Ambassador Class pulled for mechanical problems?

[Captain Seafort]

Out of interest: How can you tell that's the E-B/Lakota type Excelsior? I thought all the CGI Excelsiors were the original type. And the main difference is the engineering section not the saucer visible in the pic.

Anyway, all the pic shows is an Excelsior was present. It could be a refit, it could be a new built. There is zero hard evidence one way or the other.

The refit-Ex also has a massive pair of additional impulse engines outboard of the existing ones. The ship in the image doesn't, so it's an original.

[Elheru Aran]

Damn it. Now you guys have me looking for an Excelsior model kit on Ebay....

[Crazedwraith]

Out of interest: How can you tell that's the E-B/Lakota type Excelsior? I thought all the CGI Excelsiors were the original type. And the main difference is the engineering section not the saucer visible in the pic.

Anyway, all the pic shows is an Excelsior was present. It could be a refit, it could be a new built. There is zero hard evidence one way or the other.

The refit-Ex also has a massive pair of additional impulse engines outboard of the existing ones. The ship in the image doesn't, so it's an original.

That answers my question, thanks!

Tsyroc: I know what the Excelsior refit is. They added bits to the Excelsior model so they could then could do the damage shots for the E_B at the start of Generations. But they couldn't then get the extra bits off. That's why the Lakota in Ds9 is a refit: they were still doing model shots back then for new footage of an Excelsior class it had to be the refit: that was the model they had. When they started doing shots in CGI they used the classic design. Hence my question.

[Tsyroc]

Tsyroc: I know what the Excelsior refit is. They added bits to the Excelsior model so they could then could do the damage shots for the E_B at the start of Generations. But they couldn't then get the extra bits off. That's why the Lakota in Ds9 is a refit: they were still doing model shots back then for new footage of an Excelsior class it had to be the refit: that was the model they had. When they started doing shots in CGI they used the classic design. Hence my question.

I guess I don't entirely get your question then, but it looks like you got your answer.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Anyway, all the pic shows is an Excelsior was present. It could be a refit, it could be a new built. There is zero hard evidence one way or the other. I think may be what Prometheus Unbound was meaning, but his references to refits threw me.

It was what I meant.

I assumed it was a refit as it was 2375 or something from that screenshot. Either way, we do not know if it was under construction or repairs or refit or decommission or what. Just that on that particular day, an Excelsior-type ship was present.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Hmmm...further pondering and some research on Memory Alpha has turned up a few interesting things. Namely, there doesn't appear to be a "flagship" class of vessel between the Excelsiors and the Ambassadors. Which is an impressive testament to the Excelsiors, since the lead ship was in service circa 2285, whilst the first known reference to an Ambassadors (the E-C) is 2344, meaning there was 59 years between the classes (probably more like 40-50, between mass-production of Excelsiors starting and Ambassador class launched), a much longer gap than between the Ambassadors and Galaxies, or the amusingly short gap between Galaxies and Sovereigns. It is comparable to the gap between the Constitutions and the Excelsiors, and we know how awesome the Connies were.

Additionally, the Excelsior was NCC-2000, whilst the lowest registry of Ambassador comes from the TM, USS Ambassador NCC-10521. Ambassador class vessels seen on screen (Excalibur, Zhukov, Yamaguchi) have registry's in the 26000 range. So Starfleet built at least 8000 other vessels before they reached the lead ship for the new class, and another 16,000 before they apparently hit multiple-unit construction.

Finally, the Excelsiors were clearly still being built in large numbers, as some have registry numbers up in the 40,000's. One, USS Melbourne, is up in the 62,000's. Also, some of the names used on later-build Excelsiors are names previously used on some of the Connie's (Hood, Potemkin, Repulse, Farragut (I think she was a Connie)). They were clearly prestigious enough to bear names from old Connies, even well into the 24th century. Hell, they were routinely used as flagships, even over newer vessels like the few Ambassadors (I think Admiral Hanson was on an Excelsior at Wolf 359, even though at least one Ambassador (Yamaguchi) was present).

I submit, then, that the Federation lucked out with the Connies and Excelsiors, and then the Ambassadors failed to live up to the very high standards of the preceding "flagship" classes of cruisers and were relatively quickly replaced by the Galaxies (design work on those beginning in the 2350's) and in turn by the Sovereigns.

[Thanas]

I don't think 59 years is that long - navies in the age of sail kept entire classes for that long, even longer in some cases.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I don't think 59 years is that long - navies in the age of sail kept entire classes for that long, even longer in some cases.

Certainly they did. But it's a long gap in ST terms, or modern terms for that matter.

