Fanboy Time: Straight up- Defiant vs Warbird-

Who wins who flames out?

I say the Defiant is bloodied but wins b/c it has The Sisko and he makes liberal use of the QT's

 

Warbird easily. Proof from this FNS holocapture:



Warbird invades Bajoran sector as local Defiant task force is decimated and retreats. Warbird suffered no damage. The faith of DS9 is unknown following the loss of all communications with the station.

 

Assuming you mean the D'deridex class, then it's difficult to call. I know they appear quite a few times in Trek, but have we ever really seen them fight very often? The only occasion I can think of is the Founders' trap in The Die Is Cast, so there's not much evidence to go on.

 

Given my rather low opinion of the Warbird as a combatant I'd back the Defiant. The Warbird has always seem to be more show then go in my opinion.

The Defiant tore the Regent's flagship a new one and that was huge and was bristling with weapons. Then in the First Battle of Chin'toka a Warbird was knocked out of the fight in 3 second by the OWPs, while the Defiant kept trucking. The strength of the Warbird would be in its ability to cloak and that it could decloak and catch the enemy by surprise. You take away that first strike and force it to battle it out I don't think it has the pure toughness of the Defiant, which was designed to tough it out. The cloaking device just happened to be an extra.

 

Do games count?

If you want scenarios in games where the two could go head to head you've got:

Birth of the Federation: If the D'deridex has the 'free-turn' cloak advantage, it would go to the D'deridex. If not, both ships carry enough weapons to destroy each other in a single turn if they manage to fire them all off before being destroyed by the other.

Armada: D'deridex again, since it has the shields and hull to withstand the two pulse cannons, while being able to pound the destroyed sized Defiant in short order with disruptors and torpdoes. Even quicker if you add the technobabble special weapons for both. The opening intro does have a funky destruction of a Warbird by Worf's Defiant class though

Legacy: D'deridex yet again, since it has the all arc firepower to keep hitting a Defiant, even if the Defiant is able to get very close to reduce the ease of the Warbird getting a lock with multiple weapons. The Defiant however can get a very damaging opening salvo on the way in, but will in turn suffer a massive one in doing so.

 

In BOTF, the D'deridex was the Soveriegn equivalent, so taking the cloaking advantage out of the equation, and all other things being equal (such as crew exp.), I'd still expect the Warbird to win.

 

Very true, but the Defiant was an oddball in terms of not having any equivalents in any other races, by dint of being almost as advanced (or just as advanced, can't remember) as the Sovereign, and IIRC had sufficient firepower to wipe out even a Sovereign. The problem would mainly be the Defiant surviving long enough to fire all it's weapons before succumbing to the Warbird's firepower.

 

I've got to vote Defiant.

 

On the serious note, Defiant is my favorite Fed Ship, but I can't see how it can win without the hero factor.

The ship destroys small vessels and Cardassian cruisers. We never see them take on big ones and succeed. It takes on Lakota and struggles with it. It's easily destroyed by Dominion battleship. It runs away from Vor'cha. The Negh'var she defeats is mirror one, and their tech seems to be inferior, so I won't count that.

Warbird is a match for Galaxy-class which means massive shielding and allegedly more powerful disruptors. I just can't see one defiant defeating it without the crew outsmarting the other Romulan crew.

 

If Tomalak was in command of the Warbird not even Sisko would stand a chance!

 

That makes the D'deridex look pathetic. If you're not directly in front of it, you're in no danger.

 

We never saw what really happened to that Warbird other than it took some hits. It kept flying on when the scene cut to another part of the battle. A Galaxy class took similar damage to the Warbird and kept firing phasers, too. If the Warbird was knocked out of the fight, it probably wasn't from the first three seconds.

Anyway, back to the battle, I wouldn't be surprised if the Defiant could dodge a Warbird's weapons systems. According to various print material, one advantage Starfleet has over the Romulan fleet is the invention of the phaser array, which leads me to believe that even a Warbird has a limited firing arc. It's not that maneuverable to begin with, surely there must be some blind spots on a ship with that much mass.

