships died first. Even still a few Miranda's and even an Oberth were visible in First Contact.

[Skylon]

That reminds me; in First Contact, we see mostly newer ships fighting that Borg cube. Maybe after Wolf 359 Starfleet decided it was a good idea to keep a combat force of its most advanced types near Earth. The Wolf 359 armada was a little more ragged-looking.

Or, then again, maybe there were gobs of Mirandas and Excelsiors fighting the cube earlier; only the newer ships managed to survive.

There were a few franken-ships in the Wolf 359 Armada that appeared to be from a similar lineage to the Galaxy-Class (or similar technology) which we never see again. That implies they were newer than the Excelsiors and Mirandas.

Like this one: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Niagara_class

[Patroklos]

First, the Federation at best stalemated a war against the Cardassians. Why wouldn't the Federation ratchet up their shipbuilding efforts in a period of constant tension with another great power?

Do we really have that many details as to what the character of the Federation/Cardassian war looked like? Was it a full on nation versus nation battle like in WWII, or was it more like a political squabble with minimal actual military fighting like most so many trade wars between European powers in the 1600s-1700s? It should also be remembred that it only takes a single generation for one power to leave another in the dust.

[Samuel]

First, the Federation at best stalemated a war against the Cardassians. Why wouldn't the Federation ratchet up their shipbuilding efforts in a period of constant tension with another great power?

Do we really have that many details as to what the character of the Federation/Cardassian war looked like? Was it a full on nation versus nation battle like in WWII, or was it more like a political squabble with minimal actual military fighting like most so many trade wars between European powers in the 1600s-1700s? It should also be remembred that it only takes a single generation for one power to leave another in the dust.

The Feds did so badly that they had to cede several colonies to the Union. That was what inspired the Maquis. And instead of supporting the Maquis and essentially making it a Federation puppet, they attacked it at every opportunity which makes no sense... unless they were afraid.