Borg timeline error?

[Timo]

they had delayed construction of the new battle fleet because the threat was 'less urgent'. Which was a stupid response if you ask me.

I'd say it was pretty smart - because any weapon devised against the Borg is only good for one or two shots, and any massive building effort thus is grossly misplaced. To beat back the Borg, you need to be constantly building new defenses, not betting your survival on something you built six years ago.

The Defiants weapons were certainly effective, and it was stated to have been originally designed to fight and defeat the Borg (techs that likely gave it the necessary effectiveness against Dominion tech).

Hmh? In ST:FC, the Defiant seemed to be doing squat to the Borg vessel, despite trying real hard. Apparently, she was as much a failure as Starfleet had feared...

I would surmise that SF in Admiral Janeway's timeline managed to 'shape up' in the 16 years it took Voyager to reach the AQ, and 'adapted' in a sense that they started shifting into a sort of overdrive - which also explains how a refitted Nova would also turn out to penetrate shields on a Negh'Var class ship.

I wonder... Would time travel of the sort performed by Janeway be so commonplace at that time and age that it could explain the leaps in technological progress? That'd be a relatively natural way for the (already verifiably time-traveling) Federation to get the drop on its opponents.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

Actually, we've seen SF upgrading their ships on a regular basis.
Therefore, construction of that new battle fleet would have likely increased their numbers and could have tipped the scales earlier on.

Any SF ship can be sufficiently upgraded/modified to accommodate adjustments.
Furthermore, in case of anti-Borg ships, one would expect that SF would construct those with an ever increasing option for upgrades (exactly because frequent changes would be needed to counteract the Borg).

Oh I realize that the Defiant was doing rather pitifully against that cube in FC.
The point was 'increasing numbers' first and foremost while implementing anti-Borg tech in the process.

SF repeatedly got 'cocky' and wouldn't do changes until they got their rear ends kicked - and would usually do them in a limited fashion.

 

[Frodo Lives]

The Federation's been threatened by numerous seemingly invincible enemies over its history, to expect Starfleet to just drop everything and focus on one problem is just crazy.

Sure, we the audience know the Borg are unstoppable assimilation machines, er, cyborgs, but your average Starfleet brass probably gets two thousand reports a week on new threats to Federation space.

Some of them may be exaggerated, some not.

But that doesn't stop the Romulans from sneakin' around, trying to invade Vulcan, or Klingon pirates going on a kill-happy, honour spree in the outer colonies. Not to mention the shit the Cardassians are up to, the Tholians, the Orion Syndicate, the Breen, the Talarians, some Ferengi shmuck trying to con Starfleet retirees out of their pensions, some crazy neigh omnipitant alien with a inferiority complex that's just been encountered by the USS Deus Ex, etc, etc.

While the Federation seems to be a pretty peaceful place with nice people, it's pretty much ALWAYS under threat of some kind or another.

Sure the Borg could have invaded, but so could the Sheliak, the Tzenkethi or the Tamarians (who knows what their deal REALLY is ).

Starfleet can't know all the variables, so why would it take on a siege mentally after yet ANOTHER asshole starts gunning for them?

Despite being a cashless society they have to manage their resources by the looks of it, and they probably devoted as much to the new threat of the Borg as they possibly could at the time.

Not to mention it still takes time to refit ships, and Starfleet seems to have A LOT of ships. They can't just recall every one and hook them up to the Refit 3000, it would definitely take years if not decades.

And of course you've still got to develop the new weapons in the first place, and somehow test them, and STILL figure out a way around the whole Borg adapt to everything schtick!

I'm surprised the admiralty didn't just biff the Borg reports into the Too Hard basket, and try to figure out a way to bring peace between Klingon and Tribble instead.

Sooner or later, something's just gonna come along and kill ya, it's a simple fact of life.

 

[Timo]

Any SF ship can be sufficiently upgraded/modified to accommodate adjustments.

