Federation Fleet Composition

[BigJKU316]

A hypothetical question for the board that I wanted to get some views on. In this scenario you are in command of Starfleet and are tasked with putting together a few major combat fleets from what you have on hand, lets say 5-10 years after the Dominion War. For reasons you are not privy to Prometheus, Sovereign and Defiant Class ships are not avaliable to you.

The core of the fleet you are creating is comprised of about 30 Galaxy Class Ships, 70 Nebula Class Ships and 70 Akira Class Ships. The rest have to be lighter types as there simply are not more heavy units avaliable. You can use up to 500 total ships for this but assume as a general rule of thumb that the more heavy type units you take (Ambassadors, Excelsiors ect) the less total ships you can have.

So here is the question, given the timeframe and having the whole menagerie of Starfleet ships to pick from what lighter units do you use to fill things out? There is no particular enemy in mind here, just curious how you would organize a fleet from the legacy units avaliable to Starfleet about 5 years after the Dominion War ends.

[Deepcrush]

30 GCS (war refit)
70 Neb (war refit)
70 Akira

Well thats 170 of the 500 there. Though its a pretty good heavy ship list. These ships would make a powerful pitbull style fleet.

100 Ambassador class ships.
100 Excelsior class ships (Lakota refit).
100 Steamrunner class ships.

While the GCS/Neb/Akira would be my center line. The Amb/Ex/Steam are good ships for flank protection. The Ambassador's staying power supported by the Excelsior's QTL means heavy flank damage to the enemy. All the while, the Steamrunners provide close in support against smaller targets that would normally draw heavier fire from my heavy warships.

30 New Orleans class ships (refitted with a single QTL each).

These would be my raiders. While not very good for front line combat duty. Once the main fleet has engaged, these ships would fly past the battle and attack enemy supply points and scouts/patrol. This small number of ships will force the enemy to devote several times their cost in resources to defend against or... the enemy will just have to leave them be and hope for the best.

[BigJKU316]

30 GCS (war refit)
70 Neb (war refit)
70 Akira

Well thats 170 of the 500 there. Though its a pretty good heavy ship list. These ships would make a powerful pitbull style fleet.

100 Ambassador class ships.
100 Excelsior class ships (Lakota refit).
100 Steamrunner class ships.

While the GCS/Neb/Akira would be my center line. The Amb/Ex/Steam are good ships for flank protection. The Ambassador's staying power supported by the Excelsior's QTL means heavy flank damage to the enemy. All the while, the Steamrunners provide close in support against smaller targets that would normally draw heavier fire from my heavy warships.

30 New Orleans class ships (refitted with a single QTL each).

These would be my raiders. While not very good for front line combat duty. Once the main fleet has engaged, these ships would fly past the battle and attack enemy supply points and scouts/patrol. This small number of ships will force the enemy to devote several times their cost in resources to defend against or... the enemy will just have to leave them be and hope for the best.

That seems pretty reasonable, though somewhat heavier than I imagined. So I guess in that configuration the Ambassadors and Excelsiors are light cruisers and the Steamrunners are destroyers, while the New Orleans groups operate almost as old sail type frigates. My only concern would be the huge amount of people and resources devoted to keeping the fleet up. The Ambassador and Excelsior types take a lot of crew.

For example if I went with 100 Steamrunners, 80 Intrepids and 120 Sabers I would save about 100,000 crew, which would in theory make my fleet much simpler to maintain.

I guess I am looking for a balance between strength and sustainability. Not really a fleet deployed for a specific flight but a fleet that would be put together to watch a section of border long term and would have to be able to do scouting, escort and anti-piracy duties as well as be ready for a major fleet action in short order.

I should have limited the smaller force more, so lets say you can have no more than 50,000 crew members (which we can use as somewhat of an estimate as to how maintenance intensive a particular ship might be) to make up the remainder of the fleet not specified in the original question. So if you want to use Excelsiors you could have like 70 of them. That should get us a more "realistic" answer I would think.

[SomosFuga]

So this is not a fleet for any particular strike mission but a fleet that should be able to operate by itself for a while, maybe for some long range mission, right?.
Then you may want some support ships like a couple tenders and tugs, maybe even a tanquer and a hospital ship, depends on the term of you mission. You should also use a few Intrepids for scouting.

[Sionnach Glic]

Does the UFP even have 30 GCSes?

Well, assuming they have, that main core alone is more than enough to anhialate most enemy fleets.

With the heavy-hitters already decided, the majority of the rest of the fleet would be smaller vessels. Scouts, patrol ships, destroyers to guard the flanks, etc. Ideally, you'd also want a fair number of freighters stocked up with spare parts and repair crews, a handful of hospital ships, and a dozen or so aumminition carriers.

[Granitehewer]

lol si, i was wondering how many GCS the ufp had, i did see a shot of at least one under construction in a VOY epi and quite a few later 'VOY:endgame' and if the fleet composition in the dominion war is uniform ,we might expect a similar number to that stated in the thread. I won't comment on this thread as deep has weirdly predicted what i would have said.... jason and his mekon-brain!

