Federation Capital Ship Numbers

[Kitsune]

Looking at Sd.net, I noted the suggestion that the Federation fleet is from 1000 to 2000 ships.

A few items:

First, I assume this only includes combat vessels. This does not include support vessels such as cargo vessels?

Second, it seems to me that there are several classes which have been operated for far more than 20 years including the Miranda and Excelsior classes. This is not so unbelievable based on several US Navy ship classes getting around 50 years in age before retiring. This include several support vessel classes which were built around WW2 and the Midway class carriers which were also built around teh same time. Also, currently the carrier Enterprise (Kind of Fitting) is probably going to be around 50 years old. Does this not increase the number of vessels which could be in service?

Third, what would be the typical Federation "Capital Ship" for size since the Galaxy class seems to the example of as large capital ship?

Fourth, what class woudl be considered the Large Capital ship classes and how many would their likely be total. I am thinking of the Galaxy and Nebula class starships and additionally the Soveriegn class but currious if the Akira class would also be in that catagory? Finally, what would be the most likely number of these larger starships?

[Laird]

Looking at Sd.net, I noted the suggestion that the Federation fleet is from 1000 to 2000 ships.

Thats flawed, rick berman said that the federation fleet was something like 4000-8000 capital ships, and several thousand fighters.


someone has the exact quote around I am sure.

[Kitsune]

Looking at Sd.net, I noted the suggestion that the Federation fleet is from 1000 to 2000 ships.

Thats flawed, rick berman said that the federation fleet was something like 4000-8000 capital ships, and several thousand fighters.

someone has the exact quote around I am sure.

That number could work, figure a 50 year lifespan on ships instead of 20 years, then you get 5000 ships instead of 2000.

[TheDarkling]

Thats flawed, rick berman said that the federation fleet was something like 4000-8000 capital ships, and several thousand fighters.


someone has the exact quote around I am sure.

It was Ron Moore I believe and he said he would agree with an 8000ish figure, Ron Moore however isn't a canon source (although it does give us a rough ballpark).

[TheDarkling]

That number could work, figure a 50 year lifespan on ships instead of 20 years, then you get 5000 ships instead of 2000.

We have seen ships that are over 100 years old still knocking about ( a Miranda and an Oberth or two) so 50 years as an average sure is possible.

[Master of Ossus]

It's always seemed as if the UFP had more than 2000 combat-capable capital ships and less than 20,000. Most of the estimates I've seen fall in the 5,000-12,000 range, with about 8,000 being a good bench-mark.

[Darth Wong]

I think it more likely that they had a very large number of ships in mothballs which they dusted off and brought out to fight during the Dominion War, with varying degrees of success (I suspect that a lot of their early military disasters were due to large numbers of mothballed ships being hastily thrown back into service with inadequate upgrades and poorly trained crews).

[Alyeska]

I think it more likely that they had a very large number of ships in mothballs which they dusted off and brought out to fight during the Dominion War, with varying degrees of success (I suspect that a lot of their early military disasters were due to large numbers of mothballed ships being hastily thrown back into service with inadequate upgrades and poorly trained crews).

I've always agreed with that idea. The fleet had an awful lot of Excelsior and Miranda class ships in it. The 8,000 fleet figure probably agrees with the normal size of Starfleet on war footing and an additional 4,000 ships (brining it up to 12,000) were old mothballed ships.

[Alyeska]

Rick Berman was asked how large Starfleet was and he said 8,000-12,000 ships. I've always saw that as meaning 8,000 newer ships with an additional 4,000 mothballed ships brought back into service.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

That's a really weird way of interpreting an estimate...

[Alyeska]

That's a really weird way of interpreting an estimate...

How so? We have an estimate and bassed on the ship types that we see we know that a fairly large number of them are older ships. Excelsiors and Mirandas make up the bulk of the older ship fleet. Fleet size is said to be 8-12. I see nothing wrong with saying its 12K and that 4K of that is the old stuff. Using the 1/3 rule for navies that means in peace time Starfleet has no more then 2,500 active ships thereabouts. Some endurance ships do seem to have more active duties so you could say that 1/2 of Starfleet is inactive and thats 4,000 active ships in peace time. 4,000 more ships inactive and 4,000 mothballed reserve ships.

[Darth Wong]

Rick Berman was asked how large Starfleet was and he said 8,000-12,000 ships. I've always saw that as meaning 8,000 newer ships with an additional 4,000 mothballed ships brought back into service.

