Trek Fleet counts

[Big Phil]

Great, so now Destructionator is coming along with more No Numbers bullshit.

Moreover, the "less than a year" is by definition a lower limit. Starfleet might be able to build a thousand ships in a year, which would easily replace 40.

Why isn't it replaced tomorrow? There might be up to a year between placing the order and actually getting the result out. All the ships coming off the assembly line tomorrow are already allocated to something else (replacing old ships or whatever).


An analogy is in November 2009, I took $1000 out of my savings account to cover some surprise expenses. I didn't put the money back in savings until April 2010. Does that mean I only made 1000/6 = $167 / month? Or does it mean only about $167 was left over to add to savings after paying all my other bills each month?

NO NUMBERS LOL


Fucking retard.

Is this supposed to be a coherent argument? And how does "Starfleet might be able to build a thousand ships in a year, which would easily replace 40" disprove the no numbers aspect? Just because you list a number doesn't mean you actually gave a logical and canonical explanation for how to get it.

Although 40 ships may be a lower limit, that doesn't mean your upper limit of 1000 ships/year has any validity.

If Starfleet is building 1000 ships a year, why wouldn't Shelby say they would be replaced in a week?

Why isn't it replaced tomorrow? There might be up to a year between placing the order and actually getting the result out. All the ships coming off the assembly line tomorrow are already allocated to something else (replacing old ships or whatever).

Fucking retard.

You're arguing that Starfleet can order and build 40 new starships in less than 12 months... with zero evidence... and you're calling me a retard? I think someone spent too much time on the short bus...

and you've yet to demonstrate Federation shipbuilding capacity is in excess of 40 ships/year (except by "common sense").

Moreover, the "less than a year" is by definition a lower limit.

Fucking retard.

Your lower limit might very well be 40, and the upper limit might be 45, but I'm the retard because I'm not just accepting your lack of evidence...

I'll say it again - either show actual, canonical numbers demonstrating a Starfleet ship size in excess of a couple of thousand starships, or concede.

The Federation is 8000 light years across, and warp drive would take a couple years to cross that distance, yet there's always at least one ship just a day or two away whenever shit happens, throughout TOS, TNG, and DS9. If we assume it is a 2d circle, it's area would be 50 million square light years.

If a starship has a median maximum warp of about 5000 times the speed of light and is "in range" if it is three days away from the disturbance, a starship can cover a radius of about 40 light years, which is an area of 5,000 square light years.

50 million / 5000 = 10,000 starships just to provide timely response to their own territory. Why don't we see most those ships? Well, again, the Federation is so vast that half the fleet is a year away from you on average! And those ships all have a lot of their own shit to do, exploring strange new worlds, providing assistance to colonies, etc - the kind of stuff we see Kirk and Picard do most weeks.

I'm not even sure where to begin with this argument... first of all, what makes you think Starfleet always responds within a day or two? Because the Enterprise always seems to do it?

For Wolf 359, they got together 40 ships in one day. One day means they could gather starships from a range of about 14 light years. This implies a much higher density than we calculated above, but since Earth and other big Federation worlds were less than one day away, it'd make sense that fleet density would be higher there than throughout most the Federation, which is surely thinly populated. This high density to fight the Borg supports a huge fleet - how else could they spare so many ships without leaving vast volumes of their territory with no presence at all?

What makes you think they have a substantial (if any) presence in their remote territories (away from the Neutral Zone)? Perhaps they only have a couple of dozen scouts and surveyors in their remote territory, and 90% of their fleet is near the Neutral Zone. Real World Example - how much of a presence does the USN have near the US's Antarctic bases? Do they keep a carrier battle group positioned nearby at all times? Perhaps a couple of submarines and a frigate? Or do they position those forces near the strategically important territory (i.e., the US Mainland, Hawaii, East Asia, and Europe)?

If starships have an average 50 year lifespan, which is a little high, since I can't think of any ships in the show that actually lasted that long (even the original Enterprise was around for maybe 40 years, with at least one major refit in that time, and it is the oldest ship we know), but if they do, 10,000 starships replaced over 100 years implies that they must be able to build at least 200 per year, plus growth. The Wolf 359 replacements were likely some from the regular replinishment budget and some out of the growth budget.

You're starting from the conclusion, but you've failed to demonstrate that they can actually build 200 ships per year. The only thing you've conclusively demonstrated (which no one disagrees with) is that the Federation can build at least 40 ships a year.


