Non-starship types

posted on February 11th, 2011, 2:50 pm

A TMP-era novel (Star Trek: New Earth) includes several Starfleet vessels below a full starship in the fleet food-chain, namely Cutter and Combat Support Tender.

Does anyone know exactly what those are?

posted on February 11th, 2011, 3:38 pm

current cutters are mainly coast guard things. so lightly armed ships for small tasks in general.

i would liken them to runabouts, or slightly bigger than runabouts but smaller than sabres. maybe old starships with non functional warp drives.

i dont see them happening in fleetops much, maybe as map object stuff, but they would be too weak for combat.

posted on February 11th, 2011, 4:12 pm

Combat support tender sounds like a ship that carries extra torpedoes, medical supplies, replacement parts and such for fleets that are on extended combat missions away from a friendly base for an extended period of time.

posted on February 11th, 2011, 4:20 pm

thats the nova lol. more torps.

posted on February 11th, 2011, 4:22 pm

So Support Tender is probably something like the FO Nova, and a Cutter is like a police ship?

posted on February 11th, 2011, 4:29 pm

I would imagine that a Support Tender might be even less than a Cutter. More like something which could carry extra weapons or supplies, maybe even troops to ships in the field. It probably can't operate without a larger ship or starbase backing it. A cutter is probably a bit like a police vessel; limited to perhaps the range of a star system or planet even, with light armaments for defense and nabbing thieving Ferengi ( ).

posted on February 11th, 2011, 4:32 pm

So Support Tender is probably something like the FO Nova, and a Cutter is like a police ship?

yup.

a cutter would probably be for use against criminals rather than space navies we see in fleetops.

posted on February 11th, 2011, 4:59 pm

From what memory serves, I think the Soyuz-Class Bozeman was supposed to have been a cutter/police ship. At least according to the book Ship of the Line.

posted on February 11th, 2011, 5:08 pm

nah i dont think the soyuz would have been. it had a starfleet crew who behaved like any other starfleet crew. and it looked like a miranda variant, which wasnt really old back then. over the decades between tmp era and tng era it proved that mirandas and excels got refitted, and presumably the soyuz werent, maybe cos starfleet didnt wanna refit everything, couldnt afford to refit everything, or the soyuz didnt refit cheaply while miranda and excel did.

by the time of fleetops though, soyuz and miranda could DEFINITELY fit this role. and maybe the miranda will make it in that way as well as a map object.

idea thread about to come along from this.

posted on February 11th, 2011, 6:26 pm

Yeah I agree.

It's not a canon source, but I found where I got the idea. From the book 'Ship of the Line.

Bush took one step forward. "This is a Soyuz-class border cutter authorized by the Starfleet Border Service. You may consider us, in a way, descendants of the United States Coast Guard, which in turn derived from the 1915 merging of the Revenue Cutter Service and the Lifesaving Service. In fact, the first United States naval commission went to Captain Yeaton in 1791, the master of a revenue cutter. The historic tag 'cutter' is picked up from the early days of the British Revenue Service, which actually used cutter-rigged sailing ships. If you want to know what that is, look it up. The United States Revenue Service used schooners rather like the fast Baltimore Clippers, but they were still called 'cutters,' and we still call ourselves that today. It keeps us tied to our long tradition of coastal security, and we're proud of it."

Its a pretty good read actually, gives some fun background on the the crew of the Bozeman and the construction of the Enterprise-E.

posted on February 11th, 2011, 6:46 pm

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_Z2hX-hbLciw/RszIl ... C01786.JPG
Destoyer on left Cutter on right. A cutter is about the same size as a corvette and slightly smaller than a frigate.