A reason for Trek inferiority...

[Stravo]

Another small detail: If the Federation fleet is truly as large as you claim, why id Bashir so upset that the seventh fleet was decimated?? He screams at Sisko "We can't take these kind of losses and expect to win this." I don't think that speaks well to the Federation's ability to replace lost ships

Well, let's remember that there's more to replacing fighting ability than just replacing the ships. There's also the need of replacing the crews as well, which no matter what your industrial capacity may (or may not) be, is far more difficult to replace du to the training requirements.

Hell, even if you do manage to scrape together a crew to man the ship, they'll most likely wind up being a group of inexperienced cadets who'll only get their ship destroyed again in the first major battle they're thrusted in to.

A point I definately raised on another thread. The Federation would be hard pressed to field personnel for a 15,000 ship fleet...We're talking about MILLIONS of crewmen, THOUSANDS of officers, who all can MUST graduate from only ONE institution. So you have a sort of bottleneck for personnel that I believe supercedes the limitations on Federation ship building...how can the Federtion with only 150 worlds field such a massive military (AND Remember this is just naval personnel not army or airforce AND take into account that the Federation is NOT a militiarized power like the Klingons and Romulans. There is no draft.)

[Setesh]

Easier than you might think if you look at how the feds count ships. Lets go to GK's site for a moment, according to his numbers there are 3970 cap ships, 1300 of which are non-combat vesseals (Oberth, Shelly, Olympic).

But add in every Warp capable vessel/shuttle/fighter, you'll hit 15000 pretty quick. So the personel requirements aren't as high since they would use the personel on the cap ships. But the personel cost is still enormous, with most of starfleet being human it gets worse. To add to the problem, Starfleet is a very centralized organization. Communication time lag and ship travel time make this is highly impractical. With only a few exceptions starfleets admirals are all deskjockeys.

Me and a friend are co-writing a fic in which the federation council gives us carte blanche (sort of) to reform Starfleet. We are givin a one of the fleets and 5 years to work on them. I will post it at some point but we ran a few 'What ifs...' with NG/DS9/Voy eps against the Neofleet, they do far better in every case except Q-playtime.

[Stravo]

Lets go to GK's site for a moment, according to his numbers there are 3970 cap ships, 1300 of which are non-combat vesseals (Oberth, Shelly, Olympic).

But add in every Warp capable vessel/shuttle/fighter, you'll hit 15000 pretty quick.

You and I would agree on this point, namely IF there is a 12,000 ship SF then it MUST include fighters and shuttles BUT Chris O'Farrell states:

To put it bluntly, fighters are never said to be counted as ships. All evidence points to them NOT being counted from navel tradition to precidents in Trek such as shuttle craft (which fighters would realy fall under)

So we have a dilemma, one I am trying to come to terms with. I believe that the 12,000 number simply cannot be supported by canon visual and mathemtical evidence. There does not seem to be a way to reconcile this high number UNLESS we ARE counting fighters and shuttles.

Not only are we to believe that 12,000 is a reasonable number but O'Farrell in his analysis also states that this number represents COMBAT CAPABLE starships, not just science ships and other vessels. (By reaching this number he constantly uses the DOminion War as a backdrop thus I assume he means that his fleet count must be combat craft since science vessels are useless during the Dominion war.)

If we're looking at combat craft I have to say that at most SF can have 5,000 starships. If the Klingon DF has 1500 ships during the Dominion war and that is their entire fleet HOW can we reasonably assume that SF has nearly TEN times that number of combat ships?! Let's remember, the Federation is NOT a militarized organization in the sense that they have a draft or are a militant culture like the Klingons and the Romulans. There has to be a parity of numbers if we believe that there is a cold war status going on with the three main powers BEFORE the Dominion war.

[Chris OFarrell]

just the Sol system. Earth is actualy relativly close to the Cardasian boarder in terms of galactic distance, its possible that the operation would involve moving enough ships out that the lines protecting Earth would be easily penetrated by a fast attack fleet.

What canon source states this fact? DS9 is considered to be on the fringes of Federation space. (Bashir wanting to practice "frontier medicine")

[/b][/q]

Err its hardly on the fringes of UFP space. Sure its not the core of the UFP, but its not the very edge. Bajor sits right on the Cardasian / UFP boarder and is a relativly conveinent staging point to Cardasia prime. The Cardasians and UFP made First contact and settled the boarder region decades ago, Bajor was simply annexed by the Cardasians. Its close enough to Earth for real time communication, something that ships on the REAL fringes of UFP space don't have. Bashier wanted to practice frontier medicine and chose Bajor because it wasn't a nice plump assignment but a hard one with no real facilities, no staff in a very unstable situation.

