What ships SHOULD they have used in the Dominion War?

[Tomalak]

I doubt Starfleet would be swayed by sentimentality over Kirk if the ship really was better.

I'm entertaining in this thought experiment that what we think of as the Excelsior-class combined two projects:

• A next-generation dreadnought to replace the Federation-class
• A revolutionary warp drive advancement (the NX-2000 Project*)

The latter took considerably longer than the former, so in response to the V'GER incident and the Klingon K'T'Ingas, Starfleet rushed out the dreadnoughts with conventional warp drives augmented with additional chunky impulse engines, whilst the NX-2000 'Transwarp' testbed languished in Spacedock as development proceeded. The Enterprise's own refit was something of a stopgap.

Those dreadnoughts weren't particularly fast, but they were big and tough. Therefore the Enterprise was both still the fastest ship in the fleet, and relegated to training duty by 2285.

This would explain NCC-2XXX ships in the 2270s (Dreadnought Entente, Challenger, NCC-2004), whilst still maintaining the "wow" factor of the Excelsior herself.

I prefer the theory that the Excelsior's "Transwarp" breakthrough was a more efficient and faster warp drive that lead to the TNG warp scale, and not some kind of failure.

Following the Excelsior's trials and commissioning as NCC-2000 with some more refinements, the other earlier Dreadnoughts were upgraded with Excelsior warp tech, but the design proved less efficient and eventually all ships were either rebuilt to Excelsior specs, or mothballed.

Just for fun, this could also explain the USS Constellation's warp certification tests in 2293, long after her sister ship Hathway was commissioned - she was being upgraded with newer warp tech.

Possibly unlike the Constellations and Mirandas, the Constitutions couldn't be upgraded for some reason, which lead to their decommissioning by the end of the century. The same could apply to the Soyuz.

* Officially commenced in April 2263 to mark two centuries of human warp flight.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

I doubt Starfleet would be swayed by sentimentality over Kirk if the ship really was better.

No, but they might be if it was worse (for Starfleet's primary mission) than the alternative.

I'm entertaining in this thought experiment that what we think of as the Excelsior-class combined two projects:

• A next-generation dreadnought to replace the Federation-class
• A revolutionary warp drive advancement (the NX-2000 Project*)

I've never been convinced that "Dreadnought" is or should be a thing as a type rather than a class in Starfleet service, though equivalents in the service of more overtly militaristic cultures is fine.

I'm fine with the idea of battlecruisers and to a lesser extent battleships,

The Enterprise's own refit was something of a stopgap.

To an extent, yeah.

I prefer the theory that the Excelsior's "Transwarp" breakthrough was a more efficient and faster warp drive that lead to the TNG warp scale, and not some kind of failure.

I'm on the fence on that one, but it's not a hill I'd die on arguing for or against.

Following the Excelsior's trials and commissioning as NCC-2000 with some more refinements, the other earlier Dreadnoughts were upgraded with Excelsior warp tech, but the design proved less efficient and eventually all ships were either rebuilt to Excelsior specs, or mothballed.

IMO, the distinguishing feature between heavy/battlecruisers (which Connies and similar vessels roughly correspond to IMO during this era) and battleships is that the former might have some improvements in combat terms over second-tier workhorses, they're still optimised for generalist/exploratory work, whereas battleships are almost exclusively optimised for combat and so they were scrapped in favour of more versatile designs that consumed similar resources post-Praxis/Khitomer.

 

[HotRod]

Yeah, the destruction of the Defiant was puzzling to me. Why blow one up to bring in an exact copy of it? Especially as the first one was a testbed and no others were ever used in the war.

and the Defiant, which were the ‘hero’ ships at the time (during the Dominion war, we only see the Defiant herself and no other ships of her class

Having just caught up on this thread, I feel the need to point out that other Defiant class ships were seen in the feet shot from Call to Arms. Plus, there's an entire episode devoted to another Defiant class ship, the Valiant.

 

[Arpy]

^ where it was used for one fleet shot at the end of the season 5 finale? Eh, I’ll take it. I go back and forth between there being lots of little squadrons of them, again, just off screen, and it being more of a limited test class than having a proper run.