The point is, there is a 40+ year gap between the Connie's and the Excelsior's, and another 40-50 year gap between the Excelsior's and the next "flagship" class, and then much shorter gaps between following "flagship" classes. Hence the Ambassador class was deemed unsuccessful. It may be due to no fault in the design but simply it didn't live up to the standards expected by three or four generations of officers raised on Connies and Excelsiors.

[Batman]

Starfleet assigning lots of registry numbers doesn't necessarily mean they actually built that many ships though. The real world US Navy alone assigned a lot of numbers that never had any actual physical ships attached. Plus we know runabouts have NCC registries so not all of those numbers represent full-up starships even if they were actually built.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Even if all the registry numbers aren't used for full starships, the fact that the Melbourne is up in the 62,000's suggests the Excelsiors were still being built very recently in the TNG era, and given the numbers in the 40,000 range, they've been in production for a long time.

[Thanas]

I don't think 59 years is that long - navies in the age of sail kept entire classes for that long, even longer in some cases.

Certainly they did. But it's a long gap in ST terms, or modern terms for that matter.

Well, given that ST emulates the age of sail I doubt we can really assign modern terms to this matter.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Even in Trek terms, the Connies and Excelsiors were around for a long time, and as the top dog ship no less, not even as ships reduced to second-line duties. I think it is more likely that the Connies and Excelsior's were simply outstanding classes, rather than any follow-on vessels being bad in absolute terms.

[Tribble]

IMO a simpler explanation would be that Starfleet simply had no reason to mass-produce the Ambassador class. The Klingons were allies, the Romulans were absent and the Cardassians were not much more than border skirmishes. Why would Starfleet mass-produce a bunch of ships which they simply did not need, especially as they already had plenty of Excelsior and Miranda class ships in service?

IMO the Galaxy-class was originally going to suffer the same fate as well. According to the tech manual, only 6 were to be in service at any one time, with another 6 partially completed hulls available if needed. But then things started to happen: the Romulans came back, the Borg attacked and the Federation encountered the Dominion. Now the Federations' very survival was at stake and Starfleet had no choice but to switch gears and mass produce Galaxies, as well as design dedicated warships and crank them out asap.

Basically, the Ambassador-Class was a victim of the times. I like to think of the Ambassador-Class as bring roughly analogous to a warship built in the 1920s. The ship may have been of perfectly sound design at the time it was built, but there was no-reason to mass produce it. And by the time wars started breaking out again and ships needed to be mass produced it had been rendered obsolete by new designs.

[Elheru Aran]

I suspect that the NCC numbers are largely somewhat random (as that's the actual IRL production explanation, they just glom a random number on the different models). So I would not take them at *too* much of a face value. The Enterprise is the only one that maintains a single NCC number for heritage reasons; everything else gets a randomized NCC unless for whatever reason they carry a name from one ship to another (and IIRC the Enterprise is the only one they've done that with). There may be some logic beyond the random 5-digit numbers (never seen a 6 digit yet) but I haven't looked at them in depth enough to really notice anything.

EDIT: OK, I checked Memory Alpha. http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/NCC

There *is* one suffixed NCC number besides the Enterprise-- Yamato, NCC-1305-E. Apart from that, the NCC numbers are mostly a whole buttload of randos from the look of it that people pulled from various LCARS displays and what not, as well as ships on screen.

[Captain Seafort]

There *is* one suffixed NCC number besides the Enterprise-- Yamato, NCC-1305-E.

No there isn't - Yamato was NCC-71801. NCC-1305-E was Naglium's fake in Where Silence Has Lease.

[Elheru Aran]

Ah. Well that's annoying. They should note that error.

[Eternal_Freedom]

They've re-used plenty of names besides Enterprise, but she's the only one that keeps the registry number, which I suspect was a sop to Kirk and Co for the E-A, and when the E-B rolled around someone said "this is cool, let's roll with it."

For instance, every Coonnie we see or hear of has a name re-used, many on Excelsiors. Except, weirdly, the Constitution herself, which IIRC is never actually mentioned or seen.

[Batman]

Given the number of times Kirk & Co (riding the original big E) have saved Earth/ the galaxy/ the entirety of creation I think a little VIP treatment is perfectly acceptable. And ship names get reused in real life all the time. That's what makes the registry reuse special.

[Lord Revan]

Given the number of times Kirk & Co (riding the original big E) have saved Earth/ the galaxy/ the entirety of creation I think a little VIP treatment is perfectly acceptable. And ship names get reused in real life all the time. That's what makes the registry reuse special.

