Seeing as the Tal Shiar once built an entire fleet in secret to battle the Dominion, there's no reason to assume that the Zhat Vash couldn't have done the same. They may have had this fleet in hiding since before the supernova.
Some of these ships could date back to the Dominion War and were simply kept in reserve and quietly out of sight until needed. The war ending so quickly once the Romulans became allies of the Alpha Quadrant powers probably meant a lot of leftover vessels that never saw combat.
I think these ships are Tal Shiar, just that Oh is also Zaht Vash in addition to being a Tal Shiar general. She pushed her religious agenda on the Romulan secret ops group.
Exactly. And if it were a Tal Shiar fleet, that would make sense given how small those ships were. They looked to be maybe the size of a modern jetliner. Ships that small make more sense if they're run by a special ops group that needs stealth than if they're regular military.
Since after the Dominion obliterated all those Tal Shiar D'Deridex class ships, they needed to think small? Or could we assume those were proper Romulan military ships being operated by the Tal Shiar? Of all the major powers, I would think there was less separation between the Romulan military and their secret ops branch.
Did they? We saw some of that in the episode Troi was a Romulan I think. I wonder how wide spread that was.
Well, I am generalizing, but the description of the Tal Shiar was more like secret police who would disappear anyone if deemed necessary. They seemed to be very forward looking for threats, including assaulting the Founders without entering the war. Yes, they were manipulated but the assault would have to have kept with their basic operating philosophy to work.
The whole Romulan government was pretty sketchy in that way though. Secret police of a secretive government.
Sure, but even in dictatorships, the secret police are often especially feared and loathed. The Red Army was no fan of the NKVD, for instance -- and after Stalin died, the other factions viewed NKVD leader as enough of a threat that they eventually arrested him on trumped-up charges and killed him in a kangaroo court in order to ensure he wouldn't become the new Soviet leader. EDITED TO ADD: My bad -- Lavrentiy Beria's agency was the MVD by the time Stalin died. Still the secret police, new name.
I've tried... maybe I'll try again when I switch back to the old one at home (I'm using my work laptop at home during the shutdown and don't wanna install unverified game stuff there)
Well, you can have the same parts, say like TOS and having the Ptolemy class tug or the Saladin class, where it was made with parts of the Constitution class. but in different configurations. With the Copy paste fleet, just having the warp engines tilted in or out doesn't make a darn difference.. you can have the same warp nacelles, power reactor etc, and it look different, for purpose like a Science, border patrol, explorer etc. with keeping the same basic parts, like the Cheyenne, New Orleans, Nebula taking parts and design cues from the Galaxy class, but the look Different!!