Purposing Federation Ships During the Dominion War

[Vanyel]

Maneuverability also plays a role. The Defiant and Intrepid classes seemed to be much more maneuverable than the big Galaxy and Sovereign classes. Their shields could have been less powerful, counting on them being able to dodge and weave, allowing more power to dumped into the phaser arrays. The Sovereign class 1701E, in battle with the Scimitar, also suffered a large physical blow from a chunk of the Romulan ship which was blown away. Geordi had to restore the shielding to the bow to help keep the 1701E in the battle. In my opinion, in the interest of speed he diverted power from the other shields, to even out the shield power (They never really knew exactly which direction the Scimitar would fire at them from) to protect the ship. That allowed the Scimitar to open a hole in the shields so the Reman strike team could beam aboard.

As for phasers I think Yesterdays Enterprise put it best:

Castillo: What's a TKL?
Tasha: Standard rations. Food replicators are on minimum power, so everything else is diverted to defensive systems. So where was I?

A ships power output could be shunted over to shield and weapons allowing for the ship to have reserve power for weapons and shields. Ships like the Intrepids could have Type X phasers and put out full power because other ships systems were at minimum power. Voyager, for example, rarely used its replicators for their main purpose, feeding the crew, opting for a Galley to save power. During the war the Galaxy class were most likely only using Starfleet and specialist as crew leaving families back on their home worlds or space stations. This could have allowed entire decks to be shut down, or partially shut down using bulkheads instead of force fields to cut off those sections which would also save on power. This too would allow the phasers and shields to have more reserve power.

Cutting power to unused decks or, lowering output to some ships systems would allow the ships to keep phasers and shields at full output longer than what we saw the 1701D do.

[jpch]

Mark_Nguyen wrote:

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Or upgradeable to do the same. For that matter, even if both Galaxy and Intrepid have Type X phasers, capable of outputting X terawatts (or whatever) of power, who's to say the Intrepid has that kind of juice to dump into the phasers anyway? The Galaxy may have more raw power to use for phasers or shields or whatever. Same speakers in the system, more juice in the bigger D batteries, if you'll pardon the pun.

Mark

hehe,but the Intrepid has a mark 9 warpcore that allows it to achieve a speed of 9.975 impossible to for the Galaxy to reach,if you remember warp 9.6 was max speed 9.8 could destroy the ship,i highly sought a ship with slower main propulsion has more power.

In addition the Galaxy Class was less military,stated by the producers themselves on a youtube video i have seen,they also said that the Intrepid was more combat oriented.
another thing to think about is that the Galaxy class has civilians families,schools,18 holodecks,large Saloons,Lecture halls,many Gyms etc...all of these cost a lot of power...

[Vanyel]

jpch wrote:

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hehe,but the Intrepid has a mark 9 warpcore that allows it to achieve a speed of 9.975 impossible to for the Galaxy to reach,if you remember warp 9.6 was max speed 9.8 could destroy the ship,i highly sought a ship with slower main propulsion has more power.

In addition the Galaxy Class was less military,stated by the producers themselves on a youtube video i have seen,they also said that the Intrepid was more combat oriented.
another thing to think about is that the Galaxy class has civilians families,schools,18 holodecks,large Saloons,Lecture halls,many Gyms etc...all of these cost a lot of power...

And during war, the families would be removed from the ship.
Unused space could be closed off, and powered off, meaning the number of different recreational facilities would be cut down.
Some systems put to minimal power meaning some holodecks holodecks shut down, the ones still open used for training.
Less people on board would mean less power used by the replicators, or a return to a galley system.
Less people also opens up space that can be used for extra power cells, more power connections to phasers, extra shield generators, all things that can be left in an un-powered, non habitable space onboard the ship. The 1701D seemed quite capable of return a cargo bay back into a habitable space within seconds during Disaster, and the ship was damaged. So I see no reason why large portions of the ship could be turned off, then reactivated when access to those areas is essential.
The power saved could then be reallocated to weapons and shields.

[jpch]

Vanyel wrote:

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And during war, the families would be removed from the ship.
Unused space could be closed off, and powered off, meaning the number of different recreational facilities would be cut down.
Some systems put to minimal power meaning some holodecks holodecks shut down, the ones still open used for training.
Less people on board would mean less power used by the replicators, or a return to a galley system.
Less people also opens up space that can be used for extra power cells, more power connections to phasers, extra shield generators, all things that can be left in an un-powered, non habitable space onboard the ship. The 1701D seemed quite capable of return a cargo bay back into a habitable space within seconds during Disaster, and the ship was damaged. So I see no reason why large portions of the ship could be turned off, then reactivated when access to those areas is essential.
The power saved could then be reallocated to weapons and shields.

Oh i never thought about that...good thinking.
maybe thats why the only ship that was not getting blown up in the Dominion war was the Galaxy

[Dream]

jpch wrote:

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Oh i never thought about that...good thinking.
maybe thats why the only ship that was not getting blown up in the Dominion war was the Galaxy

Did you already forget the Galaxy ship that was blown up in The Jem'Hadar?

[Timo]

I noticed you criticise and refuse the information without giving anything else in return.

I just wish to point out that there is nothing classifiable as "information" to begin with, and you'd do wisely not to imply that there is.

The technologically more advanced vessels have better shields and weapons allowing some of them to survive the assault.

We don't really see this happen. Rather, we see ships die at an alarming rate without achieving anything much; for all we know, the Cube at Wolf 359 was identically damaged, but triumphed nevertheless. The only reason the engagement in ST:FC lasted longer might have been because more ships were involved, and it simply took the Borg a longer time to destroy 298 ships than it took to destroy 39.

