There's a trope called "Scifi Writers Have No Sense of Scale". For the size and resource base of the Federation, they should have *magnitudes* more ships than they currently have. The Inquiry class is a good start of showing what fleet sizes *should* look like. Every class of starship should have Inquiry class numbers.
I agree with the first bit, starfleet should have way more ships than they do, the trope of the 23rd century 1701/1701-A and B being the only ships in the quadrant free to respond to threats were always silly. However fleet compositions including 100 of the same ship is just silly. I image starfleet employing closer to what we consider a battlegroup today, a command ship and multiple escorts. The UFP is massive in scale and they have a ton of patrols, resupply, scientific missions, exploration to handle. Massive single fleets mostly don't make sense in that context.
@DPRacingWhereRacingLives I don't mean every class being its own fleet, but just an increased number of ships overall. The Federation spans thousands of light-years, claiming tens of thousands of uninhabited systems. Every star should have a shipyard instead of the 3(!) shipyards we hear about. Even if they only build a handful of ships a year, that's thousands of ships, hundreds of each class. That way, when the time comes, Starfleet can field a fleet the size of the Inquiry fleet anywhere in Federation space. I apologize for not being more specific.
You get a very good sense of the scale on Deep Space Nine. The fleet you see at the end of "A Call to Arms" is just one of at least 10 fleets. And given the size of the 7th fleet, which lost the battle in the Tyra system, each of these fleets has at least 100 combat ships. Also in "Sacrifice of Angels" Sisko clearly mentions that parts of the second, fifth and ninth fleet are used for Operation Return. This accumulated to about 600 ships, crountering about 1,300 Dominion ships. There are 2,700 ships waiting in the Gamma Quadrant. In "Changing Face of Evil" Martok has 1,500 ships at the ready, modified to counter the Breen weapon. Which is a ratio of 20:1 for the Dominion. That's about 30,000 Dominion ships. Here's the thing though. Starfleet will have a potion of its fleet still in reserve and defending key installations. Same goes of course for the other powers. Also there is still the issue of diplomacy, policing and patrolling Federation space. Many classes are prominently missing on the frontlines (for example there is no Intrepid, Ambassador or Norway class to be seen). So they will be out there, performing these tasks. So even if we assume Starfleet at one point has a 50:50 ratio between combat and non-combat vehicles, we can assume Starfleet has several tens of thousands of ships operatring at the same time. A mind-blowing perspective.
I have the headcanon that the Zheng He in particular was the toughest, fastest and most powerful because it had Lt. Commander Becket Mariner as armament officer, Lt. Commander Bradward Boimler as navigation officer, Commander Rutherford as main engineer and Commander D'Vana Tendi as Chief Medical Officer, and thus Riker had the best officers for those jobs he could find.
I like the idea that the inquiry class fleet was created to respond to sudden threats. it shows Starfleet learned from wolf359 and the dominion invasion
My theory. After the attack, they held an inquiry, which recommended an urgent mass production of ships to replace their losses and upgrade the planetary security on member world and colonies. . Next generation planetary shields . And they ban on androids. ..and class was named inquiry. It seems like they wanted a strong defensive starship, capable of exploration and war .
That and there was several times in TNG and DS9 were the Crew had to throw together a fleet for something and Starfleet was like. We can do two mirendas and a Connie... And maybe the Stargaze... So having several fleets of decently powerful and robust shits prestage at the Usual trouble spots be handy.
Tough, sure, but what made the Inquiry class so dangerous was Starfleet's ability to create them with a CTRL-V copy and paste. No other government had that ability.
@@podemosurss8316 Looking at Tesla now makes you wonder why theres no default model they just pump out from a line somewhere, or at least, why there wasnt one before the mighty USS CopyPaste lol
Well, I do know when the USN standardized to the F18, that simplified many supply issues. Likely same here. However I can see people accusing copy and pasting just the same
I've always thought of the Inquiry Class as a stop-gap solution to the problem of the Federation's devastated fleet. Cheap, tough, easy to mass produce from an ad-hoc assembly line until better, more elegant ships can be made once again.
