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How ships differ in game and in-universe
deaftravis05
Member Posts: 4,885 Arc User
The excel is an excellent ship for a reason. It's a battleship, built by Starfleet to be its first ship designed for war. That meant the design has to be simple, it has to be effective, capable of holding its own in border wars and easy to build.
It's been updated a few times over the decades to bring it in line with technologies.
The Defiant was built along the same idea, but smaller, cheaper and faster.
That's why those two ships are excellent for tactical-oriented situations.
So, if you'd look at canon and the manuals, you'd understand why those two ships are solid.
The Defiant is a hunter-killer, designed to kill Borg but turned out to be effective against the Dominion.
The Excel is a capital ship designed to kill other capital ships, more specifically Romulan and Klingon.
There's no compromise, they're meant to be battle-oriented.
Now if you take the Galaxy, the Sovereign or other Federation ships, you'd see that they compromise abilities to do other things. They're multimission explorers. While the Galaxy was considered a heavy cruiser, it was not easy to build. It was expensive and had its weaknesses. However it could handle prolonged engagements away from the Federation. The Excel cannot. It has to kill its target quickly and stay close to supply lines. Same as the Defiant. The Sovereign is an upgraded version of the Galaxy but more meant for deep space patrols. It's more of a battleship than an explorer.
So say I was an Admiral and had to decide what I wanted to have my fleet comprised of, I'd decide on several things. Say I was an admiral assigned to a border where I had just one starbase that was well supplied but the border was tense and tend to have a few shooting matches, I'd deploy my fleet as thus
Sovereigns to the border colonies, commanding a squadron comprising of a Sovereign as the flagship and a few Defiants to serve as escorts. I'd have a science ship such as an Intrepid or a Nebula plus a supply ship for the Defiants. They'd explore, monitor the border and engage anything that crosses. Regular supply runs to keep the Defiants well armed and rotate its crew.
Galaxies on their own, doing deep space exploration and patrols. To show the flag.
Closer to the starbase and the larger colonies, I'd have Excel cruisers and Defiants plus whatever else ships I can get. I'd deploy the Excels on regular duties and use their speed to get to the outlying colonies quickly if my Sovereigns are facing problems.
In naval concepts, I'm treating Sovereigns as carrier groups, Galaxies as nuclear submarines and Excel as battle groups.
Carriers are capable of inflicting great damage, but they're meant to hit and run or oversee invasions. They're not meant to do prolonged engagements. Nuclear submarines are sent for long patrols, on their own but have the ability to inflict a great deal of pain and suffering if necessary. The Russian flagship once was a submarine. Battlegroups are ships that are powerful, meant to fight all-out wars. The admiral of a carrier group thinks in a protective method. That admiral also is able to oversee relief efforts, host high ranking government officials and deal with a host of issues. The admiral of a submarine (or captain) is trained in three things; to explore, to keep the crew from getting bored and to asset any targets that they come along. Battle group admirals don't care. You're a threat, you're blown out of the water. Moving on.
That's why Excels are a solid ship if you're shooting targets up. Its job is to get in, engage the target, rip it to shreds and return to base. There isn't much compromise in it. It's cheap, quick and cheap to build; makes for great deployment to protect high value targets.
If I had to select my ship to command, for headed to the front lines, I'd take command of a Sovereign. It's large, well armed and impressive to look at. It's more stately, and more advanced but I'd take a few Excels as escorts to protect my ship while I oversaw the battle.
tl'dr; Excels are great ships to have around, but I wouldnt keep my flag on them.
It's been updated a few times over the decades to bring it in line with technologies.
The Defiant was built along the same idea, but smaller, cheaper and faster.
That's why those two ships are excellent for tactical-oriented situations.
So, if you'd look at canon and the manuals, you'd understand why those two ships are solid.
The Defiant is a hunter-killer, designed to kill Borg but turned out to be effective against the Dominion.
