How powerful is a Galaxy class starship?

This question has confused me for a very long time...

The Galaxy is made to be the strongest ship in Starfleet. However, in TNG it seems to be easily subdued. Yet in DS9, we see Galaxy class ships take some powerful blows, the kind that would make the Enterprise's lights go off, and then keep going.

What do you guys think?

 

Every starship is as powerful as the script requires it to be.

I never understand these questions.

 

The Galaxy-class is a large, multipurpose starship optimized for deep-space operations, IMO. It's arguably more powerful than smaller ships, but there was only one instance in which it was referred to as a warship, and that was in an alternate reality where it seemed to be operating as a troop transport.

 

^ This.

Fundamentally, the Galaxy Class is a technically very powerful ship. But my reading is that it's a multipurpose design that can basically be plugged into whatever it needs to be. So, one Galaxy Class could be technically outfitted for a different mission statement than another, and therefore two Galaxy Classes might actually be better or worse for differing purposes than each other. IMO the 1701-D is a middle range ship designed to be generally good at everything but maybe not spectacular at any of them. Whereas something like the Odyssey might have been outfitted for a different purpose, so it could be more devoted to science missions or deep space exploration, but much less able to defend itself in a sustained fight. It's hard to say how powerful a Galaxy might be if everything was maxed out.

My view is that by contrast to the Galaxy, the Sovereign Class was very much a more specialized ship design, designed for more specific mission statements, so in some ways it might even have been inferior to a Galaxy...

 

More powerful than an iphone but less powerful than a death star.

 

It's only as powerful as the starboard power coupling, which seems to fail a lot.

 

I like situations that run into the limit of the ship's power. Like the time the Enterprise-D tried to pull an asteroid or something off course with tractor beams. I can't recall the episode for sure. It might have been the stellar core fragment in "The Masterpiece Society," from what I'm seeing online.

It adds reality when a tractor beam can't just magically move anything, but is limited by the mass of the object in question.

 

Not as powerful as a Vengeance class Dreadnought.

Seriously, episodes like "Rascals" and the movie Generations do not make the Dee look particularly mighty. Then the Odyssey was just used as a giant redshirt to show off how badass the Jem'Hadar were.

Episodes like "Best of Both Worlds" show the ship spamming phasers and photons at once and even turn the deflector array into a super duper phaser cannon - yet they're NEVER used again, even when the ships are fighting for their lives. It makes no sense to see the Dee NOT use spam-fire mode or their Deflector O'Death in situations like Generations.

 

My phone has a better interface than LCARS

 

I'd say the Galaxy class is one of the strongest ships seen used by Starfleet. Sure, when it's shields were down (ignored) in Generations or when it's facing a new type of weapon like in TNG's "Darmok" or DS9's "The Jem'Hadar", it's defenses will be compromised but after upgrades, it can take whatever you dish at it. If you put the Enterprise D featured in "Encounter at Farpoint" against the Odyssey or even the Enterprise D in "All good things", they'll trump it. IMO The Galaxy class is as upgradable as Voyager if not more and we've seen how different Voyager was after it returned. Honestly, if Janeway had a Galaxy class starship, I bet she would have gotten home sooner (handling transwarp or utilizing Borg and Starfleet transmission upgrades better).

 

Question: How powerful is a Galaxy-class starship?

Worf: It is powerful!

Rest of crew: ???

Worf: It is... very powerful!

 

^

I wouldn't say the Galaxy class is better than the Sovereign class though. I just don't see Starfleet downgrading Picard.

 

It makes sense that the TNG Enterprise would seem weaker than those Galaxies shown in DS9, since presumably, they'd be able to improve upon the design in the years between TNG and DS9.

 

I always found the TNG Galaxy to be kind of weak... It seemed like Romulan D'Deridex class ships always scared the hell out of Picard. However, I agree that DS9 Galaxies looked pretty strong.

 

The D'deridex-Class Warbird is larger than the Galaxy-Class and, thanks to its cloaking device, when you come face-to-face with one there is no way of knowing how many others are surrounding you.

With the DS9 Galaxy-Class ships, keep in mind they were in a war, so they would be upgraded to fight and keep going for as long as possible. Not all DS9 Galaxy's are more powerful though, one shot took out the Odyssey's warp nacelle.

 

And they proved of limited effectiveness against the Dominion as well.

 

Whoa whoa whoa.

My iPhone can play Candy Crush. I've never seen the Enterprise play Candy Crush.

Checkmate!

 

That was before Dominion upgrades, plus there were multiple shots from multiple ships before the nacelle went down.

 

Calling a kamikaze attack a "shot" is beyond understatement. (Not to mention is took many others real shots previous to the kamikaze attack.)