*****
And if we're using video games as a measure (nods to you, SilentP!), then I bring up Bridge Commander, where the Warbird (and most mods of said Warbird) have a major major blind spot, in that her aft weaponry is nowhere near as complete as her forward weaponry. Keep the Defiant facing the Warbird's aft and the Warbird is in trouble.

 

Depends on which ship has Worf at tactical.

 

I don't really see the need to go off games, when we have the warbird designer saying he gave her 10 disruptor banks, and they look like they have 360 degree firing arc + the big disruptor at the front, and several other weapon emplacements we see her firing from in the show. Her aft firing coverage is especially good with 4 banks able to fire straight aft, and two additional ones that can't cover the 6 o'clock spot, but can fire at 7 and 5 o'clock position. That's as good as galaxy class if you ask me, and way better than definat's aft fire.

 

The Defiant did take out a Dominion Battle Cruiser (not the heavy ship in Valiant) but the feared ship in the battle for DS9.

I've never been impressed w/the Warbirds on screen and I doubt seriously if the Warbirds hull could handle 2 or 3 flurries of QT's.

Superior manueuverability + ablative armor+QT's would equal a Defiant victory.

Here's the best Warbird vs Fed battle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvk3PgRQ5js

 

At Midway, the Hiryu, Soryu, Akagi and Kaga were the focus of the undivided attention of the USN, and the four most powerful ships in the Japanese Navy were completely destroyed when all but one of the other vessels* survived. (*And Mikuma might have survived if Mogami hadn't plowed into her.)

The moral is, it's often good strategy to target the most dangerous combatants first.

The Defiant's a torpedo boat, the D'Deridex is a capital ship. All things being equal, I vote for the capital ship.

Good God, seriously. Also apparently you can fly into its infrastructure like a freakin' Death Star. Maybe the D'D would lose--it doesn't have any shields.

Also, will someone resize that wide image?

 

After it took its hit it started to "list" to suggest it was knocked out of the fight.

 

If you'll notice, I give essentially two different answers in one post separated by the line of asterisks (Tech manual commentaries in one, game physics in another). My video game post was in response to SilentP's post, so there's still two different contexts here. You're free to take and dismiss what you'd like. I myself normally abhor using video game tactics in these sorts of debates (it's a meaningless tactic in a meaningless thread, for one thing. Mechanics change from game to game!), but it was said tongue in cheek.

How severe was this "list?" The fight is easily available on Youtube, and given all the dodging and maneuvering and "patterns omega" on screen, what the warbird does is really too brief to truly figure out. The Galaxy class that was hit, for example, could be drifting after it was hit, but we see no proof of that. The Defiant appeared to be pushed as well when it was hit by a phaser during its attack run on the moon. While it looks like a list, though, all the other ships were doing it but weren't hit, suggesting they were maintaining formation.

By comparison, we saw a Miranda in the same episode take three times as many attacks. Sure, she was destroyed rather easily, but I find it hard to believe that it takes that many blasts to utterly destroy a Miranda, but only a couple of attacks to disable a giant Warbird, a class we've seen go up against the much more advanced and larger Akiras and Galaxies and Intrepids (in holo-form). Thus, I think the Warbird attack was just really exaggerated.

Even if you believe the Defiant takes this one, I don't think a Warbird will be inoperative in just a couple of hits.

 

I'd have to give it to the Defiant.

And not just because I love it.

As far as I can recall, the Defiant is smaller, more maneuverable, and more heavily armed than a Warbird. It might take a while, but I would think a decent crew (...we're imagining capable crews in these kind of scenarios, right?) could perform hit and run attacks on the Warbird, darting away before the more massive ship can turn to target them, and circling around for more.

If a ship full of rebels who'd never seen a Defiant-class can take out the Mirror Klingon's giant ship, and a crew of cadets can successfully strafe a giant ship crewed by the Jem'hadar, I'd have to think a Defiant could take out a Warbird.

 

well, yeah, I never said otherwise.

It's the "more heavily armed" part that is questionable, hence the fact that we can argue this topic. If it was that straight forward as you say, no one would be discussing this. There is also the element of shields being almost certainly more powerful on the Warbird. And your tactics seem a bit flawed there: Why does the Romulan ship need to turn to target the Defiant?