Trek Fleet counts

[Connor MacLeod]

One thing I don't see discussed in the discussion of a Fed fleet is the distribution of warships. I mean if this were Star Wars or 40K (or alot of other sci fi powers) there would be a distinction between "warships" and " civilian/merchant/transport ships" so you might have several distinct "fleets" floating around. Quite often, the "merchant" component is much larger than the military arm. Trek however tends to blend those distinctions quite a bit - ships that technically qualify as warships can also serve diplomatic, scientific, or transport functions as well as military duties, so it may be that the normal distinctions don't exist. They might have some ship classes that lean more towards one function or others (better designed for combat, exploration or scientific duties, etc.) but Federation (pre Borg/Dominion, at least) optimized more for general purpose than specialization. Which is not to say that specialist ships didn't exist (They did have dedicated scientific, transport and even military vessels) but they weren't as common.

There's also the possibility that vessels normally dedicated ot other roles are refitted for military use (I remember hearing arguments that there were "War" variants of some ship classes during the DS9 era, at least.)

When you couple this with the fact they often have large mothballed reserves of older ships (Excelsior class for example) some of the larger fleet sizes argued for probably aren't that impossible, even if one argues that smaller craft (like fighters or runabouts) don't factor into the "fleet" (which is up for debate, like alot of things in Trek you get contradictory information depending on who writes it, the series, etc.)

[Vympel]

Some general thoughts, I've just skimmed.

Going from the script we know that the Romulans / Cardassians/ Breen have a fleet of 22,000 vessels. Its likely then that the Federation/ Romulan / Klingons must have a number at least in that vicinity - but since a majority of the Dominion fleet are their smaller attack craft (no match one-for-one against a larger Federation, Romulan or Klingon ship) it need not approach one-for-one.

As far as Destructionator's assumption that the Federation has further ships distributed throughout its territory that can't participate in the conflict, that's likely the case. For example, in Star Trek Insurrection, the Enterprise-E herself, rather than participating in the Dominion War (which was ongoing) was engaged in a diplomatic mission to accept some of the silliest looking aliens ever into the Federation, and then went on to deal with that situation in the Briar Patch. But there's no real evidence to think that these ships would significantly add to to the Federation's fleet, or that they would be uniform throughout space so they can somehow lay a credible claim to it. It's not like any of the other Alpha Quadrant powers could just waltz past the Federation's defined borders and stake a claim - that's what the various neutral zones are for.

Further, this "it'd take years for them to come and participate in the war" argument is sketchy. 1,000c is the cruise speed for the Federation's fastest ship - in circumstances where they are not in friendly territory and cannot stop at umpteen different starbases (both space stations and planets) to refuel and maintain their warp drives while en route. They should be able to maintain a higher warp factor. Furthermore, the Federation would be extremely foolish to not call its ships closer to the hot spot (i.e. the Cardassian border) as tensions heated up, before the war began.

On the other hand, I noticed some argument about Federation shipyards and the Prime Directive - this just isn't convincing at all. In addition to what Serafina said, merely because you have warp technology does not mean you have a robust ship building capacity - the UFP would naturally make itself known to these newly-emergent races very soon they have their first warp drive test, and their shipbuilding capability is nascent. Then they simply join the Federation and plug themselves in to the existing infrastructure. The Vulcan, Tellarite and Andorian ships etc don't really prove anything - these were founding members of the UFP after all.

As for the Empire:-

The Empire might have millions of ships, but how many of them are busy doing other things? Even in the great showdown with the Rebellion, only a few dozen bothered to show up - perhaps the rest of the fleet had other things to do that simply couldn't be ignored.

The Empire canonically has millions of warships and trillions of fleet personnel. Mon Mothma explicitly says in the briefing in RotJ that the Imperial Fleet was "spread throughout the galaxy, in a vain effort to engage us". We also know from the EU they had various peacekeeping and general maintenance of order duties to attend to, and this actually took up the majority of their time, not hunting the Rebellion. Given the Death Star 2 (in theory) also gave the Imperials all the firepower they needed to wipe out the Rebel fleet, its understandable that they saw no need for more ships to be diverted.

In any event, that the Federation is outmatched has more to do with hyperdrive and the fact that their entire warmaking potential doesn't even amount to the merest fraction of the Empire than it does with opening ship counts.

[Wyrm]

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!

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.

Wow, you really can't read, can you? "That's three years warping in before they are even in the right area to help the fight!"

The Dominion War lasted for only 2 years.

It was literally impossible for the Federation to get their whole fleet together for it. It doesn't even matter if they wanted to or not, it was NOT an option.

And the Federation knew this... how?

First off, the Federation could not possibly have known how long their war with the Dominion could have lasted. It could easily have lasted twice as long, which leaves plenty of time for them to pull reserves from all the way across the Federation.

Second, even if I accept your insane notion that the Federation could know how long their war with the Dominion would take, it still means (by your own figures) that they could pull ~44% their force from 2000 ly away.

Thrid, your 1000c baseline speed figure is based on a Federation ship far from home with no means of rebuilding their engines at all, so they will be understandably be babying them. Their trek was an endurance run, not a speed run. A warship close to home could afford to go faster.

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?

God damn it, do you even read these fucking posts? We know concentration in certain parts is higher, as seen in Best of Both Worlds and Redemption, where they were able to get dozens of ships together on very short notice.

Both of which were a stone's throw away from Earth. Remember that Qo'noS was close enough so that Cpt. Duchess's Enterprise was able to deliver Klang from Earth into Klingon custody. And the BoBW battle took place at Wolf 359, a mere 7.8 ly from Earth. Explain how these observations contradict Sanchez's statement that the fleet is concentrated about Earth.

Conversely, there's surely some empty places where a ship taking over a week to get there isn't a big deal, so the concentration may be lower.

But, on average, it just about evening out makes a lot of sense. Space itself is uniform.

Not on the scale of thousands of light years, it isn't. The Orion Spur, which we're on, is only 3500 ly across, and our galaxy is about 300 ly thick.

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

The concept of an average is completely beyond you, isn't it?

The average is very little use for what you want to prove.

*75% of those (3000 ships) are concentrated near Earth, the rest are on exploratory missions deep in Federation territory

1000 ships / (8000 ly * 4000 ly * 100 ly * pi * 4 / 3)

The Federation is more closely approximated by a cylender, and 4000 ly takes you out to 2750 ly past the edges of the Orion Spur — aka, the middle of Nowhere, Mutter's Spiral. 1.25e10 cly, with considerations for the thicker disk than you are estimating.

