Star Trek And Cruiser Love

[Cynical Cat]

Anyone who has watched Star Trek knows that the top of the cruiser weight class gets a lot of love: Constitution class heavy cruisers, Excelsiors, Ambassadors, Klingon Battlecruisers, Romulan Battlecruisers, Dominion Battlecruisers, etcetera. Those who study early 20th Century navel warfare knows that battleships were a lot more common than depicted on Trek and that given the protection level of the main armour belt and the power of their guns, they were very good at crushing cruisers. So why the love on Trek? Does it make sense in universe?

Well the first thing to remember is that in the 21st Century the battleship is dead but the cruiser lives. Tech has changed and navies with it. The same thing goes for Trek. Heres why cruisers as the back bone of the navy work in Trek:

1) Mass penalty. Naval ships paid a big price for speed, both in huge expensive engines and in not carrying massive amounts of armour and guns. In Trek offensive, defensive, and propulsion systems are all tied to the power plant. So everyone pays that price and does so gladly.

2) Armour: In Trek shields are the key and they run off power plants. While armour isn't unknown, its a secondary defensive system. When even small attack vessels can sling antimatter warheads and high energy beam weapons magic force fields are a better defense than armour. And the magic force fields can be overloaded. The equivalent of the massive defensive advantage given by heavy main belt armour of a naval dreadnought simply doesn't exist.

3) Firepower: Weapons, like defenses and warp drive, are driven by the main power plant. Even small attack vessels pack enough firepower to overwhelm larger vessels en masse.

4) Viable large and fast vessels: The Constitution, Excelsior, Galaxy, Sovereign, D-7, and Vor'cha class are among the fastest vessels of their respective days. The power plants that allow them to reach those high warp speeds allow them to power strong shield arrays and multiple heavy weapons in combat. With larger vessels vulnerable to wolf pack attacks by lighter vessels, its no longer essential to have battleships be the backbone of the fleet.

They clearly have a purpose. The Negh'var is big and tough and the Sovereign is pretty much a battleship in all but name. They excel at leading attacks on particularly tough targets and valuable in fleet actions. But space is vast. Having large numbers of fast, capable cruisers to patrol your territory and respond quickly to a crisis and massing for large actions has its advantages for a large power instead of having a smaller number of battleships that are less able to cover its territory. That's before costs come into question, of course. If three cruisers can take a battleship that costs five cruisers to build, one should carefully consider how many battleships to build.

Of course, that's not the only way to go. The Dominion has a huge number of destroyer type vessels to patrol its territory and engage in fleet actions, with a smaller number of heavier vessels for use in all out war.

[The Minx]

Love the analysis, and it makes sense. I have some objections, though:

Does the federation even have any battleships? What would such a ship look like, as opposed to the cruisers? Heavy armor and/or shields, bigger guns, obviously, but those are matters of scale. How could you tell if a ship properly belonged to the next higher class?

I'm mainly wondering because in some of the "cruisers" have at times been described as "battleships". For for example, the federation would sometimes refer to Jem'Hadar battlecruisers as battleships, the Galaxy class was sometimes referred to as a battleship, etc.

[Cynical Cat]

That's one of the tricky bits. The Sovereign isn't called a battleship, but is tougher and more heavily armed than any other Federation ship we've seen. If a Galaxy class can go head to head with Vor'cha and D'Deridex Battlecruisers and the Sovereign is tougher, then its functionally a battleship.

Classifications are clearly fluid, but in the US Navy the Aegis is called a cruiser not a destroyer for essentially arbitrary political reasons. Then you have complications like just how do you classify powerful Dominion vessels with their very powerful technology and Cardassian vessels which are rugged but less high capable? Do you call them both cruisers when they're clearly have greatly different capabilities. And then there's the issue of what one fleet calls a battlecruiser being inferior to the line cruisers of another fleet. The Cardassians call the Galor class a battlecruiser, but the Feds classify it as a cruiser and its clearly not the equal of a Vor'cha or a D'Deridex. Starfleet calls the Sovereign and Galaxy classes "Explorers" and they're clearly more powerful than their line cruisers. Is an "Explorer" just a battleship with a big science department? It turns out that's pretty close to the mark.

In summary, the naming conventions can get murky for in universe reasons as well as the writers being sloppy.

[Stofsk]

Actually Federation calls Galor class ships destroyers. Ref. 'Sacrifice of Angels' DS9. But Trek has never been consistent, and writers are frequently sloppy. They may have called them cruisers in a previous episode.

