Trek Fleet counts

[hunter5]

Okay I am in a debate about Trek fleet numbers and I need some hard canon sources of Trek fleets including fighters in their fleet counts

[Stofsk]

'Favor the Bold' Sisko's plan called for the combination of elements from three fleets, the Second, Fifth and Ninth fleets in particular. As well as the Klingons. However, plans to deactivated the self-replicating minefield come to the head and they have to launch with only the Second and Fifth fleet elements. At the end of the episode they detect a Dominion fleet that numbers 1,254 and it's said to outnumber them 2 to 1. If you take that literally, then the Second and Fifth combined fleet numbers 627 ships.

In 'A Time to Stand' the Seventh fleet is devastated - out of 112 ships only 14 survived a battle. Both episodes show that fleet sizes in DS9 ranged from low hundreds to maybe a thousand or so total.

[hunter5]

okay thanks.

[Srelex]

I've seen people on some sites claim that Starfleet numbers around 80,000 because of registery numbers. What's to say about that?

[Adam Reynolds]

I've seen people on some sites claim that Starfleet numbers around 80,000 because of registery numbers. What's to say about that?

Does the US Army have 100 divisions before the 101st? It is probable that numbers aren't linear.

[Stofsk]

If they had 80,000 ships then the Dominion War would have lasted an afternoon.

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Registry

Scroll down to the background information section. Apparently, Matt Jeffries had come up with the number 1701 to mean 17th Cruiser design and 1st serial production. That's an interesting note, especially since it shows that registry numbers can be interpreted in different ways than simply literally.

[Batman]

I've seen people on some sites claim that Starfleet numbers around 80,000 because of registery numbers. What's to say about that?

Until and unless there's canon numbers to support those allegations, the NCC numbers can safely be ignored. Look at the real world.
If you go by hull numbers, the USN should have more than 70 carriers, over 700 submarines, in excess of 50 cruisers, about a thousand destroyers, and so on.
The NCC numbers merely mean around 80,000 numbers were assigned. Doesn't mean every last one of the represents an actual physical ship. Individual or even entire scores of numbers may have been assigned to ships that never made it off the drawing boards, or were scheduled for production but canceled, or started on but scrapped etc.
And even if every number represents an actually constructed ship, it doesn't say beans about fleet numbers. Overall, 80,000 ships were built. That says what about how many ships were in commission at any given point in time?

[Serafina]

On fleets: They used "parts" of those fleets, so it's not that unreasonable to assume that the full fleets were larger. However, that reduction could be due to casualties, non-combat ready ships or ships that are not meant for combat. Furthermore, just like with registry numbers, just because there is a 9th fleet you don't have to have 9 whole fleets - and of course, not all fleets have to be equally large! Fleets could simply denote command structures, and ships could get shifted from, say, fleet 1 to fleet two - leaving fleet 1 empty. It still has a nominal admiral and the like, and perhaps a few ships, but it mostly exists on paper now.
All of that has real-life precedents, so it's hardly unreasoanble. In fact, it's unreasonable to assume that ther are Y fleets just because there is fleet #Y, and that all those fleets are equally large and combat ready.


Overall, Starfleet numbers are unlikely to be anywhere but in the low thousands. If they were substantially higher, then the Dominion war would have been over quickly.

[Littlefoot]

If they had 80,000 ships then the Dominion War would have lasted an afternoon.

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Registry

Scroll down to the background information section. Apparently, Matt Jeffries had come up with the number 1701 to mean 17th Cruiser design and 1st serial production. That's an interesting note, especially since it shows that registry numbers can be interpreted in different ways than simply literally.

I never thought of that take on the number, but it makes sense. My vehicle number was 2B107 which when broken down (2/B/1/07) means 2nd Battalion, Bravo Company, 1st Platoon, Vehicle 07. We sure as hell don't have two billion (or whatever the suffix B means) vehicles. Does this numbering convention hold for stations as well, like StarBase 67 being in sector 6, sub-sector 7?

[Stofsk]

Possibly. TOS had with the sole exception of one episode, a convention where there would be like maybe a dozen starbases (the sole exception was Starbase 200 which was referred to in a boring and forgettable episode from season 1, 'The Alternative Factor'). However by TNG, there appeared to be hundreds of starbases. However, that doesn't make sense, so perhaps they adopted a numbering convention like you speculate on. I am however not aware of any background information other than the one on TOS, where the writers felt like there should only be ~dozen, less than 20 starbases, and 200 is the odd-one-out. (perhaps they meant to call it Starbase 20 but added a zero to it for a laugh or something)

However memory alpha might say something about this.