[q]

Every time Sisko goes to earth he is gone for days.

[/q]

Every time he go's he STAYS for days. It only takes a day or so to travel to Earth from DS9 on the Defiant, hardly one of the fastest Federation starships. Thats only in the range of hundreds of light years realy, not thousands (given that the UFP streaches across 8000 light years, its preaty damn close).

[q]

SO, when the Breen attack earth can you explain to me why this massive 30,000 ship fleet being feilded by the allies can't stop a Breen attack force that must chug along for DAYS to get to Earth, no fleet is there at earth to stop them because they BOMB SF HQ, then are only destroyed ENROUTE BACK TO THE DOMINION.

[/q]

......SIGH.

1. Space is BIG. The 'front' streaches across Federation, Klingon AND Romualn space. Lets generously assume its a total front of say 100 light years by fifty in hight by one deep. Thats five THOUSAND cubic light years. 30,000 ships, especialy deployed in large fleets is not going to cover a massive amount of space.
2. The fact that the Breen got to Sol undetected isn't exactly a surprise given that it was established way back in TNG that they have cloaking technology.
3. They were destroyed in Sol by Earths plantery defences. They were still attacking when they were finisahed off by Stafleet hence 'Most of the damage had been done" when Starfleet finished them.
4. Starfleet up until the Breen attack didn't have a clue about the Breen involvement in the war. That was their calling card to say 'hey guys, we're in the war now!'. Starfleet had been focusaing on attacking the Dominion and the Cardasians. The Breen were introversive through TNG and DS9 and kept to themselves. Their ability to go un-noticed when no-one was looking isn't exactly a major surprise...

Please try and get your facts straight.

[q]

This does seem to indicate that:
A) that Earth has a no permanent fleet elemet stationed there because they did not intercept a fleet that anyone could see coming for DAYS.

[/q]

And your proof that they HAD seen them comming for days is.......where?

[q]

AND the Breen were able to do initiate and complete and orbital bombardment then levae, finally destroyed while making their way back home.

[/q]

And your proof that this is what happened is.....where? Everything *I* have seen is that they got into orbit, got off some token shots at SanFransisco and were blasted into millions of peices. Nothing I have seen indicates they were able to do anything as amazing as a full scale planatery bombardment.

[q]

B) The Federation defensive lines must be incredibly thin if a Breen task force can breech the lines and head for earth, warping for DAYS and no fleet elements are in interception range.

[/q]

And your evidence is incredibly thing that this is what happened...

[q]

C)The only target worth striking is Earth and yet no major defenses around earth despite the fact that they have now been at war for over two years...

[/q]

Which is of course why the Breen attack force was blown appart so quickly itas not funny, even when it was shown clearly in the episode that Starships are no match for the Breen yet thanks to the energy draining weapon. Something managed to destroy the breen attack force TOTALY and the Breen as yet had not shown to the UFP their ion cannons....err.....energy dampaning weapons (those came later in the episode). Given that, the only logical thing that destroyed the fleet would have been plantery defences.

[q]
Another small detail: If the Federation fleet is truly as large as you claim, why id Bashir so upset that the seventh fleet was decimated?? He screams at Sisko "We can't take these kind of losses and expect to win this."

[/q]

No shit. If you send out a fleet at 100% strength and get them back at 8% strength, its something thats upsetting. There is nothing saying that Bashier is talking about loses in terms of numbers lost and not percentages lost. 92% loses are rather clearly something you can NOT sustain if you hope to win a war.

[q]

I don't think that speaks well to the Federation's ability to replace lost ships (BOBW states that it will take a YEAR to replace the losses at Wolf 359,

[/q]

No, Shelby said we will have the fleet back up in less then a year, not IN a year. Further this is at peacetime in the Federation, their shipbuilding is hardly at amazing levels. Contrast the shipbuilding efforts currently in the US navy. Compare that to their shipbuilding efforts in WW2. See a difference?

[q]

so how are they going to replace the losses of HUNDREDS of starships in a shorter time frame??)

[/q]

Because they are at war, have been preparing for war and building for war for some time now as ship clases such as the Akira, Sabre, Defiant and Galaxy Varients show? Once more, contrast the US production in peacetime and the US production at wartime. BIG difference mate.