[Granitehewer]

Actually I'd scrap the new orleans refits and replace with intrepids, hopefully refit since voyagers' return, or if not intrepids then novas.

[Aaron]

I'll go with my old standby of the Battlegroup, using the tried and true rule of threes.

A single BG would consist of:

1 x GCS
3 x Neb
6 x Akira
12 x Excelsiors
12 x Steamrunners
6 x Defiant (tender escort)
2 x Tenders

Total = 42 vessels

Rinse and repeat until you reach the max number of ships specified. A single BG should be more then able to handle anything locally that comes up. BG's can come together to form Task Groups for larger problems.

[BigJKU316]

Does the UFP even have 30 GCSes?

Well, assuming they have, that main core alone is more than enough to anhialate most enemy fleets.

With the heavy-hitters already decided, the majority of the rest of the fleet would be smaller vessels. Scouts, patrol ships, destroyers to guard the flanks, etc. Ideally, you'd also want a fair number of freighters stocked up with spare parts and repair crews, a handful of hospital ships, and a dozen or so aumminition carriers.

I suppose it depends on how you would define what a "wing" is. It seems most major fleets had multiple Galaxy wings. My running assumption is that this is somewhat based on the Earth organizational systems for naval forces which would have a division being at least two ships, a squadron being at least two divisions and a wing presumably being at least two squadrons. So to me that means a wing can logically be no less than 8 ships as I can't think of any reason that one would use such a designation for any fewer rather than just call it a division or squadron if it were a couple of ships.

Combined with that it seems as if you see a fair number of GCS in DS9 when they go to wide shots of the Fed Fleets so my assumption is there is a fair number of them, though it is flimsy evidence.

And yes, with that core the job is to find the scout ships and destroyers, I just never get a good handle on what ships fill those roles. Other than the Steamrunner I am just not sure what ships would do what.

The reason I ask this is I am putting together a story on the reformation of Starfleet which in my little world starts occuring not long after Nemesis. I know what I would want in a fleet built from the ground up, but I am curious what the immediate reaction of Starfleet woudl be if they were putting together a fleet to say, babysit the wormhole, and keep watch over some border territory. I need the compare and contrast between what they could throw together from their absurd number of ships and classes out there and what they could have if they built from scratch.

[Reliant121]

Scout ships: New Orleans class I think would be a good scoutship.

Destroyers are probably steameruners. Thats what i'd have anyway.

[Captain Seafort]

I suppose it depends on how you would define what a "wing" is. It seems most major fleets had multiple Galaxy wings. My running assumption is that this is somewhat based on the Earth organizational systems for naval forces which would have a division being at least two ships, a squadron being at least two divisions and a wing presumably being at least two squadrons. So to me that means a wing can logically be no less than 8 ships as I can't think of any reason that one would use such a designation for any fewer rather than just call it a division or squadron if it were a couple of ships.

I think, given that we never see more than half a dozen or so GCS in any shot, that it's unlikely that "Galaxy wings" are comprised entirely of Galaxys. It's more likely that they're formations built around a GCS as the flagship, in the same way that carrier battle groups rarely contain more than one or two carriers.

The reason I ask this is I am putting together a story on the reformation of Starfleet which in my little world starts occuring not long after Nemesis. I know what I would want in a fleet built from the ground up, but I am curious what the immediate reaction of Starfleet woudl be if they were putting together a fleet to say, babysit the wormhole, and keep watch over some border territory. I need the compare and contrast between what they could throw together from their absurd number of ships and classes out there and what they could have if they built from scratch.

If you're looking for something to babysit the wormhole, then I think a force along the lines of Kendall's suggestion would be more suitable, or even fewer. We only ever saw four fleets comprised of multiple hundreds of ships, and they were all specially concentrated for major operations - 2nd Bajor, 1st and 2nd Chintoka and Cardassia.

[SomosFuga]

Actually I'd scrap the new orleans refits and replace with intrepids, hopefully refit since voyagers' return, or if not intrepids then novas.

Novas, really? aren't those tiny, weak and slow science ships?

[Deepcrush]

That seems pretty reasonable, though somewhat heavier than I imagined. So I guess in that configuration the Ambassadors and Excelsiors are light cruisers and the Steamrunners are destroyers, while the New Orleans groups operate almost as old sail type frigates. My only concern would be the huge amount of people and resources devoted to keeping the fleet up. The Ambassador and Excelsior types take a lot of crew.

For example if I went with 100 Steamrunners, 80 Intrepids and 120 Sabers I would save about 100,000 crew, which would in theory make my fleet much simpler to maintain.

I guess I am looking for a balance between strength and sustainability. Not really a fleet deployed for a specific flight but a fleet that would be put together to watch a section of border long term and would have to be able to do scouting, escort and anti-piracy duties as well as be ready for a major fleet action in short order.