At the end of the day, DS9 flat out contradicts your "FEDERATION HAS 10,000 CAPITAL SHIPS!!!" bullshit. Given that this was a major war that could lead to the destruction of the Federation, one would assume that it dedicated a substantial proportion of its fleet to the war. 600 starships can only represent a substantil proportion if Starfleet is a couple of thousand ships strong. Unless you're seriously going to argue that, even though facing an enemy bent on their destruction, Starfleet insisted on keeping most of its forces on exploratory missions in its deep regions.

If you want a real world analogy, during WW2, both the US and Japan committed every ship they felt they could spare to each major battle. At Midway, the US had three fleet and Japan four fleet carriers. In the US's case, this was 60% of their fleet carriers; in Japan's case 100% of undamaged fleet carriers (or 66% of all floating fleet carriers). Similar proportions of fleet carriers participated in all other major Pacific battles, as did significant numbers of lighter combatants (cruisers, destroyers, frigates, etc.).

And yet we're supposed to believe that, in the face of imminent defeat and conquest by the Dominion, the Federation didn't commit all of its available forces? And you call me a retard...

[fallendragon]

sanchez then what is your thoughts on "When It Rains" then?

[Purple]

The one thing that seems to strike me when reading all this is that no mater how many posts one has, or how accepted he is in the community. Calling someone a retard should not be considered a valid counterarguement...

But maybe that is just me.

[Captain Seafort]

Look, I acknowledge what Shelby (not Riker, apparently) said indicates that Starfleet can build at least 40 ships in a year. No issues with that. But if 40 ships was just a drop in the bucket, then why would anyone be concerned about the loss of 40 ships?

I'm not suggesting any numbers regarding normal replacement rate - I'm simply pointing out that the need to replace normal wastage doesn't go away just because they also have to replace the ships lost at Wolf.

Regardless, you aren't providing any actual calculations about the size of Starfleet. You pulled 10,000 out of your ass by arguing 25 years between refits

A number I got from misreading your post, and conceded halfway up the page. Try and keep up.

you've yet to demonstrate Federation shipbuilding capacity is in excess of 40 ships/year (except by "common sense").

Yes I have. Ships s will still be coming to the end of their working lives and being scrapped. They need to be replaced. This does not change simply because Starfleet also needs to replace the Wolf losses that year. If the construction limit was 40 ships/year then the fleet would remain understrength, as that would only replace the Wolf losses and not normal wastage.

[CaptJodan]

Is the debate strictly located in the early TNG era, or are we including DS9 era shipbuilding as well? Because it's pretty clear these two eras were vastly different in terms of ship production.

You have Wolf 359, with 40 ships scrambled to engage the Borg at the heart of the Federation. In addition, you have Redemption, which sees 23 ships, some of them not ready, scrambled to the boarder of two major powers. Fleet engagements in TNG were always small. DS9's got a lot bigger.

Of course, there's other ways to rationalize this besides increased production (though increased production has to be an element in a longer war). The large fleet sizes in DS9 might be a result of most of the Federation ships coming home to roost from out on the rim, then getting combined into fleets, rather than just a result of ship construction. Redemption's 23 ships might have been all they could spare given the time they had to get ships into the area, but the protracted war with the Dominion allowed far flung ships to arrive.

Still, even with that acknowledged, I think it's hard to compare the Federation's capability for production in the DS9 era from the Best of Both Worlds era.

[Big Phil]

I get it, Destructionator. Your argument is as follows:

1. Sanchez is a retard because he disagrees with me
2. I'll assume that because in TNG Starflet always seems to have a ship nearby they MUST have 10,000 ships, even though I've never demonstrated they have the capability to build 10,000 ships
3. When challenged to provide evidence of shipbuilding capability to justify my absurd assumptions, I'll rant and rave and froth at the mouth and call my opponent a retard
4. Finally, I'll assume that the Federation is retarded as well. Even though they're fighting a major war, I'm going to argue that they're purposefully half-assing their effort. In the face of nearly one trillion casualties... they kept the majority of their fleet exploring gaseous anomalies and suppressing riots on colonies of 50 people.

[Big Phil]

Look, I acknowledge what Shelby (not Riker, apparently) said indicates that Starfleet can build at least 40 ships in a year. No issues with that. But if 40 ships was just a drop in the bucket, then why would anyone be concerned about the loss of 40 ships?

I'm not suggesting any numbers regarding normal replacement rate - I'm simply pointing out that the need to replace normal wastage doesn't go away just because they also have to replace the ships lost at Wolf.

