Miranda Class VS Refit Constitution class round 2

And the damage to Enterprise was much more extensive than that of Reliant. They were fully functional again within a few hours after all. Enterprise was still beat up by the time they got back to Starbase in the next movie.

If Kirk got shields up a couple seconds sooner, that would've been a very interesting fight. I think "doesn't stand a chance" is a bit overstating it though. Reliant would've still gotten in the first hits to be sure, but Enterprise wouldn't have been crippled, even if at a disadvantage given they'd have lost a good portion of their shield power. It would've been a slugging match to be sure from that point as Enterprise is making up ground with their superior firepower for the rest of the fight. I think Enterprise(especially with Kirk commanding) would've come out ahead, but I suppose we'll never know there.

 

They weren't fully functional, they had only restored impulse power...

JOACHIM: Impulse power restored.
KHAN: Excellent! More than a match for poor Enterprise.

And once they got into the nebula, the Enterprise used Reliant as a punching bag.

 

Naaa

the reliant was better armed, 4 torpedo launchers, 14 phaser emitters and 2 phaser cannon, than reliant was built after the constitution and problaby has more advance technology

i think reliant was an heavy cruise and tmp reliant a light cruiser

 

Where do your stats come from?

 

But the definition of "light cruiser" ITRW had basically zip to do with displacement anyway. It was solely a matter of gun caliber, and many a light cruiser far out-bulked contemporary heavies, or (in Japan and the US) was eventually changed into a heavy cruiser simply by swapping her triple 6in turrets for twin 8in ones.

The original story concept was for Khan to capture an outdated starship - a TOS Constitution... And then (initially) triumph simply because he was the better or at least more ruthless captain.

Or, we have a lot to go by (basically more than in any other TOS episode or movie), but both the hero and the villain are either pulling their punches or fighting wounded in all the witnessed exchanges of fire.

If we assume identical phasers and torpedoes for both, then the battle is probably decided on one of two things:

a) Some things in TOS suggest that first hits count, much like in early 20th century naval gun battles, so the ship with better long range sensors should win.
b) Some things support 17th-18th century naval gun battle models instead, where the ability to endure long pummeling is decisive, so the ship with better shields should win.

Apart from that, I'm not sure what real advantage the aft torpedoes of the Miranda would give, except perhaps in chase battles.

Timo Saloniemi

 

It's from interviews with the people who designed the Reliant but I don't remember where I read it. The Official Fan Club magasine, maybe, but that was long ago. I've already admitted that.

 

movie evidence

 

That's the old chestnut - how many weapons does Khan's ship have?

Apart from the use of the Genesis device as a weapon, the movie only shows two types of weapons: torpedo tubes (easily established as Kirk 2, Khan 4, even though Kirk has something called "Torp Bay 4"), and phasers. There is no third type of weapon in evidence: we don't hear of any "phaser cannon", nor do we see one in action.

Kirk's ship has eighteen phaser turrets: three twin ones above and three twin ones below the saucer, four single ones below the secondary hull, and two single ones atop the shuttlebay. Khan's ship has either sixteen or eighteen phaser turrets: three twin ones above and three twin ones below the saucer, possibly two single ones next to the impulse engine (visible in some backstage photographs of the model, not visible in the later incarnations of the ship in TNG or DS9), and then two single ones on the outer sides of the cylinders on the "roll bar".

Kirk's ship only ever fires from the twin banks below the saucer. Khan's ship only ever fires from the single banks on the sides of the cylinders. Both ships shoot identical beams, with identical results against unshielded ships.

There are no beams coming from the cylinders themselves, that is, from their forward or aft ends. The beams Khan first fires are drawn as beginning from the sides of the cylinders, where these single yellow-painted ball turrets exist. There is a white light coming from the forward end of the cylinder, function unknown.

If the white light thing is a weapon, we are left wondering why Khan never used it. If some of Khan's phaser turrets are more powerful than the single ones on the sides of the cylinders, we are left wondering why Khan never used them. In the end, it seems Khan only had one type of phaser weapon available, and all sixteen or eighteen of them had equal destructive power, so the choice of one over another was arbitrary.

