What ships SHOULD they have used in the Dominion War?

[Arpy]

I feel like each of the allied powers could’ve used at least one new ship for the war. Like they should have slapped fewer ships in the battle scenes (keep them further apart) and splurged on more ships and maybe shield bubbles.

The Romulans needed a midsize ship between the Warbirds and the Scouts.

The Klingons needed a ship to replace the aged K’t’ingas.

And the Federation could have used either a bunch of Probert Ambassadors as the most plentiful ships in their fleets, or another model to do Miranda service and be cannon fodder/wingman for the tiny Defiant…yeah, those Miranda’s were way to big for that job. 400 people dying here, 400 people dying there…meh.

 

[USS Firefly]

Miranda service and be cannon fodder/wingman for the tiny Defiant…yeah, those Miranda’s were way to big for that job. 400 people dying here, 400 people dying there…meh.

I don't think that there served 400 people on a Miranda class in the 24th century

 

[matthunter]

I feel like each of the allied powers could’ve used at least one new ship for the war. Like they should have slapped fewer ships in the battle scenes (keep them further apart) and splurged on more ships and maybe shield bubbles.

The Romulans needed a midsize ship between the Warbirds and the Scouts.

The Klingons needed a ship to replace the aged K’t’ingas.

And the Federation could have used either a bunch of Probert Ambassadors as the most plentiful ships in their fleets, or another model to do Miranda service and be cannon fodder/wingman for the tiny Defiant…yeah, those Miranda’s were way to big for that job. 400 people dying here, 400 people dying there…meh.

Klingon ship would be the Vor'cha IF they had started putting in Negh'vars and not retaining them solely as Gowron's flagship... the Vor'cha should be the Klingon Excelsior/Ambassador and the Negh'var the Galaxy/Sovereign.

As for the Romulans, I agree. This is from STO and meant to be a new ship as of 2410, but it could easily fit as a smaller Warbird:

https://media.forbiddenplanet.com/products/4e/a7/c462a5510ff26ce16e05fc581e0e9c34141f.jpg

 

[Tim Walker]

I think that Sabers would have been good wingmen for the Defiants.

 

[Dukhat]

I feel like each of the allied powers could’ve used at least one new ship for the war. Like they should have slapped fewer ships in the battle scenes (keep them further apart) and splurged on more ships and maybe shield bubbles.

The Romulans needed a midsize ship between the Warbirds and the Scouts.

The Klingons needed a ship to replace the aged K’t’ingas.

And the Federation could have used either a bunch of Probert Ambassadors as the most plentiful ships in their fleets, or another model to do Miranda service and be cannon fodder/wingman for the tiny Defiant…yeah, those Miranda’s were way to big for that job. 400 people dying here, 400 people dying there…meh.

I've always felt that if DS9 ever got the HD treatment, that all the CGI battle scenes should be redone with all new Starfleet, Klingon and Romulan ship designs. They used what they had at the time because of budgetary considerations, but new shots would not be under any such constraints. They changed out ships for other ships in TOS-R, so they could do it again. This time, they could show that the fleets were more evenly matched technology-wise rather than showing a bunch of old Excelsiors, Mirandas, Birds of Prey and K'T'ingas.

 

[Arpy]

Klingon ship would be the Vor'cha IF they had started putting in Negh'vars and not retaining them solely as Gowron's flagship... the Vor'cha should be the Klingon Excelsior/Ambassador and the Negh'var the Galaxy/Sovereign.

As for the Romulans, I agree. This is from STO and meant to be a new ship as of 2410, but it could easily fit as a smaller Warbird:

https://media.forbiddenplanet.com/products/4e/a7/c462a5510ff26ce16e05fc581e0e9c34141f.jpg

There you go. They could have saved on the Klingon fleet by using Vorchas for battlecruisers and thrown in a bunch of Negvars. Now they’ve got cash for both Probert Ambassadors and new wingmen for the Defiant. And, really, just up the polygons on the Sabers and you’re good there too.

 

[Arpy]

Though, again, I like the Saber, Mark I’s.

Either those, or some remastered New Orleans class ships would have been great.

Or, if they want to save even more money, how about squadrons of Defiants? Maybe color them differently to distinguish the new ones from the NX experimental version assigned to the station.