[q]

nor its size...If they had 15,000 ships, losing 100 won't make you rant that you might lose this war.

[/q]

I never claimed 15,000. I used it to show support for between 8 and 12. And listen CAREFULY to what bashier says:

"We can't keep taking loses like these sir, not if we hope to defeat the Dominion!"

Bashier says we can't keep taking loses " LIKE" these. That is, sending a fleet out and getting a whopping 8% back. You CAN'T keep taking loses like that and win a war. Hell in Sacrifice of Angles, the UFP apparnetly lost a butload more then that in SHEAR NUMBERS but it was celebration all around given that they retook DS9 and pushed the Dominion back.

[q]

Another minor point...if there is only a SINGLE institution that graduates your officers, HOW can you staff a 15,000 ship fleet. That graduating class must number in the tens of thousands.

Do you have any idea how big Starfleet accadamy is? ITs mentioned in TNG that there are campusus on other planets. And its very clearly mentioned MANY times in DS9 in MANY episodes that BILLIONS of people are putting their lives on the line and fighting the war. THATS how many people the UFP could devote to the war effort when they got cracking. A 12 K fleet is only going to at BEST (assuming they are all fully crewed GCS's which is VERY wrong) going to take 12000000 people. Quite a bit LESS then 2 billion (assuming that billions = 2). Minor point, canon evidence points to them having MORE then enough people contrey to what you claim with enough left over for staffing bases, ground forces e.t.c.

[Chris OFarrell]

Lets go to GK's site for a moment, according to his numbers there are 3970 cap ships, 1300 of which are non-combat vesseals (Oberth, Shelly, Olympic).

But add in every Warp capable vessel/shuttle/fighter, you'll hit 15000 pretty quick.

You and I would agree on this point, namely IF there is a 12,000 ship SF then it MUST include fighters and shuttles BUT Chris O'Farrell states:

To put it bluntly, fighters are never said to be counted as ships. All evidence points to them NOT being counted from navel tradition to precidents in Trek such as shuttle craft (which fighters would realy fall under)

So we have a dilemma, one I am trying to come to terms with. I believe that the 12,000 number simply cannot be supported by canon visual and mathemtical evidence. There does not seem to be a way to reconcile this high number UNLESS we ARE counting fighters and shuttles.

Not only are we to believe that 12,000 is a reasonable number but O'Farrell sin his analysis also states that this number represents COMBAT CAPABLE starships, not just science ships and other vessels. (By reaching this number he constantly uses the DOminion War as a backdrop thus I assume he means that his fleet count must be combat craft since science vessels are useless during the Dominion war.)

If we're looking at combat craft I have to say that at most SF can have 5,000 starships. If the Klingon DF has 1500 ships during the Dominion war and that is their entire fleet HOW can we reasonably assume that SF has nearly TEN times that number of combat ships?! Let's remember, the Federation is NOT a militarized organization in the sense that they have a draft or are a militant culture like the Klingons and the Romulans. There has to be a parity of numbers if we believe that there is a cold war status going on with the three main powers BEFORE the Dominion war.

Your not LISTNING.

The Klingon Empire AT THE END OF THE DOMINION WAR, AFTER the CARDASIAN war, AFTER the FEDERATION war had 1500 starships in the Dominion war. Its stated many many times that the Klingons lose and get a LOT more starships trashed then the other two allies as they push their attacks far harder then the UFP or the Romulans. Only an idiot could possibly claim that is indicaitive of the numbers of their fleet at full Strength. Hell, in that second last section 31 episode, Slone comments that the Klingons are going to not be any kind of threat to the Federation as they are going to spend a Decade rebuilding their military from the wreck it is now. He then comments the Cardasians are going to be occupied, the Dominion forced back to the Gamma Quadrent and the only enemy the Federation needs to worry about is the Romulans. Mathamatical evidence very easily supports my numbers, the Dominion war could not have BEEN won unless they have a fleet the size they do bassed on numbers. Visual evidence supports no-one. Space is big. We never see an entire fleet in one shot. Example. We know there are 600 Federation and 1200 Dominion ships in SOA. Do we ever SEE 600 Federation ships? No. Do we ever see 1200 Dominion ships (who dont even USE fighters)? No. Visual evidence means very little when you have such large forces spread out over such a large area.