It doesn't look like that, really. No other ship seems to have adopted the Defiant's pulse phasers, for example, and quantum torpedoes have only ever been launched by apparent purpose-built vessels (although one Excelsior was said to have been carrying them, after extensive modifications).

And building a new battlefleet is something Starfleet is apparently always engaged in - they never have as many ships as they would like, be it peacetime or wartime, so they are already by definition maxed out. We don't know what they are maxed out on: is it funding, time, dilithium? But something is putting a limit to ship production and costing lives, sometimes billions of them, and Starfleet always remains helpless to do anything about it.

Odds are, Starfleet didn't stop building new ships, it just decided it wasn't going to build its new ships on the Defiant format. Which was a good decision, considering the Defiant was such a dud in the intended role, and not much of a performer in the later armed-recce role, either.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[You_Will_Fail]

Defiant was a super-performer actually, I never saw a problem with it other than being unable to go to maximum warp.

 

[Timo]

Yet the only opponents it bested in battle were the smallest Jem'Hadar attack craft and some Klingon BoPs... A Klingon cruiser whupped the Defiant's ass easily enough, as did a Starfleet cruiser (although in both cases it's possible that both sides were pulling their punches, and certain that at least one side was).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[RoJoHen]

Whether it was intended or not, I kind of got the impression that the Defiant was rushed into action once the Dominion threat became apparent. It was supposed to be this awesome, badass ship, capable of fighting the Borg...but it was never finished.

 

[Paradon]

The purpose of the Defiant Class is: it takes very little man power to operate it, so SF can build hundreds of thousands of these ships and still have enough people to operate them. One Defiant Class Ship may not do much damage, but imagine hundreds, maybe even thousands, of these firing the phaser canon at a Borg ship at the same time.

 

[JarodRussell]

However, in Voyager, it's said the Seven of Nine and her parents were assimilated 2356. Wouldn't this dictate first contact for both species?

Not necessarily. Remember, the Hansens went off on their own to search for the Borg. Who says the general population of the Federation even knew about it?

Well you'd think that Starfleet would provide the Captain of the ship supposed to chart the outer rim of the Federation with information about potential threats, even if they are just rumors. If the Hansens knew about the Borg, I'm sure Starfleet did, too.

 

[Deks]

But even the Hansens considered the Borg a rumor at best.
Nothing entirely substantiated, and they were the kinds of people who essentially tried thinking outside the box.
Besides, SF probably didn't have intentions on visiting the J system as seen in Q-Who? just yet.

Aside from that... I wasn't suggesting on building ships in Defiant format.
More to the point, different designs that would accommodate high levels of change/modifications so they can be suitable for fighting the Borg.

As for other SF ships being upgrade-able enough...
Well, the Lakota was over 70 years old and was upgraded to match an unofficial war-ship of contemporary times in terms of fire.
And yes, they had Quantum Torpedoes.
Voyager was also stated as being able to accommodate them.

SF from what I was able to gather got lax a bit in face of grand threats such as the Borg.
They were better equipped by the time of FC I'll give them that... but they should have been able to bring those things sooner into readiness.

The Defiant was mostly seen as effective against Dominion bug ships, yes... but that's all the more reason SF should have reacted faster.
From what we were able to tell, the Oddysey was not doing well at all, and yet the Defiant was able to destroy at least 1 of those bugs initially.

The pulse phasers not being adapted on other ships is easy to explain:
The Defiant is the only ship designed to have such a system.
Other larger ships were able to deliver same fire power/effectiveness through beams.
Therefore, I would surmise that the pulses was something that SF decided to try on the Defiant class, but not expand on it to the rest of the fleet.
Whatever anti-Borg systems it carried were likely contained to the hardware (as in frequency, attenuation, modulation, etc...) which as evident was applicable to other SF ships.

 

[Timo]

Aside from that... I wasn't suggesting on building ships in Defiant format.
More to the point, different designs that would accommodate high levels of change/modifications so they can be suitable for fighting the Borg.

