Fleet upgrades - Pick your fleet & tell us what you'd re

[Deepcrush]

No, because if it did that. No one would care. It has to hurt starfleet, not help them.

[Mikey]

It's about time Starfleet's mass stupidity kicked them in the ass.

Come on. Starfleet's made a multi-century career out of skating through life nearly unaffected by the results of its staggering stupidity.

[Captain Seafort]

Come on. Starfleet's made a multi-century career out of skating through life nearly unaffected by the results of its staggering stupidity.

No they haven't - Kirk's era generally demonstrated plenty of common-sense, and good design principles. It's only the post-Khitomer Starfleet that's had problems due to their own stupidity.

[Reliant121]

Yes but Starfleets bumbling stupidity has a bloody good case of luck attached because most of their blunders have eventually turned out positive for them.

[Mikey]

No they haven't - Kirk's era generally demonstrated plenty of common-sense, and good design principles.

Point conceded. Except for a few glaring examples (MI-5?) TOS-era Starfleet command showed a great deal more common sense than TNG.

[thatcha]

not having read 18 pages....and not having been on these forums in SO long....here goes.

Im gonna take....drum roll please......and its a shocking result....starfleet!

Basically what i would do is a complete reorganisation and refocusing of resources and ships.

The reason for this is that for me starfleet has never made sense. the federation has fought too many wars and has too many generally aggressive species as members for a dedicated military force not to have emerged, cos lets face it starfleet does tend to get its arse kicked from time to time. Who really thinks that the dominion war would have gone the way it did in the early days if starfleet had a dedicated battlefleet?

So, what would i set as the priorities of Starfleet. Well.....lets just talk about the federation fleet just now for reason i shall come to in a minute.

There is a need for three distinct forces. A mobile military, to show the flag, project power and fight wars. A force able to defend federation territory within the federations borders, and finally an exploratory force.

So in reverse order: the exploratory force.

Previously that has been starfleets role, to "seek out etc etc..." But frankly thats being abit silly, you need to make sure those pesky klingons arent bombing the wife andkids back on the moon, so this force will be a relativly small force, maybe 200 ships tops. Frankly the idea that you can commit the resources need to construct and supprt a ship on the scale of the galaxy class and then tell it to bugger off for 5 plus years is alittle in the way of silly. Voyager showed that the Interpid class wasmore than capable of of doing that.

So as for ships for that force, what im thinking of is the Interpid class for one. Also ships like the Nova, maybe a few Akiras so as to provide alittle more muscle if other ships get in a tight spot,but basically the newer smaller ships, I amthinking of the Norway class as well.

This force would have as its primary task exploration, but wouldalso commit resorces to more conventional military purposes, ie cartography, perhaps as much as 15% of its force structure. So this force would keep the Roddenberry types happy, and for that reason i Shall call this force.....STARFLEET.

Now the system defence force.

The motivation for this is "best of both worlds" where you see the mars defence ships....which frankly are pathetic.

This force by its nature would not be mobile....except in times of full scale war, and it would have two elements. Mobile (on a system wide scale) and stationary.

The stationary element first. This would fall into two parts. Land based and space based.

The land based is relativly straight forward, basically what we today think of as AAA/SAM but designed to blow the crap out of a romulan warbird. You can see what a Cardassian designed orbital defence platform can do to a Galaxy class ship.....im sure the federation can do better.

Also this force would operate a number of medium range sensor systems,so as to control the battlespace in and around specific star systems.

Now the mobile element.

Basically what im talking about here are warships. Now yes i hear you cry the federation hasnt really built true warships.....But what they have built is large numbers of ships that can fight. What imlooking to do here, is to take ships like the Mirandas and even the Ambassador class and strip them. Take out there non combat systems, and their warp drives. Stick in a few more fusion reactors for extra combat power....but these ships wont have to be heavily manned as they are essentially a second line of defence, a defenceof last resort so you dont have to have themat their full capability and as the real defence of the federation willbewith the third force i will talkabout i dont even plan to beef up the weapons on these ships.

Now the last thing i want to say about this force isone of manning. my model for this is similar to that of the US national guard. Basically local forces that operate on a part timebasis,so as to free up teh regulars for the primary force.....which i shall talk about.....now!

So a mobile military, lets call it the Federation Navy.

The point of this force is simple, to point it at and enemy and kill that enemy.

This again will have two elements, but this time a space based, and a land based force.

First the space based force.

Now we have seen that the federation can produce a realwarship in teh formof the defiant. So lets havemore of them. Lots more. Lots and lots and lots more.

But as has been saidby one or two people (possibly hundredlike i said i havent read 18 pages) other powers have HUGE warships. The klingons, the Romulans and the Dominion.

So one thing that the FN will have to do is to start to design a major combat unit. Now normal federation practice has been to develope lots ofnew technologies....but frankly...no. Build a big hull and put in it proven tech. There are designs out there that work. The defiant the akira the soveriegn, nebula and galaxy. So in the medium term....10-15 post this plan being put into place those are the hulls that will be used. But after that construction has to be focusd on different true combat ships.....basically imagne if the Soveriegn was at most a medium crusier and you get the idea of what im talking about.