Naturally, we may invent reasons for Khan's "odd decisions". Perhaps he never learned to use the white-light weapons? Perhaps using them would have called for more crew than he had? But we may just as well decide that the white-light things were navigational deflectors or sensor pods or communications arrays or just plain searchlights. They did not affect the balance of power in ST2:TWoK, and they never saw action in any other incarnation of Star Trek.

FWIW, the movie does not suggest that Khan's ship would be newer than Kirk's, or more advanced. She has the same interiors, the same controls, even the same color scheme. Her registry is higher than that of Kirk's ship, but not by much, and we already saw registries that high back in TOS, suggesting that both the hero ship and the villain ship underwent a refit to their movie specs after serving in a TOS style guise previously...

Timo Saloniemi

 

Right, evidence from the movie is inconclusive, and I can't for the life of me remember where I read that "more advanced" thing.

 

Reliant could be "more advanced" based on the higher registry.

The higher registry could indicate a newer vessel (though not necessarily) and a newer vessel could be assumed to be more advanced (though not necessarily).

And even then, "more advanced" needn't be in terms of weapons or combat capability. The advances could be in computing power or sensor range or life support or power generation or whatever.

 

Or it could be something as simple as 1700-1750 are for this class, 1850-1900 are for this class, even though they're being built simultaneously. Certainly the US navy did this with navy registry numbers.

 

Makes sense. Unfortunately the Constellation is 1017, so there goes that bit of logic.

 

How so? It just adds another block of numbers to the mix: say, 1700-17XX for ships like the Enterprise, 18YY-18ZZ for ships like the Reliant, and 1000-10AA for ships like the Constellation.

That the Enterprise and the Constellation look alike doesn't need to mean much. So do, say, the Spruance, Kidd and Ticonderoga classes of USN ships, but the last has registries in a completely different block from the others.

The thing is, ships with 18XX registries apparently already existed back in TOS "Court Martial", so a refitted Enterprise might be more modern than an unrefitted specimen of the 18XX class of ships. Or the refitting in the 2270s might have eliminated any differences in modernity between the classes.

What Khan's ship has over Kirk's is never specified in dialogue until after Kirk's ship suffers damage, gives Khan's ship some, and both sides implement hasty repairs, with different priorities. It's only then, after a very thorough shuffling of the cards, that Khan is stated to "out-run and out-gun" Kirk. And Khan did get more shots in than Kirk did...

Timo Saloniemi

 

The constellation was a Constitution-class ship, Timo. The only reason why it has that registry is because that's the numbers that came with the model they used.

 

No way of telling what class the ship was, because this was not stated anywhere.

I mean, you demonstrably can't tell Danube and Yellowstone class craft apart, nor K'Vort and B'Rel. Unless you are a Starfleet hero, that is. And since the heroes weren't sharing their wisdom with us in "The Doomsday Machine", we can do zip.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Meh. The Yellowstone was just a lazy way to have new tech without using a new model. Again, pragmatic considerations, etc. I think the default is that, it looks the same, and it's not mentioned to be another class, therefore it probaly is the same class. I remember they actually talked about this as a problem in the Encyclopedia.

 

In the Encyclopedia, everything is assumed to be the same unless specifically contradicted, hence all TOS starships are Constitutions and all pre-TOS ones are of the Daedalus class. But that's just silly: diversity is a more realistic assumption than uniformity.

Since there are just twelve ships like Kirk's, it's pretty unlikely that we would actually encounter any of these during the TOS adventures, because space is big. Thus, when a ship looking like Kirk's is seen, it's probably not part of the twelve/thirteen...

Timo Saloniemi

 

That's not the point: in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the null hypothesis is that identical ships are from the same class.

Besides, "diversity" in this case doesn't work, because again the ships are visually identical, both externally and internally.

 

Externally, there are some differences between the AMT model they used for the Constellation and the Enterprise filming model.

 

Well, yeah, since they're not the exact same model. But then, ships of the same class, in reality, aren't precisely identical anyway.

I have no trouble believing that it could be a different class, mind you. But there're just too many similarities, and the more-or-less official stuff always classifies the Constellation as a Constitution-class starship. I'd just need more than registry to take that hypothesis seriously.