The 12000 number (as I went over quite carefuly) can be quite easily justified by events in the Dominion war. In fact, its realy impossible to not. Just look at "What You Leave Behind". The Dominion is stated to have a combined fleet of around 30,000 ships. Now your trying to tell me that a Klingon fleet numbering 1500, a Federation fleet numbering say 4000 and a Romulan fleet of similar numbers (the UFP and Rommies have to be nearly equivilant given their strategic situation of parity post Dominion war, in fact the Rommies would logicaly have less thanks to the warbird being their only ship of the line)....so roughly 10,000 ships were expecting to go up against a fleet of 30,000 ships....and were FULLY EXPECTING....to WIN?

That makes utterly no sense.

[Chris OFarrell]

Damn is there any way I can edit posts? I keep putting [Q] and [/Q] for quotes instead of the full [quote*] thing....

[Master of Ossus]

What do you think that the Klingon fleet would look like at full strength? I don't think that they could have taken more than 70% casualties during the conflict, given what we know about their ships and their deployments, and also from their combat record, and from the engagements we saw during the show. I really don't see how SF could possibly field more than about 15,000 combat capable ships, and I think that estimates greater than 20,000 are ludicrous.

[Chris OFarrell]

Another small detail: If the Federation fleet is truly as large as you claim, why id Bashir so upset that the seventh fleet was decimated?? He screams at Sisko "We can't take these kind of losses and expect to win this." I don't think that speaks well to the Federation's ability to replace lost ships

Well, let's remember that there's more to replacing fighting ability than just replacing the ships. There's also the need of replacing the crews as well, which no matter what your industrial capacity may (or may not) be, is far more difficult to replace du to the training requirements.

Hell, even if you do manage to scrape together a crew to man the ship, they'll most likely wind up being a group of inexperienced cadets who'll only get their ship destroyed again in the first major battle they're thrusted in to.

A point I definately raised on another thread. The Federation would be hard pressed to field personnel for a 15,000 ship fleet...

8 - 12 thousand.

We're talking about MILLIONS of crewmen, THOUSANDS of officers, who all can MUST graduate from only ONE institution.

Why only one? We hear about other campuses that people go to. Starfleet Accadamy appears to only be for officer training. In TNG The Drumhead, a crewmen (enlisted) was talking to Picard and Picard asked him why hadn't he gone all the way and applied for the Academy, hence he took his training offworld. The campus in SanFran appears to be the officer training. We don't know how big it is or the size of its clases, so I question how you can claim it can't keep up with the demand for officers. Especialy when its establised there are offworld institutions.

So you have a sort of bottleneck for personnel that I believe supercedes the limitations on Federation ship building...how can the Federtion with only 150 worlds field such a massive military (AND Remember this is just naval personnel not army or airforce AND take into account that the Federation is NOT a militiarized power like the Klingons and Romulans. There is no draft.)

150 MEMBER worlds. The major voting worlds. The number of colonies and secondery worlds that are subworlds of the member worlds are not inconsiderable. Example, Earth is one world but the other worlds in the solar system all come under Earth. In TOS its established humans are on over 1000 worlds and spreading. Just counting the worlds people mention as federation outposts or colonies (ignoring major ones like Vulcan, Earth, Andor e.t.c.) you get damn near 400 planets (and thats hardly all of them, the E-D which went to most of these is supposed to be on the EDGE of UFP space). The Federation has a more then sufficent manpower pool. Like it or hate its, its estabished that they had mobolised billions of personal for the Dominion war in several episodes. They lost THOUSANDS of them all the time when casulaity lists were posted in KIA. While it was depressing, it was never said to be a major body blow by any means. They clearly have the personal.

[Chris OFarrell]

What do you think that the Klingon fleet would look like at full strength?

[/b][/q]

NFI.

[q]

I don't think that they could have taken more than 70% casualties during the conflict, given what we know about their ships and their deployments, and also from their combat record, and from the engagements we saw during the show.

[/q]

Could you be more specific? Slone was preaty clear that whats left of the KDF would spend a decade rebuilding back to full strength and that it would not be any kind of threat to the UFP (which at the very least puts the UFP strength far above that number); 30% nominal strength would not be unreasnoable at the end of 4 years of nearly total war.

I really don't see how SF could possibly field more than about 15,000 combat capable ships, and I think that estimates greater than 20,000 are ludicrous.

So do I. I think 8-12 is a quite reasnoable number.

[Master of Ossus]

Are you counting fighters or not for your 8-12 thousand ships?