@@scienceMicroguy77 Quick. Look around you.. Do a bunch of people have facial hair who didn't yesterday? You could be trapped in the mirror universe and your comments might not exist.... They exist in this universe. Do you still?
Starfleet needed a ship that was easy to modify and construct at multiple shipyards, there was obviously a design competition and the toughest design won.
It couldnt have been a bluff bc that former admiral they where fighting was chief of starfleet security and probably knew how powerful the ship was so if it was a bluff she wouldve just attacked. But since she ran then it wasnt a bluff.
I don’t think that the fact that there were a lot of the same ship is an issue. In real life when you send an armada into battle it’s usually a lot of the same plain or boat, etc. So being this a battle ship … it does work to have a lot of the same ship (like how it happens in REAL LIFE).
that is literally never how it happens in real life. you might see as many as 4 of the same ship traveling together on one mission, but in large fleet actions, there is never just one ship class because no one ship class can do everything you need it to do at cost.
Well, they aren't all so bad, a bit ungainly-looking from some angles. (The later restyle helps, I suppose.) I think though the fact it looked like they made the whole Fleet out of them was more the point of dismay, though. :)
Love the Inquiry, sort of the midsize SUV many police departments are using these days. I also preferred the grille deflector dish. The ship overall looks like the next stage of Starfleet design post-TNG/DS9/VOY eras. Also the "copy-paste" complaint is flogging a dead horse. It was a last minute addition, not to mention they didn't have extra money to fill out the fleet. TOS only showed one class of Federation starship. TNG never showed a new class of late 24th century ship (that wasn't floating chunks of debris) until it's 4th season - the USS Phoenix.
You're right, Pete. But when ravenous fans of the old beloved Trek series get a rosy idea into their heads "how things 'ought to be!" then they'll die on that moldering hill, fully ignoring the flaws and nonsensical issues from TOS~ENT just to throw the newer, arguably better Star Trek series under the bus.
I found the copy and paste to make perfect since. If you consider how battered the federation was, it’s not surprising that they would commission multiple of the same vessels. They had to bolster there forces in a rapid amount of time. Producing the same vessels would be more efficient.
Inquiry is an awesome vessel, very much under-appreciated by the casual Trek fandom only because of how it was introduced… and jelly types who can’t stand a vessel with better firepower than a ship with the name Enterprise… lol I also hope STO updates with the season 2/3 Picard version of Inquiry as well.
The starship is amazing I've found a really good technical page that lists the armaments and defensive capabilities the ship truly is the fastest toughest ship starfleet has ever put into service and I for one absolutely love the ship They should do a new show based on the inquiry
You'd of thought Commodore oh would of known about the Inquiry class and researched any weakness if it was the most powerful in the federation, just in case she came up against a Copy/Paste fleet of them!!
It's similar to STO's Avenger-class battlecruiser with a warp core height similar to the Galaxy class's warp core height in a smaller footprint. It's effectively Galaxy class's battle star drive section repackaged into a standalone starship i.e. "cutting the fat". "Copy-and-paste" is not a major issue when real-life F-35A has its "elephant walk" wargame demonstration i.e. US-style military parade.
Of memory serves. The British navy grand fleet. ( ww1 ) had 200 ships , 150 battle cruisers and 50 battleships. ( similar design) deployed in a single engagement against the German imperial high seas fleet . 150 ships . ( battle of jutland ) 1916 . Aka battle of the dreadnoughts. All the ship were dreadnought class variants. .
The fact they all look the same can be easily explained by the loss of mars and the ship yard. The san fansisco yard might have been tooled to make the class so they just cranked out a lot instead of just a few before moving onto a new design until they could get back up and running at other yards. Its possible they also built them up for combat to be prepared for any kind of invasion being in a weakened state. Remember that Picard had to build his own fleet from barely crewed or running left overs for the evacuation.
@@harmsc12 that's another fantastic answer too. Down but not out and still able to crank out powerful ships as a demonstration to the powers that make take advantage of a "weakend" federation.
