Star Trek Picard SPOILERS thread

[Umbran]

Right, 900 million. How many ships would that take?

We can't say how many ships, unless we also know the timeframes involved.

In general, the Federation has some thousands of ships, but they are every thinly spread. For the Battle of Wolf 359, in Best of Both Worlds, they pulled together 39 ships, which were all destroyed. Major engagements in the Dominioun war had 600 to 1500 ships (not all of these were Federation vessels - the Klingons and Romulans were allied with the Federation.

So, for an effort like this, you can expect maybe a couple thousand ships?

 

[Ryujin]

Well, that didn't take long.

Defence satellites, not shields. They were shooting at the ships in combat, that got too close to the planet.

 

[Morrus]

We can't say how many ships, unless we also know the timeframes involved.

In general, the Federation has some thousands of ships, but they are every thinly spread. For the Battle of Wolf 359, in Best of Both Worlds, they pulled together 39 ships, which were all destroyed. Major engagements in the Dominioun war had 600 to 1500 ships (not all of these were Federation vessels - the Klingons and Romulans were allied with the Federation.

So, for an effort like this, you can expect maybe a couple thousand ships?

Think Dunkirk. The number of civilian transports, cruise liners, cargo ships in a vast interstellar empire ten thousand times the size of Earth would number in the tens of millions. Then add Starfleet. I find it hard to feel 900m people is a stretch.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I believe some estimates on the size of Starfleet gave something like 9,000 to 30,000 ships as reasonable numbers (30,000 was a guesstimate given by Ronald D.Moore), which could be including anything from Danube Class Runabouts (evacuation limit: 15 people perhaps?) to Galaxy Class Cruisers (evacuation limit 15,000 according to Memory Alpha). But there is no exact canonical figure.

Of course, you can't actually use many them. These ships serve a purpose in Starfleet - patrolling borders, transporting goods, providing emergency relief to other worlds, ferrying diplomats... And other ships will be on deep space missions and might take years to get back. Starfleet cannot afford to just recall all of these ships to Romulus without severely impacting the integrity of the Federation.
So they will have only be able to mobilize a small fraction of this fleet.

 

[MarkB]

Defence satellites, not shields. They were shooting at the ships in combat, that got too close to the planet.

It's a bit of both. In the close-up shots as they're being herded toward the barrier by the bird of prey, you can see that there are forcefields projected between the drones, forming a composite shield around the whole planet. Seven of Nine's ship ends up smooshing into it.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

If we're gonna keep on this subject (and why not?) then we'd have to factor in, not just number of ships, and the ship's refugee capacity, but also boarding rate and/or beam rate. How many people could, say, the Enterprise D beam up at a time?

 

[Morrus]

If we're gonna keep on this subject (and why not?) then we'd have to factor in, not just number of ships, and the ship's refugee capacity, but also boarding rate and/or beam rate. How many people could, say, the Enterprise D beam up at a time?

We don’t know how much warning they had, but that might not really be an issue. If they had hours warning, they’re all dead whatever. If they had months, the evacuation is easy.

 

[MarkB]

If we're gonna keep on this subject (and why not?) then we'd have to factor in, not just number of ships, and the ship's refugee capacity, but also boarding rate and/or beam rate. How many people could, say, the Enterprise D beam up at a time?

Quite a few. The Enterprise-D has at least 8 transporter rooms, plus three shuttle bays. It's established in canon that its entire crew can be evacuated in 7 minutes.

 

[Umbran]

Think Dunkirk. The number of civilian transports, cruise liners, cargo ships in a vast interstellar empire ten thousand times the size of Earth would number in the tens of millions. Then add Starfleet. I find it hard to feel 900m people is a stretch.

Noting that we are theory crafting here.... But you forget how friggin' enormous the Federation is. Sources are not consistent, but just from Encounter at Farpoint, we get that the Federation is several thousand of light years across. And while from Enterprise D onwards the flagship can maintain warp 9.x for a while, most ships move at more modest speeds. It takes months to years to fly across the Federation. Thus, while there are lots of ships in the Federation, the vast majority of them are not available on short notice.

This is why the destruction of the shipyards was so large an issue - they were building ships for the effort, and they were lost.

I mean, they give us a number of people saved - note that it is less than a billion. Real Earth right now has 7 billion - assume an advanced civilizations got at least that many on their home world. Which suggests... most of the Romulan population didn't make it. We get a sense of the cataastrophe from that.

 

[Umbran]

It's a bit of both. In the close-up shots as they're being herded toward the barrier by the bird of prey, you can see that there are forcefields projected between the drones, forming a composite shield around the whole planet. Seven of Nine's ship ends up smooshing into it.

Yeah, and they need to wait for an opening to be able to beam down or up.