Indeed there's a reason Ent-B is NCC-1701 and not something in the 2000 range like most early(ish) Excelsiors (Excelsior itself had been NX/NCC-2000), I can think of only 2 instances where they've reused both the name and the registry the Enterprise line and then there's the Defiant (where they didn't even stick an additional letter at the end. So it's clear you need to be special to have the registry reused, name reuse is typical even in real world I mean US Navy has had at least 2 ships named the "Enterprise" both of which were aircraft carriers.

[Eternal_Freedom]

US Navy has had 8 Enterprises I think. As for the Defiant mk II, did they change the registry? I can't recall off-hand. And then of course we have the mystery clone of Voyager ferrying Admiral Ross around in season 7 of DS9. But that's probably an effects goof.

[Lord Revan]

US Navy has had 8 Enterprises I think. As for the Defiant mk II, did they change the registry? I can't recall off-hand. And then of course we have the mystery clone of Voyager ferrying Admiral Ross around in season 7 of DS9. But that's probably an effects goof.

For the Defiant they too another ship of that class (USS Sao Paulo IIRC) and changed it's name and registry to that of the orginal Defiant (Obviously real life reason being that they could keep reusing footage without issues) and the Voyager clone is a goof it's suppose to be another ship of the same class, USS Bellaphron IIRC

[Prometheus Unbound]

(I think Admiral Hanson was on an Excelsior at Wolf 359,

He was on board a Galaxy class ship during the actual battle, but traveled to the Enterprise in an Excelsior.

[Baffalo]

I have a personal theory in regards to the numbering of particular Starfleet vessels, and it has to do with registration numbers being kept as a reference to the exact size of the fleet at any given point. I'll prove my case:

Assuming the NCC designation is given incrementally as hulls are built, then we can estimate the size of Starfleet from Kirk's era by simple extrapolation. In Star Trek III, Admiral Harry Morrow states that the Enterprise is "35 years old". We also know that the USS Excelsior is recently finished and undergoing trials. While it's possible that build times are different, the Enterprise can be assumed to have been in service for 35 years since she left the construction yards, and so 35 years have passed between NCC-1700 and NCC-2000. 300 hulls in 35 years gives us 8.6 hulls per year. Some of those hulls will be Constitutions, others will be cruisers such as the Miranda class.

Something to keep in mind is the USS Constitution NCC-1017. Such a low registry number means that the vessel was either built almost 700 hulls prior to Enterprise (and thus, 81 years prior), or that the vessel was given an odd registry number, perhaps in honor of a previous vessel (After all, the USS-Enterprise D was named in honor of Kirk's Enterprise). The problem with such is that according to screenshots of Operation Retrieve (Star Trek VI), the USS Eagle was assaigned to the operation, with registry NCC-956, along with the USS Emden (NCC-1856) and the USS Endeavour (NCC-1895). If such a scheme of using registry numbers to count vessels existed, then that would make two Constitution class vessels almost a century old!

The only explanation for this would be that either Starfleet is recycling registry numbers (a similar tactic to reusing ship names in WWII to confuse the enemy) or they're retrofitting vessels to such an extent that they no longer resemble the ship they were built off of (such as the USS Enterprise after her retrofit in the 2270s). If such is the case, then as the show continued and the numbers grew incrementally higher, they would have assigned a new hull number to a new name, to prevent confusion, with the Enterprise being the exception by adding a letter to the registry number in order to avoid confusing which Enterprise is being referred to.

Lending more support and evidence for this theory is that in 2364, the USS Ticonderoga (NCC-87270) is listed in Conspiracy (TNG S01E25), while the USS Voyager (NCC-74656) isn't launched until 2371, a full 7 years following the Ticonderoga's destruction. So it's clear that Starfleet recycles registry numbers, and so the highest registry number indicates the approximate number of hulls in service at a given time. So the size of Starfleet, in its entirety, is approximately 90,000 vessels. If the 8,000 member worlds each contribute towards their upkeep, each planet is responsible for 11.25 starships, which isn't bad given the resources of an entire planet (and a few are mere colonies and can't contribute the same as a full member right off).

[Elheru Aran]

Don't forget that small craft such as runabouts get NCC numbers as well, which could inflate the numbers of actual starships a bit.

[Eternal_Freedom]

(I think Admiral Hanson was on an Excelsior at Wolf 359,

He was on board a Galaxy class ship during the actual battle, but traveled to the Enterprise in an Excelsior.

Where was that stated? At that point there were only six galaxies, five of which were still in service, and IIRC all five are later accounted for (E-D, Galaxy, Odyssey, Venture and Challenger I think).