Explains why we never heard anything about the Cardassians during the first three seasons of TNG. Even though The War ended a year before "The Wounded".
Role of the Enterprise during the Dominion War?
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Explains why we never heard anything about the Cardassians during the first three seasons of TNG. Even though The War ended a year before "The Wounded".
Best use of Picard perhaps, but definately not the best use of the E-E during a war where the Federation is fighting for it's very existance.
If you want Picard engaged in dipolmacy, then yank him off the bridge of the giant death machine that is the E-E, and put him on a much smaller ship.
Definitely Oberth class
That the Sovereign would be any good in combat remains to be seen, though. In its three fights in three movie appearances, it has either fought as part of a larger force (and not explicitly contributed much), or has had its ass handed to it (by an admittedly superior enemy), or both.
The Galaxy class ship tended to fight alone (because fleets weren't affordable back then) and not get beaten up much (because showing damage wasn't affordable back then)...
Timo Saloniemi
The Galaxy class ship tended to fight alone (because fleets weren't affordable back then) and not get beaten up much (because showing damage wasn't affordable back then)...
Timo Saloniemi
Star Trek Bridge Commander had the Sovereign itself retired from active service for basically being nearly inoperable in most dangerous situations. The Enterprise like you said barely manages and the only other ship, the Sentinel, is only good as a battering ram in the novels.
They're pretty lightweight ships.
They're pretty lightweight ships.
Are you saying Bridge Commander paints the Sovereign-class starships as "lemons?"
That seems unlikely, and definitely wasn't the intent of the writers/producers/designers.
Weird.
It was "repaired" for use when the Galaxy class ship you start off with isn't enough to get the job done. But the ship up until then was so impared by system failures, it was practically useless. Even then they have some systems go down during gameplay to hinder you until your NPC engineer fixes her.
So not a lemon, but in a beta-test stage, maybe comparable to the "A" in TFF.
More like the Defiant and Voyager, with their myriad of problems.
Defiant: burned out phaser banks after 1 battle, structural integrity issues, engines need constant calibration.
Voyager: Neurolytic gel packs that run most of the ship functions, are a pain to replace and prone to infection.
Seems the post Wolf 359 ships just aren’t built that well. Except the Prometheus, of course.
I really don't believe Starfleet took the war with the Cardassians seriously enough to send anything other than Excelsiors or Mirandas out to fight. After all, in The Wounded the Enterprise is ambushed with its shields down by a Galor class warship and manages to cripple the Galor in two or three shots. Later in the same episode the Nebula class Phoenix tears ass through Cardassian space undefeatable despite the fact the Cardassians have its prefix code. There's no way there could be a war in any meaningful definition of the word if Starfleet had sent one Galaxy class or one Nebula class ship to take part in the war effort.
What a missed opportunity for Berman and Behr to end DS9 out of the war and propel this thing to the big screen for a TNG movie, probably sprinkling in a long awaited DS9 TNG crossover? 1701-E while doing diplomatic duty somehow gets draw into the war to help secure a new civilization's membership into the Federation.
It's best not to think too hard about the Dominion War and the Federation's tactics.
We saw several fleet battles and the bulk of their ranks were made up of century old Miranda and Excelsior Class ships.
While the new ships in town, Defiant (few and far between), Sovereign (Galaxy on Steroids), Prometheus (Big, scarier Defiant), Intrepid (economy Galaxy) were MIA. With the heavy losses the Feddies took, you have to wonder if they were either stupid (just throwing as many bodies and ships at the Dominion as they could), or just weren't taking the threat seriously. Perhaps waiting on that morphogenic virus to do it's work.
We saw several fleet battles and the bulk of their ranks were made up of century old Miranda and Excelsior Class ships.
While the new ships in town, Defiant (few and far between), Sovereign (Galaxy on Steroids), Prometheus (Big, scarier Defiant), Intrepid (economy Galaxy) were MIA. With the heavy losses the Feddies took, you have to wonder if they were either stupid (just throwing as many bodies and ships at the Dominion as they could), or just weren't taking the threat seriously. Perhaps waiting on that morphogenic virus to do it's work.
Or the good new ships fell in the opening month of the war when the Dominion still had most of their experienced Gamma Quadrant forces intact and a Starfleet that hadn't figured out tactical sense yet. Those three to six months they were losing battles and retreating time after time. Where the Seventh fleet, who seem to be thought of as one of the better fleets, was nearly entirely wiped out in a single engagement.