I wouldn't put too much stock in offscreen comments. Remember that the DS9 TM placed the number of refits at less than 200, which in turn suggests that overall fleet sizes were much, much smaller than Moore's estimates would suggest. I'd say the Trek writers just had trouble keeping their consistency, so it's up to the fans (as usual) to paper over it. I'd place the number of active ships much lower than the number of mothballed ships, which would explain why their fleet sizes seemed relatively miniscule during the TNG era.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

That's a really weird way of interpreting an estimate...

How so?

Because the estimate was said to be 8-12K. That would imply an average of about 10K.

Never have I heard of taking that to mean "8-12K? Oh, that means they have 12K total, with 8K as their active numbers and the remaining 4K are mothballed/in reserve!"

That frankly sounds fanwhorish, and you should know better.

[Praxis]

I'll show you an estimate.


What is the largest ship number we've seen?

The Defiant, which starts with a 7 and is five digits long.
Therefore, in the HISTORY of the Federation, they have made under 80,000 ships in 300 years, including cargo ships and fighters. Most of these have been mothballed over the years, most likely.

There's your maximum estimate

Dividing 80,000 x 300 gives you 266 2/3 ships (including cargo and fighters) built per year average. The later years probably had more ships built than the earlier though.

[Isolder74]

Then there is the fleets seen in DS9 being called 'massive.' Its hard to say where all of those ships came froim, but the loss of so many ships in many of those battles was played off as significant losses though most seemed to be among the older Mirandas and Excesliors. i think that 12,000 ships total seems a little high for other than the entire starfleet. My question is, do we have any idea how many ships were lost in DS9? For any loss to be significant it would have to be around 10% - 15% of the overall total. I'll wager that DS9 is first time we ever see a really large Federation battle group. Up until that point we only see squadrons of around 4 - 8 ships. Many time it was the Enterprise vs one or two enemy vessels.

[Darth Wong]

Let's think logically about this mothballed ships vs active ships issue: in space, if you evacuate the oxygen from a ship and leave it in a "space junkyard", the rate of decay drops to nearly zero. You could easily leave a ship floating there for a hundred years and it would be ready to return to service with minimal work. So why would the active portion of the fleet be larger than the mothballed portion? It makes no sense at all; the mothballed portion of the fleet should dwarf the active portion.

[Master of Ossus]

Let's think logically about this mothballed ships vs active ships issue: in space, if you evacuate the oxygen from a ship and leave it in a "space junkyard", the rate of decay drops to nearly zero. You could easily leave a ship floating there for a hundred years and it would be ready to return to service with minimal work. So why would the active portion of the fleet be larger than the mothballed portion? It makes no sense at all; the mothballed portion of the fleet should dwarf the active portion.

Assuming, of course, that you can field the personnel for it. It could be that SF has plenty of ships, but not enough people to put on them, since they already have new ships for their personnel.

[Darth Wong]

Assuming, of course, that you can field the personnel for it. It could be that SF has plenty of ships, but not enough people to put on them, since they already have new ships for their personnel.

One would think that recruitment should have gone way up once the war started. It lasted for several years, after all. That's enough time to get a lot of recruits in.

[Stormbringer]

Let's think logically about this mothballed ships vs active ships issue: in space, if you evacuate the oxygen from a ship and leave it in a "space junkyard", the rate of decay drops to nearly zero. You could easily leave a ship floating there for a hundred years and it would be ready to return to service with minimal work. So why would the active portion of the fleet be larger than the mothballed portion? It makes no sense at all; the mothballed portion of the fleet should dwarf the active portion.

True, but if the US mothball fleet is any real example a lot of ships that have been mothballed are kept less because they're useful and more because of a packrat mentality. I mean the US kept some the Standard Battleships around until the late 1950s even when they started WW2 out of date. With the rate of advance there's probably a limit so that even leaving aside preservation issues they only have so many ships worth reactivating. A ship too far over the hill probably isn't going to be worth activating and training the personell for once it's far enough over the hill.

[Praxis]

Do you think if TOS had kept a thousand Constitutions around, and put them back to work in DS9, they would have made a difference? They would have been blasted apart in single hits from Jem Hadar fighters. With the technology difference between different eras, older ships are relocated to cargo duty, or scrapped for parts.

[Howedar]

We already see that, for whatever reason, very old ships are still effective (or at least worthwhile) in Trek. The basic D-7 design has been in active service for hundreds of years, and a hundred years after its design it was very strong competition against the brand-new UFP Constitutions. Excelsiors and Mirandas are still a large part of Starfleet even a century after their introduction. Likewise for Klingon BoPs.

