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The main application of ships that aren't long-ranged would be the defense of fixed locations. Especially places of such high strategic value that it makes sense to have a permanent fleet dedicated to covering them- for the Federation to lose Earth or Vulcan or a few other places would be a big deal, so it's worth having ten ships (or their tonnage equivalent in fighters) present over those planets at all times to prevent such an incident. Of course, we never see such permanent defenses in evidence during the plot of Star Trek so far as I can remember.

This may be exactly what fighter swarms are good for, when you think about it. They don't need to be as fast at maximum warp as a normal starship, but it is advantageous to make them capable of taking off and landing from a planetary surface.. so that's a good mission to design them for. I imagine a Peregrine is better at operating from tarmac on a planetary surface than a Defiant would be, for instance.

Anyway...

Adam, I'd like to point out that when your travel times are really long, specializing your ships is a problem too. If your ship is specialized for X but cannot do Y, and Y is what the situation requires, your nearest Y-ship may be weeks or months away. Therefore, the more you expect a ship to operate isolated from the rest of the fleet, the more 'multirole' and versatile it has to be.

Historically, in the Age of Sail, warships could carry quite a lot of cargo, and could have been modified to carry more cargo if you removed some of the guns and excess crew (both of which would have been easy to do, and to undo after your cargo run). There was in fact a lot more parallelism in design, and ships designed to do a variety of different things were often strikingly similar.

It's hard to match this kind of flexibility without losing the ability to be good at one or the other of your missions... but Starfleet may well be forced into design compromises by the need for it. I mean, the Enterprise has had to evacuate hundreds of people from various places, has had to run emergency shipments of cargo and goods around Federation space... if they were an optimized, dedicated warship, there are a lot of situations that would have turned into humanitarian disasters because they lacked the means to solve the problem.

Simon_Jester wrote:Adam, I'd like to point out that when your travel times are really long, specializing your ships is a problem too. If your ship is specialized for X but cannot do Y, and Y is what the situation requires, your nearest Y-ship may be weeks or months away. Therefore, the more you expect a ship to operate isolated from the rest of the fleet, the more 'multirole' and versatile it has to be.

This is of course true. But on the other hand, it is not necessary that your fleet consists of 100% multi-purpose vessels. Perhaps it makes sense to have 5% or 10% dedicated warships with long range capability, so you can send them in as reinforcement if necessary.

Of course the problem always is that these dedicated warships are of very limited use in peace time. Since they cannot haul around cargo, they mostly will sit around waiting for war.

Also, if you keep those warships in a centrally located reserve, then it may take them weeks or more to reach the place that needs reinforcement. Any small-scale battle or operation will be over before they arrive. Their use as reinforcements in a large war would be desirable, but such a large war would also justify peeling multirole ships off other duties on the frontiers. And the Federation has, historically, only spent a small minority of its existence at war.

That combination makes things complicated. If you build fifty dedicated warships, that's fifty ships you can't really use for any other purpose. And in any situation serious enough that their use is justified, you'd be equally justified in taking 100 or 200 of your multirole ships and drowning the problem in sheer numbers of ships.

Also, it bears considering that many crises the Federation has faced were resolved, even at the point of conflict, through scientific means or other things besides the ship's phaser banks. Sending ships that are only good for fighting, as a way of dealing with a crisis, might actually result in more war and casualties, not less.

Plus, it is worth mentioning... the federation has no need for dedicated warships. Its multi-role ships are more than a match combat role to combat role against anything their local neighbors can field with the possible exception of the heaviest of Romulan ships or the more decrepit 80 year old ships they pull out of mothballs. From every earnest ship to ship engagement I have seen where they bother to shoot back (so, mostly DS-9 battle scenes). They manage to fight the Cardassians to the point of driving them to economic collapse without their society at large really noticing, and the Cardassian Empire is at least as big as the UFP if I remember correctly. In DS-9 when they went ship to ship against Klingons it was a curbstomp (granted, using the defiant, which by all rights should have been destroyed in many of these engagements anyway on account of it being outmassed....considerably).

It is almost as if they cheat the constraints of ship design. For any given tonnage you have the option of mobility, protection, and firepower. Pick two. The UFP cheats. I suspect because their shielding technology is better across the board rather then due to a weaponry advantage.

I might be way off, I am operating largely on memory, but...

Why on earth, if you have perfectly servicable multi-role ships that can pull the weight of heavy combat but still be good for other things, would you make your ships less capable in the other areas to gain a marginal increase in combat power? I wouldn't.

I suspect that in combat, all that 'wasted tonnage' the Federation uses on science labs and extra sensors translates into being able to aim their weapons more effectively, and being able to more efficiently adapt their shields and jamming to whatever the enemy is throwing at them.

Simon_Jester wrote:I suspect that in combat, all that 'wasted tonnage' the Federation uses on science labs and extra sensors translates into being able to aim their weapons more effectively, and being able to more efficiently adapt their shields and jamming to whatever the enemy is throwing at them.

that seems logical.

And they way I understood it in AQ/BQ you got the big 3 of the United Federation of Planets, Klingon Empire and the Romulan Star Empire. Then you got a host of "medium" sized powers like the Breen, the Tholians, the Gorn, the Orions and the Cardassians that while smaller then the main powers are still militarly and ecomonically powerful enough that main powers have to take them seriously and then you true lesser powers that are of insignifigant importance to the quadrant wide politics for the most part. There's no quote I can point out that says this but that's the impression I got.

Though carriers are inresting as far as specialist warships go that you could in theory use them as explorers with fairly minimal conversion, replace the combat craft with runabouts or automated warp capable probes.

Torpedo boats could work the same way I suppose depending if warp capable probes can be launched off standard torpedo tubes or do you need special tubes (or even shuttlebays) for those.

warships focusing on energy weapon firepower (for example the Defiant) wouldn't be as easy to convert to starfleet's peacetime missions

Lord Revan wrote:Though carriers are inresting as far as specialist warships go that you could in theory use them as explorers with fairly minimal conversion, replace the combat craft with runabouts or automated warp capable probes.

It seems like the Federation already does pretty much everything with probes that it can do with probes. The probes aren't self-aware (or when they are, things tend to go very wrong). While the ship's computers are fairly obviously intelligent, the ship alone doesn't seem capable of investigating anything seriously complicated all by itself.

