test content
  • Games
  • Social
  • Arc News
  • Support
  • Zen
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Forums > Home› Feedback› Federation Discussion

WHY Would Starfleet replace Excelsior with Ambassador?

paragon92518paragon92518 Member Posts: 268
edited April 2014 in Federation Discussion
By looking at the Excelsior (ST III era) vs. Ambassador (TNG era). According to *canon*, the Ambassador was designed to replace the aging Excelsior. OK, understood, but a close inspection between both ships reveals quite the opposite.

The Excelsior boasts over Ambassador :

. Greater weapons firepower (4 weapon slots)
. LT. Cmdr Tactical Bridge slot
. Advanced Transwarp Drive (AKA special ship power)
. Better Turn Rate
. Slightly bigger crew


The Ambassador has:

. "Slightly" greater hull
. 3 Science slots (is this somehow supposed to make up for lack of Tac slots)?


The Excelsior will out-gun, out maneuver, go faster, and than its' younger sister. Can anyone explain why Starfleet would even bother building an inferior ship to replace an older, superior one?

Constructive criticism, thoughts, concerns, ideas, opinions are welcome. Let's provide a thesis either way.
[SIGPIC]http://media.photobucket.com/image/dofftrader/yoreantiques/DOFFtrader.gif[/SIGPIC]
Post edited by paragon92518 on
«134567

Comments

  • ozy83ozy83 Member Posts: 156 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    LOL, you're comparing canon to STO... A game which has the excelsior more powerful than a galaxy class.. Hilarious isn't it.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    Lag Watch:
    Delta Rising: Warning
    Anniversary Event: Severe
    Iconian Season: Critical
  • thecosmic1thecosmic1 Member Posts: 9,365 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    Game stats have nothing to do with canon. The Sovereign has 16 phaser arrays and 10 torpedo launchers in canon, yet only has the same 8 slots everyone has in the game. :)

    If you're trying to use game stats to justify one over the other it just won't work. And even then you need to use the T3 stats - as the canon version of both the Excelsior and Ambassador would be T3 compared to the T4 Galaxy.

    All the T5 Refits and Retrofits are completely outside of canon.
    STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
  • trhrangerxmltrhrangerxml Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    Technically speaking the two ships were built for 2 different eras. The Excelsior was technically built in a time of war, the Ambassador class during a time when the Klingons were at peace with the Fed and a great time for exploration. So the Excelsior being more armored and the Ambassador being more sciencey actually makes sense. The whole thing with the Romulans was sorta out of place, don't forget that the Romulans were also in succlution during that time period.
    Hi, my name is: Elim Garak, Former Cardassian Oppressor

    LTS, here since...when did this game launch again? :D
  • khan5000khan5000 Member Posts: 3,008 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    To be honest I don't think the Ambassador was a successful ship for Star fleet...I am in the middle of a TNG marathon and the Excelsior showed up a bit but not the Ambassador.
    Your pain runs deep.
    Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
  • thecosmic1thecosmic1 Member Posts: 9,365 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    khan5000 wrote: »
    To be honest I don't think the Ambassador was a successful ship for Star fleet...I am in the middle of a TNG marathon and the Excelsior showed up a bit but not the Ambassador.
    That's more of a mechanics issue. Most of TNG was not done digitally. They had the Excelsior models from earlier Trek movies so they used them often. The Ambassador model wasn't made until Season 3 - and they only had the one so they needed to be more careful on how they used it.
    STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
  • capnmanxcapnmanx Member Posts: 1,452 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    khan5000 wrote: »
    To be honest I don't think the Ambassador was a successful ship for Star fleet...I am in the middle of a TNG marathon and the Excelsior showed up a bit but not the Ambassador.

    Could be, but that could also be explained by the Ambassador continuing to head off into the unknown, while the older Excelsior spent more time hanging around the Federation doing grunt work. That'd be why we didn't see many other Galaxy class ships either.

    You could even explain the conspicuous absence of the Ambassador class during the Dominion War in a similar way.

    Something needed to hold down the fort while Starfleet was busy sending pretty much every ship it could find or cobble together to the front lines; Ambassador class ships could have been large enough, flexible enough, and powerful enough, to more or less keep things nailed down by themselves for a while (all the major powers were busy, so things were probably pretty quiet away from the front lines).
    My old (and now mostly obsolete) exploration suggestions thread. Give it a read. :)
  • cosmonaut12345cosmonaut12345 Member Posts: 114 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    20 bucks a ship vs. free adds up after a while, my friend! Just financial realities of it.