1000 ships / 1e10 cubic lightyears

1 ship / 10,000,000 cubic light-years

It'd have to be able to run about 220 light years in any direction, if it is in the center, to get to the edges. 16 days at maximum warp. Oops, maximum warp isn't sustainable for that long. 80 days at the long haul sustainable speed of Voyager.

Voyager's sustainable speed which can last for decades without a major overhaul.

"The Husnock are coming to exterminate us! Help us, USS SHITCOCK!"

"Sorry, some asshole spread us so thin we won't be there for three months. Have you tried fighting off those starships with sticks and stones?"

"why do i even bother paying federation taxe---AAAAHAHAHRGH I'M DEAD THANKS A LOT"

You mean the same ship, the Enterprise, visited both Delta Rana IV and Qo'noS in the same season? Maybe six months apart?

They still need to feel like a part of the whole. That's not going to happen if the only other human/vulcan/whatever federation member is three months away.

No, they weren't three months away, but that doesn't mean that they were on the other side of the Federation from the Klingons, either. By your own calcs, if they were, the Enterprise could not have visited Qo'noS for Sins of the Father until season six.

=====

But there's no real evidence to think that these ships would significantly add to to the Federation's fleet, or that they would be uniform throughout space so they can somehow lay a credible claim to it. It's not like any of the other Alpha Quadrant powers could just waltz past the Federation's defined borders and stake a claim - that's what the various neutral zones are for.

What good would a neutral zone be if your whole fleet was distracted on the other side of your territory?

What makes you think all the important powers are on opposing sides of Federation territory? Who's on the other side? Tholians and Breen are explicitly mentioned getting involved in Klingon wars. The Klingons and Romulans are the Federation's oldest enemies, so the Feds are not expanding that way, and both are quite close to Earth! The oft-quoted 8000 ly figure is exactly the opposite direction. Changelings were on Earth before open hostilities broke out, so the Bajoran Wormhole is not on the other edge of Federation territory. That places Bajor and the Cardassians quite near Earth and quite near the Klingons and Romulans. The Breen are also close to the Wormhole. The Organians? Right smack between Qo'noS and Earth.

It seems that all of the powers the Feds are worried about are concentrated on one side of their territory. For all we know, fuck all is happeing out the other direction, including colonization.

Indeed, I'm not even sure there are well defined borders. Some other little nations seem to be surrounded by the Federation on all sides. There's several examples of the Enterprise being not too far out of the Federation, or maybe still inside it, but encountering a space going civilization that's not them anyway. Conundrum and The Outrageous Okana both come to mind, though the other aliens there were pitifully weak compared to the Federation itself.

Not unexpected. Prior probabilities on size place most starfaring races on the small side, which means they can be crammed close together.

Further, this "it'd take years for them to come and participate in the war" argument is sketchy. 1,000c is the cruise speed for the Federation's fastest ship - in circumstances where they are not in friendly territory and cannot stop at umpteen different starbases (both space stations and planets) to refuel and maintain their warp drives while en route. They should be able to maintain a higher warp factor.

The median maximum warp is about 5x that much (this was determined from data presented earlier in this thread).

I've been using 5000c in my distribution math - one ship can cover more ground that way. But such high warps are never sustainable for more than a few days. (See "The Chase" and "Best of Both Worlds" where the Enterprise sprinted at incredible speed for a couple days, but then had to stop for repairs before getting back to warp.) So for very long journeys, I use the more conservative assumption of 1000c.

Which supposedly can be sustained for the better part of a century without overhauls. That's over 1000 times longer than these sprints. Surely they can spare a bit more juice.

But in any case though, this 5x difference doesn't significantly help. It'd still take well over a year to cross the Federation even at these high speeds; the war would still be half done by the time they arrived.

Again, the Federation cannot possibly know how long the conflict will take, start to finish.

Furthermore, the Federation would be extremely foolish to not call its ships closer to the hot spot (i.e. the Cardassian border) as tensions heated up, before the war began.

Right, but there were other complications before that, like the war with the Klingon Empire, which may have kept them from focusing fully. (Do I devote Taskforce Boring to the Klingon border? Or keep them up there to watch over the Tholians? Or the Romulans who might make a move? Or just focus on the Cardassian situation?

You realize that the Klingons are close enough to the Tholians that the crabheads' wars tend to spill over to the rock people, right? Or that Romulans and Klingons are neighbors? That's three of your four powers within breathing distances of each other.

That's exactly the point - fleets have other shit to do than to just sit on their asses all day waiting for a war to break out.

Yes, they patrol the borders they share with their hostile neighbors, which we know are very close to Earth.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Holy crap... you MUST have slammed your head in the door before you posted this imbecilic screed.

So you have nothing, still. Keep bleating, it's amusing. I can almost see you in the basement, chewing on a cold slice of frozen pizza, one hand bashing flabbily away at the keyboard, the other eagerly rubbing your crotch as you glare at the glowing screen in vindictive glee, showing those damn wankers what's what and bolstering your e-machismo in the process.

But I'll answer the question for you since you're too stupid to look it up yourself.

<snip>

Coolness. Alright, so every military-abled ship was effectively pulled and sent to the front lines. Now the follow-up question is how much of the Federation are fully dedicated military ships as opposed to, as D13 has pointed out, exploration, merchant, diplomatic and transport vessels with military capabilities tagged on? The problem is that the Federation tends to make their vessels multi-purpose, which means you can't yank them all for a single military objective without leaving several other diplomatic, economic or whatever objectives unfulfilled.

[Vympel]

What good would a neutral zone be if your whole fleet was distracted on the other side of your territory? Not all the random aliens around have neutral zones too - there's the Romulan and the Klingon ones, but they just random waltz around other people.

It's pretty unlikely that minor alien powers who we never hear about are going to get any inclination to try and grab Federation territory merely because the Federation is busy. Its a bad move to pull the tail of a tiger when you're a midget. Further, its not a rational move, whilst in a war for your very survival, to seek to defend these assumed regions exposed to minor alien powers whilst you have a major inter-quadrant war going on.

I don't think in principle you're wrong, just that I'd expect the Federation to prioritize.

Right, but there were other complications before that, like the war with the Klingon Empire, which may have kept them from focusing fully. (Do I devote Taskforce Boring to the Klingon border? Or keep them up there to watch over the Tholians? Or the Romulans who might make a move? Or just focus on the Cardassian situation?

I always got the impression that the Federation, the Romulans, the Klingons and the Cardassian borders roughly all meet in the same area as the quadrant. The Klingons invaded Cardassia directly from their territory, after all, and the Romulan contribution to the war was felt pretty much immediately.