[Chris OFarrell]

Are you counting fighters or not for your 8-12 thousand ships?

I went over that at the start. The 8-12 is purely combat ready capital ships. Fighters are not counted as capital ships.

[Stravo]

No, Shelby said we will have the fleet back up in less then a year, not IN a year. Further this is at peacetime in the Federation, their shipbuilding is hardly at amazing levels. Contrast the shipbuilding efforts currently in the US navy. Compare that to their shipbuilding efforts in WW2. See a difference?

Actually you are using an incomaptable analogy. WWII era ships were incredibly easy to build because they were relatively simple affairs. You could build a liberty ship in under a week, a small carrier in two weeks. But that was before elctronics and complicated radar systems, ect. NOW it takes over 4 years to build a super carrier, 2 to build a seawolf sub. If we were at war now, no matter what you may think, we are not going to be rolling out carriers in less than a year, or building warships in weeks. Its just not going to happen no matter what war footing we're on because ships have gotten more complex....NOW you look at a starship...TM says it took YEARS to build a single Galaxy. Peacetime or not, it takes time to build a starship. The Federation was absolutely amazed by Dominion ship production, IIRC the Dominion was outbuilding the ENTIRE alliance nearly three to one. AND the perponderance of the ships we did see were MIrandas and light ships, there were no staggering waves of Galaxys (Ah but what a sight that would have been) and NOT A SINGLE SOvereign. If the Federation had this magical ability to suddenly ramp up production that cuts build time by an enormous factor (years to build a Galaxy to MONTHS??) why not build more combat capable craft like Sovereigns and Galaxies?

Starfleet Accadamy appears to only be for officer training.

Funny that, CHIEF O'Brian went to the academy (ENLISTED)

Your not LISTNING.

The Klingon Empire AT THE END OF THE DOMINION WAR, AFTER the CARDASIAN war, AFTER the FEDERATION war had 1500 starships in the Dominion war. Its stated many many times that the Klingons lose and get a LOT more starships trashed then the other two allies as they push their attacks far harder then the UFP or the Romulans. Only an idiot could possibly claim that is indicaitive of the numbers of their fleet at full Strength.

Are you SERIOUSLY contending that the Klingons lost 10,000 ships in TWO YEARS of fighting???? Because their fleet strength would have to be at the same level of the Federation's to believe the delicate tension between the AQ powers so the Klingons would have to have at least 12,000 ships as well and by the near end of the Dominion War they only have 1,500?!?!?

I never claimed 15,000.

MY mistake, I started editing before I posted when I reread your post and noted that you said 12 and NOT 15 so that is just a typo on my part.

[TheDarkling]

Stravo: Hes stated twice that the Klingons have been involved in 4 years of warfare, not to mention that the Klingons had a civil war during season 0 (TNG Season 5).

They engaged the Cardies in season 4, then season 5 they had the Fed-Klingon war and remember when the Dominion first came in force they crushed all the Klingon forces inside Cardassian space, so much so that Gowron was thinking about pulling back to the empire and fighting a war of defense(one he didnt seem too hopefull about).

Also remember that the klingons were never the threat they were back during TOS, during TNG the main worry with the klingos was that they would tip the balance of power by joining the Romulans thus giving them the advantage.

The klingons having taken heavily loses is no surprise.

[Alyeska]

FYI Starfleet expected to loose 2 BILLION personel if they lost the war, and hundreds of Billions of civilians.

Lets look at that. 2 Billion people in Starfleet. Now lets just ASSUME that every ship in Starlfeet is a Galaxy class fully crewed at 1000 people. That is 12 million naval personel working on starships, or .6% of Starfleet. Thats right, Starfleet is so large that if they had a fleet of 12 thousand Galaxy Class Starships and fully crewed them at 1,000 crew per ships, they would still have 99.4% of their personel left. Starfleet has the crew members to support 12,000 ships of varrying sizes on down to the lowly Miranda and Sabre.

[Stravo]

Darkling I have to assume parity of numbers in the AQ fleet strength numbers because otherwise the Romulans would attack the Klingons over perceived wekaness or the Cradasians, etc. It's more of a cold war mentality that you have to keep up with the Joneses.

You are right, The Klingons have been involved in quiet a few wars between the Dominion war and their own civil war, etc. But there are several factors that make me wary of accepting a 10,000 ship loss in that time frame.