EDIT: Unfortunately the only thing I could find was a reference to 'The Neutral Zone' which had a Starbase 718, and apparently after this episode the writers constrained themselves to have a number of under 500 (which they violated three more times).

There are also other starbase designations which don't have a number - Starbase Earhart, Akaria Base, Jupiter Station etc - and of course the Deep Space stations like DS9 and Deep Space Station K-7. It's all wonderfully convoluted.

[Vympel]

I got into a debate about this stuff some time ago as well. By reference to memory-alpha, it was a fairly trivial exercise to prove that the registry numbers, whilst they go higher as time passes, are in no way linear, and don't stand up to scrutiny if you look at them on that basis. They really don't mean anything that specific.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I would imagine that the starbase numbers are not linear. Not at all. They probably are things like Littlefoot said. And as for stations with names not numbers, I would think things like Jupiter Station dont count as Starbases, because they have no drydocks or whatever. Then again, Starbase 12 was a planetery facility.

As for DS stations, I think those are ones that are "outside" Federtion territory. DS9 around Bajor, which IIRC never joined the federation during the shows run. DS K7 near Sherman's Planet, which has yet to join the Federation.

In FC they receive a long range warning from DS 5, consistent with the idea that DS stations are beyond the borders

[Picard]

I've seen people on some sites claim that Starfleet numbers around 80,000 because of registery numbers. What's to say about that?

Until and unless there's canon numbers to support those allegations, the NCC numbers can safely be ignored. Look at the real world.
If you go by hull numbers, the USN should have more than 70 carriers, over 700 submarines, in excess of 50 cruisers, about a thousand destroyers, and so on.
The NCC numbers merely mean around 80,000 numbers were assigned. Doesn't mean every last one of the represents an actual physical ship. Individual or even entire scores of numbers may have been assigned to ships that never made it off the drawing boards, or were scheduled for production but canceled, or started on but scrapped etc.
And even if every number represents an actually constructed ship, it doesn't say beans about fleet numbers. Overall, 80,000 ships were built. That says what about how many ships were in commission at any given point in time?

I analyzed Dominion War and came up with these numbers:
Low value: 6820 capital ships
Medium value: 17 050 capital ships
High value: 34 000 capital ships

NCC numbers include runabouts etc. There are other prefixes (NX, BDR, NAR, H, NGA) but these seem to be included in main sequence alongside NCC, and numbers are not given twice (USS Defiant seems to be exception but I tend to ignore that example).

Same with starbases. Actually, if there are ~500 starbases, then we have 13, 34 and 68 ships per starbase, and I don't think any of these numbers is unrealistic (althought 17 000 capital ships seems to make most sense - I doubt entire Starfleet would take part in war).

And there is absolutely no evidence of Starfleet including fighters in ship counts. Runabouts and maybe shuttles are included in NCC sequence, but Federation fleet that went to re-take DS9 had 600 capital ships + unknown number of fighters, not 600 capital ships + fighters. Otherwise, they would be outnumbered 4 to 1 in capital ships, since Dominion "fighters" are about same size as Defiant (note: I think I saw one Defiant class ship in Federation fleet sent to re-take DS9 along with Defiant itself).

[SeaTrooper]

I've seen people on some sites claim that Starfleet numbers around 80,000 because of registery numbers. What's to say about that?

How that works in RL is that classes or types are given blocks of numbers, ie.,
Dreadnoughts - 0001-0050
Battle Cruisers - 0050-0200
Heavy Cruisers - 0200-0400
... and so on.

We do know that Starfleet re-uses hull numbers, otherwise we wouldn't have 1701A/B/C etc. I have seen the large registry numbers means vast fleet argument used before, in B5 of all 'verses, and found it just as ridiculous. Its not fanboy wank, just ignorance of how naval administrators and bureaucrats try to bring order from what can be extremely confusing construction quotas over time.

Oh, and this is also why most navies used to paint over their hull numbers when in a hot war. So the bad guys couldn't tell who and what you were from a distance. These days, haze-grey numbers works in a vaguely similar fashion.

[SeaTrooper]

On fleets: They used "parts" of those fleets, so it's not that unreasonable to assume that the full fleets were larger. However, that reduction could be due to casualties, non-combat ready ships or ships that are not meant for combat.

