What stops Starfleet from building more ships?

[Gil Hamilton]

I think it's worth pointing out that the first few shots usually do far too much damage in a typical Star Trek battle for the ship to last anywhere near as long as it does. It's always been a weak spot in terms of their writing: the damage to the ship always goes from zero to severe, then ... a bit more severe ... and ... a bit more severe ... and we're almost done for ... but not quite ... oops, another hit ... whoa, we're in trouble now ... etc.

Heh, damage is explicitly quantized. Going from Damage GS to the first Damage Excited State (ES) is a huge transition. Going from Damage ES1 to Damage ES2 is less. Once you get up to Damage ES4 or 5 and try to go up a Damage ES, the Damage Transition is tiny. At that point, they are never very far from the Damage Ionization Potential (I.E. the ship explodes).

That's what you get when you throw around Quantum Bullshit Technobabble all day.

Though to be fair, once upon a time this could have been called "The Millenium Falcon Principle".

[Simon_Jester]

So... can we apply perturbation theory to the Chewbacca-Hamilton-Scott Damage Quantization model?

EDIT: For example, does having a Heroically Determined captain* help or hurt, and could we conceivably estimate how much?

*"Never tell me the odds!"

[Iosef Cross]

What makes ST ships relatively rare? The Federation has a population of at least a trillion and only recruits warp-capable cultures. But, Starfleet probably has only a few thousand starships, which are often overworked or stretched thin.

What scarce factor of production stops them from churning out more ships? Skilled labor? Industrial output? Personnel to man their ships? Expensive, hard to produce technology? Are their shipyards difficult to construct? Difficulty lifting parts into orbit? A shortage of raw materials or a difficulty in transporting said raw materials? The expense of producing antimatter? Or, simply a small military budget?

The small size of the Starfleet compared to their population, about 1000 ships with average length of 350 meters, or roughly the volume of 100 million tons of modern seagoing warships, can be explained by minimalist bias.

Today the world's merchant fleet has 1.1 billion tons: http://shipchartering.blogspot.com/2009 ... -hits.html. With would be 11 000 Nimitz carriers, roughly the size of a medium to small federation starship.

And South Korea produces 12.4 million tons of shipping per year. That's the size of 150 carriers of 300 meters in length. Comparable to the total annual production of the Federation.

The 1 trillion figure is canon? Because there is nothing in ST that implies that the population of the federation is more than circa a few tens of billions.

Any insights or speculation would be appreciated. I am asking because I am trying to concoct fleet-strength figures for a hypothetical Trek nation, and want a more thought-out limit than something like "as many ships as the Klingons have."

I would think that an civilization with 150 worlds would have a population of 500 billion, a Starfleet of 50,000 warships, each on average of 550 meters in length (that would give a size of 25 billion tons in terms of modern seagoing ships) and the capacity to produce 10,000-20,000 such ships per year in case of war. That's my low end estimate for the size of the fleet of starships.

The size of the merchant fleet of a 500 billion people interestelar empire would be at least in the hundreds of billions of tons. More probably in the trillions.

[Batman]

Time stamps. Learn how to read them.

[Iosef Cross]

In today's world, your 1 billion ton merchant fleet transports about 4-5 billion tons of cargo per year. Considering that our world's population is 6 billion and that more than half of the world's still is not industrialized, I would say that the Federation, having their alleged 1 trillion population islanded in 150 planets, considering that they are fully industrialized and use routinely interestelar trade, they would need to transport 2-3 trillion tons of cargo, with would imply in a 500-700 billion ton merchant fleet.

Considering that a 1 trillion people interestelar empire would need 50 billion tons of warships, that's a realistic merchant fleet size. Historically, Britain maintained a naval fleet 10% of the size of their merchant fleet.

*I am using the ton measure to speak about volume equivalence or transport capacity equivalence to modern seagoing vessels. And the density of ST ships is not probably much more than modern ships.

[Iosef Cross]

Time stamps. Learn how to read them.

So I should have made a new tread?

[Batman]

That's not for me to decide but with the thread being dead for half a year before your response I very much suppose the answer is 'yes'.

[Dalton]

Time stamps. Learn how to read them.

Next time just use the report button. You really don't have to add your two cents.