    Oh, the IC reason!

    Well, the reason I came up with in the Robert April-verse was that the Ambassador was designed for long-range exploration and diplomatic contact, while the Excelsior was built for blasting Commies, er, Klingons/Romulans. So in an era of peace, they switched. When the Ambassador didn't work very well, they doubled-down with something big and heavy, the Galaxy.
  • admiralq1732admiralq1732 Member Posts: 1,561 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    Admittedly the Ambassador got a bum wrap during the series but she was the first ship with Phaser strips and cannon wise in a toe to toe match the Ambassador would win. during TNG there was probably only about 20 of the ship around where as the Oberth, Miranda, and Excel have the record for the most produce ships in the fleet so there are hundreds to maybe thousands of the class flying in space. Note during TNG cannonly there was only 3 active Galaxys. What are the chances of meeting a Ambassador or a Gal?
  • terlokiterloki Member Posts: 287 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    The real-world reason the Ambassador isn't seen more is rather simple: Someone dropped the model and they either didn't bother to fix it, or simply didn't have the time and money to do so, thus leading to the Excelsior being used.

    Between that and the fact that the ship had to be heavily redesigned between the concept an model stages for budget reasons, I kinda feel sorry for the Ambassador, it's had a rough ride.
    Admiral Katrina Tokareva - U.S.S. Cosmos, Yorktown-class Star Cruiser
    Admiral Dananra Lekall - R.R.W. Teverresh, Deihu-class Warbird
    General J'Kar son of K'tsulan - I.K.S. Dlahath, Vo'devwl-class Carrier
  • maxvitormaxvitor Member Posts: 2,213 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    There is no comparing how this game has ships arranged to how things supposedly worked in universe. In universe the Excelsior would be a molten pile of slag from the Ambassador's weapons. It would not be as fast, as durable, or as powerful do to it being a more primitive design. Comparing an Excelsior with an Ambassador is like comparing a P-51 Mustang with an F-16 Falcon.
    If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
    Oh Hell NO to ARC
  • thecosmic1thecosmic1 Member Posts: 9,365 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    maxvitor wrote: »
    There is no comparing how this game has ships arranged to how things supposedly worked in universe. In universe the Excelsior would be a molten pile of slag from the Ambassador's weapons. It would not be as fast, as durable, or as powerful do to it being a more primitive design. Comparing an Excelsior with an Ambassador is like comparing a P-51 Mustang with an F-16 Falcon.
    The Defiant couldn't make the Excelsior a molten slag so I doubt the Ambassador could - and the Defiant was 30-40 years more advanced than the Ambassador and had considerable more firepower.

    I'm not saying the Ambassador isn't a good ship but the combined 3 minutes of screen time we see it do anything in battle it loses to some Roms or gets popped by a Borg. In canon it's hardly a god of war ship. :)
    STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
  • stirling191stirling191 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    thecosmic1 wrote: »
    The Defiant couldn't make the Excelsior a molten slag so I doubt the Ambassador could - and the Defiant was 30-40 years more advanced than the Ambassador and had considerable more firepower.

    The Defiant could have slagged the Lakota, but both Worf and Benteen decided to stand down rather than continue a pointless engagement (since Benteen didn't actually believe Leyton's lie about Defiant carrying changelings).

    But that's not really relevant to the issues at hand (the disconnect between STO and in-universe realities, and the behind the scenes shenanigans that kept the Ambassador from getting all that much screen-time).
  • thecosmic1thecosmic1 Member Posts: 9,365 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    stirling191 wrote: »
    The Defiant could have slagged the Lakota, but both Worf and Benteen decided to stand down rather than continue a pointless engagement (since Benteen didn't actually believe Leyton's lie about Defiant carrying changelings).

    But that's not really relevant to the issues at hand (the disconnect between STO and in-universe realities, and the behind the scenes shenanigans that kept the Ambassador from getting all that much screen-time).
    Actually, the admiral ordered the Lakota to used its Quantums - which Sisko stated would destroy the Defiant and kill everyone aboard. The Lakota refused, which led to the stand down.
    STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
  • disposeableh3r0disposeableh3r0 Member Posts: 1,927 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    Space pot, that stuff is potent isn't it.
    As a time traveller, Am I supposed to pack underwear or underwhen?

    Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln

    Occidere populo et effercio confractus
  • stirling191stirling191 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    thecosmic1 wrote: »
    Actually, the admiral ordered the Lakota to used its Quantums - which Sisko stated would destroy the Defiant and kill everyone aboard. The Lakota refused, which led to the stand down.