In the books . ( before the supernova storyline ) utopia fleet yard was destroyed by the breen . As part of sn alliance with the romulans, tholians, tchkethey. . They stole the planes for the quantum slipstream drive. And destroyed the shipyard to cover the theft . The planet wasn't destroyed but damaged. And was rebuilt and restored eventually. . Star fleet had just defeated a borg invasion. Star fleet technology had advanced past the point dny of the old enemies would stand a chance in a war . This was a last desperate alliance/ war . I think they blew up all the reactors . Sabotage.
Those window placements are wild. Are the ships decks not flat, like do they go up and down like a hill path? Is the down-direction variable from the front of the ship to the back? Do cabins have ceiling windows? Are there double-height decks with walls of windows?
If 1 defiant can take on an intrepid, 2 deviants can take on a galaxy, and 3 defiant can take on a sovereign, the real question is how many defiants would it take to beat an inquiry? Better yet, how many Sovereigns and Inquiry's would be an even match. I'd really wish we had context for how powerful this class is.
@@davidbabcock8727 The Defiant only worked because the Cardassians had paper mache hulls and the Dominion won by attrition rather than outright 1 v 1 strength. You sneeze on that thing and SOME poor ensign or Lt. is dying every other episode.
@@peterthx that's the length. I have nothing against that. but they're really thick. Is it more capacitors, an experimental array type that didn't catch on?
Am not a fan of the enterprise G being the Constitution 3 class. Now to and probably a lot of fans would have Preferred Eclipse class starship from the star trek bridge command as the enterprise G
I continue to defend the "cut and paste" numbers of the Inquiry; between 24th century production tech and the emergent need for a replacement fleet, it makes all the sense in the world that Starfleet would skip the artistry and mass produce the most function design they cooked up. Tbh I fully expect we'd all be frustrated if they didn't pump out a bunch of one class. This is a case where behind the scenes issues translated to the narrative fittingly. Despite not really loving the class's design, it's kind of grown on me and I'm even kind of sad they ditched the "grill" deflector for a more traditional look, as the grill represented a distinct looks that set it apart from previous classes. It's especially sad sing as they introduced new classes with more traditional deflectors anyway, may as well have kept the grill for the "grunt ship" of the fleet. All in all it's an interesting design and I'm sad it won't get the spotlight.
There was an error in this video. At one point someone says the Defiant is the best star ship? I guess this is an error since the best is the Enterprise E.
Would’ve been interesting if they made a Defiant Class ship, the size of say…an Excelsior Class ship. Talk about FIREPOWER! Name it the “Apocalypse.” Can you imagine the enemy bridge? “We’ve got a ship decloaking! IT’S THE APOCALYPSE!!!”
Why do Starfleet’s exploration ship classes sound like warships (Sovereign, Excelsior) while its warship classes sound like explorers (Inquiry, Prometheus)?
Production and story writing disasters aside I look at the season 1 and season 3 inquiry class as the modern day F-22 and F-35 lightning II fighter jets respectively of the trek world. Best there is in the game and then they get an update to be even better. Plus the inquiry looks a million miles better with that season 3 deflector.
Wow...Let's make sure our toughest starfleets are best galactic ships to neighboring constellations, whether to visits our galactic member extroplanets or traveling to 32nd century and beyond.
The Design is impressive, and Visually pleasing. I did not care for the other design of having cookie-cutter out sections of the saucer section. That alternate design is quite inefficient, as well as limiting for crew operations. The USS DEFIANT still holds the title of toughest Starship ever, in my opinion.
All these flat starships I find so boring. The Defiant worked for me because it felt like a departure from the norm which fit it narratively. But the Intrepid, the Soverign, ect. Beh.
Aka, the USS Cut'n'paste. It's a shame such an interesting ship was side a throwaway appearance in Picard. I wouldn't mind seeing a dedicated series set on one of these ships; kick ass enough to participate in some cool situations.