Except that the Federation could easily have done the following:

1. Build 40 warships the following year which were intended to replace retiring warships
2. Postpone the retirement of 40 warships for at least five years to maintain numbers
3. Continue to delay retirements of aging warships as necessary (refits are generally cheaper than new builds)

Regardless, you aren't providing any actual calculations about the size of Starfleet. You pulled 10,000 out of your ass by arguing 25 years between refits

A number I got from misreading your post, and conceded halfway up the page. Try and keep up.

My bad - accepted

you've yet to demonstrate Federation shipbuilding capacity is in excess of 40 ships/year (except by "common sense").

Yes I have. Ships s will still be coming to the end of their working lives and being scrapped. They need to be replaced. This does not change simply because Starfleet also needs to replace the Wolf losses that year. If the construction limit was 40 ships/year then the fleet would remain understrength, as that would only replace the Wolf losses and not normal wastage.

And above I've laid out a way that the Federation could easily replace 40 starships without additional new construction.

I think what you're forgetting is that ramping up the construction of highly technical starships isn't something you do overnight. There are also factors other than raw shipbuilding capacity to consider. The workforce and the time necessary to train them, the ability to train crews, political will, money, the availability of raw materials, etc. So, let's do a very basic analysis of each of these:

1. Shipyards - how many does the Federation have, and how much capacity are they utilizing (during TNG and DS9)? Clearly enough to build 40 starships, but how many more? Answer that question and we'll be a lot closer to an answer, and maybe then Destructionator can wipe the drool off his chin.
2. Workforce (and training time) - even if the Federation is only using a proportion of its shipyard capacity, it takes time to train skilled workers. You can't just slap a welding torch in a douchebag's hand and tell him to go build a ship. How long does it take to train welders, electricians, mechanics, etc.? Do they have trained people sitting on the bench that they can stick into a shipyard, and if so, how many?
3. Crew training - What's the training program for new ship crews? Are they pulling people from the reserve, or churning out 90 day wonders?
4. Political will - clearly one of the limiting factors in TNG is political will. The Federation hasn't fought a major war in years, and they don't want to, so they probably don't build as many starships as Starfleet wants them to. How quickly does that turn around between TNG and DS9?
5. Money - how does Starfleet pay for new ship construction?
6. Availability of raw materials - just because the Federation needs 40 or 400 new starships all of a sudden doesn't mean that the logistical train is in place to provide the raw materials for ship construction. It takes time to mine material for ship hulls and transport it to a processing plant. How much can the Federation increase its raw material output? 10%? 100%? 1000%? And who is going to be doing the mining? Will the Federation forcibly recruit miners and force them to work, or will it be paying them? And who's going to train them (miners do need some training, even if it is basic)?
7. Availability of advanced technology - much like raw material, it takes time to build computers, phaser arrays, deflectors, sensors, etc. How quickly can these be built?
8. How long does it take to build ship class X? Galaxy class starships seem to take 4 years. Nebula's perhaps a little less time since they lack the engineering section. How long does it take to build other ships, and by how much can construction be sped up?

The reason I ask how much capacity they're using is, to use a real world example, shipyards may be maxed out or they may be underutilized. For example, the US Navy currently has a fleet of 57 attack, 14 ballistic missile, and 4 guided missile submarines. No ship is more than ~30 years old. So using those numbers the US should be pumping out two new submarines each year, right? Except, we're not. There was a short hiatus after the Cold War where hardly any new submarines were built, and now with the Virginia class they're being produced at a rate of approximately one a year, whereas the Los Angeles class was built at a rate of just slightly less than three a year (on average).

[Big Phil]

Seafort, one other possible explanation that I forgot about: rather than build 40 new starships, the Federation could have pulled 40 starships out of its mothball fleet and refitted/reactivated them. The US Navy has a mothball fleet of older warships, and while they could be reactivated, it's not something that can be done overnight. Perhaps this is how the Federation quickly replaced the starships lost at Wolf 359.

[Big Phil]

When the fuck did a member world have to have a shipyard? How many shipyards do Alpha Centauri, Ardana, the Arkenite home planet, the Kazarite home planet, or the Shamin home planet have? Stop assuming things, and show some actual fucking evidence.

Christ almighty, you're completely incapable of understanding what No Numbers means, aren't you? Just because you pull numbers out of your ass, or extrapolate numbers from some asinine analysis, doesn't mean you are correct. Using your logic, I could argue that the United States must have at least 50 shipyards (and therefore be building 50 ships a year) because it has 50 states!

EDIT - to be clear, here are the surface combatants UNDER CONSTRUCTION (not being produced each year, but simply under construction) and commissioned in the United States as of January 2009:

1 aircraft carrier under construction/10 in commission
1 amphibious assault ship under construction/13 in commission
3 submarines under construction/72 in commission
0 cruisers under construction/22 in commission
6 destroyers under construction/57 in commission
0 frigates under construction/6 in commission

[Big Phil]

Oh my god, did you even watch the show? Do you know what the Prime Directive is?

