10,000 starships

We were having a discussion of the Federation Fleet in orbit of Mars and the number of ships that were there. I heard that by the time of Star Trek Picard Starfleet has ten thousand ships most of which are in orbit of Mars. The matter of there was not enough time to construct that many ships in Starfleet. So here are my figures on the ability to construct that many ships. I decided to place this in spacedock as it deals with Spacedock numbers and construction times. So, I sat down to figure out the time that would take to manufacture that many ships using the spacedock manufacturing methods that I have worked out for starship construction.

I used the Excelsior as it would be an average size making up for the smaller ships and equaling out for the larger. A single spacedock can install one SU per eight hours and using an Excelsior class starship 2211 SU’s per ship. It would take a shade over two years around the clock work details to finish construction. Using two hundred orbital dry dock facilities it would still take one hundred years to make the needed number of starships for the massacre in orbit of Mars. This does not take into consideration the ships that are lost to whatever accident or fighting so there would have to be at least three hundred or more Orbital Dry Docks and all the support construction facilities that is needed to create a single starship. The newer the ships such as a protype would clearly take three times as long.

I know of the San Francisco Shipyards, McKinley Station, Utopia Mars, and I want to say Antares Yards along with another that I cannot remember the name of that was mentioned in the Next Generation as major construction yards. McKinley station I think is a single Orbital Dry Dock constructing. So, spreading a three hundred of these Orbital Dry Docks around to the four yards it would be easy to construct the ships. There could even e more facilities out there that we are not aware of that participated in the construction.

This also does not take in the number of Starbases that would have been refitting and repairing starships that come in. all ships would have to have periodic refits and maintenance that would take up time at these facilities. Starships would need refitting every twenty to twenty-five years. And a complete overhaul every forty years and refitting like the Enterprise from the Motion Picture.

Yet increasing the construction to the installation of three SU’s per eight hours would shorten the construction to eight months on average and the ten thousand would take twenty-two years to complete the fleet of ships. The Enterprise’s Refit from the Motion picture was eighteen months and figuring those months at an average of thirty days would be 5.3 SU’s stripped and reinstalled per day. That is stripping the ship down to the hull inner and outer 24 each using that as the skeleton of the ship. One of the 24’s would likely include the exterior covering yes. So, I could easily see my way to modifying the Starship manufacturing rules that our group uses.

So, using my construction methods the one hundred years from the End of The Original Series Movies to the time of Picard it is more than possible to create ten thousand starships.

So, what are your thoughts on the matter?

Ten thousand ships should be fairly easy to support for Starfleet, my annoyance is that they left the majority of them into orbit over Mars instead of sending each wave of them as it was completed to help out the Romulus evacuation. You didn't need all ten thousand to be present as part of a single fleet, just send off a group of 100 at a time. You could also explain that these ships are a fairly simplistic design that is easy for the shipyards to produce, plus the large number of S500 robots that helped build the ships.
As I understand, the ships that were in orbit around Mars were primarily the Wallenberg class tugs. I'm sure we can find a ship in the Starfleet book to compare it to. The tug pod could have easily been built on Romulus where the Tugs would come in, pick up a pod, and warp out to another star system. The pod gets dropped off with the local Romulan authorities, and the tug returns for another load. The pod is emptied, and soon it would be a loop where a tug would pick up a full pod from Romulus, drop off the full pod and pick up an empty pod at another star system, warp back to Romulus with the empty pod to exchange it for a full pod. Romulus would be strip-mined to get the necessary materials and environmental issues would not be cared about, as the sun is going to go supernova and ruin the planet anyway.
(snip various other ideas that could have helped with the evacuation)



But for Starfleet strength estimates, to give a comparison, Earth's current population is ~7.8 billion.

The United States alone has 11 full-size nuclear carriers, which could be compared to Galaxy and Sovereign-class vessels in terms of capabilities and industrial requirements to be built. As an aside, the United States also has eight Wasp-class amphibious assault ships that are almost like a 'baby carrier' in terms of capabilities.

From this, I want to get the Federation population. From Memory-alpha the rough estimate for the Federation is 985 Billion. Essentially, the Federation has 126 times as many people as the Earth.
Aircraft carriers: 11 * 126 = 1386 capital ships
Wasp-class Amphibious assault vessels: 24 * 126 = 3024 sub-capital ships

Comparing other ship classes in the United States Navy, and multiplying that value by 126 to get the Starfleet value:
Cruisers/Destroyers: 92 -> 11592
Attack Submarines: 50 -> 6300
Ballistic Missile Submarines: 14 -> 1764
Cruise Missile Submarines: 4 -> 504

So just using the x126 value for the US Navy fleet totals, this is 22,554 ships that Starfleet could support. This does not count the United States Coast Guard, the United States Merchant Marine, or the navies of the rest of Earth.