So I imagine that the Federation does its exploration the way it does because it needs crewed away teams, and crews of scientists interpreting the data it collects, on site and in real time. Everything it can learn about the space it explores purely by sending automatic probes into it, it already has learned, or will learn very easily in the immediate future.

Simon_Jester wrote:

Lord Revan wrote:Though carriers are inresting as far as specialist warships go that you could in theory use them as explorers with fairly minimal conversion, replace the combat craft with runabouts or automated warp capable probes.

It seems like the Federation already does pretty much everything with probes that it can do with probes. The probes aren't self-aware (or when they are, things tend to go very wrong). While the ship's computers are fairly obviously intelligent, the ship alone doesn't seem capable of investigating anything seriously complicated all by itself.

So I imagine that the Federation does its exploration the way it does because it needs crewed away teams, and crews of scientists interpreting the data it collects, on site and in real time. Everything it can learn about the space it explores purely by sending automatic probes into it, it already has learned, or will learn very easily in the immediate future.

for the probes I meant for carriers that used automated drones as fighters you could replace those drones with probes so that the ship isn't useless for exploration missions, not as a replacement for the jack-of-all traits ships like the GCS.

Right, but the Federation already does that to a significant degree, and has ships that do a quite admirable job of that role, with probes that can travel over interstellar distances and so on.

Simon_Jester wrote:Also, if you keep those warships in a centrally located reserve, then it may take them weeks or more to reach the place that needs reinforcement. Any small-scale battle or operation will be over before they arrive. Their use as reinforcements in a large war would be desirable, but such a large war would also justify peeling multirole ships off other duties on the frontiers. And the Federation has, historically, only spent a small minority of its existence at war.

All of this is true. However, such warships could already be deployed when tensions rise. The mere fact that a fleet of dedicated warships is on its way - or could potentially be on its way - could prevent such small scale incidents.

I think that having a reserve of warships ready at all time can be politically valuable, even if this means that 5% or 10% of your fleet is basically useless during peace time. When a fleet of Defiants shows the flag, no sane Romulan or Cardassian would say that the Federation is weak or unprepared.

Also, such a reserve can continously train for war, so the crews should be able to act more efficiently than crews with less training.

I suspect that in combat, all that 'wasted tonnage' the Federation uses on science labs and extra sensors translates into being able to aim their weapons more effectively, and being able to more efficiently adapt their shields and jamming to whatever the enemy is throwing at them.

Here I disagree: We see the Defiant perform scientific research in DS9, and as far as I remember nobody ever complained about the sensor suite. So I assume that the Defiant carries the same sensors as multi purpose ships. Also, Dax is a scientific officer, and she never complains that there is no space for her to perform her tasks on the Defiant.

Of course with all the cloaking devices and whatnot, each warship should have a set of capable sensors at hand. Additionally, in peace time such warships at least can perform scientific missions, which cannot hurt.

Plus, it is worth mentioning... the federation has no need for dedicated warships. Its multi-role ships are more than a match combat role to combat role against anything their local neighbors can field with the possible exception of the heaviest of Romulan ships or the more decrepit 80 year old ships they pull out of mothballs.

The Defiant disagrees with you

While the Federation's multi purpose ship aren't bad in combat, all the cargo space they carry makes these ships bigger. Since we often see near misses in ST, having a smaller ship is an advantage.

So it makes sense to design ships like the Defiant as small as possible. In DS9, people complain about the cramped space in this ship, so we know that having a small ship is a virtue in ST.

BabelHuber wrote:All of this is true. However, such warships could already be deployed when tensions rise. The mere fact that a fleet of dedicated warships is on its way - or could potentially be on its way - could prevent such small scale incidents.

I think that having a reserve of warships ready at all time can be politically valuable, even if this means that 5% or 10% of your fleet is basically useless during peace time. When a fleet of Defiants shows the flag, no sane Romulan or Cardassian would say that the Federation is weak or unprepared.

But a squadron of Galaxies would say the same thing (note 'squadron' not 'fleet' because a Galaxy is larger and presumably more expensive than a Defiant).

Also, such a reserve can continously train for war, so the crews should be able to act more efficiently than crews with less training.

Romulan and Klingon ships presumably spend all their time preparing for war, and yet tend to have no great advantage over the Federation. Why should we assume that Federation military training is insufficient for combat? We've seen numerous episodes involving military training activities, on every level from personal combat to simulated ship-to-ship battles.

I suspect that in combat, all that 'wasted tonnage' the Federation uses on science labs and extra sensors translates into being able to aim their weapons more effectively, and being able to more efficiently adapt their shields and jamming to whatever the enemy is throwing at them.

Here I disagree: We see the Defiant perform scientific research in DS9, and as far as I remember nobody ever complained about the sensor suite. So I assume that the Defiant carries the same sensors as multi purpose ships. Also, Dax is a scientific officer, and she never complains that there is no space for her to perform her tasks on the Defiant.

Of course with all the cloaking devices and whatnot, each warship should have a set of capable sensors at hand. Additionally, in peace time such warships at least can perform scientific missions, which cannot hurt.

In which case you're basically telling me that a ship optimized for war would be as much a science vessel as the ships the Federation already has.

So exactly what is the point of redesigning the ships?

Plus, it is worth mentioning... the federation has no need for dedicated warships. Its multi-role ships are more than a match combat role to combat role against anything their local neighbors can field with the possible exception of the heaviest of Romulan ships or the more decrepit 80 year old ships they pull out of mothballs.

The Defiant disagrees with you

While the Federation's multi purpose ship aren't bad in combat, all the cargo space they carry makes these ships bigger. Since we often see near misses in ST, having a smaller ship is an advantage.

So it makes sense to design ships like the Defiant as small as possible. In DS9, people complain about the cramped space in this ship, so we know that having a small ship is a virtue in ST.

You're confusing "it would sure help if we had dedicated warships" with "we need dedicated warships."

The Federation has gained many advantages from having ships that can perform research, humanitarian, exploration, and transportation missions. Its ships have had to fight- but they have overcome many challenges through fighting, and many more through a combination of fighting and their abilities in other areas.

Their strategy for shipbuilding is if anything actively more successful than that of any enemy in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. In the 200-year timespan between the events of Enterprise and Deep Space 9, the Federation went from a power inadequate to defeat the Klingons, to a power that could face the Klingons on equal terms, to a power that the Klingons cannot overcome. They have bested the Cardassians, they have maintained at least parity with the Romulans. Aside from enemies outside their sphere of influence who were already old when the Federation was young (such as the Dominion and Borg), the Federation has NO serious rival.

