How Big is Starfleet?
U.S.S. Phoenix > September 26th, 2005, 04:14 PM
Plus keep in mind that the Excelsior class was an extremely successfull class, in service for years and years and years and years. In contrast, there were only 6 Galaxy-class built (Galaxy, Enterprise, Yamamoto, and I forget the other 3), and only (to the best of my knowledge), 2 defiant class (Defiant and Sao Paolo(sp)). (EDIT: apparently more defiants are still being built)
The Excelsior class was in production for 39-years, and is still in active service after Voyager. There are about 300 sabers, too. But keep in mind that while Excelsiors are decent sized ships, they're not in the same class as Nebulas or Soveregins or Galaxys or Akiras.
So anyway, to answer your question, Starfleet probably consists of something in the range of 4,000-8,000 ships, including freighters and medical ships and the like. It takes a lot of ships to run a federation.
However, this does bring up an interesting question. In TNG, there never seem to be any starships handy. Certainly, the Enterprise does a lot of deep-space work out on the fringe, but you'd think there'd be a few more ships about...
This might be explainable in that at the time of TNG, the galazy was a quiet place, there were no major wars on, everything was quiet, and starfleet didn't need and battleships (Akiras, etc.), and they could afford to have a lot of ships mothballed. Then all hell broke loose and the federation had to deal with the bord, the dominion, the cardassians, the breen, etc. all at about the same time. So they panicked and put *everything* into service, and refitted lots of ships with more and bigger guns, and built a whole new fleet of destroyer-class vessels.
However, I must say that the information on that website appears to be at best unofficial and at worst suspect. For example, in the description of the Intrepid, it says this: "where the Excelsior Class numbers well over a hundred, the Ambassadors were limited to a production run of twenty six, and the Galaxy Class to six ships initially, fourteen ships at present"
So. Try to get information from a more authoratative source, methinks.