And this probably happened. That is, nobody said it didn't.

Sisko merely told that the Defiant was never finished, so she never became the model for this new battlefleet. Not that the fleet would ever have been conceived as consisting of a thousand Defiants - it would probably have been a diverse collection of designs, with the Defiant the small-scale demonstration of things to come. But apparently even this humble role was denied our hero ship, and apparently because it took way too long to sort out the teething troubles. The new fleet had to be built anyway, but since the Defiant wasn't ready, the fleet was built using other sources of inspirations, other threat scenarios and other technologies.

The Defiant doesn't appear particularly mass-produceable, really. After all, we later see that it is produced, but NOT mass-produced. It's probably more of a silver bullet. Meaning it's expensive, it is ballistically inferior to copper or steel, but it's what you must have to kill werefolves - and when sending one of your Commanders on a suicide mission during an off season for werewolves, you can give him silver bullets so that you don't have to part with more useful ones.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

It's not anymore problematic to construct than other ships.
Most of it's technology and materials are more or less based on same/similar aspects like the rest SF ships with adjustments to the hardware to make it more anti-Borg worthy.
The only distinguishing aspect would effectively be the ablative hull armor... and in my opinion that thing is not a too viable defense because it has to be replaced in space dock after taking damage.
Or the crew would need to find materials necessary to reproduce the ablative coating.

We've seen other Defiant class ships in fleet actions.
They were practically in same numbers like the Akira class ships.

But, if SF upgraded all of it's ships it sent to fight the Dominion (which is possible, but in certain cases I have reason to doubt it), then it stands to reason the new battle-fleet would be dispersed to reinforce the existing fleet.

 

[Paradon]

It's smaller, so yes it could mass produce quickly like the smaller type of Dominion ship...and it doesn't need a lot of man power to operate it. That's why it's so efficient in case the Borg (their most lethal enemy) ever invade the Fed.

 

[Timo]

It's not anymore problematic to construct than other ships.

Except that Starfleet doesn't know how to put one together right. The original design was abandoned in the corner of an orbital warehouse before it became capable of moving without tearing itself apart; the jury-rigging done after the ship miraculously survived the suicide sortie of "The Search" apparently did not restore adequate warp performance.

Failure to create a working design would be an obstacle to mass production as such. Whether there are further hindrances, we don't know - but we see no explicit evidence of mass production. (Although to be sure, we see no evidence of any sort of production of any vessel except this one during the war... )

and in my opinion that thing is not a too viable defense because it has to be replaced in space dock after taking damage.

Why? There's no indication that this would be the case. Nothing that is ablated stays ablated for even a single battle scene; the armor may well be based on the idea of constantly replicating new ablatables.

On the other hand, the presence or absence of ablative armor is not visually evident, as per "Paradise Lost". If ablative armor does not consist of matter, it's unlikely its replenishment would involve a starbase visit, given Starfleet's proficiency in generating these strange "field" or "phase" things using a remote, internally mounted generator thingamabob.

We've seen other Defiant class ships in fleet actions.
They were practically in same numbers like the Akira class ships.

We have seen something like six Defiants, two of them in VOY "Message in a Bottle". Apart from the VOY appearance, every fleet that featured one of those had at least three Akiras, and many fleets had Akiras but not Defiants in evidence.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

Ah, but the Defiant was a prototype by the time Sisko brought it to Ds9.
As he also noted, SF decided that the Borg threat was less urgent, which probably slowed down the 'urgency' factor on which they operated before to get the ship done, and since the design flaws appeared, they just never bothered to fix them because they 'shelved' the thing for the time being.

Had SF continued to work on the problems, they would likely had it up an running just fine.
O'Brien was able to patch the thing together before the crew took it to the GQ on that search mission, and he was able to fix it's flaws in the few weeks after that.

As I said... SF was sloppy.