I never understood the romulans attacking the shipyard. Those ships were going to be used to save their own people. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
Yeeeey! Now i gonna end thinking that the bs plot-point of the sinthetics going rampage is only a excuse of lazy people to copy and paste similar ships without trying make cool new things or similar to the previous ones but "advancing" in tech, (All exploded dude no shiyards, very tragic, vewy wow) I mean the "Blablabla" dilithium exploding at same time of discovery was already not enough? "Discovery" that when was announced made me excited! Finally we have good tech to make any 3D ships and renders of space, and higher budget! No more cutting the corners... and we got that disrespectful thing, with a guy named "gene" cleaning a glop of someone corpse and being disrespected by the crew and all this hings... wtf... same "coincidences" just like Star Wars, like people with ulterior motives to attack the culture we created along the decades, but ofc its juuust a coincidence. We gonna see about that.
The whole scene where the ship first got showed was a big disgrace to the entire Star trek universe. I am glad they back tracked their stupidity soon after, the mistake was redeemed partially. The updated design looks much better and hopefully they won't make a silly mistake as this ever again.
It wasn’t an intentional choice. Apparently there was supposed to be a diverse fleet of Starfleet vessels but the CGI artists were only given limited time to actually visualize that into reality and the Inquiry were the only assets they had.
@@BullGator-kd6ge thats a coverup story. They had the whole backlog of CGI models at their disposal, could have used ANY previous model of any ship ever shown on TV. It was not a situation out of their control, they just didnt care to do the right thing. The whole scene was stupid AF, Star Fleet ships arriving out of formation, warping a mass near a planet?? No tactics, no proper fleet management, showing up like it is a highschool fight. I could keep going on how bad of a scene it, it should just never have been aired.
one of the other youtubers did a video on this ship, done in some star trek game, put this ship against some other star trek ship and the inquiry got blown up, both when it was piloted by the game's ai and by the player. I do not think this ship is the best ship. That title is way to vague, in my opinion the best ships would be better and even this the inquiry would not be on that list. the defiant class would be, the ambassador class would be, the Sovereign class would be as would the intrepid class as would the Odyssey class
That would have been Retro Badger, Christopher. He pitted the Inquiry against the current Federation the Odyssey-class USS Enterprise-F. The Enterprise-F won single-handedly and without a scratch both times. Yet at the same time the Inquiry rips holes through just about any other ship, including whatever the Romulans had in service at the time. Riker wasn't bluffing but the Odyssey was THE flagship for a reason. A whole other category of vessel.
Having had a rather unfortunate happenstance with someone who is doing a similar thing with observation of starship classes. I think that in future.. Captain Jack. I might be inclined to trust you a bit more. I upset that person once too often with one observation too many. I will follow you more readily..
@@TrekCentral I can only reply there's no place for me to write a new comment when I click on my community guidelines and hit accept it does not bring up anything except community guidelines there's no place for me to make an original comment.
The Enterprise-G being Inquiry class makes far more sense then the neo constitution class….Besides…. The Titan-A was Shaw’s ship…. Pretty disrespectful renaming it…..
Inquiry has nothing on the defiant. The Defiant was so Tough not even Q wanted to pop up on the bridge The Defiant was so Tough that even with no shields it took 6 torpedo's to finish it. The Defiant was so Tough Starfleet stripped another ship of its name just so the Defiant could live again without the -A tag .
I'd called you a thoughtless lummox but RU-vid might not like that. So instead I'll leave you with this tidbit: Utopia Planitia was still burning at that time, and the UFP needed fast, powerful, Sovereign-like warships to defend themselves against a potential invasion in their weakened state. The Inquiry-class was the perfect warship/explorer for that job. They did not have the resources or the TIME to build a massive fleet of the particular, highly complexed multi-role vessels that we know and love from scratch. The Inquiry could be slapped together in months rather than take years to build a normal Starfleet vessel. It was designed to be the fastest, toughest, most powerful starship that Starfleet had ever put into service. It was built for a war that thankfully never happened. Makes sense? Good. Now take a pepto. ;)
Nice but, Voyager is the example of drop the most representative of Federation values and standards in the middle of generational nowhere and see what humanity +'will do on the way back home! I said what I said, period! Strength with uncompromising morals and a dash of dedication, team work and loyalty led by an unbreakable Captain equals the most powerful ship in the fleet, while looking sleek and stylish.