[Stofsk]

What good would a neutral zone be if your whole fleet was distracted on the other side of your territory? Not all the random aliens around have neutral zones too - there's the Romulan and the Klingon ones, but they just random waltz around other people.

It's pretty unlikely that minor alien powers who we never hear about are going to get any inclination to try and grab Federation territory merely because the Federation is busy. Its a bad move to pull the tail of a tiger when you're a midget. Further, its not a rational move, whilst in a war for your very survival, to seek to defend these assumed regions exposed to minor alien powers whilst you have a major inter-quadrant war going on.

I don't think in principle you're wrong, just that I'd expect the Federation to prioritize.

For all we know they could have. We rarely ever saw large scale strategic disposition of forces explained to us in exposition heavy scenes about the logistics of waging an interstellar war across hundreds of light years. Probably because that shit isn't as interesting as doing Ferengi episodes or 'lol check out this fleet battle where all the ships 'splode but the defiant is ROCK KICKASS AWESOME'

Actually, now that I think about it, there were hints that there are other alien powers that border the Federation which don't get any screentime when compared to say, the Klingons or Romulans, but are nevertheless threats enough to give people in the universe pause. The Tholians are one example, the Talarians are another and so are the Tzenkethi from the DS9 episode 'The Adversary'. (hmm... all three start with the letter 'T' - coincidence??? Or sinister implications!) The entire premise of that episode involved a Founder infiltrating the Defiant and sabotaging it in the hopes it would commit an act of war against the Tzenkethi who were never heard from before or since (there was a brief mention of them in the Homefront/Paradise Lost two parter in season four, but that was Admiral Leyton telling Sisko old war stories about them back in the good old days when he was a captain and sisko was one of his officers, maybe his executive).

I don't know if the idea is too far-fetched to be honest. I actually find Adam's take on the subject pretty interesting. The biggest limitation is on the TNG warp drive (as opposed to the TOS warp drive *I'm a smarmy asshole* :v ). Maybe Starfleet prioritised as much as they could, but that shit would have started from the moment first contact with the Dominion began, and it dawned on SFC that they need to pull more of their forces away from the wilderness regions to come back to somewhere like DS9, but the problem is that once war is declared it's already too late to do a recall. So you'd expect this stuff to take place in the build-up time before the war, but at the same time, you would not expect this to be something that would come up in dialogue in the show.

Right, but there were other complications before that, like the war with the Klingon Empire, which may have kept them from focusing fully. (Do I devote Taskforce Boring to the Klingon border? Or keep them up there to watch over the Tholians? Or the Romulans who might make a move? Or just focus on the Cardassian situation?

I always got the impression that the Federation, the Romulans, the Klingons and the Cardassian borders roughly all meet in the same area as the quadrant. The Klingons invaded Cardassia directly from their territory, after all, and the Romulan contribution to the war was felt pretty much immediately.

This is one of those things that always bugged me about DS9. It's supposed to be at the frontier, in the wilderness, far from the comforts of the safe and pleasant Federations. And the Defiant can get to Earth in like a couple of days or whatever. TNG was the same, like the Borg cube was detected approaching Earth in 'Best of Both Worlds', which makes you wonder where Earth is in relation to the rest of the Federation (which is somehow 8000 light years long but everything seems to happen a week's travel time away from Earth, and everyone appears to go to Starfleet Academy which is on Earth, which wouldn't make sense if you think about it if it would take you months or perhaps a year to cross from one remote corner of the Federation to get to Earth).

[Wyrm]

And the Federation knew this... how?

They don't have to. Even if they recalled everyone (by no means guaranteed; they might have expected it to be over quickly), the fact is they wouldn't have been back by the time it was over. Prediction or no, the ships simply aren't that fast.

What? They had changlings on Earth and they expected it to be over quickly? You're insane.

Secondly, pulling in ~4000 ships matches pretty well what happened in the end, when they launched the final offensives, if half the ships attacked and the other half were in reserve or whatever.

What, the 600 ships that consisted of most of the ~4000 ship fleet? Explain how that works.

Thrid, your 1000c baseline speed figure is based on a Federation ship far from home with no means of rebuilding their engines at all, so they will be understandably be babying them. Their trek was an endurance run, not a speed run. A warship close to home could afford to go faster.

Gee I've only said this 4 or 5 times.

And answered to anyone's satisfaction exactly none of those times. You simply screech that "VOYAGER IS THE FASTEST!!" without taking into account the very real logistic difficulties that the ship was in that situation would take their speed slower, like the lack of any likely friendly starbases to overhaul their engines.

Explain how these observations contradict Sanchez's statement that the fleet is concentrated about Earth.

It doesn't and I never said it did.

You mean the same ship, the Enterprise, visited both Delta Rana IV and Qo'noS in the same season? Maybe six months apart?

Figures one of you shitheads would take a little illustration as an omfg counter point. Fuckbrains, I'm not actually talking about them specifically, I'm just using them as an alien of the week to avoid making up a name myself.

Fucking retards, all of you.

You have yet to demonstrate that even ONE colony that needs to be defended is several years away from Earth by warp drive. You have fuck all to say otherwise.

What makes you think all the important powers are on opposing sides of Federation territory? Who's on the other side?

I don't know, and you don't either.

It seems that all of the powers the Feds are worried about are concentrated on one side of their territory. For all we know, fuck all is happeing out the other direction, including colonization.

For all you know, there's all kinds of shit over there, but since the show follows the Enterprise, we never see it.

The Federation had a war with the Cardassian Union in early TNG, but we didn't hear a thing about it until it affected the Enterprise crew personally!

So you admit your entire analysis is based on nothing. Consession accepted.

[Eternal_Freedom]

This may or may not be relevant/useful/helpful at all, but I recently watched "Favour the Bold" and they actually only had two fleets - neither the Klingons nor the ships from 9th fleet were present at the jumping-off point, because they had to go earlier than planned

Also, Dukat and Sisko expect that the 2200 Dominion ships on the far side of the wormhole would give the Dominion such a decisive edge that the war would be over in weeks

[Vympel]

600 ships was "Sacrifice of Angels" - the beginning of the war. By the end, they were launching offensives with thousands of ships.

Sacrifice of Angels was hardly the beginning of the war. That was an operation launched after many months of Dominion occupation of DS9. Then you've got the Second Battle of Chin'toka, which was a Romulan/Klingon/Federation counterattack, where the combined fleet was 312 ships (almost all lost due to the Breen energy-draining weapon). I don't think there's any early / late difference in the size of the fleets, it just depends on the battle.