Granted... we know little about ablative hull armor, so for all we know, it could be replicable.
Though the only thing that came close to that was the deployable armor tech that Admiral Janeway brought.
The way I see it is that the armor during it's offline mode is stored in the generators as a pattern, then materialized around the ship when needed.
Damaged/destroyed sections of the armor get replaced upon next deployment.
It's essentially a huge transportation/replication based tech (well, the replication bit would entail only aspects when the armor is damaged).


I think the Akiras were dispersed through the fleets just as much as the Defiants were.
Furthermore, we've never seen literally hundreds of SF ships in fleet shots, and just one of the fleets was supposed to have over 600 ships.

The FX guys wanted to portray diversity in designs from SF end I think and were worried of having swarms of the same design (which doesn't mean that the fleet didn't have a hundred Defiants dispersed through the battle).

 

[Anwar]

The Defiant project was more or less scrapped because they came up with better ships that didn't have the Defiants' design flaws: The Saber, Norway, Steamrunner, Akira and Sovereign classes were all post-Defiant classes and all more or less superior to it.

Why does the Defiant itself do so well compared to those, then? Because its a main character plot-armored ship.

 

[Paradon]

The Defiant Class with their forward facing phaser cannons are forced to attack the enemy's ships in only one direction and thus concentrating it's fire power on one spot blowing a hole in hull of a ship. I think strategically they were supposed to operate in groups, much like Klingons Bird of Prey, or accompany Soverign Class ships in an attack.

 

[Timo]

The pulsed output of those cannon would be ideal for fighting the Borg, as each cleverly tuned pulse could pose a new challenge to the adaptation routine. The price of that might be the abysmal range we witness. But swarm tactics might not be required - the firepower of a single starship was essentially sufficient for destroying a mighty Cube in "Q Who?", provided the adaptation routine were defeated.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

The Defiant project was more or less scrapped because they came up with better ships that didn't have the Defiants' design flaws: The Saber, Norway, Steamrunner, Akira and Sovereign classes were all post-Defiant classes and all more or less superior to it.

Why does the Defiant itself do so well compared to those, then? Because its a main character plot-armored ship.

Oh I'm not trying to glorify the Defiant.
Merely pointing out that SF was sloppy with how the 'battlefleet' was put 'on hold' because 'the borg threat was not imminent'.


As for the Saber, Norway, Steamrunner and Akira... do we know that those designs came after BoBw?
Well, we've only 'seen' them in the post BoBw years, yes, but that doesn't mean that SF hadn't made them earlier... although the notion is interesting to say the least.

And yes, while Q-Who did demonstrate that a power of a single Federation Galaxy class would be enough to defeat the Cube... we have to keep in mind that was because of a 'first time encounter'.
It would stand to reason the Borg would be able to adapt their ships to accommodate Phaser technology and minimize their effect on their hulls even if SF keeps one step ahead of their adaptation.

Still... my guess is that since we've seen TNG in the early years portraying star-ships more along the lines of extremely (and more) powerful versions of their TOS counterparts, it's entirely possible that the 'firecracker' results we consequently witnessed was nothing more than 'dumbing down tech for the sake of drama'.

Otherwise, it would be interesting to see cubes being disintegrated by 10% with each phaser shot.

Then again, disintegration from starship phasers was left in early TNG seasons for the most part.

 

[Timo]

...how the 'battlefleet' was put 'on hold' because 'the borg threat was not imminent'.

But again, that was not said.

It was only said that the Defiant failed to be the lead ship and role model of the new fleet. Presumably Starfleet picked the second threat scenario in their list and modeled the fleet after that one when the Borg proved less acutely threatening than expected. And presumably this second scenario favored the building of...

...Yes, the building of what? In DS9 and VOY, we see no starships with registry numbers significantly higher than those of known pre-"Q Who?" vessels. The ships that do have higher numbers appear to be Intrepids for the most part. So the second-most-favorite threat is fast and maneuverable and sometimes dwells on planetary surfaces?

Timo Saloniemi