How big SHOULD the Federation Fleet be?

[McAvoy]

That does rather assume that it's as easy for the Federation to build a starship as it is for the US to build a warship. Ain't necessarily so.

US Warships take ~8 years from start to delivery:
http://hamptonroads.com/node/241601
The story is from 2007, saying the construction has begun, and the carrier is scheduled to be delivered in 2015.

From Memory-alpha The Galaxy class design was started in 2350, and the USS Galaxy was commissioned in 2357. So a Galaxy class only took 7 years from design to commissioning. Enterprise was commissioned is 2363, 6 years later.

So yes, I'd argue that it is just as easy for the Federation to design and build a starship as it is for the United States to design and build a carrier.

You have ~1 trillion people in the Federation, with an overall superior tech base. A Carrier to the United States would be roughly the same as a top end starship to the Federation.

I would add, though it does not matter much, that the construction of carriers is deliberatley slow in order to allow the US to retain the workforce to build the things and the infrastructure while not ever having more than 12 or so in service. Building ships is not something you can just start and stop because it will cost you a ton.

Basically the US is building carriers as slowly as is economically possible just to retain the line and replace ships in a slow controlled manner. They could build them far faster than every 8 years. They were knocking the 4th and 5th units of the Nimitz Class out in 5 years before they slowed down due to the end of the Cold War.

While this is true, it is also cost. It's one of the reasons why the Nimitz class has been building for the past 30 years. As the Ford class has shown, designing a new one costs actually quite more than the carrier itself especially today. There are other factors in the cost as well. Capabilities wise the US can build multiple carriers at once if money wasn;t an issue.

Though I do wonder, what it does cost the Federation to build a single Galaxy class. Including the development.

[Graham Kennedy]

"Cost" is a funky issue in a society that may or may not employ the very concept of currency.

[Sionnach Glic]

They'll still understand cost in terms of the use of resources. Currency today is just a way of streamlining the system of bartering. Without it, the resouces and their value still exist, it's just less convenient to "buy" them.

[McAvoy]

They'll still understand cost in terms of the use of resources. Currency today is just a way of streamlining the system of bartering. Without it, the resouces and their value still exist, it's just less convenient to "buy" them.

That's what I meant. It still takes manpower, time, energy and resources to build a Galaxy class even if they may not cost anything in currency terms. Besides, we have seen that pretty much outside Earth that other societies still use some form of currancy. While I think the Federation is large enough to have all the resources it needs to build what it wants, I highly doubt every single individual in the Federation works for free.

[Graham Kennedy]

Indeed, but once you get into the simple material limits, the implications can become quite impressive.

For instance, in material terms, in Sol alone the Federation has not only Earth's resources, but all the other planets too, plus all the moons, plus all the asteroids. Asteroids are often metal rich, and mining even one of them out would provide material for billions of GCS-sized ships. And that's before we throw in replicators that can turn more or less anything into more or less anything else literally at the touch of a button, with only fuzzily defined limitations in place.

In energy terms, fusion and M/AM reactors provide essentially unlimited energy compared to today - M/AM has questions regarding where you get the antimatter, but still. it's clear that the Federation's energy generation capacity is many orders of magnitude beyond ours.

Manpower may be a limiting factor... but with transporters and tractor beams, one man can comfortably move and handle huge masses quite easily. The absolutely tiny manpower : ship mass ratio (1 person per 5,000 tons on a GCS as compared to 1 per 20 tons on a Nimitz class) indicates that Starfleet employs very high degrees of automation in running ships. The same could very easily - and sensibly should be - true of constructing them.

In the simplest terms, then, the Federation should really have a truly profound ability to produce ships. They should be able to run them out by the hundreds of thousands if they really want to.

That they don't is what requires us to assume significant log-jams in the production process, advanced-tech components that take a long time to build, for instance.

[Deepcrush]

Or that they haven't built the infrastructure needed for the construction of such numbers of ships.

[Graham Kennedy]

That would just raise the question of why they haven't, since building the infrastructure isn't really any fundamentally different from building the ships.

[Deepcrush]

More then likely is because they don't feel the need to.

[Graham Kennedy]

I can see that, somewhat. But it does rather imply that the Federation is something of a sleeping giant that didn't wake up even during decades of cold war with the Romulans and Klingons, or the hot and cold wars with the Cardassians, etc.

The question also becomes, since things like replicators, fusion and M/Am power systems, transporters, tractor beams are all basically old hat, and spare planets to mine aren't exactly a rarity... why aren't the Klingons, Romulans and Cardassians pumping out countless millions of ships either?

[Deepcrush]

Maybe antimatter production is much harder then we think. If thats the case then such levels of production would be impossible as you wouldn't have enough to even turn the ships on.

For the other empires, we really don't know how big they are. Fact is that they may be far smaller then the UFP but much more active at turning out ships. Which would be why they are still able to act as threats.

Cardassian production during the Dominion war is a clear sign of what just a few worlds can do.

[Lighthawk]

There could also just be a limit on how many crews a given race can actually get together. A million ships is a big waste of material if you only have enough people to properly crew a few thousand.

[kostmayer]

There could also just be a limit on how many crews a given race can actually get together. A million ships is a big waste of material if you only have enough people to properly crew a few thousand.

They might do better if they didn't reject 3 out of every 4 candidates for the Academy.