The Excel is a capital ship designed to kill other capital ships, more specifically Romulan and Klingon.
There's no compromise, they're meant to be battle-oriented.
Now if you take the Galaxy, the Sovereign or other Federation ships, you'd see that they compromise abilities to do other things. They're multimission explorers. While the Galaxy was considered a heavy cruiser, it was not easy to build. It was expensive and had its weaknesses. However it could handle prolonged engagements away from the Federation. The Excel cannot. It has to kill its target quickly and stay close to supply lines. Same as the Defiant. The Sovereign is an upgraded version of the Galaxy but more meant for deep space patrols. It's more of a battleship than an explorer.
So say I was an Admiral and had to decide what I wanted to have my fleet comprised of, I'd decide on several things. Say I was an admiral assigned to a border where I had just one starbase that was well supplied but the border was tense and tend to have a few shooting matches, I'd deploy my fleet as thus
Sovereigns to the border colonies, commanding a squadron comprising of a Sovereign as the flagship and a few Defiants to serve as escorts. I'd have a science ship such as an Intrepid or a Nebula plus a supply ship for the Defiants. They'd explore, monitor the border and engage anything that crosses. Regular supply runs to keep the Defiants well armed and rotate its crew.
Galaxies on their own, doing deep space exploration and patrols. To show the flag.
Closer to the starbase and the larger colonies, I'd have Excel cruisers and Defiants plus whatever else ships I can get. I'd deploy the Excels on regular duties and use their speed to get to the outlying colonies quickly if my Sovereigns are facing problems.
In naval concepts, I'm treating Sovereigns as carrier groups, Galaxies as nuclear submarines and Excel as battle groups.
Carriers are capable of inflicting great damage, but they're meant to hit and run or oversee invasions. They're not meant to do prolonged engagements. Nuclear submarines are sent for long patrols, on their own but have the ability to inflict a great deal of pain and suffering if necessary. The Russian flagship once was a submarine. Battlegroups are ships that are powerful, meant to fight all-out wars. The admiral of a carrier group thinks in a protective method. That admiral also is able to oversee relief efforts, host high ranking government officials and deal with a host of issues. The admiral of a submarine (or captain) is trained in three things; to explore, to keep the crew from getting bored and to asset any targets that they come along. Battle group admirals don't care. You're a threat, you're blown out of the water. Moving on.
That's why Excels are a solid ship if you're shooting targets up. Its job is to get in, engage the target, rip it to shreds and return to base. There isn't much compromise in it. It's cheap, quick and cheap to build; makes for great deployment to protect high value targets.
If I had to select my ship to command, for headed to the front lines, I'd take command of a Sovereign. It's large, well armed and impressive to look at. It's more stately, and more advanced but I'd take a few Excels as escorts to protect my ship while I oversaw the battle.
tl'dr; Excels are great ships to have around, but I wouldnt keep my flag on them.
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About the other things, please don't mix real naval concepts with Star Trek ships, it never ends well and is totally flawed too.
I simply assume you where not trying to troll or mock ppl with this, i suggest to get informed about things first before posting stuff like that.
No offense meant.
1. Star trek is mixed with naval concepts
2. I used naval concepts as an analogy in terms of fleet deployment, not how they fight.
3. It was designed and built while the Federation was at war. It's a warship. The Defiant was built purely just for war. The Federation had meant to deploy the excel as an explorer when peace came. The Defiant has no intention of not being used for war.
4. Yes the Excel was built as a testbed for transwarp. That's the prototype, not the design widely used.
5. Nice try.
Time will only tell!
/10char
Literally nothing you wrote is supported by any canon or secondary (i.e. tech manuals) sources. Don't confuse STO with Trek canon. Which is ironic, because that's what this thread is supposed to be about.
The Defiant was designed to be a mobile defensive platform against Borg, probably used in squadrons akin to how BoP's operate, but never saw action against them because the design was flawed and only later saw action against the Dominon when it was meant to be an upgrade over runabouts for stationary defense (see DS9 manual).