I see - because the prime directive says they must have warp capable shipyards, therefore they must be able to build warships for Starfleet on each of the 150 member planets. Just like North Dakota builds aircraft carriers...

Sorry dude, you're failing on so many levels it's not even funny. When you're ready to provide real evidence (not inferences and projections based on hypotheses), get back to me.

[Serafina]

Oh my god, did you even watch the show? Do you know what the Prime Directive is?

I don't want to get too deep into this discussion right now (mostly because your WoI is more annoying) - but that's not even a coherent argument! You just threw the word "Prime Directive" out there, as if it was some kind of magic.
You didn't explain how it relates to this discussion at all, you didn't make an argument based upon that and you didn't provide a shred of evidence (no surprise, since you made no argument whatsoever).
In other words: You fail utterly.

[Serafina]

Yes, this follows and is well supported. You must do a warp flight before the Federation will consider you joining up, therefore they must have shipyards. We know a lot of these shipyards are still in operation: we see Vulcan ships, Andorian ships, Tellarite ships, and so on in DS9 and TNG.

Actually, you are wrong.
One word (well, two): First Contact
Did Zephran Cochrane have a shipyard? Was his ship in ANY way comparable to a TNG-era spacecraft?
Neither is true - all that he did was build a single, slow warp drive.

Now, other civilisations might put all of their resources into building such a warp drive, building actual shipyards for it etc.
But that would mean that they actually have a less advanced technology base. If a single man can do it with your technology, and someone else needs a whole planet's effort to do it, then your technology is clearly more advanced.

Basically, your argument goes like this:
"You must be capable of building ships that can cross the atlantic ocean in order to join our club." A 16th-century wooden ship would fulfill that criteria, or a small modern ship. Therefore, we can conclude that everyone who can build a small modern ship can build modern missile cruisers and aircraft carriers. warning for morons: What i just said was highly illogical.
Take the above and replace the "ocean-going"-requirement with "warp drive", and you have your own argument.

Just because a planet could build some sort of warp-capable ship, it doesn't have to be able to build TNG-era warships. Indeed, we can't even be sure that it can still build any warp-capable ships today - just because they were once capable of doing so, they aren't automatically still capable of doing so.


So yes, as i said - YOU FAIL.


Edit:

Do you really find it so absurd that shipyards in the Federation, which we know to exist, build a ship here and there for the Federation?

First, i have already shown that the capability to build warp-capable ships doesn't require shipyards, and that a primitive shipyard for a basic warp vessel would not necessarily be able to build anything remotely modern.
Second, building "a ship here and there" doesn't mean that they can build actual warships. Perhaps they build freighters or diplomatic shuttles or anything like that. They MIGHT build warships, but that doesn't automatically follow.

[Big Phil]

Did Zephran Cochrane have a shipyard?

Yes. Though he wasn't joining the Federation either. Everybody who was considered had their own warp ships, even the Bajorans who just got out from under Cardassian occupation had their own homemade ships!

But, despite all this, only Earth can build Starfleet ships. And according to Sanchez' newest posts, not even Earth could replace the Wolf 359 losses without dipping into storage. Absurd.

You have yet to prove otherwise except with ranting and handwaving.

BTW, remember that one TOS episode where there was a Vulcan Starfleet ship? Of course not.

You've lost it, haven't you?

I also didn't list all the Earth shipyards we know to exist either. One of the TNG dedication plaques had a ship built in the USSR. (season 1 "The Naked Now"). Hell, let's go through that whole list of plaques on the wiki.


40 Eridani A Starfleet Construction Yards (TNG "Night Terrors", TNG "The Wounded")
Tranquility Base (ENT "In a Mirror, Darkly")
Antares Ship Yards (DS9, on the Defiant and the Valiant)
San Francisco (TOS, Enterprise, Enterprise A, TNG "Redemption", TNG movies Enterprise E)
Utopia Plantia (TNG, Enterprise D, TNG/VGR/DS9 other assorted ships)
Copernicus Ship Yards, Luna (TNG "Peak Performance")
Antares sector (VGR, "Message in a Bottle")
Earth Station McKinley (TNG "Family", Voyager)
Baikonur Cosmodrome (TNG "The Naked Now", "Up the Long Ladder")


So there's a huge Earth presence (at least 5 yards, one of which is very large and one of which - the USSR one - builds both civilian and Starfleet ships). There's also Eridani and Antares explicitly mentioned too building Starfleet ships.

