I came across this thread during a random, mostly unrelated Google search. After reading it, it's apparent to me that resurrecting a thread that's been dead for as long as this one is generally frowned upon unless a new perspective is brought to the table. Hopefully, my post will do exactly that. If not, mods, please feel free to remove it.
Non-Lakota class, something like U.S.S. Hood vs. Voyager.
Voyager would be faster, more manuverable and have better phaser coverage, but the Hood is a much larger ship with a big ass warp core and its shields should be of similar tech.
Neither class has overally impressive photon torpedo ability so lets also set that as equal.
Let mortal kombat begin!
The first thing I want to deal with in answering this question is the original poster's prohibition on considering
Lakota or
Exelsiors of similar caliber for analytical purposes. I want to buck that prohibition, because I feel that very comparison is inherently mandated in the question this thread poses.
We know that StarFleet's numbers were seriously depleted during the Dominion War. The exact extent of the damage is never really discussed onscreen or in any canon publication. However, the Daystrom Institute Technical Library website, which is one of my favorite sources for Trek-related technical information, does attempt to quantify those numbers. I have included a link to a DITL article which discusses this below:
http://www.ditl.org/fleetnumbers-page.php?Race=fed&ListID=Fleets
Despite the fact that the numbers given are largely based in speculation, I'm going to assume they're accurate for the sake of argument. I think I'm safe in doing so given how much research DITL generally does when conducting analyses, and because there aren't really any other websites out there that have tried to answer that question.
If StarFleet lost 60% of its starships as DITL suggests, then it's safe to say that brass would be put in a desperate situation. In the wake of the Dominion War, the Alpha Quadrant was anything but stable, and the Federation's future was anything but certain despite its victory. StarFleet had no assurances that the Dominion had ended hostilities forever - even with Odo restoring the Great Link and staying behind to "reform" the Dominion, I doubt many admirals placed much faith in the Dominion's promise to permanently withdraw from the Alpha Quadrant. The Cardassian Union was in shambles, and while the Cardassians themselves may not have posed much of a threat, their territory was likely rife with lawlessness in the resulting power vacuum, which would have largely been the responsibility of the Federation to patrol during a presumed occupation as Cardassia was rebuilt. An end to Dominion hostilities in no way guaranteed an end to conflict with the Breen; indeed, the ever aggressive Breen, reeling from a loss and looking for anything that might restore their former glory, were probably more likely to challenge Federation authority after the war than before, and were likely prone to seek new territory in formerly Cardassian space as a way of gaining something for their troubles during the war. Similarly, the Romulans and the Klingons were probably looking for a string of quick, easy victories to restore their empires to their former glory as well. Given a political landscape like that, it's likely that every flag officer in the fleet's desk was cluttered with volley after volley of new threat assessments. Picard's quote in
Insurrection about "brush fires" was likely applicable for years after the end of the war; after all, how could a human clone and his gang of Remans successfully take over the Romulan Star Empire without a little chaos in the background? And until
Voyager got her kicks in on the way home, the Borg threat surely loomed in the back of StarFleet's collective mind, too.
By 2375, StarFleet brass, with long casualty lists littered with familiar names fresh in their memory, had to have come to the realization that the galaxy isn't the safe, peaceful, "civilized" place that StarFleet had treated it like before the late 2360s. Now put yourself in the admiralty's gaudy uniforms. With all that on your plate, and all those experiences swimming around in your head, what are you going to do?
You're going to try and get your fleet back in ship shape as quickly as possible. You're going to get as many of your people back out in the field as you can because you don't want to be caught unprepared again when the next threat surfaces.
StarFleet's strategy for a quick recovery from the war had to have included overhauling older starships that still had viability left. It's often the case that it's faster, easier and less resource intensive to spend three months gutting and upgrading an older starship than to spend eighteen months building a new one from scratch. Not to mention that doing so keeps battle-hardened, cohesive crews together rather than splitting them up and scattering them to the four corners of the fleet, and that there's a little morale boost when servicemen and women are still assigned to the same ship they proudly served on during the Federation's greatest conflict to date.
That means that whatever members of the
Excelsior lineage that weren't completely wrecked by the war and were constructed during the later production cycles (read, weren't too old) remained in service likely received the same or similar upgrades as
Lakota. StarFleet wanted to project and reinforce its presence after the Dominion War.
Lakota and other
Excelsiors remade in her image could do that.
That being the case, to accurately address this question, I think we need to be assessing an
Intrepid's viability against an
Excelsior with similar specs to
Lakota, because that, in my mind,
is the modern
Excelsior. To do so, I'll use DITL again. Below are links to DITL's specs and strength indices for both the
Lakota and the standard
Intrepid Class starship. Keep in mind that the first production run of the
Galaxy Class is normalized to a strength index of 1000 in all categories for reference.
http://www.ditl.org/ship-page.php?ClassID=fedexcelsior&ShipID=6024&ListID=Ships&ListOption=fed
http://www.ditl.org/ship-page.php?ClassID=fedintrepid&ListID=Ships&ListOption=fed
DITL gives
Lakota an overall strength index of 1301, compared to a standard
Intrepid's 591.
Lakota holds significant advantages over an
Intrepid in both phaser and torpedo firepower, weapons range and accuracy, shield strength and hull armor. By contrast,
Intrepid's only advantages come in the form of speed and maneuverability, which are likely compensated for by
Lakota's superior weapons accuracy. Given that set of information, and assuming that most
Excelsiors received
Lakota style upgrades as I've outlined here, I think it's safe to say that a post-Dominion War, non-hero
Excelsior would handle a non-hero
Intrepid with relative ease in an adversarial situation.