We are not accounting for ship building between these conflicts, why do we assume that the Feds can replace their losses nearly instantaneoulsy, yet the Klingons who are on a war footing cannot at least keep up with attrition? You have an entire empire that is nearly always mobolized for war, a population that seem to be all warriors and a desire to fight and win, so building warships should not be a problem.

The Klingons never mention losses of this magnitude, yes they complain that they have suffered the most out of all the AQ powers in the war with the Dominion, but I find it hard to believe that they lost close to 80% of their entire fleet strength and they are still a linchpin of the allies offense (See SOA, it is only when the Klingons show up that the Federation is able to break the Dominion lines and turn their flank AND Coomodore Ross' statement that he doubts they could win the battle without the Klingons - He was right.)

I am NOT saying that the Feds cannot have a large fleet, I can accept a 12,000 ship number IF we include fighters and the like, because in SOA we see that the Peregrine fighters are included in the fleet count number just as the Dominion attack fighters are included in the Dominion fleet count.

[Alyeska]

Darkling I have to assume parity of numbers in the AQ fleet strength numbers because otherwise the Romulans would attack the Klingons over perceived wekaness or the Cradasians, etc. It's more of a cold war mentality that you have to keep up with the Joneses.

You are right, The Klingons have been involved in quiet a few wars between the Dominion war and their own civil war, etc. But there are several factors that make me wary of accepting a 10,000 ship loss in that time frame.

We are not accounting for ship building between these conflicts, why do we assume that the Feds can replace their losses nearly instantaneoulsy, yet the Klingons who are on a war footing cannot at least keep up with attrition? You have an entire empire that is nearly always mobolized for war, a population that seem to be all warriors and a desire to fight and win, so building warships should not be a problem.

The Klingons never mention losses of this magnitude, yes they complain that they have suffered the most out of all the AQ powers in the war with the Dominion, but I find it hard to believe that they lost close to 80% of their entire fleet strength and they are still a linchpin of the allies offense (See SOA, it is only when the Klingons show up that the Federation is able to break the Dominion lines and turn their flank AND Coomodore Ross' statement that he doubts they could win the battle without the Klingons - He was right.)

I am NOT saying that the Feds cannot have a large fleet, I can accept a 12,000 ship number IF we include fighters and the like, because in SOA we see that the Peregrine fighters are included in the fleet count number just as the Dominion attack fighters are included in the Dominion fleet count.

The Klingons DID mention heavy losses. General Martok was complaining that he was being sent in with pathetically small forces and being blammed for loosing against massively superior numbers of forces. And you also have no proof that the Fighters are included in the count. You also fail to realize the Peregrine is NOT the fighter in question. (TNG Preemptive Strike) shows that the Peregrine is not the same as the Tac-Fighter, and the Tac-Fighter is not an independent craft like the Runabouts are.

It is entirely possible the Cardassians lost a lot of ships, but that does NOT mean they lost 10,000 ships. The Cardassians were never a true threat to the Federation, and if you would examine my informaiton on the Federation fleet, you would realize that PRE-WAR footing the Federation had a fleet of only 9,000 ships. The Klingons likely only had 5-7 thousand ships. Loosing 4.5 or 6.5 thousand ships after 4 years of fighting is MUCH more realistic. But we have conclussive evidence that Starfleet can field such large fleets because they have the personel to do so, and we know that the Federation formed the single largest portion of the fleets.

As to the Romulans. While they enjoyed stabbing people in the back, they were never in a possition to attack the Klingons. Yes, the Klingons were at war, but they were in a war time footing and that would keep them somewhat inclinded to defend against the Romulan style sneak attack. The Romulans also knew the Federation would not stand for the Romulans doing such a thing because of the threats of the Dominion. It was in the Romulan's best interest to sit by the side until a true opertunity showed itself, which Sisko provided.

[Chris OFarrell]

No, Shelby said we will have the fleet back up in less then a year, not IN a year. Further this is at peacetime in the Federation, their shipbuilding is hardly at amazing levels. Contrast the shipbuilding efforts currently in the US navy. Compare that to their shipbuilding efforts in WW2. See a difference?

Actually you are using an incomaptable analogy. WWII era ships were incredibly easy to build because they were relatively simple affairs. You could build a liberty ship in under a week, a small carrier in two weeks. But that was before elctronics and complicated radar systems, ect. NOW it takes over 4 years to build a super carrier, 2 to build a seawolf sub.