[Big Phil]

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!

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.

Wow, you really can't read, can you? "That's three years warping in before they are even in the right area to help the fight!"

The Dominion War lasted for only 2 years.

It was literally impossible for the Federation to get their whole fleet together for it. It doesn't even matter if they wanted to or not, it was NOT an option.

You're claiming the Federation has 10,000 starships (and to be clear, I'm referring to combat starships - cruisers/destroyers/frigates and their starship equivalent). There isn't a single intelligent nation in the history of the planet that, when faced with a major war that might result in its destruction, doesn't pull out all of the stops. 600 starships launching a major offensive 12 months after the start of the war only makes logical sense if the Federation doesn't have 10,000 starships.

Now, I will concede that it makes illogical sense if the DS9 writers (none of whom probably have any better than a fanboy's understanding of military strategy, tactics, or logistics) decided that the Federation was going to launch a major offensive with only 6% of its fleet.

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?

God damn it, do you even read these fucking posts? We know concentration in certain parts is higher, as seen in Best of Both Worlds and Redemption, where they were able to get dozens of ships together on very short notice.

Conversely, there's surely some empty places where a ship taking over a week to get there isn't a big deal, so the concentration may be lower.

But, on average, it just about evening out makes a lot of sense. Space itself is uniform. If they want to stake a legitimate claim on that territory, they need something to show.

Found the following map (and several others on the same site), which are Paramount copyright, and so presumably at least nominally canon. As you can see, Federation space is not a concentric circle, but kind of a blob, with some territories actually on the other side of Klingon and Romulan space. Based on this map, we can see several things:

1. Earth is approximately 60 light years from Cardassia, and slightly less from Bajor
2. The Breen are 60-100 light years from Cardassia
3. The Romulan border is 20 light years from Earth
4. The Ferengi border is 60 light years from Earth
5. The Klingon border is ~100 light years from Earth
6. No point in Federation space appears to be more than 300 or so light years from Earth. I could be wrong, so I'll be conservative and say 500 light years. Even using your speeds, that means that the most distant Starfleet ships could make it back to Earth in six months, and assuming faster speeds (3000c or 5000c) they could be back much faster.

Given what we're seeing here, 600 ships committed to a major offensive is absurdly low if the Federation truly has 10,000 starships, particularly given that, based on this map, it shouldn't take more than six months to reach Earth even from the most distant Federation outpost (and that's using your numbers, rather than the higher canonical speeds we see for quick sprints).



Here's another map that shows similar placements, but I don't know about the copyright, so this may not be canon
http://www.sttff.net/AST_MAP.html

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.

Except that it's physically impossible to cross the distance in that time.

As I showed above, you appear to be flat out wrong. Moreover, if the map above is canon (and since it's Paramount it appears to be), your calculations are completely wrong. So let's take your original argument, that Starfleet always has a ship within a few days of each planet. If that's true, given that it is no longer 4000 light years from one end of the Federation to the other, but more like 300-500, then the Federation doesn't need 10,000 starships, but far fewer to cover the territory.

3. What enemies does the Federation need to defend against in their deep regions?

All kinds of shit. This is Star Trek, where crazy killer aliens are around every corner and random planets have tiny colonies fighting gods.

Since I already showed that Federation space is far smaller than you argued, we can leave this aside, as the Federation doesn't really need 10,000 ships to defend its territory.

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

The concept of an average is completely beyond you, isn't it?

*75% of those (3000 ships) are concentrated near Earth, the rest are on exploratory missions deep in Federation territory

1000 ships / (8000 ly * 4000 ly * 100 ly * pi * 4 / 3)

1000 ships / 1e10 cubic lightyears

1 ship / 10,000,000 cubic light-years

It'd have to be able to run about 220 light years in any direction, if it is in the center, to get to the edges. 16 days at maximum warp. Oops, maximum warp isn't sustainable for that long. 80 days at the long haul sustainable speed of Voyager.

"The Husnock are coming to exterminate us! Help us, USS SHITCOCK!"

"Sorry, some asshole spread us so thin we won't be there for three months. Have you tried fighting off those starships with sticks and stones?"

"why do i even bother paying federation taxe---AAAAHAHAHRGH I'M DEAD THANKS A LOT"

(Of course, sometimes even a few days is too slow, as in the case of the Husnock attack in "The Survivors" TNG. The Enterprise got there 3 days after receiving the distress call to find that the planet's life had been exterminated. Except, of course, for the god who happened to be living there.)


Btw, from "The Survivors" is the most important reason for a starship to be available:

As Rishon ignores Kevin and approaches the away team.
There are tears of joy in her eyes. Riker slips down
out of the tree.

RISHON
We'd just about given up hope.
We thought maybe the whole
Federation had been attacked.


They still need to feel like a part of the whole. That's not going to happen if the only other human/vulcan/whatever federation member is three months away.

I'll plug in different numbers, based on an actual map, rather than numbers you made up (I'll leave your depth at 100 LY):

1000 ships / (500 ly * 300 ly * 100 ly * pi * 4 / 3)

1000 ships / ~62 million cubic lightyears

1 ship / ~62,000 cubic light-years

Now you're talking about 40 light years in any direction, which is only about two weeks at 1000c. Now if you still insist on a response time of a 2-3 days, and continue to insist on equidistant distribution throughout Federation space, you only need 4000 starships (assuming a 25 light year cube a 3000c sprint speeds for 2-3 days - 3000c being far closer to the actual speeds we see rather than Voyager's average speed over seven decades).

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.

8000 light years. Sane or not, you're demanding they do the impossible.

And you are just flat out wrong.

[fallendragon]

SancheztheWhaler

You do realize that the map you posted shows Federation territory well outside of your 500 lightyear max sphere right?

[Big Phil]

SancheztheWhaler

You do realize that the map you posted shows Federation territory well outside of your 500 lightyear max sphere right?

Of course... there's an narrow boot like appendage extending perhaps as far as 1000 light years from Earth, and other scattered territories all over the place. Your point is what?

[Connor MacLeod]

ugh. I'd like this debate to NOT descend to usual debate standards where the flag-waving chest beating bullshit starts tkaing precedence. The "hilarious trekkie" thread was bad enough there.