Frankly, that’s even if you think Sisko (one of the lead architects of the invasion) should be on a tiny Defiant dogfighting right in the thick of it, instead of on a capital ship in the rear overseeing the battle.

 

[Tomalak]

Yes, the Mark 1 Sabre is a fantastic piece of design.

 

[Tim Walker]

Apollo class refit.

In this size range, a multi-role starship nearly qualifies as a mobile stairbase.

 

[Tim Walker]

Derivative of the Excelsior class? Or prelude to the Ambassador class?

Hokule'a class.

Other views

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

I've always felt that if DS9 ever got the HD treatment, that all the CGI battle scenes should be redone with all new Starfleet, Klingon and Romulan ship designs. They used what they had at the time because of budgetary considerations, but new shots would not be under any such constraints. They changed out ships for other ships in TOS-R, so they could do it again. This time, they could show that the fleets were more evenly matched technology-wise rather than showing a bunch of old Excelsiors, Mirandas, Birds of Prey and K'T'ingas.

The issue with that is that in the TNG Blu-ray extras, it is revealed that Dan Curry had opposed the remaster of TNG because he did not want to see much of his earlier work replaced with CGI. He had done some incredible things in his backyard with a video camera, and then taken those recorded elements to work and combined them with scenes of the show to create alien events. It's actually amazing what he was able to do with things like a water hoe or fireworks. The extras on the disk explain that Dan Curry only got involved in the TNG remaster when it was decided to NOT replace these elements except where needed, and present TNG as shot, just with a higher digital resolution. CGI was used to replace what was already CGI, for the most part.

Thus, the nature of shooting model kits and so on ships for DS9 makes a situation where some might feel that new CGI battles would change the spirit of the source material. As a fan the Ambassador class (several versions of it,) I'm back and forth about the matter myself. I'd love to see more Ambassador's in those battles, but that would mean changing what was shot.

As a side note, I do not think that the Ambassador had a Miranda/Nebula-like sister. To me the Ambassador is an advanced version of Excelsior architecture, so the Centaur would already have that role. The only onscreen evidence of such a ship is the unused Pegasus design (also the "Nebula Class" of Star Trek Armada 1, which was smaller and had a round saucer), and since the Pegasus was a failed prototype anyway, I think we can assume few to none would ever have been made.

 

[Tomalak]

I think the California is a potential Ambassador-era counterpart, thought the Cerritos herself is probably a later refit. She's got a very similar sized saucer, and it would he easy to replace the deflector pod and nacelles for something more Ambassador-style.

Likewise the Freedom and Niagara classes are clearly of a similar vintage to the Ambassador. There's quite a nice mid-24th century, pre-Galaxy fleet developing now.

 

[Dukhat]

The issue with that is that in the TNG Blu-ray extras, it is revealed that Dan Curry had opposed the remaster of TNG because he did not want to see much of his earlier work replaced with CGI. He had done some incredible things in his backyard with a video camera, and then taken those recorded elements to work and combined them with scenes of the show to create alien events. It's actually amazing what he was able to do with things like a water hoe or fireworks. The extras on the disk explain that Dan Curry only got involved in the TNG remaster when it was decided to NOT replace these elements except where needed, and present TNG as shot, just with a higher digital resolution. CGI was used to replace what was already CGI, for the most part.

Thus, the nature of shooting model kits and so on ships for DS9 makes a situation where some might feel that new CGI battles would change the spirit of the source material. As a fan the Ambassador class (several versions of it,) I'm back and forth about the matter myself. I'd love to see more Ambassador's in those battles, but that would mean changing what was shot.

I think that perhaps I wasn't entirely clear. I am not at all disrespecting the work of Curry, Okuda, Sternbach, Drexler, or any other production personnel that worked tirelessly and under budget to create TNG's visual world. I have chatted with all of these awesome people on numerous occasions about their work, and they all have a love and reverence for Star Trek and their role in it.

