What is design lineage? Well to put it in simple terms, all ships follow a set pattern, and in star trek there is a set pattern for four classes of ships. I’ll label the four classes as Destroyer, Light Cruiser, Heavy Cruiser, and Dreadnaught. From here, I’ll then show how a proper design linage is accomplished. Design Lineage is basically using the same elements to create different ships, such that maintenance costs are kept down. These four classes would be the basis for multi-purpose backbone warships and is not meant to mean that only these ships are allowed, as specialized ships can and do exists.

First generation, let’s look at The Old Series, here we had the Iconic Constitution class, and you’re thinking to yourself, well yea, that’s all we had. And that’s where you’d be wrong, Matt Jefferies drew up plans for several ships, and many were referenced or seen on screen in some fashion (most notable as diagrams on the monitors). So what is the Constitution class you ask? We’ll classify this as a heavy cruiser, as that’s what it is, then you ask yourself how does this apply to design lineage? And here’s how it applies.

The constitution saucer is the basis for several designs; the Saladin is a destroyer utilizing the saucer and neck of the Constitution and one Constitution nacelle attached at the base of the neck.  This also applies to its sister class the Hermes Class scouts, which are 95% the same ship. We also see the saucer utilized in other designs as well, the Federation Class Dreadnaughts also use the Saucer verbatim with minor changes, this ship uses the saucer with an additional Warp Nacelle center lined at the rear of the saucer on a small neck, the rest of the ship is almost identical to the Constitution, with the secondary hull being slightly bigger, but still the same general shape.

Now we have a Destroyer, Heavy cruiser and a Dreadnaught, but how about the other class? Well this is pretty easy, as we have the Ptolemy Class tug, here again; we see the Constitution class saucer utilized with 2 nacelles. This forms the basis of the ship, where the neck should be is a docking clamp for support Pods. However the Ptolemy is classified as a tug, but can be considered the predecessor to the light cruiser designs.

So to recap the linage of destroyer, Light cruiser, Heavy cruiser, Dreadnaught, Support in first generation:

Saladin/Hermes class Destroyer/Scout
Ptolemy Class
Constitution Class
Federation Class

Second Generation I classify as the movie era, here we see these ships move forward, the Saladin/Hermes are mentioned in the films and one would expect they would have been refitted to the same look of the Enterprise class, as evidenced by the Miranda class that utilized the Saucer and Nacelles of the Enterprise class as well (with the rear of the saucer dramatically changed). One can also speculate that the Ptolomy class would have also undergone a major refit to the enterprise standards as well, although It’d probably not be noticeable different than the Miranda class in design. As for the Federation class, if the ship series survived into the era, you can speculate it to have the same look of the enterprise class.

So second Generation is somewhat extrapolated, as we never really detailed it more:

Refit Saladin/Hermes Destroyer/scout
Miranda Class Light Cruiser (Ptolemy refit?)
Enterprise Class (refit Constitutions)
Federation class Refit (unknown, but speculation is that there would be some)

But you say to yourself, what about the Excelsior how does that fit into all this? I explain this away as and experimental class design that would have, if continued to produce a new generation to replace the second generation. The Excelsior was meant to replace the Enterprise class as the Heavy Cruisers, however the design never got full steam and no other ships were seen to fir the pattern utilizing excelsior’s saucer and nacelles. Thus Excelsior was a one of the few multiple class exceptions.

Third Generation, here we start to see more ships fitting the design linage again. Here we see the Ambassador class come online as the heavy cruiser, the freedom class come online as the Destroyer, and the other two classes are unknown, but can be extrapolated from known data. For instance, if we jump ahead to fourth generation a second, we see the Nebula follows the pattern, thus one would speculate there would be a Light cruiser utilizing the saucer and nacelles of an Ambassador in a similar fashion. There has been speculation on this and the possible class for this is the Apollo class, as for the dreadnaught there is no known designs that fit in this era.  If we speculate a dreadnaught class exists, it should follow the pattern and be very similar to the ambassador with a third nacelle and a slightly larger secondary hull.

So we have:

Freedom class Destroyer/scout (no known counterpart)
Apollo class light cruiser (speculated derivative)
Ambassador class Heavy Cruiser
Unknown Dreadnaught class

Again, we have the Excelsior still in service during this generation, thus the design must have had a specialized purpose or was redesigned to fit a particular mission.

Fourth Generation, this is the Next generation time, Again we see the pattern emerging with the Galaxy Class filling the Heavy cruiser role and the nebula class filling the Light cruiser role, however no Saladin/Freedom exists in this time that utilized the galaxy saucer and single nacelle. We also have no known information of the dreadnaught, although we have seen a galaxy with 3 nacelles at one point.

Fourth Generatio:
Unknown or nonexistent Destroyer class
Nebula class Light cruiser
Galaxy Class heavy cruiser
Unknown or Galaxy Class Variant dreadnaught


As you can see, except for the dreadnaught, there is a clear linage of the other three classes, and within the various Generations, those three classes all utilized the same saucer and nacelles of their counterpart ships, this makes ship maintenance easier, as a damaged ship can just hit any star base or shipyard that supports one of it’s companion classes for parts.

But what does this say for the next Generation? Well the fifth generation is unknown, but can be extrapolated from a few knowns. We know the Sovereign Class is the next Heavy cruiser class, this we can extrapolate that a light cruiser would utilize its saucer and nacelles. And if they continued the Saladin/Freedom forward, again the saucer and a nacelle would be utilized. As for a dreadnaught, the Sovereign is ideally set up to be converted to one of these, the secondary hull is easily expanded and the position of a third Nacelle on the saucer would be an easy fit.

I know people are saying “but but but….what about….”, yes there are other classes of ships, but as I said these are the multipurpose backbone warships. Ships like the defiant, Intrepid and Olympic classes are all specialized for specific roles. The Defiant being a fast assault ship, only useful in combat and limited excursions, and the Olympic class is a specialized medial ship designed as a mobile hospital.

The Intrepid is what I’d classify as a new addition to the lineup, a frigate class, as it is indeed a small multipurpose warship. however, as it doesn’t utilize parts from the larger classes or a similar line up, I would surmise that destroyers and frigates post third Generation would start to take on a complimentary look and design separate from the other three classes, which makes some sense as a destroyer with a galaxy class saucer would be extremely big.

There are other classes of ships we’ve seen, however every one of them has a unique mission and can not be classified as a backbone warship. So let’s look at it in a different way

Frigate:
? -> ? -> ? ->Intrepid->?
Destroyer:
Saladin-> Saladin-> Freedom-> ?

Light Cruiser:
Ptolemy-> Miranda-> Apollo (?)-> Nebula-> ?

Heavy cruiser:
Constitution-> Enterprise-> Ambassador-> Galaxy-> Sovereign

Dreadnaught:
Federation-> ?


So as we can see, within each Generation there are ships of the backbone that clearly have interchangeable parts and are designed to be complimentary in repairs. This means Star bases and repair centers do not have to stock a multitude of parts, they can store a set number of one type and in a war situation can easily repair the warships or even cannibalize complimentary ships for parts. Thus if there’s a Nebula sitting there with damaged nacelles and pod, but the saucers 85% good, and a Galaxy pulls in with a 60% damaged saucer, they could just swap the nebulas saucer onto the galaxy, repair the 15% damage to it and send out a good galaxy in a fraction of the time to rebuild both ships.

So what does this have to do with anything? Probably nothing, but I thought it was an interesting topic