How powerful is a Galaxy class starship?

I don't recall said "Dominion Bug Ship" as moving toward the Odyssey at low speed, and regardless, even at a moderate speed, any starship is going to take severe damage when hit by another starship.

 

I'm still hung up on the mental image of Guinan explosively decompressing. Grody.

 

I went back and rewatched the battle scene from "Tears Of The Prophets. The Jem'Hadar do use kamikaze attacks a lot. The Odyssey and her crew were just unlucky I suppose.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owP8rodvksA[/yt]

 

As people have stated, it's as powerful (or vulnerable) as the script requires.

Looking at it from a technical standpoint it's a very powerful ship, we have seen it put out massive firepower (BOBW) and take a hell of a beating and keep on going.

Redlettermedia put it well in his review of generations, regarding the fight with the bird of prey "why are they thinking up some elaborate plan involving plasma coils, why not just fire photon torpedos, just keep firing over and over again, they could have crushed that ship in like a second, shields or no shields"

But you know, dramatic effect and all.

It was ok for the enterprise to get beat up and need to go back to spacedock, the story and setting allowed it

Voyager on the other hand, there was no spacedock, so every time they had a battle it was miraculously repaired the next episode.

That's why people seem to think the intrepid is more powerful, when from a specifications standpoint it clearly isn't, bad writing.

If voyager was done right, that ship should have been a complete mess, just barely holding together, limping through space. But that wasn't "star trek" enough and that's what was wrong with voyager

sorry for the tangent

 

I think that's pretty spot-on.

 

I don't think we saw much evidence of further Galaxys being completely destroyed either. There's most of a Drive section in the background when the Defiant goes up (no neck) but if that was a clean break the saucer could have remained intact.

Or perhaps that is an example of a Drive section being used in battle un-saucered

 

Sounds like "Year of Hell," a VOY episode that was pretty dramatic and got painfully so,

Spoiler

until they pressed VOY's customary reset button at the end of Part 2

.

 

"Year of Hell" was originally conceived as a season-long arc, but The Powers That Be nixed the idea. They later did something similar with a season-long wrecked Enterprise in ENT's third season.

 

Actually, they don't show any Starfleet ship destroying Jem Hadar vessels, except for a Runabout and the Defiant.

The USS Centaur exchanged fire with the one Sisko had took over, but that was it. And even then Sisko was obviously trying not to destroy it.


Klingon and Cardassian ships are shown doing it, but strangely enough, not Starfleet ships.

 

Most probably because Starfleet practices a *big dramatic air quotations* "Doctrine of Non-Violence."

 

In DS9's Sacrifice Of Angels federation ships are seen destroying a bunch of Dominion ships. In this tribute I made at 21 minutes and 8 seconds (after the two Mirandas are taken out) in the top right corner, you'll see a Galaxy class phaser kill a Jem'Hadar ship in the background.

 

Yes, yes-- this is the scene I was talking about where it looks like Galaxy class is destroying a dominion battle cruiser or something like it.

But the problem is that it so grainy it's hard to make out. Someone once said it was actually a Cardassian ship if you look closely enough.

 

^It's grainy but Cardassian ships are bronze. I can't find a better shot of it but whatever is destroyed is closer to Jem'Hadar colors.

 

Recall in nu-BSG, the Galactica was in pretty bad shape by the end of the series, as it should have been. Other than in YOH, Voyager never seemed to have as much as a scuff mark on it anyplace.

 

^In that

Spoiler: Kes returns

Kes returns episode where she goes back in time as a bad guy

episode, the hull is ripped off. I assumed that happens more often than it should but they just repair it and keep going.

 

They must have really worn out their replicators, making huge chunks of replacement hull and new consoles ready to explode anew next week (and about a dozen shuttles to replace the ones they lost)

 

It's so powerful, it can be swatted down by a single shot from an 80-year-old Bird of Prey crewed by a disorganized group of Klingon terrorists and their handler.

(NB: Yes, I know the shot went through the shields. No, I don't care. The 1701 Enterprise took a torpedo THROUGH THE SAUCER, and repeated shots to its ENTIRE hull, but kept on trucking).

 

There's nothing that says that particular bird-of-prey was 80-years old--there have been multiple upgraded versions or variants of the design mentioned onscreen and the Class-D12 may only have been 20 or so years old for all we know. As a 24th-Century ship, its weapons probably could have taken out the 23rd-Century Enterprise-A even easier.

Also, it took multiple shots--not a single one--for that b.o.p. to take out the defenseless Enterprise-D.

 

Chang was playing with Kirk anyway - one shot to the bridge or to Engineering could have finished Kirk or the A once the shields were weakened. 'Excelsior's been hit' seemed to be more concerning, they bought down the bulkheads and everything.

At least the Duras sisters were planning to do the sensible thing, target the Bridge and finish it, they just left it too late.

Even the battle of Wolf 359, you have to wonder why the Borg didn't just take out the bridge of each Starship and then assimilate everyone, tremendous waste of resources really.

 

As you say, in both TUC and GEN, it's pretty obvious that the Klingons were toying with our heroes, and they wanted our heroes to know that. Shooting at the bridge or warp core while the Enterprises were vulnerable would have destroyed them altogether.

If we assume that the Duras had some level of competency, had an effectively unshielded Enterprise-D in their sights, and still wanted to toy with Riker and company, the Duras would have probably scanned the Enterprise for prime targets. I would guess that they would have shot out the forward torpedo launcher and the power conduits feeding the forward phaser arrays. This might explain why the Enterprise tried to turn around rather than stand it's ground.

As for how powerful a Galaxy-class starship is, there is an actual canonical source on that:

Now, it's uncertain whether that statement can be used as a blanket statement for all Galaxy-class starships or if the Enterprise-D, having quite a few combat missions in addition to simply exploring, has a configuration that indeed makes it the strongest (the "Federation's flagship vessel", if you will).

It's safe to say that Galaxy-class starships, at least in early 2367, are at the very top of the ladder in terms of power, although there seems to be a range depending on configuration. (Jellico, for example, thinks the Enterprise-D could be even more combat-ready and gets Engineering to make the changes.)