Important point, here. The USN, like the RAN, plans to commission three hulls for every operational warship. How this works is that while one is out of service for regular major refits, and a 2nd is in the process of training up and conducting its sea trials, the 3rd will actually be out there and fully operational. Try to keep 2 of those 3 fully operational for any length of time, and you start running into huge problems with equipment reliability, crew fatigue and engineering defects building up.

When you are in a war this ratio can't be simply thrown out, because the stresses of combat act to reduce over-all reliability of systems and fatigue your crews even faster. The wear and tear on ships under combat conditions come from running around at higher speeds for longer periods, keeping systems at full power 24/7, and losing the ability to conduct many of the day to day little repairs needed. Note that modern warships can and do disappear over the horizon for 6 months deployments, but actual combat rarely lasts much longer than a few days. The Coalition naval forces during both Gulf Wars typically spent only a few hours at a time in dangerous, life-threatening situations (what most people would think of as combat), even at the height of the conflict ashore.

Thus 9thFLT may very well have 2,000 ships of all sizes allocated, but no more than 800-odd actually available at any one time.

[Picard]

And interesting thing here:

Thus 9thFLT may very well have 2,000 ships of all sizes allocated, but no more than 800-odd actually available at any one time.

2000/800=2.5

6820 x 2.5 = 17 050

Which means that my estimations are right (I dd them without knowing that about US navy). So Starfleet has 17 000 capital ships, but only less than 7 000 actually avaliable for combat at any given time.

[SeaTrooper]

I would imagine that the starbase numbers are not linear. Not at all. They probably are things like Littlefoot said. And as for stations with names not numbers, I would think things like Jupiter Station dont count as Starbases, because they have no drydocks or whatever. Then again, Starbase 12 was a planetery facility.

Ah, good point here. This could be a Starfleet tradition of calling all fleet facilities with certain capabilities Starbases. Having scores, possibly even hundreds, of Planetary Starbases, and the sector numbering, would certainly explain the comparatively quick jump in numbers between TOS and TNG. A bureaucratic system, rather than a shitload of new construction.

As for DS stations, I think those are ones that are "outside" Federtion territory. DS9 around Bajor, which IIRC never joined the federation during the shows run. DS K7 near Sherman's Planet, which has yet to join the Federation.

In FC they receive a long range warning from DS 5, consistent with the idea that DS stations are beyond the borders

Agreed, it seems an obvious answer. Those on the very edge of Fed space (or a bit beyond) being called Deep Space stations would even make their frontier siting more easily recognised to someone not familiar with that specific station. K7 was the one I immediately thought of, remembering that Kirk had to sit on his hands when a Klingon ship came in for a visit.

And then we have Farpoint Station, one of the few with its own name. And a spectacularly stupid one at that. What happens when exploration and colonisation moves beyond that system? Do they re-name it? Move the planet? Someone wasn't thinking too clearly when they named that place.

[SeaTrooper]

And interesting thing here:

Thus 9thFLT may very well have 2,000 ships of all sizes allocated, but no more than 800-odd actually available at any one time.

2000/800=2.5

6820 x 2.5 = 17 050

Which means that my estimations are right (I dd them without knowing that about US navy). So Starfleet has 17 000 capital ships, but only less than 7 000 actually avaliable for combat at any given time.

Ah, no, I still think you plucked your numbers out of an exceptionally well reamed arse.

One of the minor points my little post was also trying to point out that Starfleet ship availability numbers must be as bad (or worse) than we can achieve today. Only 39 Starships at Wolf 359? That's freaking appalling! If they'd had the extra ships about to go in for refits or still working up (what we would consider non-operational), then they would have been fucking sent! My earlier argument only works when they weren't faced with an immediate, impending and nearby threat, but could run their normal availability routines to conduct a still distant conflict. You can't use a Borg Cube thundering down on Earth RFN, and a long-expected, (hopefully-) much planned for and comparatively long running Dominion War to having any strategic similarities whatsoever.

[Stofsk]

40 Starships at Wolf 359. 39 were destroyed, but there were 40 there.

Why is that appalling?

[SeaTrooper]

40 Starships at Wolf 359. 39 were destroyed, but there were 40 there.

Why is that appalling?

Rgr 40, my mistake.

Appalling from a ship availability perspective. Whether there are nearly 7,000 Starships in commission, or the BS 17,000 Picard claims, that only 40 were available, in range and able to respond really argues either for the lower number, or some spectacularly poor reliability issues.