Now, some further points:

- I don't think its that unreasonable that what we saw fighting in DS9 was not the entirety of Starfleet. Indeed, if we allow for the multi-role nature (lots of general purpose warships but not so many specialized ones) then there are limits to just how much military force they can concentrate without losses elsewhere (they still need to do transport and shipping at least.. even in Trek economics does not cease ot exist, I don't care WHAT Picard says. At the very minimum you need to be hauling resources and finished goods betwene planets to and from the magic replicators. Not to mention fuel, munitions, personnel, etc.) Likewise you cannot leave your territories COMPLETELY undefended.. the possibility exists that an enemy might strike (and there are always issues of terrorists, pirates, random hostile aliens, etc.) Even in the case of "greater specialization" (Eg dedicated transports nad warships) you still need to defend the transports, so invariably there will be some segment of the fleet not participating. Also, we HAVE quite often seen in TNG that when a crisis arose oft times the Enterprise was the only ship on hand to help (or at most a handufl of vessels.) The most major task forces were all (IIRC)
dozens of ships (like when the Borg attacked earth) and evne then it was fairly piecemeal as I recall.

That said, I don't think that one can automatically assume that the forces we observe represent only a fraction of what the FEddies have. I mean, tens of thousands of warships is tens or hundreds of ships per world. That's a BIT hard to believe (in the same vein that the Empire having billions of warships lying around on the basis of the DS1 is fairly absurd.). The "multi-role" aspect could mitigate this somewhat, if the transports also serve as armed cruisers of some sort (even if just in an emergency.) you might TECHNICALLY have a large fraction of your fleet uninvolved (shipping is going to be a big deal, again.) But I don't see that argument holding up for specialized designs (especially dedicated warships.) The "outdated/refitted ships in mothballs" idea arguably could make the "large fraction" more palatable.. its possible some of the ships in mothballs were assigned to patrol/escort/defense roles to free up newer/better ships as well (and its quite possible that the mothballed ships outnumbered the "active" service ships.)

Next: to further the "multi-role" idea.. I believe in WW1 the British (at least) ran a class system for cruisers much like the earlier Napoleonic era "rates" - you had first second and third rate cruisers. The last were, I believe the "auxiliary" cruisers, also knowned as armed merchant ships. Hell, conventional military forces (like the Russians) had different qualities of troops as well on varying grades in their army (someone like Stas would have to confirm or correct me on that though) Concepts like that I think would fit quite easily with what we see in Trek (again and fits with the use of mothballed ships as well.)

Last: I do think the Feds have to have at least some fairly significant shipbuilding capability, but having it does not tell us automatically what all they can do with it. They arguably managed to get a fair number of mothballed reserves up and running (and even refitted - hell they semeed to manage to refit stuff like the GCSes for wartime) in fairly short order, after all. But having lots of shipyards does not automatically mean they can start churning out huge numbers of warships en masse. Sea Skimmer would have to confirm or correct me on this, but I believe that you can have shipyards dedictaed to building a certain kind of ship (or kinds) but not neccesarily others. (EG civilian or military at least.) When you consider that the Feds basically have not fought an actual war since the TOS era (and evne then it was dying out in the TOS movies) so they probably were out of practice building actual warships, and I imagine their yards weren't suited to building them. So having to retool your yards to a wartime standard would take time and resources. Throw in the need to refit and restore mothballed ships and the odds of being able to easily use that capability right off the bat seems even likelier (indeed the fact they had to rely on older designs like the Excelsior does argue that while they have some hefty shipbuidling ability, it is probably not oriented towards dedicated warships.)

The klingons: We dont know how their fleets breakdown. As I recall they had quite a few Birds of Prey, and those are not.. large ships (they're little better than fighters or runabouts... although maybe torpedo boats is a better description? Fed Fighters seem pretty damn large after all.)

[fallendragon]

If you knew one of your points was wrong then why did you post it? there are 3 areas that are farther then 500 light years, ya you claim that no point is longer then 300 or so, then claim to be conservative at 500, when there are clearly 3 areas of fed territory that are clearly over 500 lightyears away.

[Coalition]

I always got the impression that the Federation, the Romulans, the Klingons and the Cardassian borders roughly all meet in the same area as the quadrant. The Klingons invaded Cardassia directly from their territory, after all, and the Romulan contribution to the war was felt pretty much immediately.

The Cardassians and Romulans have a border in common, as in the Dominion war C/D forces attacked through Romulan space.

When the Romulans joined the F/K forces, it freed up a lot more than just the Romulan ships. The Federation had ships there originally to guard against Romulan incursions. They then had to beef it up to deal with C/D raiders. With the Romulans on their side most of those forces can be shifted to the C/D front.

[Big Phil]

If you knew one of your points was wrong then why did you post it? there are 3 areas that are farther then 500 light years, ya you claim that no point is longer then 300 or so, then claim to be conservative at 500, when there are clearly 3 areas of fed territory that are clearly over 500 lightyears away.

Ah, nitpicking, how I love thee.

The point is that the boundaries of the Federation do not look remotely like a 4000 light year circle. The remotest regions of the Federation are perhaps a thousand or 1500 light years distant (and perhaps 3000-4000 distant from something on the other side), and they are mostly remote colonies and isolated settlements, not shipyards and major worlds, but they are the exception. Most Federation member worlds seem to be pretty close to Earth.

BTW - here's another (expanded version) of the map.

EDIT - the map is huge, so I'm linking rather than embedding
http://www.sttff.net/images/AST030.jpg

[Big Phil]

You're claiming the Federation has 10,000 starships (and to be clear, I'm referring to combat starships - cruisers/destroyers/frigates and their starship equivalent).

Starfleet is not a military organization. They have very few combat starships of that sort - the vast majority of their fleet are peaceful explorers armed well enough to take care of themselves if shit happens on the job.

If you want a count of dedicated warships, it's probably like 3. Defiant, Valiant, and Defiant #2.

I'm going to respond to this, and drop the rest, because we're not getting anywhere and we're just shouting at each other.

The issue I have with your 10,000 starship assertion is that I define a starship as a vessel capable of fighting another vessel (i.e., the starship versions of surface combatants and submarines). In other words I wouldn't include transports, freighters, lightly armed scout ships, or scientific ships in that count. Now, perhaps your assertion is simply that the Federation has 10,000 starships (of all types, including non-combat warships), in which case I'm going to drop the argument since I don't have an issue with that.

I understand that one of the problems with defining Federation starships is that they blur the line between combatants and other types of ships. Voyager, for example, is (I believe) a Scout or a Long-Range Explorer or some such thing, never meant to stand in the line of battle. And yet it seems to be significantly more capable than Miranda class frigates, which regularly fight (and get blown up) in DS9 battles. Galaxy-class starships, likewise, are defined by Starfleet as Explorers, and seem not to be intended as battleships (they're surprisingly fragile for such large ships), but by DS9 they seem to have transitioned into a more combat capable role.