Fantastic - you can regurgitate names. Now, please tell us how many of those are still in operation during TNG/DS9, how many ships each of those yards can construct at a given time, and how many they can build each year.

We also, again, know a requirement for joining the Federation is building warp capable starships and we know the core worlds at least actively do, including on at least one occassion, operating a Starfleet warship.


but hey a federation of 150 members and thousands upon thousands of other worlds covering millions of cubic lightyears with a population well into the trillions obviously can't handle building starships any faster than a handful each year.

Then prove otherwise fuckface... you're argument is the equivalent of saying that the British Empire must have had thousands of warships and millions of soldiers because it controlled so much territory. Which ignores the political and economic realities that England faced, which limited fleet and army sizes to much smaller numbers.

Just because a planet could build some sort of warp-capable ship, it doesn't have to be able to build TNG-era warships. Indeed, we can't even be sure that it can still build any warp-capable ships today - just because they were once capable of doing so, they aren't automatically still capable of doing so.

Let's just ignore all those Vulcan, Andorian, Tellarite, Bajoran, etc etc etc etc ships we see. They obviously can't do it.

(btw I totally accounted for it not being automatic. Look at my math, I only used 10% of the member worlds!)


But hey, you admitted earlier in this thread that you don't even watch the show, so you obviously know everything about it.

Numbers, fuckface, numbers. How many ships are Vulcan, Andor, and Tellar building each year? What classes? How many shipyards does each have?


I fear that we will never be able to penetrate your Wall of Ignorance and No Numbers bullshit. If you had the debate skills of anyone even marginally more competent than Darkstar, you could at least make an attempt at demonstrating the Federation's shipbuilding capabilities without resorting to screeching, ranting, and illogical ravings. I've already explained some of the factors that need to be considered to calculate shipbuilding capacity, which you've conveniently handwaved away and repelled with your wall of ignorance. Instead you use illogical bullshit like:
* The Federation is BIG = can build lots of starships
* The Enterprise always responds within a day or two = Starfleet always responds within a day or two = tens of thousands of starships. Conveniently ignoring, of course, that perhaps TNG only shows cases where the Enterprise actually manages to respond. Perhaps the Federation only responds to one in a hundred such distress calls, and TNG doesn't bother showing cases where they show up weeks late and bury the bodies.

[fallendragon]

...
I am begining to understand why Picard was the way he was.

[Serafina]

You forgot "capable of building warp-capable ships=capable of building TNG-era ships"-illogical bullshit. It's basically an equivocation-fallacy - if it qualifies as a "shipyard" in any way, it must be a highly modern TNG-era shipyard.
By his logic, a pre-WWI factory is capable of building a Leopard II tank, and one that builds small freight ships can build aircraft carriers.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

So if I'm getting this right:

D13 has watched the show.
D13 knows how to, and has done the math.
D13 has shown this multiple times, providing every step of his calculations for others to review.
D13, on top of this, shows how common sense and simple logic back up his numbers as well.
D13's only real argument is, "Yes, of course Wars will effectively curbstomp the federation, it just won't be quite the extreme wank-fest the main site implies".

...Yet apparently D13 is a worthless wanker who obviously hates Wars and doesn't provide anything, according to the claims of people who 1) haven't watched the show and admit it, and 2) demonstrate time and again that they don't even read his posts.

And D13's the one who allegedly has a WoI problem? Here I thought we had a higher standard of debate on this site, but apparently that only applies to the more popular position.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Conveniently ignoring, of course, that perhaps TNG only shows cases where the Enterprise actually manages to respond. Perhaps the Federation only responds to one in a hundred such distress calls, and TNG doesn't bother showing cases where they show up weeks late and bury the bodies.

Ahahahahahaha! I can't believe I didn't see that, holy shit!

"We only see the Enterprise responding to distress calls (in a show centered around the crew and exploits of the Enterprise, who woulda thunk?!), so obviously the Enterprise is the only ship who can respond to calls and everyone else is shit out of luck!"

Hold on...

"The only smuggling ship we see in SW is the Millenium Falcon, so perhaps it's the only smuggling ship in the SW universe, and everyone else is shit out of luck for their need for illegal goods!"

I mean really? You're actually going to use this as an argument?