I just wrote out as an precis the Armidale-class patrol boats availability figures, and then thought better of it. Nonetheless, even publically available information shows that we can and do regularly surge far higher numbers of hulls when faced with unusually high numbers of Contacts of Interest. We've occasionally see foreign fishing fleets numbering in the hundreds come down from our northern neighbours, rape an area clean of all marine life just as fast as they can, and then scatter as they attempt escape with their booty. When this happens, since we don't want our seas to be the lifeless deserts they have left theirs, we freaking surge every single damned hull that'll still float!

When Starfleet was faced with the arrival of a Cube... they could only find 40 hulls?

[Batman]

40 Starships at Wolf 359. 39 were destroyed, but there were 40 there.
Why is that appalling?

Rgr 40, my mistake.
Appalling from a ship availability perspective. Whether there are nearly 7,000 Starships in commission, or the BS 17,000 Picard claims, that only 40 were available, in range and able to respond really argues either for the lower number, or some spectacularly poor reliability issues.
When Starfleet was faced with the arrival of a Cube... they could only find 40 hulls?

Space is big. Warp is comparatively slow. Assuming a speed of 10,000 c and 36 hours to assemble the fleet at Wolf 359, which would require them to have started doing so 24 hours or more before the E-D's failed Deflector Dish of Doom attack, anything more than 41 ly away was out of it.

[SeaTrooper]

40 Starships at Wolf 359. 39 were destroyed, but there were 40 there.
Why is that appalling?

Rgr 40, my mistake.
Appalling from a ship availability perspective. Whether there are nearly 7,000 Starships in commission, or the BS 17,000 Picard claims, that only 40 were available, in range and able to respond really argues either for the lower number, or some spectacularly poor reliability issues.
When Starfleet was faced with the arrival of a Cube... they could only find 40 hulls?

Space is big. Warp is comparatively slow. Assuming a speed of 10,000 c and 36 hours to assemble the fleet at Wolf 359, which would require them to have started doing so 24 hours or more before the E-D's failed Deflector Dish of Doom attack, anything more than 41 ly away was out of it.

Oh, absolutely... but the Cube was headed directly for Sector 000 - Earth. The heart of the rather humano-centric UFP, of Utopia Planitia and Starfleet HQ, not mention Spacedock and all its floating and planet-bound friends. A known position, course and speed, allowing an intercept to be plotted with an ease I'd certainly envy. What I'm trying to say here is that, even given the known low capabilities of Warp (10KC might be optimistic), Starfleet's strength within the core of the Fed must be lower than the 6-7,000 figure we've seen bruted about.

Please note that in Star Trek 2009, when we saw the kind of mass mobilisation of Starfleet assets you'd expect for a Borg incursion, they were deploying even 3rd-year cadets out of the academy. Sure, that may have been simply to get Kirk and Co onto the E, yet it is not unknown for us to effectively empty out naval stores, the PBGRP headquarters and the work-shops in order to get boats to sea during a major surge. All the Frankenstein-ships created for the Dominion War a few years later didn't come from nothing. Emptying out Spacedock, launching ships that didn't have all their luxurious accommodations carpetted yet, and even those whose systems weren't fully on-line, should have fielded a much larger force.

Finally, if Wolf 359 isn't enough, observe how many freaking times we see the E called into some crisis because they are the only ship in the Sector! This, more than anything, argues for a far smaller fleet than Starfleet's ADMLs are probably happy with. Border Protection Commander is on record as stating that if he had 30 patrol boats, rather than just 14, he would be able to use them all.

[SeaTrooper]

And then we have Farpoint Station, one of the few with its own name. And a spectacularly stupid one at that. What happens when exploration and colonisation moves beyond that system? Do they re-name it? Move the planet? Someone wasn't thinking too clearly when they named that place.

Farpoint was named by its builders as I recall. They were looking to rent it out to the Federation (or some such arrangement). It could have been far from their home.
Anyway, you call that name stupid, but names are often based on something temporary. Take some street names from my city for example.
Factory St. so named because because there used to be several factories on it. They're all closed now, but the street still has the name.
Mill St., sitting right on the river. Only one paper mill is still actually there (and even it stopped making paper a few years back!).
Mechanic St., right off factory street. It's where the people who worked at the factories were put to live.
Academy St., used to have a big academy on it. Not for a hundred years, but still the same name.
Hell, half the streets in the city would probably fit this pattern. After a while, names lose their meaning beyond simply being a name.