The Excelsior was a big success, but it was a Starfleet Cruiser, not a battleship. It's officially classed as Explorer.
Once fully integrated into the fleet, the Excelsior's sister ships were used for a variety of mission profiles, ranging from deep space exploration and terraforming missions, to patrol duty, to courier and transport runs. (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country; TNG: "Tin Man", "The Drumhead", "Brothers", "Allegiance"; DS9: "Homefront", "For the Uniform", etc.) - MA.
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The Defiant was called a battleship in cannon, yet it's not. Battleships are ships built for battle. The excel models (not the prototype) were built to fight (or defend) in times of war. It's sturdy, easy and quick to build.
STO and canon, ugh, i hate trying to mix them together. I'm speaking from if Star trek was real and I was an admiral. I'd take the cheap, easy to build ships that are pretty good for battle, and deploy them to defend core worlds, or worlds where numbers are nice.
p.s. The Defiant class did see action against the borg.
Where do you get thousands?
If the cruiser can easily be put together, it's possible to do it quickly.
I would estimate about a hundred of them were built in the time span from its production to now. Estimating at least 1 a year.
The Defiant Class was officially classified as an "escort", not a battleship.
intially a while since it was the biggest class to date a while. But as time went on and bigger ships were built it got easier to make them. As far as we know they are still being built so in 80 years by DW and 100 by STO. That's alot of time to make ships.
Also to the other guy. Defiant was labled a warship not battleship
So they stripped the Excelsior off her engine, replaced with a regular warp drive, changed the hull and components a bit and then you had Starfleets newest standard cruiser. My guess is that they didn't want to scrap the design just because the prototype failed (maybe it turned out to be a great design despite the original failure). At no point in the show or movies was the Excelsior classified as a "battleship" though.
Non-canon sources are a different story. In the Starfleet Command series, the Excelsior was a "heavy battlecruiser" in 1 and 2. But IMO they only referred to her as such, because the game made no distinction between faction ship types. For example, the B'rel BoP was called the E4 frigate, not a raider.
"Let them eat static!"
I will have to search for the DS9 episode that introduced the Defiant.
I kinda remember Sisko stating that the Defiant is "officially" classified as an "escort". But unofficially it is considered a warship since it was designed to fight the Borg.
Just to clarify, I am pretty sure term "escort" refers to the real life naval ships that are designed to escort convoys which are small and lightly armed ships that would serve a support role in a fleet . That's different from Cryptic's definition of "escort" which is a front line warship.
Actually, the Defiant was designated, officially, an Escort. Unofficially she was a warship, NOT a Battleship. (Source - Capt. Benjamin Sisko, DS9; Episode 301: The Search Pt.1)
It was designed and built to fight and defeat the Borg. With the diminution of the Borg threat, and the design problems that revealed themselves in trials,... the project was shelved. It was pulled out later and refined/redesigned for fighting the Dominion and was later used, briefly, against the Borg in the "Star Trek: First Contact" time frame.
Yes real naval tradition and terminology is mixed all throughout Star Trek, however, it doesn't extend very far before you get completely off the map. So trying to compose fleets/task forces the way that real navies do is not only useless but idiotic and a waste. Supplies. fuel, personnel,... none of these things is handled or transferred in the Trek universe the way it is in the real world.
As for the purpose of the Excelsior,... it was designed as a direct replacement for the Constitution Class Cruiser. Designed to do all the things that Starfleet Cruisers do. It can be and has been pressed into service as a warship, courier, etc etc etc... but that doesn't mean it was designed for it specifically.
"There... are... four... lights!" ~Jean Luc Picard
I can't honestly take anything you had to say to be serious with comments like the quote above. There are more, but they don't need to be mentioned as the bit above is far from enough.