Asfor theland based force wellbeyond saying that the federation needs an army what can you say. (personally id like to see an army of clones but would that be too much like the empire in star wars?)

so yes....my VERY LONG PLAN.

[Mikey]

You haven't thought about this too much, have you?

[mlsnoopy]

Well the easiest way to upgrade SF is to just put 500 defiants in every system and invite anyone you want for a party.

[Deepcrush]

OH, my my my! NEW fresh blood to the forum!

The sov is a battleship by all rights of the current AQ standard. The best thing to do would be to build a multi-function ship like the sov or nebs to work in the outer systems and Defiants and akiras in the inner systems.

The big question is how would you deploy this new model of starfleet?

[thatcha]

i dont think you can call the sov a battleship.

i say that with the big beast nehgvars from all good things in mind, as well as early 20thC battleships.

Frank;ly i dont think that the Sov has the firepower....nor range of fire to be considered a battle ship.

I think that the federation would have to develope a ship that can hang back towards the rear of a fleet and pound major enemy units from adistance with serious firepower while smaller units, like the defiant/akira, get up close and personal.

Basically a battleship has to have that one hit kills capability, if perhaps with a lucky hit.

Think of the Bismarck/Hood (second world war) big modern BS takes out big not so modern BC with one (somewhat lucky) hit.

That was a battleship....you know it was cos it took half the Royal Navy to sink the beggar. I dont see the domminionwetting itself for one rogue Sov.




One addition to the pervious.

Post dominionn war the romulans are in a bad way,so personally id be pretty happy to say lets not worry overly much about what you think...heres a niceshiney new federation cloaking device.

[Granitehewer]

are the romulans in pretty bad shape-barring the reman coup and junta, did they suffer heavy materially or politically during the war, is that canon, or speculation?

[Deepcrush]

Only two ships in the AQ ever match the sov. The Scimitar and the Dominion Battleship. That tells me that the sov since it can be battleships would be counted as a battleship.

[thatcha]

the comment on the romulans is part cannon part deducation.

The tal Shiar has at the least been badly mauled, the reman coup is evidence of that, and all sides took a pounding in the war, part of what im taking is the non cannon stuff from this site, but i dont think that the romulans benefited from this war but i do think that the federation did. in terms of military strength.

and i still say that the sov isnt a battleship.

when you look at the fight it had with the scimitar, where it had support from two modern and i have to assume powerful romulan ships it got its arse kicked. The Scimitar was still, largly,functional at the end of that, the Enterprise was most certainly not.

If you want to say its a battleship, in terms of strenght comparisoon the only way im gonna give you that is if you compare it say...to HMS Dreadnought of 1906, against HIJMS Yamato.

It wasnt designed as a battleship,it ISNT a battleship.

Just because it can stand up, somewhat, to a battleship doesnt make it a battleship. Picard saw that, which is why he ran away like a little girl to the rest of the fleet before he wanted to fight the Scimitar.

[Granitehewer]

i think that argument is slightly flawed, using ww2 battleships to elucidate a point, theres not much homogeneity in that class, noone would want to see the tirpitz vs the musashi for example.
The sovereign may not be overtly military, but if an exploration/diplomatic liason vessel like the enterprise-A is designated as a 'heavy cruiser',then so might the sovereign be classed as 'a battleship'

[Jim]

OH, my my my! NEW fresh blood to the forum!

The sov is a battleship by all rights of the current AQ standard. The best thing to do would be to build a multi-function ship like the sov or nebs to work in the outer systems and Defiants and akiras in the inner systems.

The big question is how would you deploy this new model of starfleet?

I believe I mentioned supercarriers once before. I still think that is a great way to go. A problem with the Defiants and Akiras is their long haul functunality. They are not good for outer system service simply due to their interiors etc.

If you want to carry the Def/Aks internally, the carrier would have to be the size of a Kazon Predator for Defiants, but bigger for Akiras, possibly the size of a Dominion Dreadnaught. The obvious problem with a relatively hollow craft of that size would be intergety in battle and self defence.

I believe I previously stated that a craft that would be a spine with the Defiants and Akiras attached externally would be the easiest to make, by far. A carrier of this design would have the powerplant and living quarters centralized, and the shields and weapons of the attached Def/Aks would provid additional weapon and defensive capibilities. This would make the carrier much cheaper and easier to build. Plus, the Def/Aks could be launched much faster.

I would think that it would be rather easy to make one of these spine carriers, about 1000M long. This could hold 18 Defiants rather easily. (5 end to end on the 12 and 6 axis, 4 along the 3 and 9 axis, staggered for room)

Two version could be created. One would be tactical. The central carrier would basically be two things, a warp core and very powerful engines. This would simply be designed to get the warships to where they need to be FAST! The other could be more perminant, like our aircraft carriers. This would simply add additional living quarters for the crews. More space, more comfort. This version could cruise around the outer systems without worry about the crew having issues.