True, and this is a game anyone can play. I'm re-reading the Diskworld series at present, and Ankh-Morpork has Treacle Mine Rd (where treacle hasn't been mined for centuries) and Short St (the longest avenue in the city). Nonetheless, we were talking about Starbases and their naming. If named by the marketing dept, then sure, I get it, but that means it wasn't a Starfleet Starbase at all. Ummm, in which case it shouldn't added to the list.

[Stofsk]

Appalling from a ship availability perspective. Whether there are nearly 7,000 Starships in commission, or the BS 17,000 Picard claims, that only 40 were available, in range and able to respond really argues either for the lower number, or some spectacularly poor reliability issues.

I don't happen to like the idea of huge fleet counts, so from my perspective the fleet assembled at Wolf 359 was impressive enough. DS9 changed things by adding hundreds of ships to a particular fleet, or a fleet suffering over a hundred losses and the war still continues. In my view this isn't in line with TNG's take on Starfleet.

I just wrote out as an precis the Armidale-class patrol boats availability figures, and then thought better of it. Nonetheless, even publically available information shows that we can and do regularly surge far higher numbers of hulls when faced with unusually high numbers of Contacts of Interest. We've occasionally see foreign fishing fleets numbering in the hundreds come down from our northern neighbours, rape an area clean of all marine life just as fast as they can, and then scatter as they attempt escape with their booty. When this happens, since we don't want our seas to be the lifeless deserts they have left theirs, we freaking surge every single damned hull that'll still float!

Uh ok.

When Starfleet was faced with the arrival of a Cube... they could only find 40 hulls?

At short notice. Also the Cube arrived sooner than they anticipated. Admiral Hanson even says at the start of the first episode, that they weren't ready.

[Batman]

SNIPPY for length

Oh, absolutely... but the Cube was headed directly for Sector 000 - Earth. The heart of the rather humano-centric UFP, of Utopia Planitia and Starfleet HQ, not mention Spacedock and all its floating and planet-bound friends. A known position, course and speed, allowing an intercept to be plotted with an ease I'd certainly envy. What I'm trying to say here is that, even given the known low capabilities of Warp (10KC might be optimistic), Starfleet's strength within the core of the Fed must be lower than the 6-7,000 figure we've seen bruted about.

Why? And who says Starfleet is actually concentrating forces around the core areas?
Assuming the (absolutely optimistic, that was intentional to show just how hard it would have been for Starfleet to get even those 40 ships to 359 in time) 10,000c/36 hours figures, that gives an average distribution of 1 ship per 6,702 cubic ly. Even assuming Picard's almost inevitably exaggerated 17,000 hull number, that gives the UFP, assuming it's cube shaped, a whopping 485x485x485 ly of space, or a sphere with a radius of about 300 ly. As per FC, the thing is '8,000 ly across'.

Please note that in Star Trek 2009, when we saw the kind of mass mobilisation of Starfleet assets you'd expect for a Borg incursion, they were deploying even 3rd-year cadets out of the academy.

Which they actually had a chance to get to the scene of the action in time.

Sure, that may have been simply to get Kirk and Co onto the E, yet it is not unknown for us to effectively empty out naval stores, the PBGRP headquarters and the work-shops in order to get boats to sea during a major surge.

Sure. Because that's usually actually of use. There's no point of sortieing ships that will never get there in time, and even if they did, we wouldn't see them at the scene because the couldn't get there in time.

All the Frankenstein-ships created for the Dominion War a few years later didn't come from nothing.

Which means they were up and running and in range to get to Wolf 359 in time why?

Emptying out Spacedock, launching ships that didn't have all their luxurious accommodations carpetted yet, and even those whose systems weren't fully on-line, should have fielded a much larger force.

Because-you say so. Please show those forces existed in the first place, could have been made even marginally spaceworthy and combat capable in time, and gotten there in time to join the battle after that.

Finally, if Wolf 359 isn't enough, observe how many freaking times we see the E called into some crisis because they are the only ship in the Sector! This, more than anything, argues for a far smaller fleet than Starfleet's ADMLs are probably happy with.

How so? Even using Picard's completely unfounded 17,000 hulls number, thanks to the low speed (relatively speaking) of Warp drive it's entirely possible for the Big E (or any other Starfleet ship) to really be the only ship in range.

Border Protection Commander is on record as stating that if he had 30 patrol boats, rather than just 14, he would be able to use them all.

Border commander also doesn't have to worry about distances anywhere near those Starfleet does, leave alone another spacial dimension.