Nice reminder on the Valiant—most of the time when I think of the episode I think of the new Jem’Hadar battleship prototype we got in that one. And the ignoble end of Nova/Red Squad.

Curious thing assigning the ship to circumnavigate the Federation with a bunch of cadets during a war. The Defiant was officially an escort vessel, and it did so escort duty in “Message in a Bottle.” Could the ship actually be an “escort” while the Defiant itself was a testbed? It did have an NX prefix whereas the Valiant had an NCC.

 

[Dukhat]

Having just caught up on this thread, I feel the need to point out that other Defiant class ships were seen in the feet shot from Call to Arms. Plus, there's an entire episode devoted to another Defiant class ship, the Valiant.

The Valiant was a bit different. The entire episode was focused on the Valiant, not to mention a great segue at the end with the Valiant getting destroyed due to the actions of young people in over their heads, and then the establishing shot of the Defiant showing an older man at the helm. That was completely deliberate.

 

[Dukhat]

There's a USS Challenger NCC-2032 on a graphic in TUC and GEN, and in the latter the silhouette of the Ent-B is used, suggesting the Challenger came first. The GEN graphic also shows an unnamed NCC-2004 as the same type of ship.

Are there screencaps of these GEN displays? (not the one with just the names, the ones with the Excelsior silhouettes.) That’s the first I’ve heard of this.

The slight wrinkle is that the TUC graphic appears on the Bozeman, which suggests Excelsiors were active in 2278. All things considered, it would have been much better if that ship had come from 2287 instead!

I wouldn’t worry too much about background displays that are completely illegible.

 

[USS Firefly]

Curious thing assigning the ship to circumnavigate the Federation with a bunch of cadets during a war. The Defiant was officially an escort vessel, and it did so escort duty in “Message in a Bottle.” Could the ship actually be an “escort” while the Defiant itself was a testbed? It did have an NX prefix whereas the Valiant had an NCC.

Weren't they send on a mission before the war started?

 

[Arpy]

Weren't they send on a mission before the war started?

Right, upon review, they were going to circumnavigate the entire Federation in three months (oof, more questions) “in a state of the art warship.” They were in the Kepla System, one of the first to be attacked, when the war broke out.

I wonder if there’s another tale to be told in that. Convenient they were in one of the first systems to be attacked in a top of the line warship just as the war broke out. A squad that had been used for clandestine operations before.

I mean it’s a hell of a thing to send cadets into what would be the front lines as half the galaxy’s a powder keg ready to go off.

 

[Tomalak]

Are there screencaps of these GEN displays? (not the one with just the names, the ones with the Excelsior silhouettes.) That’s the first I’ve heard of this.

It's the "tactical" console where Not-Tuvok sits, but the graphic itself is not visible on screen. I'm trying to track down set pics; the Roddenberry Archive set recreation shows it, but for me the numbers are not quite legible.

 

[Yuri Nikolayev]

They used literally everything. The fact that Starfleet had to resort to using the “frankenfleet” kitbash ships on DS9 is proof that they used everything. Shipyards were cranking out ships built with whatever parts were left that could be used.

 

[Dukhat]

They used literally everything. The fact that Starfleet had to resort to using the “frankenfleet” kitbash ships on DS9 is proof that they used everything. Shipyards were cranking out ships built with whatever parts were left that could be used.

Well, no. The point of this topic was what they should have used. Because Starfleet has about 50 different ship classes, and we only saw them use 8.

And the idea that the Frankenfleet ships were thrown together from random parts at the last minute is just an illogical fallacy promoted by an author of a fictitious tech manual who happens to hate kitbashes. And it has even been proven wrong on screen, as PRO has shown entire fleets of Centaur type ships which pretty much 100% indicate that they are their own unique starship class and not randomly constructed with whatever parts were available.

