Way of The Warrior: Battle with the Klingons

[SilentP]

Also at least it seemed that the 6 starships in question were a Galaxy-class with a group (perhaps 5) of Excelsior class vessels. With the Galaxy being amongst the heaviest hitters in Starfleet and Excelsiors being among the stronger ships as well makes for a fairly strong mix up. Remember that even though the Klingon fleet was 50 ships, I wouldn't be surprised if a decent number were small light ships like B'rel-class Bird of Preys.

[Hartzilla2007]

SilentP wrote:

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Also at least it seemed that the 6 starships in question were a Galaxy-class with a group (perhaps 5) of Excelsior class vessels. With the Galaxy being amongst the heaviest hitters in Starfleet and Excelsiors being among the stronger ships as well makes for a fairly strong mix up. Remember that even though the Klingon fleet was 50 ships, I wouldn't be surprised if a decent number were small light ships like B'rel-class Bird of Preys.

Plus they still had a heavily armed space station supporting them so probably not very good odds for the Klingons.

[GulGoneCrazy]

i was thinking...if an DS9 could halt whole klingon fleet ,than how the klingons manage invade Cardassian space witch is very likely full of Nor (DS9 type) stations ??

[SilentP]

You have to remember that the Nor style stations were never really intended to be battle stations, if you could call them that, they were generally just refining stations. All those weapons we saw were additions that Sisko had made (despite them being 'organically' intergrated into the stations structure) specifically to fight the Dominion.

[Timo]

...Also, a clever conqueror would just go around the stations and challenge the Cardassian mobile forces where they would enjoy no support from fortifications, then move against the more heavily defended targets.

However, it does seem that Cardassian defenses are not to be sneered at. We never got the impression that the fortification technology used in "Tears of the Prophets" would be new to the Cardassian Union as such - it may be just that the beam weapons got a tad stronger, the torpedoes gained a bit more bang, from the new power arrangements. There seems to have been a quantum leap in Cardassian weapons strength between "The Wounded" (which probably features the same weakling weapons used in the old war with the Federation) and DS9 (where the pink beams have been replaced by amber ones that actually can hurt somebody - and perhaps again when the Dominion provided aid. But the actual physical elements of defense may not have changed much, considering that the starships certainly don't change much during these technology leaps.

An invasion thus supposedly involves large starship forces, such as those seen in "Tears of the Prophets", and not merely the sort of fifty-ship formations seen in "Way of the Warrior". The dialogue in this latter episode certainly allows for very large Klingon fleets, as the only numerical value we get are "over a hundred ships in the first wave already" and "at least twenty warships in the vicinity of the station".

Timo Saloniemi

[Sandoval]

GulGoneCrazy wrote:

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i was thinking...if an DS9 could halt whole klingon fleet ,than how the klingons manage invade Cardassian space witch is very likely full of Nor (DS9 type) stations ??

Firstly because the "nor type" space station in The Way of The Warrior had been massively upgraded by Starfleet.

Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, because space stations just sit in one place.

[EmperorTiberius]

The torpedos DS9 fires are mostly micro torpedos that are fitted on small craft like runabouts and shuttles. IIRC there are only about 6 full scale lauchers left over from the original station. This could prove why some of them just fly out into nothing - they might not have their own guidance system. Also, Klingons could be using some sort of jamming signal against the station.

[Timo]

IIRC there are only about 6 full scale lauchers left over from the original station.

I sort of doubt there are any launchers left over from the original Cardassian design, seeing how

1) the Cardassians supposedly thrashed everything worthwhile when they left, and
2) the launcher with six torps that Kira does have in "Emissary" is compatible with Starfleet torps.

More probably, the Enterprise team just initially installed one Starfleet launcher in place of a destroyed Cardassian one as a nominal defense system, and gave Sisko six torpedoes to test-fire it with, and then left Sisko waiting for the next engineering team that would install more hardware (assuming Sisko didn't get booted out of Bajor before that, which was a likely scenario for Starfleet to concern).

The torpedos DS9 fires are mostly micro torpedos

We don't know that.

We do see in "Tribunal" that the station is stocked with warheads in big boxes that wouldn't easily fit inside "micro" weapons, but that of course tells us nothing about the size of the warheads themselves. (And curiously, the Maquis were supposed to have stolen the warheads while leaving the boxes behind, yet the Cardassians present the boxes as evidence that O'Brien was the Maquis who stole them!)

We also see the pillbox launchers that fire some of the torpedoes (or compact glowing things at any rate) after popping out of the sides of the weapon sails, but we get no sense of scale. The overall scale of the station is vague anyway, and the "regular" launchers at the tips of the sails have no actual openings visible, so we can tell zip about the torpedo caliber that way.