Clearly, they are doing something very right.

So while everyone else was running around building ideal optimized SUPABATTLESHIPS, they were designing versatile ships and doing their science homework... and now they're the preeminent power in their part of the galaxy.

Sure, they might have done a bit better with some SUPABATTLESHIPS of their own, but they're doing fine as it is, and maybe they'd have done less well if they'd focused more on SUPABATTLESHIPS.

Simon_Jester wrote:But a squadron of Galaxies would say the same thing (note 'squadron' not 'fleet' because a Galaxy is larger and presumably more expensive than a Defiant).

True. And in TNG we often see that the Federation lacks such a reserve. All Federation ships seem to be spread out, performing various tasks in various areas. Defiants seem better suited to me than Galaxies as reserve, since you can have a bigger number of ships, which adds flexibility.

Romulan and Klingon ships presumably spend all their time preparing for war, and yet tend to have no great advantage over the Federation. Why should we assume that Federation military training is insufficient for combat? We've seen numerous episodes involving military training activities, on every level from personal combat to simulated ship-to-ship battles.

My impression always has been that the Federation has a bigger GDP than the Klingons, Cardassians and Romulans. But on the other hand the Federation is peaceful and spends a lesser percentage of its GDP for military affairs. Note that this changed after the Federation met the Borg, and hence the Defiant (and possibly also the Akira) were designed.

So exactly what is the point of redesigning the ships?

Making them smaller and tougher. The Defiant is a good example for this, as well as Birds Of Prey and the Dominion's bug-ships.

You're confusing "it would sure help if we had dedicated warships" with "we need dedicated warships."

No I don't. It do mean some dedicated warships could have a net positive effect on the Federation.

The Federation has gained many advantages from having ships that can perform research, humanitarian, exploration, and transportation missions. Its ships have had to fight- but they have overcome many challenges through fighting, and many more through a combination of fighting and their abilities in other areas.

True. But does a fleet consisting of 100% cruisers make the most sense for the Federation? I think not.

Their strategy for shipbuilding is if anything actively more successful than that of any enemy in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. In the 200-year timespan between the events of Enterprise and Deep Space 9, the Federation went from a power inadequate to defeat the Klingons, to a power that could face the Klingons on equal terms, to a power that the Klingons cannot overcome. They have bested the Cardassians, they have maintained at least parity with the Romulans. Aside from enemies outside their sphere of influence who were already old when the Federation was young (such as the Dominion and Borg), the Federation has NO serious rival.

Clearly, they are doing something very right.

In an alternative TNG time line, the Federation lost against the Klingons. Perhaps they were just lucky in this time line.

Also, I wonder how the Federation space looks like during the Dominion war: In TNG, we always see a shortage of available ships, but in DS9 the Federation can muster fleets with hundreds of ships at a time.

These fleets must come from somewhere, so this must have a great effect on the Federations's routine tasks, which somehow have to continue. Shure, you could theoretically reactivate some mothballed ships to help out, but I doubt that their number is big enough to completely replace the ships which do frontline tasks, not to speak of the personal needed for such a "second" Starfleet.

This problem isn't mentioned anywhere in the show, though. But this has to have an effect.

Additionally, more cargo ships couldn't hurt the Federation, too. For me, it seems to be too focused on building cruisers, so the Federation lacks dedicated ships in general. Having a Galaxy within the Federation territory is nice and well, but if it is sent to the frontline, it is gone. A cheap transport can still haul around cargo when the Defiant is on the frontline.

Sure, they might have done a bit better with some SUPABATTLESHIPS of their own, but they're doing fine as it is, and maybe they'd have done less well if they'd focused more on SUPABATTLESHIPS.

The existence of the Defiant shows that the Federation thought that their approach to only build cruisers is suboptimal after meeting the Borg. Otherwise they wouldn't have made these ships, would they?

BabelHuber wrote:

Simon_Jester wrote:But a squadron of Galaxies would say the same thing (note 'squadron' not 'fleet' because a Galaxy is larger and presumably more expensive than a Defiant).

True. And in TNG we often see that the Federation lacks such a reserve. All Federation ships seem to be spread out, performing various tasks in various areas. Defiants seem better suited to me than Galaxies as reserve, since you can have a bigger number of ships, which adds flexibility.

You also have a reserve that is capable of doing fewer things (which decreases flexibility) and which isn't as fast in warp (likewise).

Romulan and Klingon ships presumably spend all their time preparing for war, and yet tend to have no great advantage over the Federation. Why should we assume that Federation military training is insufficient for combat? We've seen numerous episodes involving military training activities, on every level from personal combat to simulated ship-to-ship battles.

My impression always has been that the Federation has a bigger GDP than the Klingons, Cardassians and Romulans. But on the other hand the Federation is peaceful and spends a lesser percentage of its GDP for military affairs. Note that this changed after the Federation met the Borg, and hence the Defiant (and possibly also the Akira) were designed.

The Defiant-class appears to have been an experimental program not really followed through in large numbers. The Akira-class show every sign of being 'just another big multirole cruiser,' no more of a specialist combat ship than contemporary designs like the Intrepids and Sovereigns.

And as to the Federation having a higher GDP than its rivals... how do you think that happened, exactly? In the 2150s the Federation was hardly impressive, but a combination of diplomacy, internal stability, and a commitment to exploration and scientific/technological advancement has carried them into a comfortable lead over all nearby rivals.

People keep complaining that the Federation isn't warlike enough, but they handle themselves well in wars despite their 'weakness,' and routinely excel at dealing with threats that are not best resolved by fighting a war. Threats like, oh, "overmining this moon will cause it to explode and devastate our homeworld" or "there is a giant super-advanced alien headed for one of our planets and it wants something confusing and weird" or "alien parasites have taken over a colony planet"

So exactly what is the point of redesigning the ships?

Making them smaller and tougher. The Defiant is a good example for this, as well as Birds Of Prey and the Dominion's bug-ships.

The Klingons have been using Birds of Prey for centuries and it has not given them an obvious strategic advantage.

You're confusing "it would sure help if we had dedicated warships" with "we need dedicated warships."

No I don't. It do mean some dedicated warships could have a net positive effect on the Federation.

Even this is debateable- would they gain more from having 5% of their fleet be incrementally more effective in combat, than they would lose by having only 95% as many ships during the majority of the time when pure warships are not helpful?