This is what gets to me about this: You guys suck. You really do. You suck at reading, you suck at debating, you suck at basic creative thought, you suck at logical analysis. You don't have any clue how to do the basic math involved with this, you haven't even watched the material you're arguing against, you don't even notice that the answers to your retarded questions/assumptions are RIGHT IN THE SECTION OF THE POST YOU QUOTED. It's like you're a bunch of pull-string dolls, if someone comes along and tries to wipe away a little of the semen you've coated your holy cow with, you collapse into a screeching pile of "CANONNONUMBERSICSTREKKIEJUGGATONHYPERDRIVETRIGGERGUARDZ!" without actually comprehending anything you or the other side is claiming.

What do you expect to get out of this? Do you think if you wank hard enough, you'll be able to magically summon DW back here to lead you to holy SW salvation? Don't get me wrong, unlike you tools, DW actually knows how to debate (though in my highly subjective opinion, I'm leaning far more towards D13's view that he only looks at a small part of the evidence in exclusion to everything else), you're just... sad. I have to say I stand in admiration of D13's patience for trying to hold the hands of a bunch of babies and walk them step-by-step through this despite their proudly displayed ignorance of practically any of the material involved.

[Big Phil]

Oh well, now that Onisucksonhisballs is here to call me names, I guess I concede. Clearly, the Federation has tens of thousands of starships, and yet only commits 600 to a major offensive in a war for its survival, even though they can clearly build thousands of warships each year. Forget the logical inconsistency involved, let's just take numbers pulled from speculation and combine them with other speculative numbers and declare victory.

[PLR2]

Something just came to mind: The Promethesis from Voyager was built at the Beta Antares ship yards.

Beta Antares is a system Kirk visited - it has the gangster planet in "A Piece of the Action". Apparently the Federation did come back for their cut of the action, and eventually built high tech shipyards there!

Not Exactly. I doubled checked at Memory Alpha because I remembered the episode a little different from you. I thought the Gangster planet was a different one rather than Beta Antares. According to Memory Alpha I was right.

Beta Antares IV was an inhabited planet which had made contact with the Federation by the 23rd century.
Captain James T. Kirk stated this planet was the origin of fizzbin, a card game with absurdly complicated rules, which he invented while being trapped on Sigma Iotia II. Spock was familiar with the culture of Beta Antares IV and started to explain that there was no such game there, but was stopped short by Kirk. (TOS: "A Piece of the Action")

Edit: I'm not trying to be an ass. I just really thought I remembered that episode differently.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Oh well, now that Onisucksonhisballs is here to call me names, I guess I concede. Clearly, the Federation has tens of thousands of starships, and yet only commits 600 to a major offensive in a war for its survival, even though they can clearly build thousands of warships each year. Forget the logical inconsistency involved, let's just take numbers pulled from speculation and combine them with other speculative numbers and declare victory.

You still don't get it. You can't concede anything because you haven't made any argument. You're just a pull-string dollie regurgitating catchphrases and asking retarded questions that were answered right in the post you were quote. I'm just mocking you for being the very definition of a fatty nerd.

Let's see, I suck at debate, I'll pull the first logical answer that comes to mind regarding Federation fleet size: Just because the Federation can build X ships, doesn't mean they necessarily do at all times. Why the fuck would a nation be *constantly* at maximum wartime ship production, rather than building consistently at minimum levels needed to replace those lost to normal age and use? Perhaps the reason they didn't have a huge fleet was because they hadn't been at war for a long while and before that point had no valid economic or military reason to be going at full production capacity?

I'll repeat it because each new post you make hammers the point home: You suck at this. But hey, I'm sure the wanker emoticon makes a great stand-in for actually making a valid argument.

For the people who actually have some competence, I am a little curious about determining ST fleet strength, running off some WW2 assumptions. Let's say that for the Dominion War, the Federation pulled all its ships it reasonable could within, say, a month's travel time of the conflict, leaving the areas they pulled them from still defended, but rather lightly so. During WW2, what average percentage of the military was actually committed on the actual warfront, as opposed to maintaining defense and control over areas not directly involved in the war? From this wouldn't we be able to determine true fleet size in the one-month radius, and thus determine total fleet size by multiplying that by the actual size of Federation territory?

[fallendragon]

Serafina and SancheztheWhaler

What are your takes on the fleet sizes in "When It Rains"?

[Serafina]

Serafina and SancheztheWhaler

What are your takes on the fleet sizes in "When It Rains"?

Put simply: None.
I just wanted to point out the bad logic of Destructionator XIII when he made his "Warp drive=large shipyards=federation member=lot's of warships"-argument.
Again - you don't need a large shipyard to have warp drives. Building one small ship would, in theory, be enough.
Second, just having a shipyard doesn't equal it's capability to build warships - the federation needs freights etc. as well, those have to be built somewhere.