[Lighthawk]

There could also just be a limit on how many crews a given race can actually get together. A million ships is a big waste of material if you only have enough people to properly crew a few thousand.

They might do better if they didn't reject 3 out of every 4 candidates for the Academy.

Perhaps, though in normal times of peace, if they have enough ships for the day to day stuff and they have more people trying to sign up then they could fit on their ships, of course they are going to be picky. Probably the biggest reason we saw such a huge jump in fleet size between TNG and DS9 is due to the war, they ramped up both ship production and lowered standards to get more crews together.

[Coalition]

I can see that, somewhat. But it does rather imply that the Federation is something of a sleeping giant that didn't wake up even during decades of cold war with the Romulans and Klingons, or the hot and cold wars with the Cardassians, etc.

The question also becomes, since things like replicators, fusion and M/Am power systems, transporters, tractor beams are all basically old hat, and spare planets to mine aren't exactly a rarity... why aren't the Klingons, Romulans and Cardassians pumping out countless millions of ships either?

What I could believe is that during the peace years, the Federation was expanding its infrastructure. Not because of military necessity, but because it was more convenient for outlier systems. Instead of traveling to a center system where the larger shipyard exists and is busy 90% of the time, the Federation builds another smaller shipyard at the desired location, to reduce travel times for personnel in that sector.

One potential slowing point would be the lack of trained personnel. If you need a construction team including fifty warp core qualified engineers, and you only have forty available, you either have to take people with lower levels of training, have a lower level reactor, or delay construction.

Maybe antimatter production is much harder then we think. If thats the case then such levels of production would be impossible as you wouldn't have enough to even turn the ships on.

What would be nice is seeing a few older freighters that are pure fusion craft. Their engineering section is much larger than normal, but it can be refueled from a nearby gas giant or solar tap. They wouldn't have the same acceleration abilities as an antimatter ship, they'd need more space for its reactor(s), but the fuel is much safer, a fusion reactor takes more effort to keep going than to turn off, and the technology is much older.

For the other empires, we really don't know how big they are. Fact is that they may be far smaller then the UFP but much more active at turning out ships. Which would be why they are still able to act as threats.

Cardassian production during the Dominion war is a clear sign of what just a few worlds can do.

We have the Cardassian building rates from the DS9 tech manual, if you count that as canon. Of course, it is also countered by the fear at the end of the Dominion War about Cardassia Prime being able to build enough ships to hold off the Alliance fleet if they waited.

[DarkMoineau]

Well, it's true that we never seen the size of Sci-Fi fleets.

We know, because the Star Wars EU is canon, how many Star Destroyer exist in Star Wars, 25 000 Imperial & few hundred Imperial 2, but we have never seen how many ship exist in Star Trek, in a canon media.

We know that they have more than 150 member, across 8000 ly, but we don't know if 150 members means 150 planets or 150 homeworld.

If it's 150 planets, are they a population like the earth? We are 6,5 billion, the assimilated Earth in First Contact has a population of 9 billion, but we don't know for the others planets.

Maybe Vulcan has just 600 million people, just like the Star Wars planet Naboo.

The only thing know is, a Trantor or Coruscant-like planet doesn't exist in Star Trek, or if she exist, she is in Borg Space (i haven't many remembers of Voyager).

But it's appear hard to think that these worlds haven't defenses and it's hard to control a Federation with just few hundred ships.

It's why I like DS9, because, for the first time, the Federation looks like a Space Power.

After all, when you are alone, you can just have few hundred ship and use Defenses Force of your member like the Galactic Republic in Star Wars, but with many rivals and potential enemies, you need a defensive force.

If we compare with Other Sci-Fi universe, what can we said?
The twelvew worlds of Kobol appears to have 120 Battlestar Group, it's assume to looks like a carrier group of the USA, so we have 120 Battlestar and circa.1200 ship, each planet support 100 ships in this militarized world (they are prepared to a imminent war with Cylon).

In Star Wars, we know the 25000 Imperial of the Galactic Empire in the time of the Battle of Yavin and the fleet of 200 Imperial Mark 1 & 2 18 years later. If they have an escort of 10 ship, we have 250 000 and 2 000 ships. For the first fleet, thousand words support the fleet, and the Imperial Starfleet is probably bigger than just 25 000 Star Destroyer and her escort, and the second Fleet has a maximum ratio of one Stardestroyer by planet, just like the Colonial Fleet, but many little ship & escort probably exist.

This fleet of 200 Star Destroyers appears to be ineffective against the less militarized New Republic.

In Star Trek we know a task force of 500/600 ship in Sacrifice of Angels. It's appear to be a mixe of many fleet & a big part of Starfleet.

But 600 ship are a big part of 1500 ship (10 ship by member, this fleet is supported by 60 world) and still a big part of 15 000 ship (100 ship by member, the fleet is supported by 6 worlds).

And if we assume than a member can have just one little planet of 600 million people, or have 10 planets of 6 billion people, maybe Starfleet has circa.50 ship by member or 7500 ships, corvettes and little science ship includes, and we have just the Starfleet equivalent of a Stardestroyer/Battlestar (Galaxy & Sovereign) for 10 members/worlds.

We just know a Sovereign, and few, maybe a dozen, Galaxy so this Size appears to be the more conclusive, and i guess, someone think like me