Their strategy for shipbuilding is if anything actively more successful than that of any enemy in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. In the 200-year timespan between the events of Enterprise and Deep Space 9, the Federation went from a power inadequate to defeat the Klingons, to a power that could face the Klingons on equal terms, to a power that the Klingons cannot overcome. They have bested the Cardassians, they have maintained at least parity with the Romulans. Aside from enemies outside their sphere of influence who were already old when the Federation was young (such as the Dominion and Borg), the Federation has NO serious rival.

Clearly, they are doing something very right.

In an alternative TNG time line, the Federation lost against the Klingons. Perhaps they were just lucky in this time line.

In fairness that is a valid point...

I feel that two issues provide counterweights here.

1) There are considerable reasons to think that the early to mid-2300s were the low point of Federation military strength. Ships from the late 2200s (Excelsiors and Mirandas) were still in use in 2350-60. There was at most one generation of new designs built between the 2280s and the 2340s, contrasting to two or three generations of ship designs in the 2350-2375 timeframe alone. So 2344 (the start of the Federation-Klingon war that the Federations were finally losing twenty years later) may well have been literally the most opportune time possible to attack the Federation. By contrast, had the Klingons waited and attacked twenty or thirty years later, they would most likely have lost, as events in Deep Space Nine illustrated.

2) Notably, the alternate timeline thus created was the result of the Enterprise-C being swallowed up in the middle of a battle by a bizarre space anomaly. Having that not happen is hardly a case of the Federation being "lucky." Quite the opposite, really. It looks like another case of the Federation's willingness to pursue a course that reaches out to former enemies and tries to make them friends paying off... unless of course a random space anomaly ruins their whole day by Act of Q.

Also, I wonder how the Federation space looks like during the Dominion war: In TNG, we always see a shortage of available ships, but in DS9 the Federation can muster fleets with hundreds of ships at a time.

These fleets must come from somewhere, so this must have a great effect on the Federations's routine tasks, which somehow have to continue. Shure, you could theoretically reactivate some mothballed ships to help out, but I doubt that their number is big enough to completely replace the ships which do frontline tasks, not to speak of the personal needed for such a "second" Starfleet.

This problem isn't mentioned anywhere in the show, though. But this has to have an effect.

Thing is, building dedicated warships wouldn't solve that problem either- you'd still have to maintain "two Starfleets." Only now you only ever get to use one of them at all in order to blow stuff up.

Additionally, more cargo ships couldn't hurt the Federation, too. For me, it seems to be too focused on building cruisers, so the Federation lacks dedicated ships in general. Having a Galaxy within the Federation territory is nice and well, but if it is sent to the frontline, it is gone. A cheap transport can still haul around cargo when the Defiant is on the frontline.

I'll actually agree that more fast cargo ships would be good, because those serve a specific need that we often see much more advanced ships being used for.

Then again, I suspect a lot of cargo and medicine are regularly shipped around by conventional cargo ships in Star Trek, and we just happen not to see them because they manage routine operations in secure space. With Starfleet having the fastest ships at any given point, and the ships most capable of defending themselves against the unexpected, and most capable of coping with unexpected problems at the destination, it does make sense that Starfleet's cruisers are used to transport sensitive or exotic cargoes to frontier outposts at times.

Sure, they might have done a bit better with some SUPABATTLESHIPS of their own, but they're doing fine as it is, and maybe they'd have done less well if they'd focused more on SUPABATTLESHIPS.

The existence of the Defiant shows that the Federation thought that their approach to only build cruisers is suboptimal after meeting the Borg. Otherwise they wouldn't have made these ships, would they?

Yes, but they only made a handful of Defiants, which in turn suggests that the Defiant-class was also deemed a suboptimal response to the Borg.

Its canon that it was suboptimal, when the ship is introduced Chief O'brien complains that the thing nearly self destructed on trials. Probably not a problem you can solve without designing a new hull given that ship hull lines are directly tied to warp field performance, something most of sci fi doesn't have to worry about.

It probably made sense as a panic reaction to the Borg and the need to replace 39 major ships quickly, but long term upgrading the firepower of all new vessels would be a more effective strategy. The Federation is a big place so a low endurance ship like Defiant simply can't be all that appealing, and while the all forward main armament is okay against a Borg cube it's a bit unsound against other types of warship.

BabelHuber wrote:Here I disagree: We see the Defiant perform scientific research in DS9, and as far as I remember nobody ever complained about the sensor suite. So I assume that the Defiant carries the same sensors as multi purpose ships. Also, Dax is a scientific officer, and she never complains that there is no space for her to perform her tasks on the Defiant.

Of course with all the cloaking devices and whatnot, each warship should have a set of capable sensors at hand. Additionally, in peace time such warships at least can perform scientific missions, which cannot hurt.

That doesn't mean much when you stop and really compare the Defiant against Galaxy and Intrepid class ships. In TNG we saw that the Enterprise had multiple laboratories staffed with specialists in various fields such as biology, geology, and astrophysics (the astrometrics lab was shown off in Generations), and that some of her scientific missions could take weeks to complete (as in Pen Pals, which took place over such a timespan so they could do a true exhaustive geological survey of a planetary system). Even without the laboratories, a larger science staff can get more done than one science officer alone, especially when those scientists come from a diversity of fields. Throw in the labs and its no contest which vessel is better suited for scientific expeditions. Voyager didn't have quite the same scientific capabilities, but she obviously did have some kind of lab space which Harry and Seven were able to convert into an astrometrics lab later in the series. It also had a larger med bay which was equipped with some serious microbiology equipment. And it had a holodeck which was often used for scientific modeling purposes and engineering simulations. And of course, she had tons of shuttles and probes, and even the engineering capabilities to manufacture the Delta Flyer (twice!), which is an amazing accomplishment when you stop to think about it. Clearly, a GCS or an Intrepid is a superior scientific vessel to a Defiant in multiple ways. Now imagine how much better still a Nova class must be, which are smaller but built specifically for scientific research, not exploration, police duty (I suspect that's what Intrepids were really meant for, plus with some possible Section 31 meddling), or war.

Sea Skimmer wrote:It probably made sense as a panic reaction to the Borg and the need to replace 39 major ships quickly, but long term upgrading the firepower of all new vessels would be a more effective strategy. The Federation is a big place so a low endurance ship like Defiant simply can't be all that appealing, and while the all forward main armament is okay against a Borg cube it's a bit unsound against other types of warship.

