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Why only one ship?
similon
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
This question first occurred to me quite some time ago when watching the next generation, why only send one?
Yes that was an (at the time) top of the Line ship but it is not the only thing that flies around solo. All federation ships seem to, so do all Klingons, but they have some justification for that.
What if your life support cut out, and your Deus Ex Machina engineer was on leave? I've lost count of the number of times I've heard "the next closest ship is a week away" And from what we hear, no crew will last that long. And how about all those random combat encounters? You fend of a Warbird, but lose a nacelle in the fray, then you find a disruptor hole where your comms used to be, what do you do?
For these reasons (and a few others) Would it not make more sense to send ships out in groups? Modern military vessels never go anywhere without support ships.
So, firstly:
1) Do you agree?
2) How many ships seems reasonable?
3) What configuration? A pair of cruisers? A Vesta, Odyssey & Prometheus?
Unsurprisingly, this doesn't exclusively relate to STO, and is easily solved by teaming up, but that's neither canonical nor official.
Yes that was an (at the time) top of the Line ship but it is not the only thing that flies around solo. All federation ships seem to, so do all Klingons, but they have some justification for that.
What if your life support cut out, and your Deus Ex Machina engineer was on leave? I've lost count of the number of times I've heard "the next closest ship is a week away" And from what we hear, no crew will last that long. And how about all those random combat encounters? You fend of a Warbird, but lose a nacelle in the fray, then you find a disruptor hole where your comms used to be, what do you do?
For these reasons (and a few others) Would it not make more sense to send ships out in groups? Modern military vessels never go anywhere without support ships.
So, firstly:
1) Do you agree?
2) How many ships seems reasonable?
3) What configuration? A pair of cruisers? A Vesta, Odyssey & Prometheus?
Unsurprisingly, this doesn't exclusively relate to STO, and is easily solved by teaming up, but that's neither canonical nor official.
___________________________
The day will not save them. And we own the night.
The day will not save them. And we own the night.
Post edited by similon on
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Comments
but space is different and more vast than all oceans combined. just imagine an emergency situation would develope on the ISS...sending an unsceduled vehicle up takes atleast a few days. (i think that is actually no longer the case, since the travel to the station only takes 6 hours now and not 4 days like in the past, i think i read about that somewhere)
More ships means more cast members which means more money.
additionally, Starfleet only explores solo, hardly ever see them going solo into a situation they know for a fact is going to be all out war. ( at least that's how I remember it )
example, dominion wars. HUGE number of ships on screen during engagements
exploration on the same show, single starship.
plus budget :P he has got a point.
most definately, although battlestar galactica did it, back in the 80's and nowadays.
I know that many people will have already picked holes in it, but JJ's Trek (the first one), how was the Enterprise the only ship left alive? Surely, in a Vulcan Emergency, Starfleet wouldn't have sent every remaining ship to go and help Vulcan. What if it was a trap? It would have left Earth wide open for an invasion from the Klingons.
How mine times (old movies) was the Enterprise the only ship in the area too? It was the only ship sent to intercept the Voyager/V'ger cloud because of that very reason. :P
I wonder if we're all over-estimating the size of Starfleets...er...fleet.
Obviously, if we're talking ships in the thousands, then the idea that we're the only ship in range is a little odd.
But if we're talking just a few hundred ships or less....then maybe it works.
You clearly see 3 D-5's get owned by V-Ger.
In Generations you see a Nebula Class, a Miranda Class, and an Oberth Class warp out together after rescuing the crew of the Enterprise.
Also, I agree that Starfleet's primary mission is to explore, not to make war. So there is no justification in their primary mission, for them to need to travel in squadrons.
Finally, according to many sources, the time it would take for a starship to travel at warp 9 to get from Earth to Quo'nos is somewhere in the weeks time frame, give or take the need of the plot. Space is a vast place and there are only so many starships in the fleet that are spread from Deep Space 9 to Starbase 234 on the Romulan boarder. So yeah, it probably would take a while for one ship to get to another.
Jay
Think how many fleet battles we saw in DS9 alone, and how many ships were seen destroyed, in addition to being reported as destroyed. Then there was that Breen Fleet that went to Earth (that must have been quite some fleet in itself); at least with that, Starfleet actually had ships defending the system. God knows what would have happened to Earth if only the Enterprise was available. :P
If Starfleet has no other ships to investigate a moving Cloud, then Starfleet should be invaded and enslaved by the Klingon Empire/Cardassian Union/Dominion/etc
In JJ's Trek (the second one this time) Kirk, the Enterprise and even the Vengeance all managed to get considerably close to Qo'nos in a reasonably short time.
However, in most other trek canon from the television series, at Warp 5 it would take weeks, and sometimes even a month or so. Like it was said previously, Trek moves at the speed that the plot requires.
Maybe once you leave the confines of a solar system, space-time does funky things and travel time between two destinations can vary greatly.
(I know it's really speed of plot, but it's no less hokey in my opinion that introducing the Preservers to explain why budget makes every alien race look like humans with strange foreheads.)
Warp speeds are often modified to suit the needs of the plot as well, but another important factor few pay attention to is navigation. It might very well be easier to travel in well-mapped sectors that the more developed sections of the Federation would have, vs travelling out in the boondocks where no one has gone before. Voyager would sometimes refer to this that despite the length of their journey they could often find little short cuts here and there that would shave off x amount of time.
Actually it's more a case of under-estimating the size of interstellar space. If your fleet of ships numbered thousands... or even millions you still wouldn't have enough. For any significant section of the Galaxy distances are V A S T! For comparison consider that just near Earth space (say a volume defined by less than half that described by Lunar orbit) would constitute a an area MANY times greater than the entire surface of the Earth (land and water). Expanding that volume outward by the time we reach Mars orbit you've increased the volume by many magnitudes. By that point there wouldn't be enough resources on Earth to place starship sized vessels thruout such a volume. That's just a fraction of our own Solar System... :P
I always pictured Starfleet's size as varying depending on whether it's peacetime or wartime. If war looms, Starfleet might increase in size to compensate for the need to maintain more of a military presence in the troubled area. The Borg invasions and the Dominion War were the biggest threats to the Federation's existence, ever. They also (except for the first Borg invasion) happened after TNG. In DS9, it's all revolving around a station. In Voyager, it's a ship that's stuck in the Delta Quadrant after being on a short-range mission. Neither situation is a good way to introduce companion ships or w/e, even if they had the budgeting for it.
So, let's just assume that we're talking Cardassian-tensions area, before the Dominion War. Starfleet probably doesn't have the however many ships it has during the Dominion War, because there's no immediate need for 'em. However, things have been ramped up a bit. Let's just assume they have 1500 ships to patrol the entirety of the Federation (which is really damn big and ungainly) at this time, with maybe 2000-2500 ships during the Dominion War. When you think about it that way, it makes sense that they'd send larger cruisers out on solo missions, equipping the cruisers with the crew and equipment necessary to operate solo for a few years with only occasional returns to a starbase. Sending out groups of 3+ ships on exploratory missions for years on end is a great way to tie up a lot of your defensive capabilities really quickly. Since Starfleet isn't even aimed at being as big and powerful as it can be all the time (since it's not a purely military organization, etc), they have to prioritize and stretch things out a bit.
Hope this makes sense :P
Never fear, Romulans are destined to rule the universe.
'nuff said. :cool: