Harmony of Horizon Fleet Strength Report
This is a somewhat complex matter. Before we can begin to speak of the Harmony's fleet strength, we need to discuss Directorates. The spacegoing strength of the Harmony is tied up in a trio of Directorates.
The Peacekeeper Directorate - Functionally their principal military arm. Divided into four equal fleets with an astrographic area of responsibility.
The Public Safety Directorate - Operates as an exceptionally well armed interstellar law enforcement service with a very broad remit. Divided into a series of Precincts of varying size and astrographic responsibility.
The Science Directorate - Smallest of the three directorates, but potentially the one we are most likely to meet. Divided into Orders according to a wide variety of focal points.
We can say for sure that each of the Peacekeeper Fleets is anchored by a Sanctuary-class Fleet Tender, a tremendous five megaton mothership that supports an approximate dozen of short-range Corvettes. They are then supported by two older, much smaller, fleet tenders. The exact numbers of Corvettes in each fleet is not precisely known. Providing some heavy metal staying power, each fleet is also backed by a quartet of Liberators.
The Public Safety Directorate operates in, we believe, six Precincts, sharing a dozen of the older pattern fleet tenders which have been relegated to home service. In addition, they have a wide variety of older corvettes, and Alert-class public safety corvettes, almost like space-going law enforcement cruisers. A dozen Scientist-class cruisers and about a half-dozen older Solace-class battlecruisers help provide additional strength.
The Science Directorate is at least a dozen, but probably more, Scientist-class cruisers, and an equal number of Solace-class battlecruisers. The Solace-class, though a battlecruiser, is still a very capable research and diplomatic vessel, but a lot stronger in combat. Beware that outwardly they appear nearly identical, but you would not want to mistake the two.
If I may, the Harmony of Horizon has a very specific fleet structure. Fleets are not organized in ad-hoc forces like our task forces or sectors, but in standardized fleets. We could expect a Public Safety Directorate Precinct to have two
Scientist cruisers attached, for example. The Science Directorate is the most ad-hoc organization, but we know from later intelligence reports that they're organized into Orders of variable size. So if we see two groups of two (total four)
Scientist cruisers, we can presume that at least one Order of the Science Directorate has been tasked into the Federation border diplomatic mission, possibly as many as two or with Orders being reorganized to the size of the problem, as we know that in the past there were at least five Orders. As the Public Safety Directorate is
not an outreach organization, their
Scientist cruisers are not likely to be available for this venture, and as far as our intelligence goes the Peacekeeper Fleets don't use the
Scientist, being a mostly military structure.
So the fact that we see four visible
Scientist cruisers likely means that the Science Directorate was marshaled to support the Horizon's new diplomatic strategy, and I would suspect we're facing a force of about six
Scientist and six
Solace cruisers in this mission, with an upper bound of about eight of each ship. Any more than half the total strength of the Science Directorate doesn't make much sense, since we would be completely unable to commit half
our total strength on a single border in peacetime.
Keeping in mind that the Public Safety Directorate contains between eight to twelve of these cruisers too, and those forces shouldn't be available for foreign diplomacy without a major reorganization of Horizon fleet structure that we would have heard about.
Harmony Fleet Strength (2318.Q4)
4 Sanctuary Fleet Tender
20 Old Fleet Tender
16 Liberator
~18+ Solace
~24+ Scientist
~34 to 60+ Virtuoso Strike Corvette
~48-72+ Dancer Strike Corvette and Alert Corvette combined
e: It being 3 years on from this report, we can expect the current numbers to be something like ~20+ Solace and ~28+ Scientist total.