From my perspective, it would make more sense to approach the fleet size issue as follows:
1. Define which classes are considered warships and which are not (recognizing that virtually all starships have some combat capability, but transports and freighters are not intended to fight pitched battles).
2. Define the canonical fleet size at the beginning of TNG
3. Identify the infrastructure available (shipyards, mothball fleets, training programs, etc.) to expand the fleet

Which should get you to the fleet growth and size during DS9, and where it came from.

[Eternal_Freedom]

From what I remember, there is almost never a clear distinction between "Warship" and "non-combatant." The only ones I can think of ff hand are the Defiant class warships, and the Oberth and Nova class science ships.


however, IIRC, new ship classes like the Akira, Sabre and (to an extent) Sovereign became a lot more combat oriented/capable after the discovery of the Borg. So I would say they don't distinguish between warship and not, but they have different degrees of combat-focus (like connor mentioned above, like first, second and auxilliary cruisers)

[Big Phil]

The issue I have with your 10,000 starship assertion is that I define a starship as a vessel capable of fighting another vessel (i.e., the starship versions of surface combatants and submarines). In other words I wouldn't include transports, freighters, lightly armed scout ships, or scientific ships in that count.

Eh, that'd still include the majority of Starfleet. While almost none of them are pure combat, almost all of them seen can take care of themselves.

Only the Oberth class in Starfleet itself seems to be fairly defenseless. (This includes the USS Grissom from Star Trek III). Mirandas can fight, Constitutions can fight, Galaxies, Excelsiors, Nebulas, Ambassadors - all seen fighting when the need arises.

The Next Generation Technical Manual uses the following classification system (quoted here): "The USS Enterprise is categorized as an Explorer, the largest starship in a classification system that includes cruiser, cargo carrier, tanker, surveyor, and scout. While most starships may be adapted for a variety of mission types, the vessel type designations describe their primary purpose."

Presumably any starship intended to actually fight and win a pitched battle is either an Explorer or Cruiser (and possibly a Surveyor or Scout), while Cargo Carriers and Tankers are most assuredly not intended for battle. The question then becomes how many of each type are there?

While this is hardly perfect, we could look at surface navies (current and historical) for guidance into what proportion of Starfleet's ships are actually capable of fighting and what proportion are non-combatants (albeit able to defend themselves somewhat). Currently the USN has (this is hardly the only model, but as realistically the only blue water navy in the world, it's probably a better than looking at the navy of Turkey, for example):

*213 combatants (carriers, cruisers, destroyers, frigates, submarines, patrol boats, and amphibious assault ships)
*23 amphibious ships (LCC's, LPD's, and LSD's)
*94 support ships (oilers, cargo ships, tenders, etc.)
*~100 non-commissioned support ships (i.e., civilians vessels that can be used by the USN)
*~60-100 inactive (mothballed) ships, that could theoretically be returned to service (although it would take at least a year). Mix of combat, amphib, and support

So roughly 60-75% of the USN's commissioned strength is comprised of combatants and amphibs (which can fight in a pinch, but would be sunk by a combatant) and the rest are support ships. Including the non-commissioned ships it's more like 50/50.


So then what proportion of Starfleet's ships are Explorers and Cruisers (ships capable of putting up a legitimate fight)? For this purpose, it might easiest to define the ship types.

Explorer - a type of spacecraft designed for exploring unknown regions of space. Galaxy's, Sovereign, and perhaps Intrepids could classify as explorers
Cruiser - a type of starship that serves as the primary combat vessels in a fleet. Akira's, Excelsior's and Miranda's would presumably fit the definition of a cruiser
Cargo Carrier - a limited role starship designed to carry people or supplies.
Tanker - a tanker is a starship with a limited role. Similar in purpose to a freighter, tankers are designed to carry large amounts of bulk fuel or other liquid-type substances.
Surveyor - appears to be more capable than a Scout, but less capable than an Explorer. Korolev is considered an explorer
Scout - a lightly armed, limited-role starship (according to Memory Alpha). Hermes, Oberth, and Nova's are considered Scouts

Given that we rarely see support ships in Star Trek, I don't think it's unreasonable to argue that there aren't that many tankers and cargo carriers, perhaps 25-35% of the total strength (rather than 50% as in the USN). So let's start with 10,000 ships. I'll (arbitrarily) assign the following numbers based on a 25% support ship figure

Explorer - ?
Cruiser - ?
Cargo Carrier - 1500
Tanker - 1000
Surveyor - ?
Scout - ?

What proportion now are Scouts, Surveyors, Cruisers, and Explorers? I don't think there's a canonical answer, but given Starfleet's exploratory role, I would expect a greater proportion of Explorers, Scouts, and Surveyors, with not as many Cruisers. We rarely see Surveyors (only one class is even mentioned anywhere), and Explorers can vary wildly in size between smallish Intrepids and larger Galaxy's and Sovereign's. This is only a guess, but I'm going to guess at least 50% of Starfleet is Explorers, Scouts, and Surveys, leaving 25% as Cruisers. So, again plugging in some guesswork, we arrive at:

Explorer - 2000
Cruiser - 2500
Cargo Carrier - 1500
Tanker - 1000
Surveyor - 500
Scout - 2500

Now, that leaves the Federation with (realistically) 5000 combat capable starships (Explorers, Cruisers, and Surveyors), out of 10,000 total, as no one seriously could expect an Oberth to stand in the line of battle. Of course you can always take issue with my calculations, and argue that the Federation doesn't actually have that many Tankers or Cargo Carriers, but since they're explicitly mentioned as one of six types of ship in the (admittedly non-canon) TNGTM, we should account for them somewhere. And it's realistic to assume that since tankers and cargo carriers exist, they must play some sort of role in allowing Federation starships to replenish underway.

[Serafina]

Just a quick throw-in for the amusement of the masses:

Picard stated the following on StarfleetWankers.Net:

You know what happens when you ignite hydrogen and oxygen in closed space? I think that happened to Death Starandthat unlucky ISD that exploded in RotJ.

He actually believes that a oxyhydrogen-reaction blew up the Death Star. You know, that stuff that chemistry-teachers love to show to their students.
Yes, he is actually arguing that a CHEMICAL REACTION blew up an 180km(and 900km)-diameter space station.