I mean, we did see other Defiant class ships like the Valiant and the Sao Paulo (the latter of which replaced the original Defiant near the end of the war and was rechristened as the Defiant), and more unnamed ships in episodes like Message in a Bottle where two of them and an Akira were sent to retake the Prometheus from the Romulans (notably, also a warship design but with slightly different gimmicks and conventional weapons). But you're right, and I think that All Good Things supports this-- in the future that Picard saw, the Galaxy class refit was seen and although this is hindsight for the audience, it very much looks like they took ideas that worked for the Defiant class and applied it to other ships; namely, I'm thinking of the dedicated phaser cannon on the underside of the future Enterprise which had superior firepower just like a Defiant's phaser cannons. It also seemed like a much faster and possibly more maneuverable ship than other GCSs (probably the reason for the third nacelle). In a future with more dangerous enemies, it makes sense to take the best aspects of two ship classes that had both proven themselves in war and merge those qualities to create a true capital ship.

Of course, that was a mere glimpse of the future, so its possible that the fleet in the future will in fact have more warships like the Defiant class and the Prometheus class. We can't know for sure unless the next TV series depicts said future (or they canonize Star Trek Online, where there are Defiant class, Promethius class, and ships based on the Defiant class that the players can all choose to command).

I think that having a reserve of warships ready at all time can be politically valuable, even if this means that 5% or 10% of your fleet is basically useless during peace time. When a fleet of Defiants shows the flag, no sane Romulan or Cardassian would say that the Federation is weak or unprepared.

Also, such a reserve can continously train for war, so the crews should be able to act more efficiently than crews with less training.

No sane Romulan or Cardassian thinks the federation is weak or unprepared anyway, and there has been no noticeable deficiency in federation combat training either. They do fine in-universe.

Here I disagree: We see the Defiant perform scientific research in DS9, and as far as I remember nobody ever complained about the sensor suite. So I assume that the Defiant carries the same sensors as multi purpose ships. Also, Dax is a scientific officer, and she never complains that there is no space for her to perform her tasks on the Defiant.

It is really fucking basic when they do it, they dont even have a full sickbay. Nor do they have sufficient crew. They have good combat sensors which can be boostrapped to do other things, but they dont have the full range of capability. Think of it like this. The science officer (Dax in this case) is not doing all the work they look like they are doing on the bridge. Other science crew is feeding them data from their own sensor stations that has been filtered for relevance, in addition to what said science officer asks the computer to do. The defiance does not have that crew, and because of that, there are limits on said officer's ability to multitask.

When you compare to what other ships like Novas, Galaxies, and Intrepids can do... there is no comparison, as Formless has gone over while I was writing this.

And even if you are right...

In which case you're basically telling me that a ship optimized for war would be as much a science vessel as the ships the Federation already has.

So exactly what is the point of redesigning the ships?

As Simon points out, you've defeated yourself.

The Defiant disagrees with you

"Defiants are nice" is different from "we need defiants to win". They did not win the dominion war on the back of one to maybe half a dozen defiant class ships. They won with the rest of their fleet.

While the Federation's multi purpose ship aren't bad in combat, all the cargo space they carry makes these ships bigger. Since we often see near misses in ST, having a smaller ship is an advantage.

While the smaller mass and energy-generation capacity of the defiant makes each hit it does take more dangerous. Even then, the defiant is noticeably more durable than other [foreign] ships of similar tonnage, which should tell you something about the larger ships in the federation fleet.

So it makes sense to design ships like the Defiant as small as possible. In DS9, people complain about the cramped space in this ship, so we know that having a small ship is a virtue in ST.

That is a complete non sequitur.

True. And in TNG we often see that the Federation lacks such a reserve. All Federation ships seem to be spread out, performing various tasks in various areas. Defiants seem better suited to me than Galaxies as reserve, since you can have a bigger number of ships, which adds flexibility.

You are COMPLETELY forgetting that an internal strategic reserve wont be available to put out the fires that you are claiming they would be useful to help put out.

They wont get there by the time a Galaxy or Nebula has dealt with it.

If they have need to concentrate force, they can do that. Pulling their other ships off other tasks in nearby sectors temporarily will be just as effective militarily, while also letting them use those assets in the interim periods instead of having them hanging around in the interior doing nothing to advance UFP policy.

My impression always has been that the Federation has a bigger GDP than the Klingons, Cardassians and Romulans. But on the other hand the Federation is peaceful and spends a lesser percentage of its GDP for military affairs. Note that this changed after the Federation met the Borg, and hence the Defiant (and possibly also the Akira) were designed.

The Akira is not a dedicated warship. The Akira is what the federation does when it wants a multi-role cruiser with upgraded combat capability. It has three torpedo launchers with 5-tube auto-loaders each. That's it in terms of armament. Major upgrades to internal systems as well I am sure. Better shields per tonnage over prior designs as well, I am sure. It represented a 20 year technological leap over the Galaxy Class starship, and a 10 or so year leap over the Nebula. The same with the Sovereign.

The Defiant seemed like a sub-optimal testbed. A ship designed to combat the Borg, but that did not really work too well at that task. They took miniaturization too far for its various energy outputs and thus while very very angry for a ship of its size was not very durable or safe to operate (ever notice the REALLY high attrition rate of its crew compared to other ships?). Other ships (like the Akira and Sovereign) learned from its lessons and were able to do its job--and all the other jobs a full size starship should do--better than it did.

Hell, the Intrepid class was better at killing Borg than it was.

In an alternative TNG time line, the Federation lost against the Klingons. Perhaps they were just lucky in this time line.

Not lucky no. More like supremely unlucky in the alternate timeline. Between the 2340s and 2350s, they doubled their shield capacity. They got attacked by the Klingons before those advances were made, and as a result they just got overwhelmed while they were still tooling around with a fleet comprised mostly of Miranda and Excelsior class ships. They got complacent between TOS and TNG. Now (TNG-VOY era) they are in a much better position.

Also, I wonder how the Federation space looks like during the Dominion war: In TNG, we always see a shortage of available ships, but in DS9 the Federation can muster fleets with hundreds of ships at a time.

A) They ramped up production. Between the Borg and their advance warning about the Dominion they put ship production into overdrive, as well as pulled older ships out of mothballs and retrofitted them. Hence all the Miranda and Excelsiors you see (which make up the bulk of visual casualties, I will note)

B) Do you have any idea how vast space is? Yeah, when it comes to the need to put out little brush fires, will only have so many ships readily available at any given time. Yet, they can still pull large fleets together for things like Wolf 359 or the Battle of Sector 001.