I look at it this way. Space is big and the Federation is big. Starfleet would need a sizeable fleet to carry out its mission of exploration and defense of the Federation. So while thousands may not unreasonable, hundreds may not. Given a production run of several decades with many shipyards producing them.
Largely I agree it is not appropriate to compare ships and ship classes to the big gun naval days. What distinguished a destroyer from a cruiser to a battleship was not only just size and size of its armament (post WWI this was also largely defined by the major naval treaties), but also its specific role in the battle group. Basically those aren't apparent in what we've seen on-screen or in STO.
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No this doesn't as Federation Shipyards were you talk about ships.
They're Klingons, every cruiser is a battlecruiser to them.
What exactly is a 'Constitution II' ?
To my knowledge, there's the Constitution Class (TOS-era Enterprise), which was later refitted to 'Enterprise Class' stats (TMP-era Refit). But nowhere in canon, has it EVER been called a 'Constitution II'. I know. I've seen every episode more times than I count, and every movie (including the lackluster POS JJ movies).
Boy that is that the truth!
Easy to understand shorthand is what it is.
Easier than typing 'refit' or 'movie version' every time. Might start using it myself.
Constitution II
Connie Refit
Yup, so much more difficult to type Connie Refit. /sarcasm
One could argue that maybe a 25th century Excelsior - due its age and size - may need a refit that specializes its role, but that's... well, speculative. I guess it's likely they won't be used at the forefront anymore, but rather where the situation is ... more controlled, safer, where you probably don't need the best of the best.
Well, when Federation starships enter your homeworld's orbit and say: "Join us, or die" then you can say say they were deceitful with calling their ships "explorers".
But that never happens, for some strange reason.
Even when the Federation actually was in a war, and was in orbit of the Cardassian homeworld, they didn't say: "join us, or die". They just said: "We will make you stop trying to conquer us. Now that your military capabilities are done with and the leaders disposed that ordered those attacks, would you like your independence and some supplies with that? Need any help rebuilding?"
What he missed/discounted was that the Transwarp project was scrapped due to several factors, not the least of which being that improvements in warp field theory and power generation at around the same time meant that conventional warp drives could achieve the same sorts of speeds that the new Transwarp systems could and for roughly the same energy cost.
It was shelved because it was a case of reinventing the wheel though I suspect a lot of fans missed this is at was supplemental information and nothing in TNG indicated that they had redefined what the various Warp factors referred to in the time between the movies took place and TNG beginning (they had, Warp 9 in TNG is so much faster than the Warp 13 Stiles ordered the Exceslior to go to in III that it's not even funny).
Additionally most of the material I've encountered suggests that in-universe the NX-2000 was supposed to be a one-off design used to test and refine the transwarp systems and that a new class was supposed to have been designed and built based on the results of those tests. When the transwarp project was scrapped and the NX-2000 was refit with a standard warp drive system apparently somebody looked at the updated design and it's performance and compared it to the aging fleet of Constitution-class ships and decided that it would be cheaper an easier to adapt the Excelsior's design to take over the role of the Contsitution-class rather than update the Connie's again or design a brand new ship to replace them.
Of course that's all in-universe explanation to account for out-of-universe decisions. The Excelsior was actually designed to be a dud from the get-go and the guy who designed the ship intended for it to be hated...he was incredibly surprised when it proved to be popular. It persisted into TNG alongside the Miranda-class for monetary reasons - using existing models was much cheaper than creating new ones after all. Both of these meant that there needed to be some way of salvaging the design and with Rodenberry being strictly "No Transwarp, No Warp 10+" in TNG they couldn't have the transwarp project succeed yet they still needed a reason for the Excelsior to be around in TNG-era so...
Everything is a garbage scowl to a Klingon, until it fires on them, then its a battlecruiser...
...as far as I'm aware, the Klinks have always referred to the Constitution class (and refit) as a Battlecruiser in canon, its part of Klingon bravado.
LTS, here since...when did this game launch again?