Star Trek Observations Part 7

[This article is in support of my project to design an unofficial (and free) Fudge role-playing game adaptation of the original Star Trek.]

The ship prefix most commonly heard in Star Trek is "USS" as in "USS Enterprise." We know from the original series that USS stands for "United Spaceship," which is conveniently close to its historical inspiration, "United States Ship." The only other ship prefix heard is "SS" as in "SS Beagle" or "SS Columbia." We can assume in this case that SS stands for "Spaceship," pertaining to Federation ships in general, whereas USS denotes Star Fleet ships. (The historical meaning of SS, incidentally, is "Steamship.")

The question is: Do other major spacefaring civilizations also use ship prefixes? I see no reason why they should. If the Germans and the Japanese during World War II perceived no purpose for ship prefixes, why should the Klingons and Romulans? Perhaps that is an unfair comparison, perhaps not, but it possesses an appealing symmetry. Besides, the logical choices are decidedly unappealing. For instance:

• "Imperial Romulan Ship": IRS
  
• "Romulan Imperial Naval Ship": RINS
  
• "Imperial Klingon Ship": IKS
  
• "Klingon Imperial Naval Ship": KINS
  
• "Klingon Imperial Spaceship": KISS
  

I suppose one could simply resort to RSS for "Romulan Spaceship" and KSS for "Klingon Spaceship," but both sound too Federation-like, too neighborly, too friendly. The Tholian Assembly is far too alien to have any use for something as quaint as ship prefixes, and I think the Gorn are likely to lack the sentimentality to give their ships names at all. Therefore, in the Expanded Classic Star Trek Universe, USS and SS will be retained for Federation starships, Klingon and Romulan ships will have names sans ship prefixes, Gorn ships will use hull classification symbols combined with hull numbers exclusively for identification, and Tholian ships will use only hull numbers (a.k.a. registry). Furthermore, Star Fleet vessel identification will consist of the following:

• ship prefix (e.g. USS)
  
• name (e.g. ENTERPRISE)
  
• registry (e.g. NCC-1701)
  
• hull classification symbol/hull number combinations (e.g. CA-2)
  

Hull classification symbol/hull number combinations are used to identify individual ships by their type (e.g. CA for Heavy Cruisers) and their production number (e.g. 2 for the second ship of that type to be commissioned). Ships of different classes within a type are numbered consecutively for their production within the type, not the class, i.e. Constitution class Heavy Cruisers CA-1 through CA-19 might be followed by the hypothetical Magna Carta class Heavy Cruisers CA-20 through CA-22, which might be followed in turn by the Fuji class Heavy Cruisers CA-23 through CA-25. A class that is too radically different from its predecessors might warrant reclassification as a separate type altogether, along with a new series of hull numbers, e.g. USS Dreadnought (NCC-whatever) (BB-1). Here BB stands for Battleship and 1 stands for the first ship of that class.

[Originally posted in Fudgery.net/fudgerylog on 12 July 2007.]