As to construction times, one idea might be adding small amounts to the refit rate multiplier to represent higher tech advances, i.e.:
Pre-TOS: 5 SUs/day
TOS: 5.3 SUs/day
TNG: 6 SUs/day

The other idea is that there are more orbital assemblies than just the shipyards in the Sol system. The Sol shipyards might get most of the attention, but other worlds in the Federation would have their own shipyards as well.

yeah, I don't get it either that many ships in one spot was a boneheaded move. You would think that Pearl Harbor would be a good example of what not to do. Ever sense then no Navy Keeps so many eggs in one basket.

Coalition, I looked at the suggestions the numbers work well but I made some adjustments to my notes in accordance. I liked the suggestions and those of our group have agreed to them. Thanks, or the help.

Here are my notes.

Processor/Ore Refinery
SU’s Cost: Size + 10 for processor, +2 for additional product produced, + 10 for a fully automated systems, +2 SU’s for the computer monitoring.
Power Cost: Equal to the SU’s for power.

Build much like the Terok Nor/Deep Space Nine space station in orbit of the home planet of Bajor, this is station was used during the Cardassian rule to strip mining the planet. Each of these processors required four crewmembers per 1 SU.

Example: The Cardassian Ore Processing Space Station, Terok Nor with its six ore processors and a single processors with 22 SU’s, would have 88 forced Bajoran laborers working the processors many functions. With six processors operating at the same time would bring the Bajoran laborers up to 528. For the processor operation of feeding the processor, monitoring the individual operations of the processor, and handling the finished products and storing the materials into the cargo holds.

When active these processors could produce one kilogram of useable product per round per SU’s cost. This would allow production of over fifteen tons of processed ore per hour for Terok Nor for a single processor, with the three producing 45 tons. Oddly these Terok Nor Processors cold easily process over 1000 tons in a 24-hour period. One could estimate that at least once a day a cargo ship would arrive to haul off the product while others freighters would be arriving to deliver at least two loads of ore per day.

Processors can be processing only one kind of material at any time with an additional material made from the impurities taken from the ore with the cost of two SU’s. This does not reduce the tonnage processed but GMs will decide on the percentage. If it was me I would say that each ton of ore processed twenty percent would be impurities in the ore that would have to be dealt with by removing and eight percent would be hazardous materials that would have to be stored and two percent for anything else that could come up to you.

The United Federation of Planets tends to use fully automated processor systems and requires only one person per 2 SU of processor. Example: If the Federation installed the automated processor in the DS9 at 32 SU’s would have a crew of 16 workers instead of the 88. This system can also be completely run by a computer system with the addition of 2 SU’s and then where no personnel would be needed.

The different types of processors can be processing everything from mineral ores to rare gasses, food processors converting animal and grown food from their raw forms to the eatable forms. In Alien the Commercial Starship Nostromo 180924609 a towing tug pulling a cargo pallet with automatic processors.

Example: Here is the add in for the Terok Nor space station Ore Processor: 3 processors units (15 kilos/round) [22 power/round] <22 x 3 = 66>


Manufacturing and Installation Facility
SU’s Cost: Same as an Ore Processing plant
Power: Same as an Ore processing plant

The facility can manufacture a single SU of starship parts every four hours during the Next Generation era (24th Century). To install a single SU, it takes another four hours. There is no automation to the construction of the ship until sometime after the twenty-six centuries.

The facility can manufacture a single SU of starship parts every five hours during the Original Series era (23rd Century). To install a single SU, it takes another five hours. There is no automation to the construction of the ship until sometime after the twenty-six centuries.

The facility can manufacture a single SU of starship parts every six hours during the Enterprise era (24th Century). To install a single SU, it takes another six hours. There is no automation to the construction of the ship until sometime after the twenty-six centuries. (Note: During the Romulan war the doubling of the work force decreased the time by one hour.

Any time before the Enterprise Era all space craft takes twenty-four hours per SU to manufacture and another twenty-four hours to install for Earth ships only.

Example: Cardassian Repair and Construction Facility; Heavy Spacedock
Manufacturing facilities five units (manufactures one SU per four hours/136 workers per unit) [ power/round] <34 x 5 = 170>