Historical Trends and fictional history

[Irish Wolf]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Hmmm. Could the telescopic optics also serve to direct a weapon-grade laser beam?

In Star Trek Online, there's a weapons console that was, according to its flavor text, originally designed as a sort of subspace telescope to gather data from extreme long range. It proved to be less than completely useful for that task; however, at normal combat ranges, the quantum collimation beam used to aim the sensor can do a great deal of damage to a single target. The Klingons were, of course, the first to weaponize this, but after the series of treaties that formed the Alliance, the design was shared to shipbuilders of the Federation and the Romulan Republic.

[Qoltar]

The 'weapons converted to optics' has nothing to do with my original question.

The Real Question was:

What would be the average age of Starfleet offers ad enlisted being re-assigned just 2 to 3 years after the big war?

The 'converting equipment' thing is not important or the issue at all.

- Ed C.

[Irish Wolf]

Originally Posted by Qoltar

The 'weapons converted to optics' has nothing to do with my original question.

The Real Question was:

What would be the average age of Starfleet offers ad enlisted being re-assigned just 2 to 3 years after the big war?

The 'converting equipment' thing is not important or the issue at all.

- Ed C.

You're expecting Trekkies to stay to only one line of discussion? :D

More on-target, the STO storyline has also been in conflict for most of the past two years in-game - it was shortly after the Iconian threat was finally defeated that we found the Tzenkethi protomatter-bombing planets they thought contained Hur'q eggs, as the eggs had started to hatch. Then we got involved in a bit of a civil war among the Founders, helped Odo's side win, found out what was going on with the Hur'q, and negotiated a peace. And now we're starting to get incursions from the Mirror Universe again - they sent agents to steal the recently-recovered body of the android Ilia (from TMP).

Upshot there is that we had rapid promotions during the wars, and most ships today are captained by admirals barely old enough to have made Lieutenant Commander during peacetime. (At least, the game regards them as admirals - my headcanon is that all my guys hold the rank of Captain, and it's not their fault if various civilian NPCs don't know how to read the pips.) Age skews toward early adulthood, as most of the older guys died in the early stages, back when we thought the Klingons were going to be the enemy. (They thought Species 8472 had infiltrated the Federation Council - and 8472, the Undine, were starting to get close. They had replaced the Vulcan ambassador to the Federation, but we found out what he was when he tried to replace the head abbot at the P'jem monastery.)

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by Qoltar

The 'weapons converted to optics' has nothing to do with my original question.

The Real Question was:

What would be the average age of Starfleet offers ad enlisted being re-assigned just 2 to 3 years after the big war?

The 'converting equipment' thing is not important or the issue at all.

- Ed C.

Noting that DISCO s1 utterly alters all prior canon on the war.... not that there was much Alpha canon, but a lot of beta canon went right out the window.

Also note that enlisted grades have been shown explicitly in all shows but TOS TAS, Picard, Prodigy and Lower Decks. Burnham was reduced to Specialist 2c in Disco. Crewman Tarses in TNG is clearly NOT an ensign. O'brien is a SCPO in DS9 and in a TNG episode; Sergei Rozhenko is a retired SCPO. Voyager has Crewman Seska and a few others. Ent has "crewman Daniels" wearing an enlisted rank device - kind of like half a USAF stripe, but with a delta in the middle. The TOS Movies have explicitly labelled enlisted insignia in beta material, and seen on screen in passing. Thiess' jumpsuits for TOS are often interpreted as enlisted; Uhura's dialogue in the Man Trap reinforces this.

Generally...
The losses were so high in canon, the officer corps is well-past decimated. The fleet went from hundreds to maybe a dozen combat-capables.

Navies, unlike Armies, don't generally function based upon their conscripts. the conscripts are there to do scutwork and see if they can be taught to function; those that do get retained if possible. This is partly why navies hate wartime crash-building...

On the other hand, most suviving crews maintain the same PO/CPO/WorkingOfficer/CommandOfficer ratios before, during, and after, since war casualties to ships tend to be everyone together.

What determines the post-war staffing change is how many ships are to be brought online. If few, then the ratios stay the same. If many, then most of the command grade slots get filled by promoting the always more numerous Lt's to LtCdr and under-ranking command slots.
And the supervisorly LTjg and LT slots get filled by promotion as well... but ensigns take 4 years of academy time; crewmen take but 1...

So, where you have non-supervisory Ens and JG working slots, those get filled with PO's as an interim; the best get commissioned.

Given that we "know" the setting doesn't rebuild the fleet quickly, the ratios and ages should be a slight reduction in average ages of Commanders and LtCdrs, a significant reduction in ages of Lt's and JGs, and faster promotion of ensigns but only for a few years.

Likewise, more of the non-NCO enlisted get offered retention, and more of them get promoted, but the enlisted corps as a whole is going to largely be pulled down just a year or two, again, only for a while.

[Irish Wolf]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

Also note that enlisted grades have been shown explicitly in all shows but TOS TAS, Picard, Prodigy and Lower Decks. Burnham was reduced to Specialist 2c in Disco. Crewman Tarses in TNG is clearly NOT an ensign. O'brien is a SCPO in DS9 and in a TNG episode; Sergei Rozhenko is a retired SCPO. Voyager has Crewman Seska and a few others. Ent has "crewman Daniels" wearing an enlisted rank device - kind of like half a USAF stripe, but with a delta in the middle. The TOS Movies have explicitly labelled enlisted insignia in beta material, and seen on screen in passing. Thiess' jumpsuits for TOS are often interpreted as enlisted; Uhura's dialogue in the Man Trap reinforces this.

Also, in "Space Seed", Khan has cut off life support to the bridge. Kirk records what he thinks at the time will be his final log entry, in which he recommends commendations for everyone on the bridge besides himself, including "Technicians First Class Thule and Harrison".