    When asked for status reports you hear that the Lakota is far more damaged, and had sustained considerably more casualties, than the Defiant. Both ships weren't untouched, I'm not arguing that in the least, but remember that Worf was pulling his punches. Benteen didn't (up until refusing to deploy Quantums).
  • thecosmic1thecosmic1 Member Posts: 9,365 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    stirling191 wrote: »
    When asked for status reports you hear that the Lakota is far more damaged, and had sustained considerably more casualties, than the Defiant. Both ships weren't untouched, I'm not arguing that in the least, but remember that Worf was pulling his punches. Benteen didn't (up until refusing to deploy Quantums).
    Except that Torpedoes are the big weapon in a Cruiser's arsenal - as it didn't have Defiant's energy cannons. It's like sending a tank into battle and telling them not to use the 120 mm cannon, just use the 3 machine guns.

    Of course the Defiant is going to win that conflict. It's the hero-ship. But if someone less honorable had been captaining the Lakota the Defiant would have gone splat. One Quantum would have blown it to dust.

    My overall point was that the Defiant was more advanced than an Ambassador, so I doubt the Ambassador would have walked all over the Excelsior. The Excelsior was built for conflict. The Ambassador was built for exploration.
    STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
  • vitzhvitzh Member Posts: 519
    edited April 2013
    ozy83 wrote: »
    LOL, you're comparing canon to STO... A game which has the excelsior more powerful than a galaxy class.. Hilarious isn't it.


    Think this should be standard response to every post? Add something about script writers doing idiotic stuff and making everything not make sense. (Casing point is when they created canon ship files, it was very interesting to note how much weaker fed ships were compared to Klingon and Romulan ships of the same class; and if feds wished to make something as good they broke the bank 9/10)
    KDF Future with Cryptic. Fact.

    What Cryptic should consider before releasing anything.
  • stirling191stirling191 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    thecosmic1 wrote: »
    My overall point was that the Defiant was more advanced than an Ambassador, so I doubt the Ambassador would have walked all over the Excelsior. The Excelsior was built for conflict. The Ambassador was built for exploration.

    No arguments with that at all.
    skollulfr wrote: »
    uh, "plot armor", the defiant was made of the stuff.

    tch, oh, its you.... i should read the names before responding.

    Did you actually have a point? Or do you make it a habit of jumping straight into a thread and randomly insulting everyone who has ever disagreed with one of your unsupported concepts?
  • blitzy4blitzy4 Member Posts: 839 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    On a side note, the Ambassador makes a pretty nice Light 'tactical' cruiser. I've been having lots of luck with mine.
    jKixCmJ.jpg
    "..and like children playing after sunset, we were surrounded by darkness." -Ruri Hoshino



  • thegreendragoon1thegreendragoon1 Member Posts: 1,872 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    I think the power of the Ambassador (at least at Tier 5) is that it has a lot of versatility without giving up too much. Built correctly, it can be quite a bear.
  • snoggymack22snoggymack22 Member Posts: 7,084 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    cosmonaut12345 wrote: »
    while the Excelsior was built for blasting Commies, er, Klingons/Romulans.

    You're going to have to do a better job explaining how the Excelsior was built for blasting Romulans. Using the TNG episode Neutral Zone as you know, reference.

    Go!
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • khan5000khan5000 Member Posts: 3,008 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    Ships in the series needed to be as strong or as weak as the plot needed it to be...one minute the Galaxy is the pinnacle of Star Fleet technology the next its taken out by three hits from a Warbird
    Your pain runs deep.
    Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
  • desertjetsdesertjets Member Posts: 207 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    These discussions are so fruitless because what we saw on screen in the TV series and movies was much more a function of budget and budget constraints and what the writers felt they could do (I like the term plot armor by the way). If budgets weren't an issue I suspect we would have seen contemporaries to the Galaxy in TNG rendezvousing to drop off the admiral of the week, vs. 50-70 year old cruisers or frigates doing the same job. But it is hard to justify that when they had perfectly good studio models of the Excelsior and Miranda laying around.


    Now lets imagine that Starfleet is in fact a real military/exploration agency in a world that faces fairly rapid technological advances and one that physically is expanding. Baseline for baseline an Exclesior class ship first conceived and designed in the 2270s and 2280s will be less advanced, less capable, less of everything than the Ambassador that was conceived and designed in the 2320s and 2330s. That's 50 years of technological and operational advances.

