The Majestic and the Nautilus were both seen on DS9 during battles of the Dominion War.
At the start of the Next Generation, and even into the start of the Dominion War, there were less than 20 Galaxy class ships according to canon. Those were not the average size of ship, they were the largest Starfleet had at the time. They were the top of the line, newest ships meant to be the long-range explorers, so they needed the best and biggest amount of options available for whatever they might come across while as far away from Federation resources as possible.
The main fleet was comprised mostly of smaller vessels than those. In TNG era, that would be the scale 4 ships being average. It wasn’t until after the discovery of the wormhole at DS9 and the possibility of possible conflict that the Federation really started amping up their production of ships, and churning out more designs. (If I recall correctly…)
Not entirely correct, if I may be so bold. Only a few years before the discovery of the wormhole at Bajor / DS9, Starfleet and the Federation became aware of the Borg and that they posed a major threat to them. It was then, when they started to design new ships, e.g. the new Defiant-class. Since the Defiant was almost abandoned but the Akira, Norway and Steamrunner Class engaged in the Dominion war, it is reasonable to assume that design & production began a bit earlier than the discovery of the wormhole and the dominion.
But it might also be that Starfleet always had a rather broad arsenal of different ship/hull types. In TNG, we only saw one big battle (if now I recall correctly), the Battle of Wolf 359, and Starfleet was caught flat-footed by the Borg, then. So it might be that a big amount of newer ships never made it in time and we saw so few different designs because of that.
True, the Akira, Defiant, Steamrunner, and even the Sovereign were being designed with the Borg threat in mind, they weren’t close to production when the wormhole was discovered. The Defiant had even been abandoned as you mentioned. Sisco talked them into pulling the prototype out of mothballs for him to use in the Gamma Quadrant in 2370.
The Norway class itself is only vaguely mentioned in one 6th season episode and featured in Star Trek: First Contact, both of which happened a few years after the discovery of the wormhole.
According to Memory Alpha, and even Deep Space Nine, that happened in 2369. It is two years before the first Akira rolls off the production line. Same with the Steamrunner, according to Memory Alpha.
No. We see it dwarfing other ships in the fleet onscreen.
Again, no. We are told, “There are only twelve like it in the fleet.” (Tomorrow is Yesterday)
Now, the thing is, they aren’t even the same classification type.
- Enterprise 1701 is a Cruiser, per A Taste of Armageddon dialogue.
- Enterprise 1701-D is only specified as to type in one onscreen reference I can recall… Battleship. (All Good Things). Extended universe materials call her a Heavy Explorer.
We see 1701-D dwarf a light cruiser at least once, she’s clearly bigger than the Stargazer, and there are few of the Galaxy class (9 per “official” sources… until we see 2 blow up and are told a third died). We see in DS9 that the Galaxy Class is far outnumbered by smaller ships.
We Can say with relative confidence that the Galaxy Class is the biggest thing in the original TNG/DS9/Voyager setting that moves by warp drive routinely and is part of the Federation Starfleet.
We can’t say that for Constitution class during TOS/TAS, but we can say that it’s a very low number for a fleet of much larger than 12 (implied heavily in TOS and TAS). In TAS, we see that the older Bonaventure is similar in size, shape, and overall pattern, but the engines are bigger and less potent. We see that the freighters are considerably smaller. These have also become canonical in the revised TOS.
Both enterprises are Big for their era. The Galaxy class is quite probably the only scale 6 in the inventory.
THe Constitution is one of several classes of her size in the fleet in TOS/TAS, tho’ the others are older.
From the ships we’ve seen in the 2250s through to the 2290s, the Constitution-class is around average size for a ship of the era. There aren’t many Constitutions - only a dozen as of the mid 2260s - but we see a few older designs both larger and smaller than the Constitution-class in Discovery, and the vessels seen during the movie era (Oberths, Mirandas, Excelsiors) all fit that similar size range (Oberths are Scale 3, Mirandas are Scale 4, Excelsiors are Scale 5).
