Constitution Refit Recommissioning

[JALU3]

Have a question here . . . I notice alot of threads mentioning ships in mothballs being refitted and recommissioned in the face of the early defeats and losses of territory during the early part of the Dominion War. I have to wonder, what was the oldest class to be refitted and recommissioned . . . and were a couple of the newer, later commissioned, Constitutions that were built . . . and later decommissioned . . . were they brought out of mothballs as well?

If so . . . has anyone considered a campaign with one . . . or is the class to old to handle even internal cutter duty.

Would one find one serving in a Planetery Defense Force of a member system . . . or purchased by a friendly steller government to supplement their fleet . . . much as is done in FMS program.

[Phoenix]

Well Starfleet did have an *** load of Miranda's to throw out there during the Dominion War. If any surviving Constitutions were available for re-commissioning they might very well have been.

[Cmmdr JT Wayland]

I don't think they would recomission the Old Connies', they require a crew of over 400, and Starfleet is even more critically short of personnel. I would thought the Loknar class Frigate is more appropriate, it only requires a crew of 80 and is a lot smaller, and a lot easier to update.

[Doug Burke]

Actually, with refitting of technology and considering the Intrepid is about the same size and has a crew of 150, I could see a complete refit and updating of the ship to use only a fraction of the original crew (say the original 203, or even fewer). Add some updated weapons, some additional cargo bays and you'd have a pretty good Heavy Escort/Transport or even an Exploratory Cruiser...

[JALU3]

The ex-Yorktown, Enterprise A . . . was decommissioned . . . was it ever stated in cannon what happened to her? I imagine that she was decommissioned and sent to be a museum ship somewhere . . . but imagine of one of her system ships were brought out . . . especially one that might have made contact with the Cardassians some time in the past, at the end of her service life, and struck fears in to the hearts of those who would oppose her . . . imagine if she was refitted, her hull restrengthened as to make up for weakness that is inevitable with age, and recommissioned . . . imagine what that would do to little cardies woes grandparents told them stories of how they were defeated and shown mercy by a ship in federation white (or are they still painted wartime battleship grey?).

Oh the adventures that can be had.

[Evan van Eyk]

I don't think they would recomission the Old Connies', they require a crew of over 400, and Starfleet is even more critically short of personnel. I would thought the Loknar class Frigate is more appropriate, it only requires a crew of 80 and is a lot smaller, and a lot easier to update.

I don't think that there would be a need for 400 people if the ship were refit. Also in this 400 there is a lot of science personnel - after all the ship was meant to do exploration on its own for 5 years. When you just take her for combat duty, patrols, escort, etc. you probably need far less personnel. Throw in some modern computers and other equipment and you probably can make it with around 100 people.

[JALU3]

One thing that people fail to realize, much as with modern ship designers . . . ships designed that are involved in battle recieve a lot of damage . . . and the fewer people left to repair damage taken on during battle, the harder it is to repair the damage when it is effects may not be dire. Therefore, just because a ship of significant size can have fewer crew members, doesn't necessarily make it wise . . . but then again if you were to enlist exocomps . . .

[Evan van Eyk]

One thing that people fail to realize, much as with modern ship designers . . . ships designed that are involved in battle recieve a lot of damage . . . and the fewer people left to repair damage taken on during battle, the harder it is to repair the damage when it is effects may not be dire. Therefore, just because a ship of significant size can have fewer crew members, doesn't necessarily make it wise . . . but then again if you were to enlist exocomps . . .

That is of course very true, however we already had established that Starfleet was desperate! Not mentioning all the kitbashes and only half-completed ( meaning combat but ot overall ready ) ships, they still used vessels over a hundred years old! So I reckon if necessary to get a few extra phaser banks into the fight, they would crew a ship with less people that usually would be wise...

[tonyg]

When I ran my last TREK campaign, I brought a few ships out of mothballs. A couple of the old ships were TOS era designs (like an old cass F shuttle and a Scorpio class corvette) used to replace lost shuttlecraft (every ship heading to the front used to requisition a shuttle or two from the station the PCs were assigned to).

I had given the PCs a sort of honorary duty where they got to crew the U.S.S. Constitution, which I ran as still commissioned much the way the wooden U.S.S. Constitution is still commissioned by the U.S. Navy today. The PCs got to dress up in the old uniforms, and had to use the ship's intercom system. Naturally, a. emergence came up and the player had to take the ship on a rescue mission. The ship got prety badly smashed up (the players were really off that night, messed things up, and tried to do a slingshot maneuver to go back in time and fix things!) . I has it worked out that when the DOmion War broke out, the ship was in dock getting repaired (by a Capt. Scott, who couldn't stand to see the ship in such condition). In my campaign, it was this experience with old ships and new tech that lead to the "kitbashed" ships. I blamed them all on Scotty, which seemed a good justification on why they worked.

I also had him using the "kitbashes" as a learning experience so he could design an upgraded Connie after the war, and pull out the old Enterprise-A for the refit. Considering that Scotty had probably dumped a few advancements into the ship, aqnd that her old engines still gave her a WF 9.2 top speed in MCU terms, she wasn't a bad ship. I had planned on usinng it for the campaign, and was going to use some anniverasy date for her launch and orginal mission. She would retrace the route the orignal Entperise took on some historic mission (lots to choose from).

During the war, an Oberth-class ship that had been retired and was on it's way to the scrapyard got pressed into service. Originally the players were using it as a sort of shuttle replacement. In the end, it became a personal project got and refitted as an escort. Rip out some of that science equipment toss in a few torp launchers, up the shields, toss in some more structure, and it made a fair escort. Not as good as a Defiant of course, but the players didn't have a Defiant. The Oberth and the Scorpio (refitted) gave their station some defense. The look on the player's face when he got assigned an Oberth as an escort (he thought he was going to escort the Oberth) was priceless.

[Mirror_Sulu]

Just noticed this little discussion, and it reminded of something I saw on the Subspace Comms network a while ago...

The 'Phase III'...

http://scn.nov-net.com/index.php?topic=327.0

But personally, i've always liked the idea of keeping at least some of the Connies 'alive', if only for nostalgia, or 'living history' purposes, sort of like with the HMS Victory.

[tonyg]

THere is always the model with the sideways nacelles that is used in Next Gen, so maybe they got recomissioned in some fashion. While no longer the cutting edge ships they once were, Connies would make decent escort vessels in the TNG era. The old engines are fast, and upgrade the photorp launcers to Q-torp capable and a Connie could be used to prtoect convoys during the Dominion war.

[Commander Sonek]

In one of the Star Trek Next Gen novels, it was established that one of the recommissioned Constitution class ships had a Magna Roman crew. Not really canon, but still . . .

[First of Two]

Yep, in "The Captain's Honor" (TNG #8), the Constitution Class USS Centurion is commanded by Magna Roman Captain Lucius Aelius Sejanus.

[tonyg]

I wish they woud have revisted more TOS settuings and storylines in the TNG era. Some places, like Magna Roma, and Iotia just cry out to be revisted.

[Commander Sonek]

I never understood how the blocky looking Constellation class, supposedly designed as the successor to the sleek and streamlined Constitution class, looked like it was built twenty to thirty years before.