These fleets must come from somewhere, so this must have a great effect on the Federations's routine tasks, which somehow have to continue. Shure, you could theoretically reactivate some mothballed ships to help out, but I doubt that their number is big enough to completely replace the ships which do frontline tasks, not to speak of the personal needed for such a "second" Starfleet.

That is exactly what they did. Plus production increases in the lead up to war.

They CAN put their exploration missions etc on hold pretty easily to combat existential threats, and they probably did not pull all their ships off patrol tasks. But lots of those other tasks (neutral zone patrol etc) were made moot by the war.

Additionally, more cargo ships couldn't hurt the Federation, too. For me, it seems to be too focused on building cruisers, so the Federation lacks dedicated ships in general. Having a Galaxy within the Federation territory is nice and well, but if it is sent to the frontline, it is gone. A cheap transport can still haul around cargo when the Defiant is on the frontline

They have those. They have always had those. Take a look at ENT, where we have cargo ships. Also there is Sisko's girlfriend who does what? Oh, right, she hauls cargo in the civilian service.

The existence of the Defiant shows that the Federation thought that their approach to only build cruisers is suboptimal after meeting the Borg. Otherwise they wouldn't have made these ships, would they?

Big organization, Starfleet. They allocated resources to a new experimental approach (building dedicated warships like the defiant), while ALSO designing other ships along their conventional design philosophy with upgraded technology. They learned things from the Defiant, even if they never put it into full-scale production (which they did not, though they did build a few), and incorporated those things into new designs.

Which is exactly what I would expect Starfleet to do.

Thinking about the OP, I think I have an answer to the question of "what would a Starfleet carrier look like?"

Its the Prometheus.

Or at least, the Prometheus class to me represents a reinterpretation of a carrier that shows the difference between a spacecraft and seafaring vessels. Because of its "Multi Vector Assault Mode" the ships is really three starships in one, but no one of the three is subservient to a mothership so much as they are interdependent upon the other two ships. They don't need to be-- this is space. A carrier at sea represents the only landing strip available for its aircraft, but in space no one ever needs to land. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Again, the Prometheus is transparently a warship. They even give it the designation of a "tactical" ship, which is obviously a euphemism for "we built it to fight the Dominion, okay?" It was even built in secret for political reasons, further emphasizing that it is a warship just like the Defiant class. Now, Mike once considered the possibility that the Defiant class is basically just an oversized fighter, and it fights like one; and so does the Klingon Bird of Prey, so this kind of ship seems to be tactically quite relevant and probably a lot more effective than true starfighters for whatever reason. The Prometheus is stated to be 414 meters in length, whereas the Defiant is supposed to be somewhere under 180 meters (of course, there are continuity problems establishing a more precise figure for Defiants) so its over twice the length of those ships. So when the Prometheus separates into three sections, you're getting three ships with approximately the same tonnage of a Defiant, or possibly a bit more. Of course, if they are bigger that would make sense because they lack the overpowered phaser cannons of a Defiant.

Now, here's where things get interesting. The Prometheus is stated to be the fastest ship in the entire fleet, able to max out at warp 9.99 (where even the Intrepid maxes out at warp 9.975). What this means is that a Prometheus must have been built to deploy as fast as possible to either intercept whatever threat is out there, or to preform critical missions that other ships couldn't do at all. But there is one other consideration: the MVAM. Now, if you were to deploy a single Intrepid class (which is slightly shorter but almost as fast), it would probably be able to preform most missions just as adequately. But an Intrepid can only be in one place at a time unless you account for shuttles, which are weak and less useful. On the other hand, during the war they were frequently able to send a single Defiant class ship or a few Birds of Prey to preform short duration missions like hit and runs or ambushes successfully. However, Defiants are slow for a ship of their size, and only built for short duration missions.

And now the most interesting bit: each section of a Prometheus has its own warp drive, unlike the saucer section of a GCS which lacks warp capability. And the class is a testbed for some rather extreme automation as well. So in theory, if you have missions in multiple systems that are relatively nearby to one another, you could send multiple large cruisers like Intrepids or Sovereigns but with all the expenses of doing so, or you could send some Defiants but with the problem that they might not get there in time. Or... you could send a single Prometheus class, have it separate into three ships at a rendezvous point, and have the three sections go off to do three short duration missions before returning to the rendezvous point where they resume being a cruiser with all the advantages that entails. All you would need is to staff the ship with three commanding officers instead of two (a captain, a commander, and a lieutenant commander, as was the case during Best of Both Worlds). And if you have just a single mission, they can operate as a conventional cruiser with all the advantages of doing so. And if you run into the kind of situation that they had in Waltz where the Defiant crew debated whether they needed to get onto their next assignment or stay where they were and continue searching for Sisko, a Prometheus crew could simply separate the saucer section and send the other two sections off to defend troop transports instead.

So yeah, as laughable as most people find the Prometheus in concept, it does actually seem to represent something akin to a carrier while being slightly different in practice. Although the way I envision utilizing the MVAM is probably a bit different from what the writers had in mind.

Simon_Jester wrote:[You also have a reserve that is capable of doing fewer things (which decreases flexibility) and which isn't as fast in warp (likewise).

Yes. On the other hand, it is questionable if the Federation would be able to hold a reserve of cruisers, since they could be used to support the Federation's routine tasks. Then the reserve is gone, spread out through the territory like all other cruisers already are.

And as to the Federation having a higher GDP than its rivals... how do you think that happened, exactly? In the 2150s the Federation was hardly impressive, but a combination of diplomacy, internal stability, and a commitment to exploration and scientific/technological advancement has carried them into a comfortable lead over all nearby rivals.

I'd assume that the Federation's space is bigger than that of their neigbours. After all, species can join the Federation without being suppressed by a xenophobic government, so the Federation most probably grew during this time.

I'd assume that noone voluntary joins the Cardassian, Klingon or Romulan empire. The Cardassian are downright fascist, probably also the Romulans. The Klingons are at least racists - I've never seen any other species serving on a Klingon ship.

So these empires have to grow by conquest, which puts them at a disadvantage.

Also, it would not surprise me if a fascist society or the Klingons (with their "houses" and nobles) would be less efficient than the Federation regarding industrial output, even if they had the same size.

