why, other than a single ship( and cause it not the same ship IRL) the federation never did. A refit does not rebuild a ship, its normally just upgrades computers and maybe weapons. Most of the ships we saw before hand had RL reasons for the look, they were reused models or kitbashes based off store bought models. The TE can build connies now, it looks to me as if the Defiant's data base was how they kept pace with the Federation and always have the same ships. They would not Upgrade the original and not install those same upgrades on the copies. After all, its a heavy cruiser, meant to wade into battle. The ship may not even be in use any more, but the one they saw on the screen looked just like the one they knew as that was the only confusion "But its not been reported lost?"
I thought that the Defiant image came from a ships core, but the deployment of the 23d century Defiant came from Discovery's computer.
Could be, but the point stands they have zero confusion on the Look of the ship. Just the fact it was not yet lost.
I think a "refit" is a major rebuild (ie: the TMP Enterprise). An "upgrade" is just that, minor upgrade to systems, maybe replacing things like reactors, even the bridge module, but no structural work outside of repairs.
No, that used the term "refit, but that is the only place in star trek they have ever used the term in that way. The Enterprise was refit after Pike for example. This is a real world term By the way, TMP is the oddball and really only fits if they used the Phase II model the TMP model is based off of. Its a hand wave to excuse changing to a new ship
The TE had more powerful, and more numerous ships than the Federation before they got their hands on the Defiant. No ship looks the same after a hundred years, unless it's being preserved as a museum. Not in the real world, nor in the Star Trek world.
I thought Trek clearly distinguished between retrofits (minor upgrades, mainly to internals) and refits (significant upgrades, including externals).
See you are not thinking this through. in the 22nd they had a leg up over the humans of prime, because they stole the tech of other races. However, once the Federation was formed, it would have outpaced the empires tech, because you no longer have dozens or hundreds of worlds and races added to each other, you have the empire keeping the other races down. There is simply no way they would have kept pace as the federation tech was not from a single race and the YE are like the Romans or the Borg, they take from those they take over, but they are too racist to allow them to keep making innovations. Star trek disagrees, we see ships at lest a 80 to 100 years old, looking the same they always did. Maybe in books or something, not on screen.
K't'inga-class battle cruisers look largely the same from TMP until the Dominion War well over a century later. The Klingons appear to be notorious for using warships designs for generations at a time with only minor refits and modifications to set one ship subclass apart from another. Starfleet uses the conventional Excelsior-class starship as first seen in TSFS for at least ninety-three years if not longer.
Why is it so hard to believe the Terran Empire would modify their acquired Defiant? The Imperial Starfleet is a conquering military, not a scientific and defense military.
Starfleet in our universe certainly modified ships that it has captured over the course of its history. Even if on the surface the alien vessel remains unchanged there are changes to the internal systems and control interfaces to allow humans and other Federation species to operate those ships.
Because they lacked the ability and they would have altered the copies to fit a more powerful version. No MU ship we have yet seen is altered from its prime version. And once more, the Discovery crew thought it looked just like the prime version, so much so they were confused as to how it was there.
A refit is literally "fitting" new equipment in an existing ship. It is usually an upgrade, but can also be a downgrade (newer system maybe unreliable, expensive, or needed in another vessel). The only thing it isn't is like-for-like (that's replacement or repair) or installation of equipment for the first time (that's "fitting out", and is hopefully done before next Tuesday). Almost every US warship gets a refit of some sort during maintenance cycles (every 6-18 months or so). Most ships get a more significant mid-life upgrade (MLU, which is still a refit) roughly half-way through their service life. What happened in/before TMP goes way beyond a typical refit or MLU. I mean, refit is a broad term, so it would technically apply, but something of that scale is usually called a "conversion" or even "reconstruction". It's rare in real life, but still happens on occasion. Most recent example was the conversion of Ohio SSBNs (armed with nuclear ballistic missiles) to SSGNs (conventional Tomahawks). Other examples are the conversion of Essex and Midway class WW2 carriers to post-war angle-deck attack carriers, or the addition of early anti-air missiles to WW2 cruisers. Conversions are big enough deals that the ships that come through them are considered entirely different classes. For example, 3 Boston class heavy cruisers were converted (started with USS Albany) into the Albany class missile cruiser. The Ohio SSGNs are still Ohios because the lead-ship USS Ohio was converted along with 3 other boats. It is implied that USS Enterprise was the first ship to go through the TMP conversion. Most notably: the simulator in TWOK is clearly labeled "Enterprise Class", which is in keeping with conversion tradition. That Scotty's schematic in ST6 reads "Constitution Class" implies that USS Constitution (or even all extant Constitutions) were eventually converted to Enterprise-Class baseline. At which point, the terms "Constitution class" and "Enterprise class" would become synonymous and (in their protocol) Constitution takes precedence.
Which was done for silly reasons. But he was pointing out that a normal refit does not do what they did here. Which the poster though was a normal refit.
It was also called "a brand new ship" in TMP and "20 years old" in TSFS. Neither of those statements are literally true.