I really like how in ST3 Kruge thinks of the Enterprise as a 'Federation battlecruiser that outguns us 10 to 1'. Meanwhile the Enterprise is considered a 'heavy cruiser' by Starfleet. I like to imagine the Reliant being a light cruiser in comparison. (it has no secondary hull after all)

Using a wet navy analogue to Star Trek ships are a bit haphazard. Particularly since Star Trek was based on Hornblower era age of sail, where ships were a lot different, and comprised of ships that were supposed to, and required to, perform their duties independently or as part of a squadron. This all sort of went to hell though by TNG, which also introduced 'frigates' as part of Starfleet, and treated them as escort vessels (where in the age of sail, a frigate would be a big capship lol)

[Cynical Cat]

Galor class are called cruisers, battlecruisers, and in (and only in) "Sacrifice of Angels" destroyers. Slip up by Sisko, translation bug, or the consequence of being a mid sized cruiser with an unimpressive arsenal, you be the judge.

To a large extent, the terms "heavy cruiser" "battle cruiser" and "armoured cruiser" all overlap. The Klingons consistently use the term "battle cruiser" so its probable they use only a single term for ships of that type and it translates as battle cruiser. The Final Reflection has some great "translation going awry" moments.

And frigates are a mid sized capship in the Age of Sail. Ships of the Line (rated 1st through 4th by the Brits) were the big cap ship equivalents. In 20th and 21st Century navies, frigates are small fry so it depends on what you're referencing. Real life naval terminology is pretty messy, so we're only getting verisimilitude with Star Trek on this subject and shouldn't complain.

As an aside, when FASA had the Trek license they had frigates as large pure warships, often up to cruiser size. Some of them were mean motherfuckers. You did not fuck with the Federation when a Chandly class frigate and its battalion of Marines were in the vicinity.

[Stofsk]

Galor class are called cruisers, battlecruisers, and in (and only in) "Sacrifice of Angels" destroyers. Slip up by Sisko, translation bug, or the consequence of being a mid sized cruiser with an unimpressive arsenal, you be the judge.

It's possible that Starfleet reclassified them as 'destroyers' when compared next to both those small jem'hadar beetleships and the larger battlecruisers. I think that explanation bravely fits in context, though I'm still not happy with the inconsistency.

The Final Reflection has some great "translation going awry" moments.

It's an awesome book.

Real life naval terminology is pretty messy, so we're only getting verisimilitude with Star Trek on this subject and shouldn't complain.

We're nerds on the internet; of course we're going to complain.

I prefer the age of sail explanation for the most part, although obviously it is only a limited analogy.

[General Havoc]

The cruiser however did not exist in the age of sail really. Ships were either 1st through 4th rate, AKA ships of the Line of Battle, or Battleships, or 5th and 6th rate, AKA Frigates. Cruisers originally just meant any ship that would go off and "cruise" by itself, independent of the fleet, usually a frigate or a small-rate ship of the line. It wasn't until the mid-19th century that the term came to mean a specific type of ship. Destroyers (originally Torpedo-boat destroyers) didn't come about until the very end of the 19th century, originally as a means of warding torpedo boats away from the Dreadnoughts.

If Starfleet is comprised of "Cruisers", with a handful of "Destroyers" (Defiant) and "Battlecruisers" (Sovereign), then they're not employing Age of Sail terminology at all, but WWI/Interwar terms

[Stofsk]

Except in TOS there was a much tighter age of sail motif which TNG ruined. The Enterprise was referred to as a starship on more than one occasion, rather than as a cruiser or what not.

[General Havoc]

At no time did I ever get an age of sail motif from TOS more than I did from TNG. All Federation starships are referred to as such. The standard greeting for the Federation is "This is Captain X of the Federation Starship Y".

[Cynical Cat]

At no time did I ever get an age of sail motif from TOS more than I did from TNG. All Federation starships are referred to as such. The standard greeting for the Federation is "This is Captain X of the Federation Starship Y".

TOS does have a stronger Age of Sail motif with communication with Starfleet frequently being days or weeks away, so that Kirk has to make the important decisions on his own, unlike TNG where Starfleet can almost always be reached quickly.

[Stofsk]

At no time did I ever get an age of sail motif from TOS more than I did from TNG. All Federation starships are referred to as such. The standard greeting for the Federation is "This is Captain X of the Federation Starship Y".

So you missed the many, many references to Captains being cut off from immediate advice from Starfleet Command and thus they're given far greater authority in handling delicate missions than people would normally expect from modern day naval Captains, but would fit right at home in the Age of Sail? In 'A Taste of Armageddon' Kirk has the authority to conduct orbital bombardment on an inhabited planet. In 'Errand of Mercy' Kirk was also sent to Organia to be a diplomat when time was a crucial factor and he was the closest ship to the planet. That makes no sense in anything other than an Age of Sail milieu.

And when I said they referred to them as Starships, I meant capital S for Starship. In one episode, a drop out from the Academy - Merrick - commented to a Roman big wig in 'Bread and Circuses' that Kirk isn't just some ordinary dude but a Starship Captain. Considering Merrick was himself a captain of a starship, it doesn't make sense for him to stress the importance of this distinction if there was, in fact, no distinction.