The Galaxy-class, however, is most certainly a giant by Starfleet standards, at least during its own time (the Odyssey-class Enterprise-F in Star Trek Online is significantly larger, and even that is dwarfed by the Universe-class Enterprise-J seen in the distant future in Enterprise).
Only having a dozen or so of the most advanced ship doesn’t mean other ships of similar size couldn’t exist.
True, there are more than 4 Nebula class ships that show up on screen through TNG, and those ships while not scale 6, are definitely close. Both the Ambassador class and Nebula class are scale 5, and there is not a lot of info on how long the Ambassador class was active, or how many of them were produced.
There are only 2 scale 6 Federation craft, the Galaxy and Sovereign class. We know that there were few Galaxy class ships made, and it is assumed that the same can be said about the Sovereign. The Galaxy was made more with exploration and peace-keeping in mind, while the Sovereign was made more with combating the Borg and other threats.
If your campaign is set in the year 2371 or on, then there is a possibility there will be some Sovereign class ships out there, as well as Luna class explorers which are also scale 5. (2372 projected)
This may help you out:
ENT Era
Scale 3 Starfleet Vessels: Daedalus, NX Class.
TOS Era
Scale 5 Federation Vessels: Excelsior.
Scale 4 Federation Vessels: Centaur, Constellation, Constitution, Hermes, Miranda, Sydney.
Scale 3 Federation Vessels: Oberth.
TNG Era
Scale 6 Federation Vessels: Galaxy, Sovereign.
Scale 5 Federation Vessels: Akira, Ambassador, Excelsior, Luna, Nebula.
Scale 4 Federation Vessels: Centaur, Constellation, Constitution, Hermes, Intrepid, Miranda, New Orleans, Norway, Olympic, Steamrunner, Sydney.
Scale 3 Federation Vessels: Defiant, Nova, Oberth, Saber.
These lists were made using the core book and Command Division Supplement. I sorted them into general years. (Ent: 2140-2175, TOS: 2220s-2300, TNG: Any vessel made after 2230. Some in the TNG list may have been decommissioned or otherwise no longer used, however most have been seen at one point or another in the series/movies.)
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going by this we can draw some conclusions. in the ENT era, Scale 3 was the alrgest size, but by TOS they had reached a period where the largest ships where the size 4 range, and most ships fell into that (I’ve always wondered if the Hermes being size 4 instead of 3 was a error mind you) with the excelsior’s launch starfleet finally reached ships around size 5. for their biggest baddest ship, size 3 was mostly reserved during this period for the Oberth, a small science vessel. I’ll touch on this further in TNG era.
Then comes the TNG era the vast majority of their ships are scale 4. but the heavy cruiser workhorses of the fleet, The excelsior and Nebula, are T5, as are the ships that would presumably replace them, such as the Akira. With the biggest Battleships/heavy explorers, the prides of the fleet, being size 6. At scale 3, you have the Nova, Oberth, Saber, and defiant. All are specialist ships. the Oberth and Nova being science vessels, the defiant and saber essentially being military vessels. It seems to me that as early as the 2250s Starfleet decided small ships simply didn’t work with their plan. a small ship couldn’t fill a multirole purpose and thus ships that size where reserved for specialists. then starfleet ships got bigger and bigger as the bigger the ship the more stuff could be packed into the ship, allowing them to fill more roles more easily. however these big ships where expensive, and thus they also made ample use of small ships with modular componants. Like the Nebula.
Of the non-Discovery original timeline screen-seen ships in TOS era, only the Excelsior is larger; most are smaller. But that’s a pretty small number of ships overall.
Constitution Class is in TOS. We see 4 in TOS; 7 in TOS-R, none in TAS.
The Bonaventure Class is in TAS.
The SFTM ships (Constitution, Federation¹, Saladin, Hermes, Ptolemy) schematics appear in background shots and several are mentioned in background dialog in STTMP.
Enterprise subclass Constitutions are seen in all TOS movies except Generations.
The Miranda Class is in ST2:TWOK
The Antares class is seen in TAS and TOS-R
Excelsior is in ST3:TSFS and ST6.