 

[Tim Walker]

I’m okay with most of the 359 ships not being seen again. They weren’t designed to much cobbled together as background scraps. For me they’d need major refits to pass muster. The two closest to okay for me are the Cheyenne and New Orleans Classes. The Challenger and Freedom Classes are godawful. I get what they were going for with them, the Niagara, etc (placing nacelles in novel configurations to easily distinguish ships from one another), but they need work. I don’t think proper designers doubt that, but some fans sure do seem to. Same with ships like the Norway, the Yeager, and others not meant to be looked at too closely.

A few of these, those we only got one glimpse of, could be explained as test beds. Such as Freedom, Challenger, and Springfield. As these are sizable ships, they may have been retained as gophers.

 

[Arpy]

Eh. They were tests of ships more than real ships and they were never seen in tact because they largely didn’t pass muster. I’m okay with ignoring the pristine versions and imagining the wreckages as different ships. Either entirely other ones or better versions of the same ones. The Cheyenne especially I’d love someone to take another pass at like D.M. Phoenix did with the Saber Mark II.

 

[Tomalak]

I enjoyed the Wolf 359 Project's explanation for the rather ragtag fleet in that battle.

Spoiler

Hansen's fleet was a small forward force intended to distract the Borg long enough to destroy it with one of Dr Soran's solar probes.

It was made up of ships in the Sol System, including some odd follies plus ships pulled out of Utopia Planetia.

When the plan failed, he hastily attacked and got wiped out.

The *real* fleet was stationed around the Oort Cloud and was about to engage when the Enterprise saved the day.

 

[Tim Walker]

Rather than Frankenships, it is easier to assume that some of the odd ships were older ones pulled out of mothballs. Little known designs that may have had rather short production runs.

One design I can't really accept as a Frankenship is the Centaur. It looks too good to be something cobbled together from random parts.

As for building ships, I think one or two of the First Contact designs would have been chosen. One web site that has been linked to before...though there is one detail I disagree with, I would have gone with the smaller size estimate of 190 meters.

Apparently a handful of Defiants were constructed during the war.

As for the larger First Contact designs, I see two bottlenecks. First, they couldn't be built fast enough to compensate for the enormous losses. Second, the shipyards would be filling up with damaged ships.

Actually, I imagine Star Fleet straining to build the task force we saw in First Contact, constructing advanced war ships in a big rush.

 

[Arpy]

You could also think of it as the shipyards were full of undamaged ships getting their Defiant testbed upgrades like the Lakota. Wouldn’t make a lick of sense sending century old Mirandas into battle with original weapons.

 

[Ithekro]

Considering that the Battle of Sector 001 and the year or so long war with the Klingons was immediately before the start of the Dominion War, Starfleet had lost a lot of starships even before the war started. They probably had a sizable number of starships that survived the battle with the Borg in Spacedock under repair when the war started. USS Defiant was ready to go probably because it was a priority ship to get fixed up since it was on the front line posting to begin with.

No telling how many starships were lost fighting the Klingons, or if they were frontline models or older ships since the Klingon's had been allies for 20 years at that point. Even if it was basically a year before full hostilities between the Federation and the Klingon Empire started after the Klingons invaded Cardassia. The conflict after that, even considering the discovery of the Martok changling, was still brutal until the Khitomer Accords were resigned on Deep Space 9 after the Dominion took control of Cardassian space.

 

[Arpy]

Was there actually a war with the Klingons? They attacked the Cardassian Union but I didn’t get they continued on the Federation front after “The Way of the Warrior.” The war was one battle against one station. Heck, I’m not sure how long it was waged against the Cardassians either.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

Klingon War

Somewhere between a year and a year and a half, from "WotW" (s4 opener) when the Treaty was cancelled to "By Inferno's Light" (S5e15)

 

[Arpy]

Looking at the link, isn’t that how long they were without a treaty? The Klingons tested Federation weakness along the border as they continued to prosecute their war with the Cardassians, but for the most part there wasn’t open war with the Federation. Not until Changeling Martok finally convinced Gowron (who’d paused war on two fronts in WotW) to declare an invasion of the Archanis Sector, but even so Sisko exposed the Changeling and open war was largely averted.

For the most part, there wasn’t much to the Klingon-Federation War, and the fleet remained intact.