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Federation needs diversity
keepitcomin
Member Posts: 10 Arc User
How come all federation ships are human in design? Where are all the Vulcan, Andorian or even Trill ships. I would like to see some diversity from the Federation ship design.
Post edited by keepitcomin on
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The other ships like the Defiant and such (assuming that's what you mean by 'human' ships) are not human ships. They're Federation ships.
T6 Vulcan, Andorian and Tellarite ships have been requested often, right now it doesn't seem they're coming.
That said, when it comes to the Federation, who says Starfleet ships are "Human?" They're Federation ships, which means built and crewed by all races of the Federation. Heck, the Captain of the Enterprise is an Andorian.
@risian4 is also right. Memberworld ships are often requested but not popular enough for Cryptic to put into the game (at this point - any more?). But you can still use a T5 D'Kyr, Kumari or Atrox. But Starfleet is a unified service, so diversity in equipment and ships is not really what they go for.
On the other hoof, the Klingon side of the game could use a lot more diversity. It's not supposed to be a red federation or red starfleet. We'd need much more choices in costumes, ships and social zones for the "red" faction and subfactions.
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If we start syndicating Star Trek shows to Andoria you'll see more main characters with antennae.
There were Vulcan-crewed Starfleet ships IIRC. There were also Vulcan captains like the captain of the Saratoga.
The fact that we never saw many other species serving or commanding Starfleet ships has more to do with real life reasons like @davefenestrator points out. Beside the human nature of the viewers, adding a human on a starship is much cheaper than putting a random alien there when you're talking about tv shows. This is also why all aliens look so human-like.
As much as I hope to see an T6 Andorian battlecruiser or a Vulcan cruiser from the 29th century, I don't think we'll be seeing anything like that soon.
Of course we pretty much only see Starfleet ships.... we are Starfleet Officers!
Let's make a list:
Andorian - Kumari Class
Vulcan - D'kyr Class
Caitian - Atrox (a.k.a U.S.S. Cat Carrier)
That's IT....
Who is Missing:
Bajorans - We could use some of the sublight fighter used in the 3 part "Circle Homecomming Siege" as a carrier pet / small craft
Trill - There is the Shuttle that I think Torias Dax tested carrier pet / small craft
Tellarite - Small craft from Bounty ENT episode
Bolians - Maybe some sort of merchant oriented vessel, like the ferengi
Benzite - ???
Deltans - ???
Saurian - ???
El-Aurian - ???
Betazoid - ???
Ba'ku / Sona - ???
Zakdorn - ???
Voyager had some Bajorans, Vulcans and Bolians on the ship too. Again, the fact that most crewmen walking the corridors are humans is because they don't require much special attention in terms of make-up and such. That doesn't mean other Federation cultures are not involved in the running or designing of Federation ships.
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United Earth Starfleet. (Whats Depicted in Enterprise) is not the same Starfleet we see depicted in TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, or STO. Thats would be UFP Starfleet.
Very Different Organizations.
I don't think we'll see them (edit: soon) because there are no indications yet that they're coming. No news on it, no other hints that I'm aware of, sadly.
Also, I don't know exactly how long the D'Kyr has been in the game, but it has been there for quite some time. The Andorian ships aren't exactly recent additions either.
I do say we could use more ships from the other cultures.
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Um ya, no...
In enterprise, you see the PRE-Federation starfleet. That organization was retired when Earth joined the United Coalition of planets, that soon thereafter became the United Federation of planet.
While it is true, that all Pre-Federation personel was transferred to the new Starfleet that was chartered along with the new coalition and certain rules were adopted by the new Starfleet (Section 31 among others), they are entirely separate enteties.
Any ships and facilities build after the the Romulan wars and the signing of this new coalition, are cross-species ships (for example, pre-UFP ships did not have tractorbeams or shields), that serve the federation, and not humans.
Remember: Just because they LOOK similar, dosen't mean they are the same species... For example: Many freighters across species look extremely similar, yet they are not the same species.
This ^ gets my vote for the best reply to OP's post
As far as Captains/Human mainly crews. In my mind there are two reasons for this. One is more speculative on my part. The other is reality.
The first point (As made by others). is the reality of it. Having humans running around requires about 10 minutes max in the makeup chair. Having Klingons, Vulcans, Andorians, or Whomevers requires in upwards of 4-6 hours (I think at one time Dorn said that was how long it took him for the Worf Makeup) and expensive prosthetics. Sci-fi shows in general are rather expensive as is. That is why they do things like Bridge episodes. So you are going to have fewer aliens and more humans to cut costs.
The more speculative reason for me, is Star Trek is always more about the human condition then anything else. It is about who we are as human being and what we can become. It is always hard to do that without an actual human element. Something that ties it all back to what makes us who we are.