[fallendragon]

wow... that is just incredible

[Big Phil]

I know his numbers are highly speculative, but it was interesting to go and look at Graham Kennedy's calculations of Starfleet fleet size, pre and post-war. He estimated ~8000 starships pre-war, of which (based on my redefinition of his categories into one of the six defined above):

Pre-War
5% are Cargo Vessels
42% are Cruisers
13% are Explorers
40% Scouts
he doesn't seem to have any Tankers or Surveyors

What I find most interesting about his numbers is that, proportionally, they hardly change pre-post war. In other words, the Federation starts with 42% Cruisers, loses thousands of them, and ends with 42% Cruisers. This is very different from what I would expect, which is that the combatants (Cruisers and Explorers) would suffer most of the casualties, and even with replacements and new builds, there wouldn't be as many post-war.

In any case, the other thing I find very interesting is that his Starfleet has no logistical support. I guess he's assuming that Starfleet ships are largely self-sustaining, never needing replenishment, which is unreasonable when you factor in the need to transport men, guns, torpedoes, replacement parts, etc. to ships on or near the front lines, as well as raw materiel and finished pieces (replacement sensors, phaser arrays, etc.) here and there. Perhaps he's assuming that all of those things are being carried by civilian vessels to the front lines?

In any case, that's not so much a criticism of DITL as much as it is an interesting contrast in philosophy, analytical approaches, and style.

[Junghalli]

wow... that is just incredible

I wouldn't be surprised if what you saw on screen did resemble a chemical explosion ... if that's what the FX people used or modelled the explosion on.

Not that this necessarily makes the theory credible, mind you.

[SeaTrooper]

As noone appears to have responded to your valuable points, I thought I might have a shot at it with some further explainations and exposition.

Now, some further points:

- I don't think its that unreasonable that what we saw fighting in DS9 was not the entirety of Starfleet. Indeed, if we allow for the multi-role nature (lots of general purpose warships but not so many specialized ones) then there are limits to just how much military force they can concentrate without losses elsewhere (they still need to do transport and shipping at least.. even in Trek economics does not cease ot exist, I don't care WHAT Picard says. At the very minimum you need to be hauling resources and finished goods between planets to and from the magic replicators. Not to mention fuel, munitions, personnel, etc.)

We have seen non-SF freighters/transports - Cassidy Yate's ship (DS9) comes immediately to mind. However, hers was a non-Fed registered ship that did the bulk of its operating outside of the Fed; an important point when she is arrested and imprisoned for supporting the Maquis (again) outside of Fed space.
Otherwise, it has been SF ships we have always seen carrying their cargoes from TNG onwards. Only in the TOS did we see any number of civilian-owned and operated transports; with Harry Mudd's being an unfortunate example. So, this suggests that SF held a significant, possibly even monopolistic role in the transport of replicator feed-stock, specialist medicines, seed grains, VIPs, and so on.
And when it comes to your photon torp casings, spare parts for warships, deuterium stocks, and other war material, you do really, really want to look after their shipment and handling yourself. In this case especially, I would expect SF to carry such material and preferably in hulls that are reasonably well armed. You do not want to be relying on civilian contractors to haul all of your most precious fungibles into a war zone.

Next: to further the "multi-role" idea.. I believe in WW1 the British (at least) ran a class system for cruisers much like the earlier Napoleonic era "rates" - you had first second and third rate cruisers. The last were, I believe the "auxiliary" cruisers, also knowned as armed merchant ships. Hell, conventional military forces (like the Russians) had different qualities of troops as well on varying grades in their army (someone like Stas would have to confirm or correct me on that though) Concepts like that I think would fit quite easily with what we see in Trek (again and fits with the use of mothballed ships as well.)

The original definition of a Cruiser relied partially on its speed, but predominantly on its range. With sail-powered ships, the only restrictions navies of the day had were on how much food and water they carried. But when steam engines came into use, and became advanced enough to be of any tactical effect, then how much coal you could carry became just as important. The earliest Cruisers were what was called Hermaphrodite-ships, meaning they possessed steam engines yet also full-rigs so normal cruising could be conducted under sail. You would only fire up the engines and shift to screw (or paddlewheel) propulsion when absolutely necessary.
This insistance on range lasted into WW2, even as the RN completed the conversion from coal to oil-fired, but size, armament and armoured protection were also steadily being used to determine if a specific design was of cruiser type. This is where the various 'rates' of Cruisers came into common use. However, this was not a matter of mere displacement, but rather their armament, thickness and style of armoured protection, and (again) speed and range. The BattleCruiser, for example, was a ship with a Battleship's armament (in calibre, not necessary number of guns), but markedly less armour in order to provide the speed and range thought most necessary for this type of warship.
Cruisers (whether they be BCs or the smaller CLs) fulfilled the roles previously held by Frigates in Nelson's time. Independant operations, the hunting of raiders and direct mercantile interdiction, and scouting. That last was a biggie, for which they had to be fast and long-legged, yet no better armed or armoured than their likely opponents; in theory, other Cruisers. The Auxiliary Cruiser, or more commonly the Q-Ship, was typically just a fairly well-built civilian vessel that could mount a few guns. Some of these were insanely heavily armed, a good example of this being the German ORION armed with 6 x 15cm L/45 C13 (taken from battleship Schleswig-Holstein), 1 x 7,5 cm L/33 Schneider/Creuznot, 2 x 3.7 cm, 4 x 2 cm, 6 x 53.3 cm torpedo tubes, 228 EMC mines! But these remained 'hardboiled eggs', being dangerous yet fragile, having little internal sub-division, limited reserve bouyancy, and no armour at all.
As such, the Trek use of the term 'Cruiser' tends to annoy me just a little, as this appears to cover every size and anti-role-specific design from Mirandas on up. Why not just come out and say that the Ent-D and E were Battleships, for fucks sake?

Last: I do think the Feds have to have at least some fairly significant shipbuilding capability, but having it does not tell us automatically what all they can do with it. They arguably managed to get a fair number of mothballed reserves up and running (and even refitted - hell they seemed to manage to refit stuff like the GCSes for wartime) in fairly short order, after all. But having lots of shipyards does not automatically mean they can start churning out huge numbers of warships en masse. Sea Skimmer would have to confirm or correct me on this, but I believe that you can have shipyards dedictaed to building a certain kind of ship (or kinds) but not neccesarily others. (EG civilian or military at least.)