Sure, different ships probably have different capabilities. Else why build different ships? But by the same token, not every ship can be "the best", and there is no reason to think the most advanced would be the best combatant. Nothing indicates the Intrepid class would have combat merit, as surely we would have seen it fighting in the Dominion War if it was worth anything. We never did. We did see her in courier duty, which suits well her dialogue-acknowledged high speed.

The Defiant did avoid most hits

Where do we see her avoid being hit? Star Trek battles do not generally involve misses (except when Klingons are spraying'n'praying with their disruptors). But ships do appear to hold fire to a surprising degree, perhaps exactly because they don't want to waste shots on something that could turn out to be a miss. However, the amount of fire the Defiant received did not differ from the amount of fire received by background ships one way or the other. It just happened that some background ships died spectacularly when hit, while others and the Defiant did not.

Timo Saloniemi

[jpch]

Dream wrote:

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Did you already forget the Galaxy ship that was blown up in The Jem'Hadar?

yes i remember the USS Odyssey,but that was before the large fleet battles...they were upgraded against polaron weapons after and we did not see any getting destroyed.

[Dream]

jpch wrote:

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yes i remember the USS Odyssey,but that was before the large fleet battles...they were upgraded against polaron weapons after and we did not see any getting destroyed.

I heard that the DS9 writers wanted that ship to be the Enterprise that was blown up. How much more shocking would it have been if it had been a ship that we had been following for seven years?

[Mark_Nguyen]

That's new... Where was this from? Closest I've read was that they wanted to THEMATICALLY build up the Dominion by showing that in a straight-up fight, a ship just like the Enterprise would have been no match against three small Jem'Haddar ships. Also, there would be no way they'd consider doing that with the Generations movie already in advanced planning stages by the time they got around to breaking the DS9 season finale.

Mark

[Dream]

Mark_Nguyen wrote:

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That's new... Where was this from? Closest I've read was that they wanted to THEMATICALLY build up the Dominion by showing that in a straight-up fight, a ship just like the Enterprise would have been no match against three small Jem'Haddar ships.

Yeah, that's what I meant. They wanted people to think it COULD have been the Enterprise.

[Mark_Nguyen]

jpch wrote:

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hehe,but the Intrepid has a mark 9 warpcore that allows it to achieve a speed of 9.975 impossible to for the Galaxy to reach,if you remember warp 9.6 was max speed 9.8 could destroy the ship,i highly <doubt> a ship with slower main propulsion has more power.

The Enterprise-D popped Warp 10 once. Ask Geordi. ;P

In any case, the Intrepid weighs a fraction of a typical Galaxy class starship (700,000mt versus 5,000,000, if you believe the manuals), so in terms of raw power I wouldn't think an Intrepid would NEED a powerplant with more lightbulb power than its much larger cousin.

MArk

[Dukhat]

Dream wrote:

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Yeah, that's what I meant. They wanted people to think it COULD have been the Enterprise.

Well, that's a far cry from saying that it was supposed to be the Enterprise.

Now with that said, I think that would have been a fantastic way for the Ent-D to have its demise (with the main crew having had time to evacuate in escape pods, of course). It certainly would have been more dramatic than getting hit with a stray torpedo from an antiquated Bird of Prey. That way Generations could have started with a new Enterprise instead of First Contact.

[Timo]

Of course, having there be so many survivors that all the main cast makes it to safety would seriously undermine the "Jem'Hadar message" of ruthlessness...

I personally enjoyed the use of a Picard-like captain in a ship like Picard's more than I would have enjoyed a TNG crossover here, for the cleverness of the dramatic choice. But I'm sure the climax could have been pulled off as a crossover, too. It would just have been different in more ways than the obvious ones.

...In terms of alternate dramatic takes, how about it really being Picard here, but Sisko's XO having been Ro from the get-go? The mini-conflict that endears us to / alienates us from Keogh would have been played out, only with the audience now knowing the full story, and both sides of it.

In any case, at the time of the episode, the audience was supposed to be thinking of the Galaxy class as the most potent Starfleet combatant; there were no alternatives being offered. So the choice of ship type in the episode would have been dictated by these concerns alone, even if one forgets about this being the hero ship of a sister show. (Although of course the Galaxy being a top combatant is a direct consequence of it being the hero ship of the sister show.)

Timo Saloniemi

[TheRoyalFamily]

Re: Wolf359 performance vs. Sector 001:

It is most likely that several of the ships there were designed specifically with such a scenario in mind: we know that the Defiant-class for sure was, and the Intrepid (not seen, I don't think) and the Sovereign almost certainly were as well. The remaining ones likely have had upgrades since then, again in anticipation of such an attack. Indeed, Starfleet felt comfortable having a very powerful, new ship sit the battle out.

Wolf 359 was a complete surprise against an enemy of unknown capabilities. Starfleet knew the Borg would be back, and had been preparing for years.

[R. Star]

Dream wrote:

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I heard that the DS9 writers wanted that ship to be the Enterprise that was blown up. How much more shocking would it have been if it had been a ship that we had been following for seven years?

That was shocking enough as it was. Sure it was a guest star ship, but it was a Galaxy class, which was the baddest ship out there at the time. I was fully expecting them to get away and them was just like.... ... when the Jem'Hadar ship kamikazed them.

Had the Enterprise been there, and been destroyed I probably would have screamed at the TV... and I don't know if that's good or not. Killing off the whole TNG cast would've been WAAAY too much, but it would've been equally as lame if all of them somehow lived. So perhaps using the guest star ship was the best move.