How long to build a ship??????

Here’s something I came up with Dave’s help when we finally started up the new adventures on a new ship fresh from Spacedock. See Hawkeye-class thread here. http://forum.trek-rpg.net/showthread.php?t=11286

Well the new ship had problems leaving the space dry dock stubbing its toe basically. It had to be toed back in by another ship.

The player who’s character is the ship's Captain turned to me and asked, “how long did it take to build the ship?”

My answer, “I’ll get back to you.”

It brought some laughs at least.


I pulled out the book looked through all I found was 2 SU’s of repair per round 10 per minutes. To build a Galaxy class it would have taken half a day.


That wouldn’t work.


Dave said that he saw somewhere that it took two years to build the Enterprise-D. so there we were two years to build it. Dividing two year into the SU’s it came out to 4.145205479 SU’s per day.

So it takes roughly two hour of work to put 1 SU worth of ship together. I figure starting with 50% of the Outer Hull and 25% of the Inner Hull.

For a Galaxy-Class it would take four days for just that much of the ship.

This is figured for one crew working on the ship each additional shift +2 Su’s per eight hour day. Doubling the crews working the same. As additional shifts.


Let me know what you think.

Your forgetting the decade it took to come up with the design, layout, etc... for your Galaxy scenario. Lets not forget any amount of Red-Tape that also goes along with a new design.

I don't know if additional crews could be added to the process (depending on what you consider a 'crew'). I should take millions of man hours just to lay the basic hull components in place for that size of a ship. One other thing to consider, it probably takes less time to build a ship with older/stock components vs. a cutting edge tech design ship of the same size/SU total (Example: Miranda vs. Saber or Defiant).

Although it would take considerable amount of time to design, engineer, and build a prototype . . . the process in which one designs, engineers, and builds a ship matters as well.

For instance look at the turn around time for the F/A-22 and the F-35. The amount of time from concept to IOC is far different due to three things: funding, mission concept, and tools used in the design. Where as the F/A-22 was the last aircraft, arguably, to be designed traditionally . . . this took time. Where was the F-35 used more computer simulations. But then again, the F/A-22 had funding peaks and lows, where as the F-35 funding was rather constant.

But those are things to be considered.

Now, as far as production of an established class. One can take the calulations that you came up with . . . or you can look at to factors. The level of capability of the Precommissioning Unit (PCU), and the level of capability of the shipyard contractors. Depending on each would determine the production time. Not to mention resource availability.

Dave was off by four years. It took eight years to construct the Enterprise-D form time line given in the Star Trek The Next Generation Technical manual by Sternbach and Okuda. This does not include the time it took to design of research the vessel just the time it took to build.

Fior a rule of thumb I'm using the size as a year. Unless needs to be other. Quick easy and simple.

This will get Burt off my back on the preplanned delay in the ships departure by Dave and myself. They were all gung ho to go warping off and we stopped them dead in their tracks with a warp drive failure and a toeing back to dry dock.

This delay worked well as we were not quite ready with our newest adventure.

So it takes a year to build a shuttle pod? That's an odd thumb :D

For early design linage, of capitol ships, I can see that rule working very well. It's a good guess.

I don't think it's as simple as all that. During the Dominion War it took them MUCH less time to build whole starships!

There are a number of factors to consider. yes the design cycle of the Enterprise D took a long time because, other than the USS Galaxy, she was the first in her class (the Galaxy was finished actually after her.. just!). However it's like comparing the length of time it takes to build a car for a motor show (I.e. a custom design) and a standard factory model.. the first production run of ANYTHING obviously takes SO much more time than the real run. The Galaxy class is STILL the single biggest and most complex starship of the Federation, with a much larger internal volume than anything baring a spacedock (she is larger than the Sovereign class internally by a large margin). it woul dhave taken months to iron out the internal arangement of her power suplies / power / qaurters / replicator networks etc.. can you imagine the wiring diagram for that thing!!! Once they had that hurdle underneath them they would have been able to refine it and produce them much more quickly.

With regards to the size issue - err no - a ship one size bigger is at least twice the size of the size before. Ok SU's are an abstract but really a ship the size of a galaxy class should take 128 times longer (I.e. 7 integers higher or is my brain doing poor maths this late) than a size 1 ship and without taking the number agregates to task I suspect longer as you have to factor the 3rd dimension!

So I doubt you can take simple SU's into the equasion. In the DS9 tecnical manual it did mention that many ships were launched half empty when they were built during the dominion war. On the one hand they would have major structural components such as warp nacelles and the hulls fully resolved, which would take the majority of the time up (comparitivelly) the fact they would be produced on a production line would speed it up imesurably!

As a general rule of thumb I take the square root of the size of the ship cubed (i.e. Sqrt(size^3). This gives the following values, rounded heavily up:

Size Months
1 1
2 3
3 6
4 8
5 12
6 15
7 19
8 23
9 27
10 32
11 37
12 42
13 47
14 53
15 59
16 64

You can modify these values as you like depending on the circumstances. For example, the first ship can take up to 4 times as long to build. The second would take twice as long. Or make it 3x and 1.5x as you see fit. For military ships, multiply the final value by 2 or 3, whatever makes sense for you. In wartime, reduce the time as you see fit. It's a guideline, not a hard & fast rule.

It's quick & dirty but it seems to work for me. Comments?

Thank you, that was most helpful. I printed it out and stuck it in the notebook I use for the game as a reference.