[Alyeska]

Let's think logically about this mothballed ships vs active ships issue: in space, if you evacuate the oxygen from a ship and leave it in a "space junkyard", the rate of decay drops to nearly zero. You could easily leave a ship floating there for a hundred years and it would be ready to return to service with minimal work. So why would the active portion of the fleet be larger than the mothballed portion? It makes no sense at all; the mothballed portion of the fleet should dwarf the active portion.

Actualy the active list would be larger simply because you can upgrade an old design only so long before it becomes useless. Also the Federation has been growing over the years. So the number of ships to run the fleet in years past are smaller then the number of ships in the future. There is also the fact that some ships might be gutted for parts to keep others in service. Easier to use old Excelsiors and Miranda's for spare parts. They can also be scraping some of their ships as well.

These reasons would indicate why the reserve fleet isn't necessarily going to be as large. Judging by the fleet numbers given by Berman and juding by how often Excelsior and Miranda class ships were seen, its obvious they do not represent a larger chunk of the fleet over the obviously newer designs.

[Alyeska]

Rick Berman was asked how large Starfleet was and he said 8,000-12,000 ships. I've always saw that as meaning 8,000 newer ships with an additional 4,000 mothballed ships brought back into service.

I wouldn't put too much stock in offscreen comments. Remember that the DS9 TM placed the number of refits at less than 200, which in turn suggests that overall fleet sizes were much, much smaller than Moore's estimates would suggest. I'd say the Trek writers just had trouble keeping their consistency, so it's up to the fans (as usual) to paper over it. I'd place the number of active ships much lower than the number of mothballed ships, which would explain why their fleet sizes seemed relatively miniscule during the TNG era.

That simply doesn't fly. We saw more active/new designs then we saw old designs. Furthermore we know that some Excelsior and Miranda designs are still on the active list. For reasons I posted above we can see why the reserve fleet isn't necessarily going to be as large as the active fleet.

[Darth Wong]

Rick Berman was asked how large Starfleet was and he said 8,000-12,000 ships. I've always saw that as meaning 8,000 newer ships with an additional 4,000 mothballed ships brought back into service.

I wouldn't put too much stock in offscreen comments. Remember that the DS9 TM placed the number of refits at less than 200, which in turn suggests that overall fleet sizes were much, much smaller than Moore's estimates would suggest. I'd say the Trek writers just had trouble keeping their consistency, so it's up to the fans (as usual) to paper over it. I'd place the number of active ships much lower than the number of mothballed ships, which would explain why their fleet sizes seemed relatively miniscule during the TNG era.

That simply doesn't fly. We saw more active/new designs then we saw old designs.

So? We also saw nothing resembling 10,000 ships, and it makes sense that in the most crucial battles (which were the only ones we actually saw), they would try to use their newest and best ships.

Furthermore we know that some Excelsior and Miranda designs are still on the active list. For reasons I posted above we can see why the reserve fleet isn't necessarily going to be as large as the active fleet.

Then explain why the fleet is so pitifully small in the TNG era, or why it would take them a year to recover from the losses incurred at Wolf 359, or why they could only muster a few dozen ships to defend Earth in STFC (and don't give me this bullshit about hundreds or thousands of ships in an offscreen battle lasting for weeks; it's nonsense and you know it).

[TheDarkling]

Then explain why the fleet is so pitifully small in the TNG era, or why it would take them a year to recover from the losses incurred at Wolf 359,

It is easy enough to take that as 40 on top of current builds, especially since it is Shelby intention to more or less say "all is good, no big deal".

The estimated build times for the Defiant and the Ent-E tend to bear out this idea (that is if they didn't just reactivate some old ships).

or why they could only muster a few dozen ships to defend Earth in STFC (and don't give me this bullshit about hundreds or thousands of ships in an off screen battle lasting for weeks; it's nonsense and you know it).

The battle against the Borg certainly didn't start in the Sol system so either it was a running battle for an unspecified amount of time or there were two battles (one at Typhon and a Second at Earth) either explains a low fleet count by the time the Enterprise enters the battle (after it has been on going for some time).

The only other defence of Earth during peace time is Endgame from Voyager in which a fleet of 18 ships is assembled near earth with a few minutes notice (of which only two ships were old designs) and 9 more would be there in a few more minutes.