    Now I suspect Starfleet in their infinite wisdom understands they are in a world that faces massive technological advances and is physically advancing knows that it needs a ton of ships to provide for the defense of the Federation and exploration/diplomacy missions would have built in some expandability/upgradability to any given ship design. So an non-upgraded Excelsior with a 2290 build date is going to look and be capable of different stuff than say one with a 2320 build date. But ultimately there is a ceiling to how much you can upgrade a space frame. That new stuff may not fit or may not fit without cutting a giant hole in the hull of the ship. Even mission requirements may change significantly. While the Ambassador class was developed during a time of peace and expansion (and may have been biased in its fitting out for certain missions) would still likely represent a fairly significant leap over the baseline Excelsior in both offensive and defensive capabilities. Further the limits on what it could be refitted/upgraded to would likely be higher than an Excelsior as well.
  • ouroboros99ouroboros99 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    I'd agree with the post on the first page that the Excelsior was designed and built during the height of the Klingon cold war Starfleet had going on and was thus more likely to be more of a warship with science and research abilities added on as secondary concerns.

    Once the Klingons were no longer an immediate threat Starfleet's priorities shifted back toward exploration and scientific ventures and in that role the Excelsior was more limited and couldn't really be upgraded much more so a new ship class was needed.

    It also explains how they're able to hotrod one of them in Deep Space 9 and have it keep up in a fight with the Defiant, a state of the art modern escort, despite the Excelsior design being 100 years old at the time.

    If you don't need warships though then it's a waste of resources and maintenance.

    There's different metrics by which to measure what constitutes a "better ship" than just which one is better at blowing up things. At the time and for the task Starfleet wanted it for the Ambassador was the better ship.
  • cmdrscarletcmdrscarlet Member Posts: 5,137 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    Man, for the style and look.

    Otherwise, I have no idea :P
    Kathryn S. Beringer - Endless Excelsior - Veritatum Liquido Cernerne - a proud off-meta build
    TT2r1Y3.png
  • crypticarmsmancrypticarmsman Member Posts: 4,115 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    cosmonaut12345 wrote: »
    20 bucks a ship vs. free adds up after a while, my friend! Just financial realities of it.

    Got my Fleet Ambassador 100% 'free' (yeah, I know, someone somewhere paid $5.00 per FSM) in that I got 4 FSMs for about 18 million or so EC of the Exchange. ;)

    Just saying, for the ones who don't want to spend a dime themselves; there are legitimate ways to 'earn' the ships free in game.
    Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012
    TOS_Connie_Sig_final9550Pop.jpg
    PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
  • admiralq1732admiralq1732 Member Posts: 1,561 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    thecosmic1 wrote: »
    The Defiant couldn't make the Excelsior a molten slag so I doubt the Ambassador could - and the Defiant was 30-40 years more advanced than the Ambassador and had considerable more firepower.

    I'm not saying the Ambassador isn't a good ship but the combined 3 minutes of screen time we see it do anything in battle it loses to some Roms or gets popped by a Borg. In canon it's hardly a god of war ship. :)

    Not Lakota was an experiment to beef up the Excel, so most excels during D W would be the standard version of the excel type in the 2370's so if Lakota was a standard Excel of that time and went against the defiant the defiant would have clearly won, if taken to the end. but the fight would have been over earlier than it was in that episode. To the Universe the Excel is the workhorse of the fleet. Note the Klingons feel less inclinded to make new ships. "If it works don't fix it" seems to be the KDF motto and the smallest house can afford a small fleet of BOP and Ktingas
  • maxvitormaxvitor Member Posts: 2,213 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    With Klingons it no so much "If it works don't fix it" as it is "If It still works don't replace it" Klingon society revolves around it's military, which is not a very good situation economically. They're using a lot of these old ships simply because it's cheaper to do so. Like Russians during the Cold War using diesel powered ships for a large proportion of it's submarine fleet because diesels are cheaper to build and maintain than nuclear powered ships.
    If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
    Oh Hell NO to ARC
  • admiralq1732admiralq1732 Member Posts: 1,561 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    skollulfr wrote: »
    and the uss voyager could fly in and kill both with a single volley of beam fire simply because ;
    voyager > borg cube > whole fed fleet.

    where do you get that lgic? Note the ONLY way for Voyager to do that is the 25th upgrades
  • vetteguy904vetteguy904 Member Posts: 3,903 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    yes the Enterprise was surprisingly susceptible to the infamous plasma leak and loss of main power couplings
    sig.jpg
This discussion has been closed.