Of these, only the Federation and Excelsior classes are larger. So there’s a range of size 4 classes. Hermes and Miranda appear to be low-end, Constitution high end; if the federation class is actually extant, it’s in between the Constitution and Excelsior in size, and could be a large 4 or a small 5.
¹ Only an outline is shown.
² Discovery’s been said to be outside the Modiphius license.
yeah, it’s pretty clear that the enterprise is always the “biggest and best ship of it’s day” it’s one of the unwritten rules of trek. and well it might be an intreasting series to have a series about an aging enterprise that’s no longer the best ship in the fleet… I doubt that’ll even happen. Although it might work better then some of the series out there CBS is serious about making
@BrianDavion Except during the Movie era. The Excelsior is bigger, and, from ST3:TSFS to between ST6:TUC and ST7:Generations not the biggest and best.
My take on a Constitution Refit currently being used as a Starfleet Academy Training Ship in the TNG era in 2371: USS Hornet
Ignore the Ship Registry number on the miniature 
. Feel free to use the Hornet in your campaign. She has a lot of fight left in her yet.
TRAIT: Gremlins! This ship is so old that there are always a few components that haven’t been replaced and are prone to faulty performance or failure. Whenever a complication is rolled on a Task by the ship for a given system, the complication range increases by one for all subsequent Tasks using the given system until repaired. The complication also increases the difficulty of ALL SUBSEQUENT ship Tasks for that system by one for each complication rolled. A successful repair of the system ( diff = to the complication range value ) will fix the system in question and restore the complication range back to 1 ( the default complication range ).
If you are going to use a Connie in TNG era, then you need to do the full refit to it. A Connie would get 12 refit points to spend in the systems, and since you can not (according to rules) put more than 2 points into systems, the Connie would be 2 years away from it’s decom date. (In service for 128 years. Maximum number of allowed refits being 12, 2 for each system.)
That would put the systems at the following:
Engines: 10 Computers: 9 Weapons: 10
Structure: 10 Sensors: 10 Communications: 9
@SSiron I intentionally did not use the full number of refits. The numbers that you stated are the maximum allowable and I decided to use less than the full number of refits to represent an older Constitution Refit class with a Tactical profile that had been pulled out of mothballs to be used as a Starfleet training ship. The year of my campaign is 2371 in the TNG era.
Ablative armor seems an odd choice for a TNG era training vessel. it’s a spretty specialist system and brand new so it seems off as to why it would be given a training vessel. One could argue in many new bits of tech to argue that it’s included to famierlize cadets with the new tech but abalative armor is so passive it seems not worth it. if you want some brand new tech I’d suggest considering a EMH. which could be priceless on a training vessel in the event of an accident
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@BrianDavion
I’m keeping ablative armor ( I like your idea of familiarizing the cadets with newer systems ) Also, the crew count will remain at the 500-520 mark as the ship needs more personnel to operate it and thus makes it ideal for a training ship.
“Aye, laddies! On the Hornet, you’ll have to put your backs into it and press five buttons on two stations instead of one button like those new controls aboard the tin cans that Starfleet is pushing out of space dock now.”
suggestion regarding the abalative armor then, it was done as a special project by the engineering cadets at the academy to show them how to add abalative armor to a space frame. with the way abalative armor works, knowing how to patch that stuff in the field is a legit important skill to teach
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One consideration that I was reminded of when looking something up in the TNG Tech Manual, is that a vessel’s shape is partially defined by the needs of the warp drive: the engines need to generate a warp field around the whole ship, and certain shapes and configurations of vessel have been proven to be more efficient as the science of subspace fields has advanced. You can see a design trend over the decades: ships getting leaner, sleeker, with smoother integration between saucer and engineering section.
This would be a solid reason why older ships are phased out: a Constitution class, even with a 2360s warp core and field coil assembly, may not be able to achieve the same kinds of speeds as, say, an Intrepid-class, and it’ll certainly need to spend more power to achieve those higher warp factors. That would in turn limit the power available to other functions, and limit the vessel’s abilities.
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@Modiphius-Nathan Good points all. That’s why I’m keeping my Constitution Refit in this thread at Warp 8 maximum speed.