Right. Well, a drydock is just a hole in the ground, and a Trek spacedock is little more than an appropriately sized frame floating in space. To work out what they can and do build there, you need to look at the underpinning infrastructure. A merchantman doesn't need heavy armour, turrets nor any of the other typically bulky, heavy equipment you'll find on most large warships, and thus a dock dedicated to building them would not have these facilities. Nor will they necessary have the necessarily huge and powerful cranes necessary to handle such over-engineered components.
Going back to our WW2 example, the US were building fantastic numbers of Liberty Ships in every pissant little dockyard they could find. Many of these had built luxury yachts, trawlers, tramp steamers and whatnot before 1940, and had surprisingly little difficulty ramping up to build the thin-hulled, variable-engined, effectively one-use Liberties in quantity. But Warships could still only be built and drydocked for major repairs in facilities built specifically for them. Not because these docks were bigger, you don't need a honking great hole in the ground to construct mere destroyers, but because the infrastructure containing everything they needed to build a proper warship was ready to hand. Even if you didn't actually have the steel plate cut and stacked, the whole administrative, logistical, stowage and warehousing, skilled personnel, specialist workshops, etc., were all in place and ready to get what you needed in.

When you consider that the Feds basically have not fought an actual war since the TOS era (and even then it was dying out in the TOS movies) so they probably were out of practice building actual warships, and I imagine their yards weren't suited to building them. So having to retool your yards to a wartime standard would take time and resources. Throw in the need to refit and restore mothballed ships and the odds of being able to easily use that capability right off the bat seems even likelier (indeed the fact they had to rely on older designs like the Excelsior does argue that while they have some hefty shipbuidling ability, it is probably not oriented towards dedicated warships.)

Too true, as the Fed-Cardassian War mentioned in passing in both TNG and DS9, appears to have been a major CF from the word go. I still don't understand what the hell O'Brien was doing as a ground-pounder in that conflict, but sending your most skilled engineers out to fight as infantry is something we've tried to avoid since the Boxer Rebellion (oops, except for the WW1 Naval Divisions, sorry )
Nonetheless, that conflict appears to have been fought half-heartedly, with a premature surrender and treaty that was just going to cause problems down the track. As has been raised in the TGG stories, I can only assume these failures in preparation, readiness and the ability to learn from lessons was political in origin.

The klingons: We dont know how their fleets breakdown. As I recall they had quite a few Birds of Prey, and those are not.. large ships (they're little better than fighters or runabouts... although maybe torpedo boats is a better description? Fed Fighters seem pretty damn large after all.)

Agree in its entirety. The Klingon situation may be due to their individual Houses having such a dominant political and economic presence within the Empire. A House that wished to advance itself would necessarily have to field at least one warship, if only for the prestige such brings, and I'm guessing BoPs are among the cheapest options there. I might even suggest that the very largest Klingon warships (Negh'Vars and Vor'Chas) were built and manned by the Empire, while the sizeable remainder were House contingents. I've no evidence for that, so would ask your opinion here.

[Big Phil]

As noone appears to have responded to your valuable points, I thought I might have a shot at it with some further explainations and exposition.

Now, some further points:

- I don't think its that unreasonable that what we saw fighting in DS9 was not the entirety of Starfleet. Indeed, if we allow for the multi-role nature (lots of general purpose warships but not so many specialized ones) then there are limits to just how much military force they can concentrate without losses elsewhere (they still need to do transport and shipping at least.. even in Trek economics does not cease ot exist, I don't care WHAT Picard says. At the very minimum you need to be hauling resources and finished goods between planets to and from the magic replicators. Not to mention fuel, munitions, personnel, etc.)

We have seen non-SF freighters/transports - Cassidy Yate's ship (DS9) comes immediately to mind. However, hers was a non-Fed registered ship that did the bulk of its operating outside of the Fed; an important point when she is arrested and imprisoned for supporting the Maquis (again) outside of Fed space.
Otherwise, it has been SF ships we have always seen carrying their cargoes from TNG onwards. Only in the TOS did we see any number of civilian-owned and operated transports; with Harry Mudd's being an unfortunate example. So, this suggests that SF held a significant, possibly even monopolistic role in the transport of replicator feed-stock, specialist medicines, seed grains, VIPs, and so on.

We haven't seen realistic transports, tankers, or freighters in virtually all of TNG, DS9, or Voyager. Freighters are LARGE ships, not small shuttles. Unless there's some handwavium we're unaware of that allows Trek not to require such large freighters, the lack of their appearance on the screen doesn't mean they don't exist off screen.

And when it comes to your photon torp casings, spare parts for warships, deuterium stocks, and other war material, you do really, really want to look after their shipment and handling yourself. In this case especially, I would expect SF to carry such material and preferably in hulls that are reasonably well armed. You do not want to be relying on civilian contractors to haul all of your most precious fungibles into a war zone.

Most navies with forward projection capability have dedicated support ship, and these don't really appear at Trek. Reasonably well armed, however, is subjective. Support ships today may have a couple of machine guns, or they may be unarmed, but installing missile systems or 5" guns and radar is both expensive and takes up space that could be better used to carry stuff. I don't know that even Starfleet transports are necessarily armed.

Last: I do think the Feds have to have at least some fairly significant shipbuilding capability, but having it does not tell us automatically what all they can do with it. They arguably managed to get a fair number of mothballed reserves up and running (and even refitted - hell they seemed to manage to refit stuff like the GCSes for wartime) in fairly short order, after all. But having lots of shipyards does not automatically mean they can start churning out huge numbers of warships en masse. Sea Skimmer would have to confirm or correct me on this, but I believe that you can have shipyards dedictaed to building a certain kind of ship (or kinds) but not neccesarily others. (EG civilian or military at least.)

Right. Well, a drydock is just a hole in the ground, and a Trek spacedock is little more than an appropriately sized frame floating in space. To work out what they can and do build there, you need to look at the underpinning infrastructure. A merchantman doesn't need heavy armour, turrets nor any of the other typically bulky, heavy equipment you'll find on most large warships, and thus a dock dedicated to building them would not have these facilities. Nor will they necessary have the necessarily huge and powerful cranes necessary to handle such over-engineered components.
Going back to our WW2 example, the US were building fantastic numbers of Liberty Ships in every pissant little dockyard they could find. Many of these had built luxury yachts, trawlers, tramp steamers and whatnot before 1940, and had surprisingly little difficulty ramping up to build the thin-hulled, variable-engined, effectively one-use Liberties in quantity. But Warships could still only be built and drydocked for major repairs in facilities built specifically for them. Not because these docks were bigger, you don't need a honking great hole in the ground to construct mere destroyers, but because the infrastructure containing everything they needed to build a proper warship was ready to hand. Even if you didn't actually have the steel plate cut and stacked, the whole administrative, logistical, stowage and warehousing, skilled personnel, specialist workshops, etc., were all in place and ready to get what you needed in.

As far as I can tell, DS9 just handwaved all of these issues away. The Federation just started building new ships because they were needed, details be damned.