After that, Starfleet had to pull on older ships to fill in squadrons and by the time they figured out tactics, they realized they didn't need the fancy ships, just better tactical patterns, and updated shields and weapons. Also numbers it seems. The early fleets were smaller in numbers, thus Starfleet needed more generic hulls rather than specialty ships on the front line.
This frees up the starships that are the most capable of handling the other kinds of threats Starfleet faces all the time. Those threats that require science, engineering, and diplomacy to defeat, rather than weapons....but the ship needs to be tough enough to survive long enough to enable said science trick of the week. And while the Galaxy-class seemed to be pulled for the war (less so the Nebula-class and Ambassador-class), the Sovereigns seem to be absent, perhaps they are faster than the Galaxy and as capably, thus better suited for hot spot science problem solving along with the fast Intrepid-class starships, who's speed would be hampered by the slower fleet speeds of the Miranda-class starships and the Defiant-class escorts. (Prometheus wasn't ready until late war at best given it was still in prototype testing when the Doctor(s) saved the ship from the Romulans.)
After that, Starfleet had to pull on older ships to fill in squadrons and by the time they figured out tactics, they realized they didn't need the fancy ships, just better tactical patterns, and updated shields and weapons. Also numbers it seems. The early fleets were smaller in numbers, thus Starfleet needed more generic hulls rather than specialty ships on the front line.
This frees up the starships that are the most capable of handling the other kinds of threats Starfleet faces all the time. Those threats that require science, engineering, and diplomacy to defeat, rather than weapons....but the ship needs to be tough enough to survive long enough to enable said science trick of the week. And while the Galaxy-class seemed to be pulled for the war (less so the Nebula-class and Ambassador-class), the Sovereigns seem to be absent, perhaps they are faster than the Galaxy and as capably, thus better suited for hot spot science problem solving along with the fast Intrepid-class starships, who's speed would be hampered by the slower fleet speeds of the Miranda-class starships and the Defiant-class escorts. (Prometheus wasn't ready until late war at best given it was still in prototype testing when the Doctor(s) saved the ship from the Romulans.)
2378, 6 years after the launch of the Enterprise so presumably a year or two more since the Sovereign launched, shes been in mothballs since. And a year before Nemesis, both in and out of universe (2378/2002).
Yup. IMO, If TPTB didn't need (read: want) to keep the crew in stasis because of the movies, the war would've been the natural point in Picard's career for his captaincy to end and for him to take a seat in the Federation president's Situation Room.
Agreed. It seems to me that the Cardassian "War" was a long border dispute with Starfleet's main role being patrolling colony systems along the border. As tensions ratcheted, the Feds seemed to cut and run pretty easily. That's evidenced in their decision to sign such an inflammatory treaty with Cardassia. They shafted the colonies and we know how that turned out. If the Feds truly valued those colony worlds, the Cardassians wouldn't have been much of a match for a fully mobilized Federation. Simply judging from what we saw on screen, the Federation didn't place much strategic value on the region until after the wormhole was discovered.
At the start of DS9, the station was as a shitty backwater assignment. Starfleet assigned a demoralized commander with one foot out the door to represent the flag. It was only after the discovery of the wormhole that the Federation realized they hit paydirt and that the region would become one of the most strategic locations in the Alpha Quadrant.
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The treaty seeming was signed around the time of the Borg attack and the Battle of Wolf 359. So it might just have been a reactionary treaty due to Starfleet loses and not having the ships needed to patrol that border/war zone because too many were pulled to fight the Borg, plus all those ships that seemed to be having issues with Picard pulling to get a blockade going on the Klingon-Romulan border just a year later.
As for the Cardassian War...I think it’s likely the war was over and they were just in a cease fire/armistice (the same situation as the US and North Korea are in now) until they signed the treaty to officially end the war.
As for the lack of top line ships shown during the Dominion War. I always just assumed they had some/most of the heavy hitters protecting the bigger planets like Earth, Vulcan and Andoria. Or they were part of different fleets in other parts of the war. The only time it sticks out is in the final battle to end the war. You would have assumed the Federation Flagship (the Big E) would have been there if both the Romulan and Klingon Flagships were. I understand they didn’t want the crossover. But that’s where the absence seems the most conspicuous to me.
As for the lack of top line ships shown during the Dominion War. I always just assumed they had some/most of the heavy hitters protecting the bigger planets like Earth, Vulcan and Andoria. Or they were part of different fleets in other parts of the war. The only time it sticks out is in the final battle to end the war. You would have assumed the Federation Flagship (the Big E) would have been there if both the Romulan and Klingon Flagships were. I understand they didn’t want the crossover. But that’s where the absence seems the most conspicuous to me.
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