I wouldn't go so far as some of the places you go, but your theories are in general roughly compatible with my own. Though building a huge ship like the Excelsior on the grounds of being spread too thin is odd . . . they could've built four Mirandas for that one ship, by volume.Tholian_Avenger wrote:Well to answer this in disregard for the several pages of debate about non-canon things, and to verily raise from the dead a horse that was not beat enough--the Oberth and Miranda are reported to be the eldest of designs viewed in TNG and DS9 and those two were seen in droves. Next in line would be the Excelsior.SuperSaiyaMan12 wrote:You know, what are the other ships that they use besides the Connies back then? They have to control thousands of light years of space after all.
To my knowledge, no Constitution class Star Ship was ever shown in either series (except for time travel). Since we also know from TOS that there were very few Constitutions about the obvious answer is that the Constitution was an endurance jogging scientist, with a Slim Pickens sprinter alter ego. Which is to say that Constitutions were kept on the borders and frontiers, and in the event of war were expected to dash into the enemy territory and visit strategic devastation upon them, knowing full well it was a one way trip to prepare time for the rest of the fleet. Recollect, if you will, the period in which this Television Show was conceived and it makes sense. (I guess the USS Me was a Connie?) Recollect, if you will again, that a certain NCC-1701 had a certain ease and natural quality about her dash raid into the Romulan Empire.
Considering that there exists a certain design similarity between the Miranda and Constitution-TMP, and to some extent one can envision this ethos in the Oberth, I feel confident in asserting that a Miranda TOS form was around defending the interior from war and natural disaster, while an Oberth TOS form fleet was also present bringing the mundane cargo, wares, and missions to their destinations. Obviously, then, the actual displayed Oberths and Mirandas certainly functioned that way during the "movie years".
The Excelsior must then be a realization by SF that it was spread to thin and that a resurgent Romulan Empire (with other undiscovered threats) needed a large cruiser force, not merely a blitzkrieg raider + angry cow herd. Certainly there seems to be a recurring pacifist and hawk element in SF's internal discourse. I think the immediate aftermath of the Excelsior build up constitutes the appeasement to the Cardassian menace and others in which Jean Luc Picard's command of the Stargazer featured so dimly. This era of mellow feelings resulted in the (few in number) grandiose Galaxy class which were intended to regally criss cross the Federation when needed and deal with the unwashed mass of frontiersmen when so called upon.
But I concur, for instance, that the political instability of the 2350s probably resulted in the Galaxy Class, finally topping the aged Ambassador Class that had appeared around the time of the last known conflict the Federation took part in for almost fifty years, up to the 2350s. But regarding TOS:
Volumetrically, for instance, the Constitution and Miranda are nearly identical, and by registry info I consider the Miranda to be the newer of the two designs by a few decades.
The Constitution design, to my mind, was 50 years old by the time of TOS, originating sometime circa 2210. She would've been a fairly impressive ship for the Starfleet, being 67% larger in volume than the older Daedalus Class. Kirk noted that there were a dozen Constitutions in service in the 2260's, and with at least seven of these having built in the 2240's (Intrepid 1631, Excalibur 1664, Exeter 1672, NCC-1700, Enterprise 1701 (2245), Lexington 1709, Defiant 1764) I would argue that the early Constitution probably was considered a large and fast vessel, and the presumably-modernized 2240's version was still an excellent starship. But the design was showing its age, perhaps especially compared to the compact and capable Mirandas (better armed with torpedo rollbar or perhaps able to accept mission-specific pods like the Nebula) that were deployed circa the mid-2250s.
By the 2280s, the Excelsior and Constellation class ships were in service, both of which are over three times larger than the Constitutions (the Excelsior is four times larger). And, as soon as TMP there was already the USS Entente NCC 2120, referred to as a dreadnought, a term never used for Constitution Class starships. (That ship could even be of the Constellation Class, since I rather favor the idea that it originated circa 2270 rather than in the late 2280's as the earliest known registry suggests (certainly it cannot have appeared prior to the destruction of the USS Constellation in the mid-2260's).)
Given that the Constitutions did not apparently exist in massive numbers even after the 2240's constructions, and given the existence of diagrams of Hermes/Saladin and Ptolemy Class ships (which may or may not've been tugs, or indeed might've been simply TOS-styled Mirandas or proto-Mirandas depending on how far we want to take the resolution of the Star Trek II screens), those ships must've constituted a high percentage of the fleet.
During the TOS era, then, I would posit at least the following classes:
- (Unknown New Large Dreadnought, Possibly Constellation)
- Constitution Class (12)
- Miranda Class (probably being built in good numbers)
- Ptolemy Class (as proto-Miranda, fairly numerous)
- Saladin/Hermes Class (quite numerous)
- Oberth Class (reasonably numerous)
- Unknown others (probably quite a number of other small classes given the Federation class-happiness of the 24th Century)
Assuming a DS9-era fleet of 8-12 thousand ships, I can't imagine a Federation starfleet during the height of the Klingon Cold War with less than a thousand ships. So to have only a dozen Constitutions implies that other classes made up the vast bulk of the fleet, however famous the Consitutions were.