Well, your points of crew cost are valid. My fleet would require a large crew. I would have liked to take Defiants in place of my New Orleans and Steamrunner classes. That alone would have cut back the crew cost in a massive way.

The point of my fleet was to A.) remain within the OP while B.) providing every service I could think of while C.) being unmatched in combat ability pound for pound. I feel that I have achieved this goal within a reasonable standard.

Long term border patrol would be handled by the Excelsiors, Ambassadors and Nebulas.
Scouting would fall to the Steamrunners and New Orleans.
Science and exploration would be covered by the GCS.
Supplies lines would be maintained by the Akiras. Either by protecting the transports or by being the transports themselves.
All ships in the fleet would serve as law enforcement as all the ships are combat able.

I also picked ships that I felt would be openly available to SF. Both in numbers built and the ability to build more. I'll cover them from the bottom up as that is how I came about my ship classes. The numbers came later on.

The New Orleans, while never shown in number is a small purpose built ship with rather standard tech needs. Simple to build and maintain. Which makes it the perfect raider for a fleet that needs a raider class but doesn't need another heavy/costly warship.

The Steamrunner, again this is a ship that I'm iffy about. I would have rather had the Defiant class to draw from. However, I needed a fairly tough, fast and cheap (relative of course) ship to cover the flanks of my heavier warships. Since even my lighter line warships are rather heavy by standard. I had a gap coming and thought best to cover it before it arrived.

The Excelsior is first off, my favorite ship class in all of trek. Simple as that, they were going to be on this list. Also, the damn things are EVERYWHERE. SF must turn them out like Voy turned out shuttles. With the Lakota upgrade, we have a powerful warhead platform with is both strong in numbers and reliability. However there was problem. Against the Defiant, the Lakota showed that her shields and hull weren't strong enough to survive against most heavy classes. Let alone, win! So I needed a sister/brother ship to cover the Excelsiors while they let loose with their QTLs. This is where the next ship came in.

The Ambassador class ship is a monster. In TNG-YE we see one that takes a beating from as many as half a dozen warbirds over the course of a single day. I figure they must have some damn impressive shields and hull protection. So, with as much time as we've had since then. I'd guess a good number would have been built. So, with a rather powerful holding on shields, hull and phasers (since her phasers look like a slightly older version of those on the Nebs and GCS). I believe this ship would be perfect to protect the Excelsiors.

I should have limited the smaller force more, so lets say you can have no more than 50,000 crew members (which we can use as somewhat of an estimate as to how maintenance intensive a particular ship might be) to make up the remainder of the fleet not specified in the original question. So if you want to use Excelsiors you could have like 70 of them. That should get us a more "realistic" answer I would think.

The problem is that you can't call 50,000 personnel a "realistic" number. The USN had more men in a single fleet back in WWII. So, if you wanted to be ''realistic" then you would have to multiply that number along with the population of the US (WWII) by the population of Earth (24th/25th century). Thats not including the other UFP members though most of SF being human I think the figures work themselves out nicely.

The UFP could easily maintain several fleets of the nature I've designed above through the OP. Even if they only maintained two such fleets. One protecting the Core Worlds (Mostly Earth) and the other on standby to attack anyone who threatens the UFP. Try to figure the power needed to defeat or even just halt a force like that. Knowing all along that there is a second fleet just like it waiting to trade places.

BTW, the DITL fleet calc rates the 500 ship fleet at 501,730.

[McAvoy]

30 GCS (war refit)
70 Neb (war refit)
70 Akira

Well thats 170 of the 500 there. Though its a pretty good heavy ship list. These ships would make a powerful pitbull style fleet.

100 Ambassador class ships.
100 Excelsior class ships (Lakota refit).
100 Steamrunner class ships.

While the GCS/Neb/Akira would be my center line. The Amb/Ex/Steam are good ships for flank protection. The Ambassador's staying power supported by the Excelsior's QTL means heavy flank damage to the enemy. All the while, the Steamrunners provide close in support against smaller targets that would normally draw heavier fire from my heavy warships.

30 New Orleans class ships (refitted with a single QTL each).

These would be my raiders. While not very good for front line combat duty. Once the main fleet has engaged, these ships would fly past the battle and attack enemy supply points and scouts/patrol. This small number of ships will force the enemy to devote several times their cost in resources to defend against or... the enemy will just have to leave them be and hope for the best.

I agree with everything but the numbers and the Steamrunners. I personally do not like the Steamrunners because they could be anywhere in power between a runabout and a Galaxy class for all we know. But anyway:

80 Excelsior class (Lakota type)
80 Ambassador class (Can I have these refitted like the Excelsiors?)
85 Intrepid class
85 New Orleans


Though in a perfect world I would use 170 Intrepid class ships but if those pods are truly torpedo launcher pods they could backup the Akira class. Especially if these are refitted with qunatum torpedoes.

[Deepcrush]

Well, the Steamrunners are a rough guess but they have speed and they are agile which is what I need.

However, why Intrepids?