Actually, the latter is probably a good argument why the fleet sizes went up that much. If warship-construction is normally limited to a few shipyards and the rest builds other ships, then maybe the federation put themselves on a war footing for the dominion war and re-tooled those civilian shipyards to build warships. It's pretty much works that way in real life as well, and it explains the vastly different fleet counts.
Of course, that isn't necessarily the only explanation. The second good explanation is that the Federations fleet was highly dispered in the TBG-era and highly concentrated during the Dominion War.

[Big Phil]

Oh well, now that Onisucksonhisballs is here to call me names, I guess I concede. Clearly, the Federation has tens of thousands of starships, and yet only commits 600 to a major offensive in a war for its survival, even though they can clearly build thousands of warships each year. Forget the logical inconsistency involved, let's just take numbers pulled from speculation and combine them with other speculative numbers and declare victory.

Well obviously that's absurd. You'd be scoring big points if anyone were actually saying that.

My USS SHITCOCK scenario explained why they wouldn't commit the whole fleet (which, by the way, I'm putting at ~10,000 total and 200 build a year, smaller than you're attributing): it would have taken so long for them to get to the battle zone that the war would have been over by the time they arrived anyway!

Let's take Voyager's sustained speed of 1000c as our baseline. If the war is on the other side of the Federation, we're looking at an average of about 3000 light years to cross. That's three years warping in before they are even in the right area to help the fight! And it's three years to get back too, meaning the other end of the territory is completely undefended for a total of 6 years bare minimum! That's obviously not a good idea, and since the effort is likely futile anyway, it makes sense for Starfleet to not bother allocating the whole fleet to this war. It's impossible and even trying guarantees they'll lose something on the other hand.

There are several logical issues here:

1. The Dominion War was a HUGE FUCKING DEAL. There's ZERO logical reason why the Federation wouldn't pull out all the stops in an attempt to win the war. That means pulling every capital from from exploratory missions in its deep regions. Why would you think that the Dominion would stop once it had conquered Earth, or that the conquest and destruction of Earth (or Vulcan/Tellar/Andor/Alpha Centauri/etc.) would even be acceptable to the Federation?
2. Given that the majority of the Federation's enemies are along the Neutral Zone (Romulans, Cardassians, Klingons at various points in time), and they're all fairly close to each other on most maps I've seen of the Star Trek universe, why would you assume an even distribution of starships throughout Federation space? I would expect concentrations of starships around strategically critical planets, with a much smaller number of ships elsewhere in Federation space. There's no logical reason to think that only 10% of the Federation's 10,000 starships are available for the war.
3. What enemies does the Federation need to defend against in their deep regions?
4. What sane government commits only 6% of its navy in the most important battle up to that point? As I demonstrated with real life examples, nations that half-ass decisive battle tend to lose, and even those that go all in can still lose. That's why it's a decisive battle, and that's why they're so damned important. You don't fight a decisive battle with 94% of your forces elsewhere.

BTW, a 600 ship offensive gotten together in a year matches my result. With an average sustained cruising speed of 1000c, in one year, a ship can cross 1000 light years. So we could bring in all the ships from a 1000 light years radius.

1000^2 * pi / 600 ships = 5000 square lightyears / ship.

If the federation is a circle with radius 4000 light years (simplification from Picard's First Contact statement), 5000 square lightyears / ship means.... 10,000 ships total.


This is a delicious coincidence. That 600 ship offensive was from Sacrifice of Angels, yes? Early season 6 - the Dominon War went into all out fighting in season 5, and they had some advance warning in season 4. About one year lead time to gather the ships just about matches.

Why are you suggesting this ridiculous notion that Starfleet is distributed evenly throughout Federation territory? Do you think their job is to stop smugglers?

I can do numbers too. Watch this:

*The Federation has 4000 starships (including new builds and accounting for losses) total at the time of Sacrifice of Angels
*75% of those (3000 ships) are concentrated near Earth, the rest are on exploratory missions deep in Federation territory
*1/3 of Federation starships are unavailable at any given time due to repair, refitting, working up, etc. That leaves 2000 starships available to wage war and defend strategic planets.
*1000 warships are kept near Earth or along the Romulan Neutral Zone defending critical planets, leaving 1000 to fight the Dominion.
*Three fleets were concentrated in Sacrifice of Angels (600 ships), suggesting (if we want to be simplistic about it) 200 ships per fleet.
*The Federation needs to defend convoys, launch feints, harass the enemy, etc., so perhaps two of those fleets were assigned to that task, leaving on the 600 ships to launch that offensive.