I was not going off the electroincs actualy, just the launching of the hull. The fitting of stuff like computers is done after the ship has been launched from drydock. In WW2 they could have the ships frame without the comms equipment, radar e.t.c. launched in a VERY short time. Today in peacetime, even similar sized ships take far long as there is no incentive. The Borg threat was nullified and they only watned to build around 40 ships to replace them.

If we were at war now, no matter what you may think, we are not going to be rolling out carriers in less than a year, or building warships in weeks. Its just not going to happen no matter what war footing we're on because ships have gotten more complex....

Sure for supercarriers. For similar sized ships at a FULL war footing (which the US has not been in since WW2), I think it might surprise you how fast you could start to move things out.

[q]

NOW you look at a starship...TM says it took YEARS to build a single Galaxy.

[/quote]

Since when was the TM considered canon over here? I thought most of the people here realy DON'T want it in any way....

Ah well.

At any rate, the figures in the TM are questionable. Starsahips don't appear to take that long. Look at the Defiant class for example. The Mirror universe when they stole the designs for it were able to build one in a VERY short time, with NO experence in Starfleet technology, WITHOUT any kind of shipyard, with EXTREEMLY limited resources. I mean, in between getting Terak Nor and the Regent comming in, they were able to construct a full functioning warship. We know when Starfleet developed the project itself it only took a couple of years to go from concept to prototpe, given the time Sisko was stationed at Utopia before going to DS9 and overseeing the project. In fact, the Wolf 359 quote is quite useful here. Shelby is clear that they will have replaced the loses in less then a year. This is almost certianly to be starships being constructed in parallel, so we can infer that major starships can be built in less then a year. The limiting factor in throughput is going to be the number of slipways you can work on at the same time.

I don't see anything to realy support starships taking YEARS to build, perhaps excusing prototypes (but then again the Prometheus was apparently build during the Dominion war, the Akira went through prototype -> full production sometime between the end of TNG and mid DS9....

Peacetime or not, it takes time to build a starship.

Which is going to vary quite a bit depending on the situation. Round the clock wartime production is rather different from standard 9 to 5 monday to friday production.

The Federation was absolutely amazed by Dominion ship production,

The Dominion were stated as being able to build ships faster then the UFP and its allies could blow them up. It was the major factor in the decision to Invade Chintaka. The Romulans were in favour of simply blowing up each Dominion fleet as it came in, the Federation and Klingons pointed out that the Jem'hadar were produced and mated with ships faster then they could destroy them.

IIRC the Dominion was outbuilding the ENTIRE alliance nearly three to one.

Would you mind quoting the IIRC. I never heard any quote like that.

AND the perponderance of the ships we did see were MIrandas and light ships, there were no staggering waves of Galaxys (Ah but what a sight that would have been) and NOT A SINGLE SOvereign.

At the start of the war there was a bias towards older ships yes. By Chintaka there appeared to be a far more even mix in ship types. By Chintaka II they were mostly newer ships. By Endgame, the ships were almost exclusivly newer ships, mostly heavies like Galaxies, Nebulas, Akiras, Prometheus-B's...

The Soverigns were not seen simply because the DS9 FX people didn't have the legal right to use that model in their FX, that was explained by the production staff a while back when people asked the same question. However from ST9 we can guess that the Soverigns were running around putting out brushfires like the E-E was while the majority of the fleet was butting heads with the JH.

If the Federation had this magical ability to suddenly ramp up production that cuts build time by an enormous factor (years to build a Galaxy to MONTHS??)

Bassed on a source that is usualy not even accepted for years and once again you have put words into my mouth, now I have apparently claimed somewhere that Galaxies take months. Now if I knew WHERE I said that I might not be so confused, but get your facts right please.

why not build more combat capable craft like Sovereigns and Galaxies?

They DID build more Galaxies. They DID build combat craft like Akiras, Nebuals (with warpods), Sabres, Steamrunners. Episodes like Sacrifice of Angels take place quite early in the war, only a few months in. Later episodes show far more marked changes in the UFP fleets. Hell by the end of the series, they are giving out Defiant class ships to people like Sisko which appears to show a surplus of warships, if they can afford to give a state of the art ship to someone who is only going to sparingly use it.

Funny that, CHIEF O'Brian went to the academy (ENLISTED)

Funny that in early TNG he was a commisioned officer, an Ensign if I am not mistaken. And don't ask me how he suddenly became a non comm, I don't have a clue.

Are you SERIOUSLY contending that the Klingons lost 10,000 ships in TWO YEARS of fighting????