People keep complaining that the Federation isn't warlike enough

Not me. I just doubt that having a fleet which consists of 100% cruisers is the most effient use of the Federation's reserves. I don't want them to be the British Empire or the USA in space, otherwise it wouldn't be ST anymore.

The Klingons have been using Birds of Prey for centuries and it has not given them an obvious strategic advantage.

The Klingon fleet seems to be much smaller than the Federation's one. If I recall correctly, in DS9 when the Klingon ships were the only ones which weren't affected by the Breen's super weapon, it was stated than 1,500 Klingon ships are available and that they are outnumbered 20:1.

If the Federation's fleet had the same size, the Dominion could have easily defeated them (the Romulans cannot have a much bigger fleet than the Federation, otherwise they most probably would have already conquered the Federation). So to "only" have a 2:1 disadvantage as a whole, the combined Federation and Romulan fleet should have 13,500 ships. Fewer ships don't make much sense, although they could also have more.

So if we accept that the Klingon fleet is smaller, they could be forced to have ships which are more efficient in a fight than Federation ships on a per-ship basis. The Federation could afford to have less efficient warship designs, since they can even the odds with a higher number.

A WW2 example would be the Alaska class and the Scharnhorst class. I think that both classes are idiotic designs, but the US Navy was so big that they could afford this. On the other hand, the Germans with their small fleet couldn't. Spending the resources on more valuable ships would have helped them.

Even this is debateable- would they gain more from having 5% of their fleet be incrementally more effective in combat, than they would lose by having only 95% as many ships during the majority of the time when pure warships are not helpful?

If it wouldn't be debatable, we wouldn't need to debate

In fairness that is a valid point...

Thanks.

Thing is, building dedicated warships wouldn't solve that problem either- you'd still have to maintain "two Starfleets." Only now you only ever get to use one of them at all in order to blow stuff up.

Additionally, more cargo ships couldn't hurt the Federation, too. For me, it seems to be too focused on building cruisers, so the Federation lacks dedicated ships in general. Having a Galaxy within the Federation territory is nice and well, but if it is sent to the frontline, it is gone. A cheap transport can still haul around cargo when the Defiant is on the frontline.
I'll actually agree that more fast cargo ships would be good, because those serve a specific need that we often see much more advanced ships being used for.

Then again, I suspect a lot of cargo and medicine are regularly shipped around by conventional cargo ships in Star Trek, and we just happen not to see them because they manage routine operations in secure space. With Starfleet having the fastest ships at any given point, and the ships most capable of defending themselves against the unexpected, and most capable of coping with unexpected problems at the destination, it does make sense that Starfleet's cruisers are used to transport sensitive or exotic cargoes to frontier outposts at times.

Exactly. The Federation does need its cruisers, and it needs lots of them, but focusing on cruisers only is not the best idea, I think.

Instead, you could have smaller ships (frigates and corvettes?) for tasks where a cruiser is overkill, you could have fast freighters to ship stuff like medicine within save territory, slow and cheap freighters to ship regular cargo and some dedicated warships like the Defiant.

No need for 2 Starfleets here. On top of it, you still have the mothballed ships.

Yes, but they only made a handful of Defiants, which in turn suggests that the Defiant-class was also deemed a suboptimal response to the Borg.

I don't know. I have the impression that the Federation didn't build much ships during the Dominion war at all, since the fleets at the beginning of the war consist of the same classes than at the end of the war.

Heck, even at the end of the war they still had Mirandas in frontline service! These ships always get blown up to pieces left and right, so they would be the first ones to be relegated to second line duty if feasible, but seemingly the Federation couldn't afford this.

Sea Skimmer wrote:Its canon that it was suboptimal, when the ship is introduced Chief O'brien complains that the thing nearly self destructed on trials. Probably not a problem you can solve without designing a new hull given that ship hull lines are directly tied to warp field performance, something most of sci fi doesn't have to worry about.

I have the impression that from season 4 on, the Defiant's problems were fixed - at least nobody complained anymore and the Defiant did really well in battle (except when being confonted with the new Breen-weapon).

Sea Skimmer wrote:It probably made sense as a panic reaction to the Borg and the need to replace 39 major ships quickly, but long term upgrading the firepower of all new vessels would be a more effective strategy. The Federation is a big place so a low endurance ship like Defiant simply can't be all that appealing, and while the all forward main armament is okay against a Borg cube it's a bit unsound against other types of warship.

But the Federation seems to have built at least a few of them, so they can't be that useless.

A Defiant of course cannot completely replace a Galaxy, but they seem to be decent warships and have their use cases. The Defiant e.g. seems to be a better warship than an upgunned Excelsior (see the fight with the USS Lakota), so having a few at hand in a battle is not bad.

I am under the impression that so few were built because

1.) The Federation doesn't want and doesn't need a fleet consisting mostly of dedicated warships. They are the exception, not the rule

2.) It makes more sense to use the existing manufacturing lines for ships which already are in production than to retool them during war time. So I guess the Defiants were only built on completely new manufacturing lines.

I'm not sure the USS Lakota versus USS defiant battles is really fair comparison as both ships were holding their punches not wanting to destroy the opponent. Yes the Defiant was superior in this very specific tactical scenario but overall we can't say for use.

Alyrium Denryle wrote:No sane Romulan or Cardassian thinks the federation is weak or unprepared anyway, and there has been no noticeable deficiency in federation combat training either. They do fine in-universe.

We see Romulans and Klingons debating this topic on screen in TNG and DS9, though.

It is really fucking basic when they do it, they dont even have a full sickbay. Nor do they have sufficient crew. They have good combat sensors which can be boostrapped to do other things, but they dont have the full range of capability. Think of it like this. The science officer (Dax in this case) is not doing all the work they look like they are doing on the bridge. Other science crew is feeding them data from their own sensor stations that has been filtered for relevance, in addition to what said science officer asks the computer to do. The defiance does not have that crew, and because of that, there are limits on said officer's ability to multitask.

Yes. So? It's a warship which happens to have sensors which are capable of scientific tasks (or some scientific tasks). What's the problem if teh ship cannot do everything a cruiser can?

As Simon points out, you've defeated yourself.

... if you ignore that a Defiant is smaller and hence is harder to hit. Birds of Prey and Dominion bug-ships stick to the same concept, and they seem to be efficient.

"Defiants are nice" is different from "we need defiants to win". They did not win the dominion war on the back of one to maybe half a dozen defiant class ships. They won with the rest of their fleet.