The assumption of microtorpedo use thus doesn't seem to have any independent proof on its side, not even a hint in dialogue.

Timo Saloniemi

[Knight Templar]

If it has not been mentioned, I believe the Klingons do not fight as well as a group in hand to hand combat because they are an honor obsessed culture. Honorable combat generally requires "one on one, man to man" combat. Not hundreds of warriors taking on hundreds of enemy soldiers at once. Thus they do not make a point of practicing their skills in that regard.

When engaged in combat, they try to isolate a single enemy individual and fight until they win or die. Much like the Klingon bragging about boarding the Starfleet ship and killing the Tellarite helmsman with his Bat'leth and then fighting the captain (a friend of Sisko's) to the death.

[EmperorTiberius]

^Micro torpedos are beckround info from a producer or some such, non canon.

[King Daniel into Darkness]

Why would a huge space station fire micro torpedoes? That sounds ridiculous. I always assumed they were the same "Spock coffins" as the rest of Trek.

[Timo]

It isn't necessarily any more ridiculous than a battleship armed with 16in guns facing the enemy (also/only) with 0.30in machine guns. Depends on the nature of the threat, I guess.

It would be nice to give those pillbox things a smaller-caliber projectile, to better match the overall small size of the features. Curiously, I don't think we ever saw the "regular" torpedo tubes of the station firing - the ones with the muzzles somewhere near the tops of the weapons sails, as in "Emissary".

Note also that there appeared to be many "calibers" of phaser in use, with beams of differing thicknesses; the narrowest ones came from the multi-segment strips on the weapons sails and from the simple strips on the pillboxes, while dedicated boxy mounts atop the habitat ring produced thicker beams.

Weapons sail fires (small?) torps from the center of the phaser strip and from muzzles in the rotating pillbox:

http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albu...rrior2_598.jpg

Weapons sail fires narrow phaser beams, element by element; faint remains of a beam fired by the pillbox are also visible:

http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albu...rrior2_621.jpg

Somewhat thicker beams seem to be projected by the boxy things atop habitat ring:

http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albu...rrior2_623.jpg

Some of the beams are quite thick compared with the ships targeted:

http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albu...rrior2_668.jpg

Outer pylon boxes appear to fire heftier torpedoes from a single muzzle:

http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albu...rrior2_646.jpg

Now, everything seen is subject to scaling ambiguities. But IMHO it would make sense for both the torpedoes and the phasers fired by "combined" platforms such as the pillboxes or the sail phaser mounts to be smaller/weaker than those fired by "dedicated" platforms such as the outer pylon boxes (torps only) or the habitat ring boxes (phasers only)...

Timo Saloniemi

[EmperorTiberius]

KingDaniel wrote:

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Why would a huge space station fire micro torpedoes? That sounds ridiculous. I always assumed they were the same "Spock coffins" as the rest of Trek.

Because those turrets are not big enough to host full launchers. The lauchers on the Galaxy are 20-40 meters long. Perhaps the choice was between putting an inferior "glued on" short range, slow rate of fire full size launchers (like on a runabout) or putting micro torpedo ones that have high rate of fire in order to repel amassed enemy ships.
I'll look into it when I get a chance.

I do agree that it's a bit ridiculous. They shoud have installed full launchers all around the outside docking ring and pylons instead of bothering with rotating turrets.

[Timo]

But they did install really badass launchers in the docking pylons. Giant, almost starship-sized boxes with the apparent sole function of spitting out torpedoes from a single orifice.

The end effect was a nice "layered defense"... The only thing I regret is the disappearance of the original torpedo launchers. Unless we are to interpret the "Emissary" VFX as showing the torpedoes coming from the middle of those weapon sail phaser/torp combo things? But that would take some doing.

http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albu...missary332.jpg

Timo Saloniemi

[King Daniel into Darkness]

EmperorTiberius wrote:

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Because those turrets are not big enough to host full launchers. The lauchers on the Galaxy are 20-40 meters long. Perhaps the choice was between putting an inferior "glued on" short range, slow rate of fire full size launchers (like on a runabout) or putting micro torpedo ones that have high rate of fire in order to repel amassed enemy ships.
I'll look into it when I get a chance.

I do agree that it's a bit ridiculous. They shoud have installed full launchers all around the outside docking ring and pylons instead of bothering with rotating turrets.

But the torpedo launchers on the NX-01 Enterprise were only a couple of meters long and the TOS 1701 ones were probably smaller (the entire lowest saucer deck being the size of the bridge - which is probably the same size as the rotating launchers on DS9)

Just because the 1701-D gives the impression of a long launch tube, doesn't mean thats the only way they can work.