Once more your putting words in my mouth. Where the F*#K did I say there that the Klingons lost 10,000 ships in two years!!!!!!!!

Because their fleet strength would have to be at the same level of the Federation's to believe the delicate tension between the AQ powers

Why? Lets look over it shall we?

Season 5 TNG. Klingon civil war. Fun all around as the Empire splits and has fun beating itself with a stick.

Season 4 DS9. Relativly short time later. The Empire invades the Cardasians AND for kicks breaks the treaty with the UFP. Cardasian war moves to a halt in terms of space but still lots of conflict.

Season 5 DS9. Federation Klingon war. The Klingons throw everything they have at the unprepared UFP (in fact most of their forces should be on the OTHER side of the UFP IIRC where the wormhole is) and while they take ground they suffer preaty bloody loses.

Season 5.5 DS9. Dominion enters and kicks the shit out of the Klingons and ejects them from Cardasian space. The Khitomer accords are reinstated and the UFP and Klingons make up.

Season 5.13 - Season 7 DS9. The Dominon war. Massive scale all out war for TWO YEARS during which the Klingons are constently said to be pushing the hardest and the most in their attacks, incauring more damage and loses as a result.

Now at the VERY end of all this, with a days notice the Klingons are able to get a fleet of 1500 ships on the boarder and you are seriously telling me that this is still going to be a large fraction of their fleet? When Sloan himself confirms they have taken such massive loses they are going to spend a DECADE rebuilding? I sure as hell hope not.

so the Klingons would have to have at least 12,000 ships as well and by the near end of the Dominion War they only have 1,500?!?!?

Did I say 12,000? No. We don't know how many they have though for numerical purposes it fits. Loses of that magnitude after years and years of almost CONSTENT WAR is hardly surprising, especaily given comments that confirm their place post Dominion war as a broken and shattered power.

To put it bluntly, I have seen no evidence to conclusivly show Rick S's statement (which by itself given his position realy counts as much as canon as the SW producers comments have) is false, and PLENTY of evidence to show that it fits. I have seen not a shread of eviedence to claim that ST counts FIGHTERS as Starships except for insisting 'it is so!', flying in the face of commen sense, navel tradition AND ST precedents.....

[Chris OFarrell]

Darkling I have to assume parity of numbers in the AQ fleet strength numbers because otherwise the Romulans would attack the Klingons over perceived wekaness or the Cradasians, etc. It's more of a cold war mentality that you have to keep up with the Joneses.

You are right, The Klingons have been involved in quiet a few wars between the Dominion war and their own civil war, etc. But there are several factors that make me wary of accepting a 10,000 ship loss in that time frame.

We are not accounting for ship building between these conflicts, why do we assume that the Feds can replace their losses nearly instantaneoulsy, yet the Klingons who are on a war footing cannot at least keep up with attrition? You have an entire empire that is nearly always mobolized for war, a population that seem to be all warriors and a desire to fight and win, so building warships should not be a problem.

The Klingons never mention losses of this magnitude, yes they complain that they have suffered the most out of all the AQ powers in the war with the Dominion, but I find it hard to believe that they lost close to 80% of their entire fleet strength and they are still a linchpin of the allies offense (See SOA, it is only when the Klingons show up that the Federation is able to break the Dominion lines and turn their flank AND Coomodore Ross' statement that he doubts they could win the battle without the Klingons - He was right.)

SIGH.

You do have the FIRST clue that SOA takes place THREE MONTHS into the war right? And the 1500 ship number comes two weeks before the war ENDS? TWO YEARS later?

[TheDarkling]

The Romulans cant attack the Klingons even if the klingons were weaker that them (Klingons have 8000 or s to bthe romulans 12,000 as an example) because such a loss of ships would open up the Romulans to federation attack.

The same goes for the Romulans VS anyone else because the Romulans see the Feds as the biggest threat to them and they wont risk a fleet draining war against anyone since the Feds can then press the advantage.

Example the Romulans attack Cardies the Feds could attack (not likely but the Roms dont trust the feds so they may think this) but the Klingons would sure take the opportunity and thus it would devolve into Roms Vs Cardy and Klingons.

Thus the balance of power the Feds are far more powerful that then other races simply observe that the Feds have no warships or proper war footing and they still threat the others - the only conclusion is the Feds are bigger than the others but the others have proper warship thus redressing the balance somewhat.

[Cpt_Frank]

Sounds reasonable to me.