Now with that said, the DS9 fleet shots that I was referring to were the ones that were 100% CGI to begin with, not studio model shots. Those shots HAVE to be replaced in an HD transfer, because the original CGI assets would not stand up to high definition standards, like how Babylon 5's CGI looks like total crap on DVD. My want is that those scenes are replaced with new CGI fleet battle scenes with different ships than what were originally shown. Do we really need to see tons of Mirandas, Excelsiors and Birds of Prey that we've seen a million times already? Or could they take the opportunity with an HD transfer and create new ships for the scene?

As a side note, I do not think that the Ambassador had a Miranda/Nebula-like sister. To me the Ambassador is an advanced version of Excelsior architecture, so the Centaur would already have that role. The only onscreen evidence of such a ship is the unused Pegasus design (also the "Nebula Class" of Star Trek Armada 1, which was smaller and had a round saucer), and since the Pegasus was a failed prototype anyway, I think we can assume few to none would ever have been made.

The Centaur is only 210 meters, smaller even than a Miranda class starship. So it's not really a true Miranda/Nebula sister. But as for the Ambassador, I like to think that several of the conjectural classes from the Star Trek Encyclopedia are Ambassador variants; we've just never seen them on screen. Perhaps the Ambassador family was a whole generation of ships dedicated to deep space exploration, hence why we saw so few of them.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

Or could they take the opportunity with an HD transfer and create new ships for the scene?

They’d be overwriting the work of VFX supervisors from back then rather than making improvements too small for even fans to notice. Gary Hutzel made a lot of effort to continue shooting models, but once you have that CGI fleet, the temptation would be too strong to replace the VFX work he supervised also. Besides, it’s all a part of history: you want people to remember that DS9 wasn’t the flagship show, that nobody really bothered to make sure both DS9 and VGR employed someone like Rick Sternbach, who can design Starfleet ships that fit the era without producing chimeras of previous classes.

 

[Dukhat]

They’d be overwriting the work of VFX supervisors from back then rather than making improvements too small for even fans to notice.

So? That didn't stop TOS-R. And the improvements would be quite noticeable when you're replacing a Miranda with a ship design that looks like it's contemporary to the Enterprise-E.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

So? That didn't stop TOS-R. And the improvements would be quite noticeable when you're replacing a Miranda with a ship design that looks like it's contemporary to the Enterprise-E.

It stopped TNG-R for the most part, even though they had considered replacing VFX like upscaled BoPs, and DS9-R would be expected to follow in the footsteps of TNG-R. Besides, we wouldn’t have had VFX replacement in TOS if the network hadn’t wanted to give viewers something new, and Dave Rossi said he was opposed to the whole idea (because George Lucas has given SEs a bad name) until he was given the opportunity to work on it himself. It’s all in his Inglorious Treksperts podcast appearance.

Yes, the improvements would be quite noticeable and take me out of that era. I think they should rerender scenes in HD where they can and recreate what’s missing so it looks as good or slightly better (primarily matching the physical model shows).

 

[Dukhat]

It stopped TNG-R for the most part, even though they had considered replacing VFX like upscaled BoPs, and DS9-R would be expected to follow in the footsteps of TNG-R.

But it can't follow in TNG-R's footsteps, because the sheer amount of CGI in DS9 pales in comparison to TNG. 95% of the time, TNG relied on physical studio models for VFX shots. Not so for the latter half of DS9.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

Yes, but we know that artists like Adam “Mojo” Lebowitz have saved some files that could be rerendered in HD (he provided the battle sequence for the documentary). His colleague Rob Bonchune said he liked to overbuild models, so they should hold up in HD. All this is following in the footsteps of recompositing existing motion-control footage, and if they have to recreate something using new CGI, they can always do that without the effort and cost of designing new ships that feel like they truly belong in that era.

 

[matthunter]

So? That didn't stop TOS-R.

One suspects most of the TOS VFX people are past caring or retired. Not necessarily so for folk from TNG/DS9 who still have those credits on their resumes and are in work.

 

[Dukhat]

One suspects most of the TOS VFX people are past caring or retired. Not necessarily so for folk from TNG/DS9 who still have those credits on their resumes and are in work.

They would have changed things for TOS-R whether TOS was produced 50 years ago or 50 months ago. Their goal was to show TOS in high definition, and changes were required in order to do that. Nobody was caring about what the original VFX people would think.