Lys wrote:Oh, well you downgraded the Connie to medium cruiser from heavy cruiser, and the Miranda to frigate from either medium or heavy cruiser (never stated on screen which), so i figured you were dropping the older ones down in weight class. It's just weird to me to not have the Miranda and Connie in the same category, or with the Miranda just one category lower. They're about the same size and we saw them evenly matched in Wrath of Khan. But then, we do see Mirandas zooming around like Jem'hadar bugs, which is why two of them were running escort on the Defiant during... Sacrifice of Angels was it? i've not actually watched DS9, just YouTube clips. Maybe they refitted the thing with more powerful engines so it could fill the frigate role, and the Connie was taken out of service because it could not be so refitted and was too small to fill any other role?
If you
really want my rationale on those decisions...
The Constitution and Miranda classes date from an earlier time in Starfleet, when there were fewer overall classes of ships (at least ones we know about), and the stylistic and structural parallels to the Age of Sail were considerably more prominent than they later became. Not that Star Trek ever got completely away from those traditions, but by the DS9 era, the feel had definitely become more WWIIish, what with Escort Destroyers and massive fleets of hundreds of ships, including squadrons of carrier-launched fighters. It therefore stands to reason that the concept of what a ship-of-the-line is would have changed over time.
When the Connies were flying around, there was no distinction in Starfleet between a "Heavy" or "Light" (let alone "Battle") cruiser, a ship of the line was a ship of the line, as in Nelson's day, and the Constitution was thus rated a "Cruiser" without comment (yes, I know all about the Royal Navy's 'rating' system, but there is no evidence nor any compelling reason that Starfleet would have needed an equivalent). The Miranda, a smaller vessel, yet clearly still a ship capable of projecting potent, independent force, was rated as a "Frigate", the old Royal Navy term for a ship that was a step down from a Ship-of-the-Line, but still entirely capable of mounting independent operations (see the Aubrey-Martin books for a good example thereof). Had the concept of a "Light" cruiser existed at the time, Miranda might well have been rated as such, but the traditions of the Starfleet were those of the old Royal Navy in the days of Napoleon and Trafalgar (Star Trek II is clear enough on this, to say nothing of everything else), and the terminology used was derived therefrom.
But times changed, and new classes of ship emerged. For a while it was simple enough to simply call anything that was intended to replace the Constitution (Excelsior for instance) a Cruiser, and anything intended to replace the Miranda (Oberth for instance) a Frigate. But as generations of ships went by, and Starfleet began building more and more classes of more and more varied ships, the blanket term of "Cruiser" became less and less helpful in determining just what a ship was. If 80% of your vessels are "Cruisers", scattered within a dozen different classes with a dozen different mission parameters, then the term is no longer of any use. Accordingly, the super-heavy vessels that Starfleet (and others) began building before and during the TNG era, ships considerably larger and more powerful than a Constitution was, even when accounting for the age of the various vessels, became "Heavy" cruisers, while the smaller vessels, large enough to rate as cruisers, yet not designed as heavy vessels of the line, became "Light" cruisers. As time went on, the "Heavy" designation bifurcated even further as Starfleet began facing more overt military threats that demanded a more overt military response, thus spinning off the hyper-armed gutpunchers of the fleet into the "Battlecruiser" designation, while retaining the stately omnipurpose flag vessels in the Heavy designation.
The older Federation vessels, the Connies and Excelsiors and the like, remained Cruisers, for that was what they were built as, and one does not, ever, for any reason, "demote" a ship in rank simply because bigger ships have been built (which is why the First Rates of the old Nelsonian fleets had no cap to the number of guns they could carry). However, being as the generic "Cruiser" designation they had used was now split into many categories, none of which they legitimately fit into, the decision was made to simply reclassify them all as "Medium" cruisers. You will note that, with the exception of the Nebula class (a weird vessel I could legitimately place in any one of three categories), all of the "standard" or "Medium" cruisers I cited are all either legacy vessels (including Klingon ones), or the ships of second-tier powers whose shipbuilding capacities were such that they could not reliably construct ships large enough to warrant classification as Heavy or Light. The Galor and Keldon classes, for instance, are more modern ships, but thanks to the congenital defects of Cardassian ship design (I cite basically all of DS9), classifying them as anything above a medium cruiser is simply unrealistic, whereas they are clearly not designed as Light Cruisers in function or intended role. Medium Cruiser thus became, for Starfleet, a sort of catchall term for older, refitted ships from an earlier era, ships designed to stand in the line, but for whom the line had grown considerably more teeth than it had possessed in their day.
As to the Mirandas, they remained classified as Frigates, just as the Connies did as Cruisers. But unlike the Connies, the designation of "Frigate" did not split up as much as the "Cruiser" did. Frigates, however advanced, remained what they were even in the Miranda's time, smaller, more limited vessels still more than capable of undertaking their own independent operations, but not expected to stand in the direct line of battle and pound away. In the Dominion War, the Mirandas were indeed used to do that, with predictable results, but the succeeding classes of Frigate, however more advanced, did not really alter from that model. What changed was the scale of the
other vessels in the galaxy. The worst a Miranda might previously have been expected to run into was a D-7 or the equivalent, but by DS9's time, you have D'Deridex, Vorcha, and even Negh'var classes flying around, as well as their Federation equivalents. As ever-more lofty designations were invented for those scale of ships, the Miranda and the other Frigates found themselves outmatched by not one but many weight-classes of ship, but per the tradition before, they were not downgraded to "cutters" or "corvettes" or whatever else, but retained the name Frigate, even if the concept of what a Frigate was had changed somewhat since their heyday. This is why Miranda-class Frigates, which were capable of holding their own against Constitution-class Cruisers, were being swatted out of the sky by Jem'Hadar Battlecruisers. The level of firepower these ships were classified against was simply orders of magnitudes higher, necessitating a revision of just what a Frigate was and was not capable of doing.
The only class to divide off from the Frigate was, of course, the Destroyer, a term that did not exist in the Napoelonic age, and which the unwarlike Federation never properly embraced at all. Nevertheless, once the decision was made to construct purpose-built escort warships, fast, maneuverable, and packed with firepower, it was clear that something other than Frigate would be needed to classify them. The Federation used the term "Escort" for a while, but Destroyer is a term I believe to be more in keeping with the more modern conception of Star Trek embodied by DS9 and the like, one derived from the WWII-era navy, mixed with the old traditions of Napoleon. As a Defiant class, for instance, despite also being a small vessel, is both designed for and employed in a role completely alien to those of the Mirandas and other Frigates, it seemed the logical choice.
So that is why I have classified the Constitution as a Medium Cruiser and the Miranda as a Frigate. These designations reflect the roles for which they were constructed back when Starfleet was smaller and their classifications less diverse. There are of course, modern ships classified as Frigates (and a few classified as Medium Cruisers), but this is because they are intended for roles similar to those undertaken by the original ships who first embodied that classification, unlike those vessels in more modern ones.
Gaze upon my works, ye mighty, and despair...
Havoc: "So basically if you side against him, he summons Cthulu."
Hotfoot: "Yes, which is reasonable."