And if you recall from Enterprise, the other races didn't really seem all that interested in exploring. They had Warp for many years before humans and had done very little exploring. (Vulcans explored but were so detailed it took them decades to map 1 system.) So makes sense if you have one member race all gung-ho for exploring you let them do it and the rest just putter around their own spaces. Probably why all angry races want to blow up Earth instead of Andoria or Vulcan.
Or you could think like NATO. The US make a lot of military stuff so other countries don't really bother for the expense. They'd rather just buy the finished product instead of the expense of R&D on their own.
Generally, the NX class, and other ships of human designs seem to be better thought out.
Take a look at the D'Kyr class: A cylinder, with a ring around it. Weapons-wise alone, this creates a serious weapons blind-spot around the ship (Basically, you can't use forward weapons to fire backwards... You can do that on the NX-Class). This also goes for sensors btw. For a ship like the D'Kyr to have full and proper sensor coverage, you'd need significantly more sensor nodes scattered around the ship.
The NX class needs the sensor-dome on the bottom, and assuming a smaller amount of nodes on top.
Finally: The NX class isn't exactly a pure human ship to begin with, right?
It may also be that human ships were universal enough to be able to easily adapt existing designs into?
For example: Humans and Andorians use Dual Nacelles, while Vulcans use the Ring nacelle, and Tellarites use a rear-placed design. So perhaps the Vulcans accepted that the Dual-build may have been more effective (futher enforced by the fact that alot of later Vulcan ships use Dual-nacelle build... not all of them though).
Remember, that while yes: Human designed, Human build, the Vulcans had a great deal of options to provide input when Henry Archer designed the ship... He even told Archer, that Soval had been "Very helpful".
This is also indicated, as Ships such as the NX-Era Intrepid, Conestoga and Sarajevo, are of significantly different design.
Starfleet is not a hodgepodge of different member race navies and vessels. It was right when it was formed at the end of ENT, because it was brand new and the members threw in their pieces together.
But from TOS onwards, no, the "hodgepodge" nature of Starfleet during the Federation's founding was long gone. At no time in Star Trek from TOS, through TNG, DS9, VOY, and their associated TOS/TNG-crew movies, have we ever, ever seen anything like, Vulcan, Andorian Cruisers and such.
Again, it would make sense if STO was set in Founding-era of the Federation, but it isn't. Starfleet handles it all for the Federation.
To argue "other ships exist" because they are in the premium store or require ridiculous grinds that tempt you to power through with money, or blow millions of EC on the exchange (above free EC cap, which means, you have to make a premium purchase to go above that...) only justifies the fact that the game is nothing but an ATM machine for Cryptic. "You want a ship that's not Starfleet in design even though these other worlds are part of the Federation? That's cool, pay me."
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I think the difference between early Vulcan and Human exploration stems more from their attitudes indeed. One of the impressions I got from Archer in the first episodes, where he asks T'Pol to put her tricorder away, or that episode where he didn't want to use a probe but rather have fun on the planet himself (where we never see him study anything btw) supports this. He appeared a bit amateurish to me, as if they were out there to just enjoy themselves instead of fulfilling certain tasks. The lack of procedures and professionalism from other crewmen (except Reed perhaps) didn't exactly help in taking them serious either.
Of course this all changed after the first couple of episodes, and they were still learning too. Still, the difference between area explored and actual in-depth exploration may largely be explained by different attitudes. Vulcans may have explored less and keep their ships closer to home, that doesn't mean they're not exploring, nor that their scientific contributions are not important.
Humans were basically just satisfying some basic need to see what is out there. Much like a child or some young animals who want to explore their own direct environment. Vulcans were more scientific explorers, more thorough and cared more for the result of their exploration rather than getting satisfaction out of the process itself.
So that may indeed be another reason why we're mostly seeing humans on deep space exploration missions. The other species have grown up already
To be honest, there were quite some times when I agreed with the general Vulcan opinion on immature humans in Enterprise.
As for the 'blowing up the Earth thing': I think that all the angry races only want to blow up Earth (which isn't exactly true btw, but I know what you mean) because it's easier to make the battle an important one for human players.
I forget where I left the book, but my (really old) Star Trek Encyclopedia mentioned that Zefram Cochrane's warp designs were far more efficient than any other races designs, which is why Federation ships stuck with the external twin nacelle design even though warp fields work just fine with just one, or having them streamlined inside the ship, like you see with Vulcan science ships or Klingon Birds of Prey. Even some Federation ships use just one nacelle, simply because it's a small ship designed for small simple missions, like bringing stranded ships to spacedock, low risk patrols and the like.
Much like cars, four wheels work really well. Some have six, some others have three, but four is right at the sweet spot for ease of use and ability to support.
That being said, I'd love to see more minor species ships show up, even as T-5's, or Small Craft. Heck, just a playable version of the Alien Ships (Frigate, Cruiser, Escort, Science, and Battleship) would go a long way to make it more diverse.
Considering how much the ship creation team recycled ship models to keep costs down for the TV Shows, it'd make perfect sense too!