No, they won by divine intervention.

While the smaller mass and energy-generation capacity of the defiant makes each hit it does take more dangerous. Even then, the defiant is noticeably more durable than other [foreign] ships of similar tonnage, which should tell you something about the larger ships in the federation fleet

Martok's Bird of Prey doesn't seem to be much weaker than the Defiant...

That is a complete non sequitur.

Sigh. The Klingons, the Dominion and seemingly the Federation seem to think that having a small warship is a virtue, even when this means having a cramped ship. Otherwise they would make the ships bigger.

You are COMPLETELY forgetting that an internal strategic reserve wont be available to put out the fires that you are claiming they would be useful to help put out.

I give you an example: In this TNG episode where the Romulans helped one Klingon fraction and shipped weapons to the Klingon Empire to start a civil war, the Federation had problems to assemble a fleet with a few dozen ships. Having a reserve ready would have helped them, wouldn't it?

They wont get there by the time a Galaxy or Nebula has dealt with it.

Depends on where they are. Also, as I have already stated, the mere existence of such a reserve fleet could have an effect in avoiding conflicts and ships can be sent somewhere when tensions rise, not when the conflict starts.

The goal is to actually prevent a conflict by showing that you are prepared for it.

If they have need to concentrate force, they can do that. Pulling their other ships off other tasks in nearby sectors temporarily will be just as effective militarily, while also letting them use those assets in the interim periods instead of having them hanging around in the interior doing nothing to advance UFP policy.

Then why is this always a probem in various TNG episodes?

The Akira is not a dedicated warship. The Akira is what the federation does when it wants a multi-role cruiser with upgraded combat capability

Where did I state that teh Akira is a dedicated warship? I merely stated that the Akira possibly is also a reaction to the Borg thread, like the Defiant.

The Defiant seemed like a sub-optimal testbed. A ship designed to combat the Borg, but that did not really work too well at that task. They took miniaturization too far for its various energy outputs and thus while very very angry for a ship of its size was not very durable or safe to operate (ever notice the REALLY high attrition rate of its crew compared to other ships?). Other ships (like the Akira and Sovereign) learned from its lessons and were able to do its job--and all the other jobs a full size starship should do--better than it did.

The Defiant performed well in battle in DS9 (except when confronted with the new Breen weapon). Show me an episode where the Defiant performed bad as a warship.

Come on, we can argue if it is a good idea to have more Defiants or not, but I don't buy that the Defiant is a bad warship, not from what I saw on screen

Hell, the Intrepid class was better at killing Borg than it was.

Can you cite the according episode? I'm not talking about technobabble solutions here, show me an episode where an Intrepid performs better in battle than a Defiant.

Not lucky no. More like supremely unlucky in the alternate timeline.

However, they lost.

A) They ramped up production. Between the Borg and their advance warning about the Dominion they put ship production into overdrive, as well as pulled older ships out of mothballs and retrofitted them. Hence all the Miranda and Excelsiors you see (which make up the bulk of visual casualties, I will note)

The Federation doesn't seem to have produced that much ships in the Dominion war, see my answer to Simon above.

B) Do you have any idea how vast space is?

I think it's 5 km³

They CAN put their exploration missions etc on hold pretty easily to combat existential threats, and they probably did not pull all their ships off patrol tasks. But lots of those other tasks (neutral zone patrol etc) were made moot by the war.

This is actually a good point. But still, we also see regular cruisers perform cargo duty within Federation territory in TNG, so I assume it has some effect. Of course we can hardly calculate the exact numbers, so it's speculation.

They have those. They have always had those. Take a look at ENT, where we have cargo ships.

I tend to ignore ENT, I simply cannot watch it. But yes, teh Federation has cargo ships, just so few that cruisers have to be used for that role, too.

Also there is Sisko's girlfriend who does what? Oh, right, she hauls cargo in the civilian service.

I am under the impression that she had a Bajoran license, didn't Siskotry to make sure via the Bajoran government that she stayed at home when she was pregnant?

We never actually see an independent Federation freighter in the Federation as far as I remember, they all are government-owned.

Big organization, Starfleet. They allocated resources to a new experimental approach (building dedicated warships like the defiant), while ALSO designing other ships along their conventional design philosophy with upgraded technology.

But tehy did at least build a few...

Lord Revan wrote:I'm not sure the USS Lakota versus USS defiant battles is really fair comparison as both ships were holding their punches not wanting to destroy the opponent. Yes the Defiant was superior in this very specific tactical scenario but overall we can't say for use.

True. But this is the only example I know where we at least have a direct comparison to another Federation vessel.

BabelHuber wrote:

Lord Revan wrote:I'm not sure the USS Lakota versus USS defiant battles is really fair comparison as both ships were holding their punches not wanting to destroy the opponent. Yes the Defiant was superior in this very specific tactical scenario but overall we can't say for use.

True. But this is the only example I know where we at least have a direct comparison to another Federation vessel.

Still it's incomplete and thus you shouldn't draw too heavily upon it. Sometimes an in-direct approach is superior method to achive the intended goal.

I'm not saying that said is totally useless, but you have to remember that it's not a typical situation and had it been a for example of Bird of Prey USS Lakota wouldn't had held its quatum torps in reserve until told to use them. Same goes for the USS Defiant the fight might have ended the same but we can't know for sure.

BabelHuber wrote: I tend to ignore ENT, I simply cannot watch it. But yes, teh Federation has cargo ships, just so few that cruisers have to be used for that role, too.

We don't know whether or not the Federation is suffering from a dearth of cargo ships or not. As far as I can recall, cruisers have never been shown on screen to be used for any routine cargo operations. Every time the Enterprise was involved that I can remember, the situation was unique: either it was an extremely specialized cargo that needed unusual levels of protection or it was an emergency situation where the Enterprise just happened to be the closest ship (in fact, I seem to recall some of these episodes, though I'll be damned if I can remember any episode names without digging through Memory Alpha, but I'm positive it is from one of the first three TNG seasons, there is dialogue between the bridge crew that the normal transports are 48 hours away but the star/evil space cloud/whatever will kill everyone in less than 12 hours, etc. etc.). I don't think we can take any of these situations and use that to say that the Federation lacks cargo ships; it would be like pointing at the USS Indianapolis being used to transport the bomb during World War II and claim that the US didn't have enough cargo ships. The Indianapolis actually serves as a rather nice real-world precedent for the types of activities we see the Enterprise occasionally engaged in.