See how easy it is to produce numbers? And mine are more valid than yours since I'm not ridiculously assuming equal distribution through Federation space, and the last time I checked, most sane nations don't handicap themselves when waging a vicious war with an opponent who wants to conquer them. Your notion that the Federation purposefully kept 94% of its starships away from the front lines is beyond stupid, and I have trouble believing that such self-declared intelligent people like Oniwhatthefuckshisname are actually buying that idiocy. But there you have it...

[Big Phil]

Serafina and SancheztheWhaler

What are your takes on the fleet sizes in "When It Rains"?

1100 Klingon starships are probably a fair proportion of their fleet (anywhere between 20-50% would be my guess, unless Destructionator wants to argue that the Klingons also half-assed the war and committed only 6% of their fleet), given the importance of this battle.

Given that the Federation, the Klingons, and the Romulans are all at rough parity with each other (in terms of fleet strength), this gives us some suggestion about relative fleet sizes. On average, Federation starships seem to be stronger than Klingon ships (25% stronger? 50% stronger? I have no idea) since so many Klingon ships are scouts and birds of prey, so one would expect that numerically the Klingons would outnumber the Federation although fleet strength would be approximately the same. So if we generously assume the Klingons only committed 20% of their ships, that gives their total fleet a strength of ~5500 starships. Assuming that Federation starships are, on average, only 25% more powerful than Klingon ships, that gives us somewhere in the neighborhood of 4500 Federation starships.

[Big Phil]

Oh well, now that Onisucksonhisballs is here to call me names, I guess I concede. Clearly, the Federation has tens of thousands of starships, and yet only commits 600 to a major offensive in a war for its survival, even though they can clearly build thousands of warships each year. Forget the logical inconsistency involved, let's just take numbers pulled from speculation and combine them with other speculative numbers and declare victory.

You still don't get it. You can't concede anything because you haven't made any argument. You're just a pull-string dollie regurgitating catchphrases and asking retarded questions that were answered right in the post you were quote. I'm just mocking you for being the very definition of a fatty nerd.

Let's see, I suck at debate, I'll pull the first logical answer that comes to mind regarding Federation fleet size: Just because the Federation can build X ships, doesn't mean they necessarily do at all times. Why the fuck would a nation be *constantly* at maximum wartime ship production, rather than building consistently at minimum levels needed to replace those lost to normal age and use? Perhaps the reason they didn't have a huge fleet was because they hadn't been at war for a long while and before that point had no valid economic or military reason to be going at full production capacity?

I'll repeat it because each new post you make hammers the point home: You suck at this. But hey, I'm sure the wanker emoticon makes a great stand-in for actually making a valid argument.

For the people who actually have some competence, I am a little curious about determining ST fleet strength, running off some WW2 assumptions. Let's say that for the Dominion War, the Federation pulled all its ships it reasonable could within, say, a month's travel time of the conflict, leaving the areas they pulled them from still defended, but rather lightly so. During WW2, what average percentage of the military was actually committed on the actual warfront, as opposed to maintaining defense and control over areas not directly involved in the war? From this wouldn't we be able to determine true fleet size in the one-month radius, and thus determine total fleet size by multiplying that by the actual size of Federation territory?

Holy crap... you MUST have slammed your head in the door before you posted this imbecilic screed. But I'll answer the question for you since you're too stupid to look it up yourself.

Midway - 3 of 4 undamaged American carriers, 4 of 4 undamaged Japanese carriers. Just about every other available surface combatant in the Pacific was also involved
Philippine Sea - USA: 15 carriers, 7 battleships, ~80 other ships. Japan: 9 carriers, 5 battleships, ~40 other ships. Pretty much everything available in the Pacific was involved.
Leyte Gulf - USA: 34 carriers (18 escort), 12 battleships (the Pearl Harbor veterans are back with a vengeance), 24 cruisers, 140 destroyers. Japan: 4 carriers, 9 battleships, 20 cruisers, 40 destroyers. Pretty much everything available in the Pacific was involved.

Now, in each of these cases there were other ships uninvolved, but these were generally ships being repaired, refitted, working out, in other war zones, or serving other duties (convoy escort, anti-submarine patrol, coastal defense, etc.). In each case, at least three quarters (or more) of each nation's offensive striking power was concentrated in these battles. The US didn't have 60 additional fleet carriers doing other things during Midway. Everything they had was there. Same for the Philippine Sea, Leyte Gulf, etc. What wasn't at Midway/Philippine Sea/Leyte Gulf was destroyers, frigates, patrol combatants, submarines (which were sinking merchant shipping), armed yachts, etc. In other words, the only ships not there were too small to matter.