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To reiterate GK's comment about the application of resources; Coalition's numbers provide a rough idea of what Starfleet could do on a balls-out production schedule - but this doesn't necessarily reflect what they have done or will do.

Aye. Although TOS era Starfleet was definitely a more sane, military organisation, there were probably elements both in Starfleet and in the government that would eventualy lead to the TNG era Starfleet by placing pressure on both Starfleet and the government to give S&E missions a greater importance.

This really makes me wish we could have seen the TOS UFP at full war footing. That is before UFP cut SFs balls off.

It's worth noting that the small number of Connies probably isn't due to their being a recent design; we know from The Menagerie that the Ent predates TOS by a good ten years or so, and the class is older still.

I always took it as fairly obvious that there were other cruiser designs around though. Ships a few years older than the Connies, a little slower, slightly weaker phasers, slightly worse shields, but still up there as effective cruisers, much as the carrier Enterprise remained in service and highly effective for many years after the newer and better Nimitz class came along.

My personal low end guess for the TOS fleet is around 400 ships, with about 80 of them being cruiser types and the rest destroyers, frigates, etc.

Sorry, for the back post, but I was out a bit and only now started reading this thread.

The only thing that caught my eye was this.

The TNG TM claims that they developed a process to produce dilithium synthetically by the TNG era. Non canon, of course.

Didn't Scotty develop a method to do this on the BoP in STIV... in the 20th century.

I don't remember that. Transparent aluminum, yes. When did he synthesize dilithium?

The real crystals were burnt out from the first time-warp. I remember him saying something alone the lines of "I've synthesized just enough dilithium..." maybe. I'm kinda tired; if I were more awake I'd watch the movie and find out. maybe I'll watch it tomorrow.

Well in TNG era they didnt seem to have the ability, at least not on star ships... ala Voyager.

As I recall Scotty didn't produce new crystals, but used the energetic photons from the E-65's reactor to repair the original ones.

To be precise, the dilithium was decrystallising. Soctty used "high energy photons" from a fission reactor to recrystallise them.

Teaos wrote:Well in TNG era they didnt seem to have the ability, at least not on star ships... ala Voyager.

I do know, as per Relics that they do have the ability to repair/maintain the crystals while keeping them inside the warp core. I don't remember the exact quote but it's when Scotty is poking around the engine room and pulls out the crystal assembly.

GrahamKennedy wrote:To be precise, the dilithium was decrystallising. Soctty used "high energy photons" from a fission reactor to recrystallise them.

Ah, yes, I see. My nighttime memory was slightly faulty. Thank you both.

me,myself and I wrote:

Teaos wrote:Well in TNG era they didnt seem to have the ability, at least not on star ships... ala Voyager.

I do know, as per Relics that they do have the ability to repair/maintain the crystals while keeping them inside the warp core. I don't remember the exact quote but it's when Scotty is poking around the engine room and pulls out the crystal assembly.

As I recall the word Geordi used was "recomposite", whatever that means.

GrahamKennedy wrote:As I recall the word Geordi used was "recomposite", whatever that means.

I took it to refer to the same recrystallisation procedure Scotty invented in TVH.

Which would extend the life of the crystals and solving one of the TOS problems-trying to find dilithium-rich planets.