Guide:Starships and Other Large Vessels

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Part I: Starships and Other Large Vessels

“ The starships of the Federation are the physical, tangible manifestations of Humanity´s stubborn insistence that life does indeed mean something. ”

– Spock


There exists some ambiguity as to what is meant by ‘starship’. Modern reference works often go by the modern definition, a straightforward approach somewhat ill suited for describing even the relatively brief history of Starfleet vessels. While any interstellar vessel from rather arbitrary size up can nowadays be considered starship, the designation was originally reserved for the best and biggest ships only. During the 22nd and 23rd centuries, ‘starship’ was largely analogous to the 19th- 20th century designation ‘battleship’ in describing a rare and expensive capital ship that could take as much as she could dish out and triumph over all other vessel types. Such martial criteria only told half the story, of course, as a starship was also characterized by her exceptional speed and range, as well as by the quality and quantity of the research gear she carried. While lesser vessels could challenge a starship in any one of these fields, the truest definition for starship in this time period must be ‘ace of all trades’.

Given the obvious ease by which vessels from outside Earth could trump humanity’s high card in the formative years of the United Federation of Planets, it should further be simple to understand why Earth documentation from that era almost invariably attributes such ships with the starship designation. The scope of this work limits our ability but also our need to more closely examine the native designation schemes for off-Earth designs, until these merge with the UFP Starfleet practices.

Of the lesser vessels, too many variants gross and subtle exist or have existed to be listed here. Large combat-dedicated vessels have been built to many different specifications, nomers like ‘frigate’ or ‘destroyer’ being applied under criteria that have varied with time or political pressures. Research has called for specialized as well as generalized types, depending both on the subject and scope of the study and the circumstances in which the research has to be conducted. Half a dozen distinct types of logistics vessels have always existed under the generic military designation ‘transport’, and an untold number of special types have filled the many niche roles without which a space combat and exploration force could not survive.

The evolution of the various categories of large stargoing vessels will unfold in the following chronologically ordered chapters. Obvious parallels are to be found in the waterborne navies of Earth, from which the Standard vocabulary used here largely derives.

Part I: The Eras


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