Defiant For The Borg? Makes No Sense

[All Seeing Eye]

Starfleet should be building ships for planetary defence capable of shooting hundreds of torpedoes

They did already. It's called the "Galaxy Class Starship."

I'm talking about something that can fire more volleys than a Galaxy class. If a Galaxy can fire 10 torps from 1 tube then they should build a ship with about 50 tubes firing 10 torps per tube.

Even with adaptation a Borg cube would be history.

 

[Timo]

The Defiant fired four quantums at a Cardassian ship in the titular episode. The target was not visibly damaged - it only shook a bit and was "disabled". Most targets have been blown up if hit by four photon torpedoes, with the two exceptions (Klingons in "Yesterday's Enterprise" and Bajorans in a Cardassian ship in "Parallels") being from alternate universes.

The Borg Sphere was hit by four quantums fired by the Enterprise-E, and blew up. Yet the Sphere had no shields. A single photon torpedo has usually been enough to vaporize shieldless starships or giant space stations. (Also, Worf used a lot of quantums in an attempt to kill an ancient battle cruiser in "Rules of Engagement", but only managed to blow up a shieldless freighter.)

A small Klingon BoP in "Way of the Warrior" was given a spanking with pulse phasers, then blown up with four quantums, and an equally small Breen vessel in "The Changing Face of Evil" was destroyed with a spread of at least four. Hardly indication of superior firepower there; photons generally do at least as well.

Apart from these four cases, there is only one further known case of quantums being fired against a starship target: ST:NEM. There, a volley of the things made a 30% dent in the target's shields - or at least that was the end result after the E-E was said to have exhausted her supply of torpedoes on preceding shots. We have little chance of knowing how photon torpedoes would have done against the target in comparison - but we do know that Picard saved his quantums for the very last. Was that because he was hoping his chances of an accurate shot would improve towards the end, so the best ammo should be saved for this? Or was that because quantums were so inferior that it was better to try anything and everything else first?

Apart from these, the only other time quantums were fired in anger on screen was in "For the Uniform", against a planetary target. There were no lethal effects, save for the distribution of a chemical agent.

Elsewhere, the Defiant and the E-E fought with other weapons, for whatever reason. Perhaps for a good reason...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Starfleet should be building ships for planetary defence capable of shooting hundreds of torpedoes

They did already. It's called the "Galaxy Class Starship."

I'm talking about something that can fire more volleys than a Galaxy class.

And Starfleet needs this why?

If a Galaxy can fire 10 torps from 1 tube then they should build a ship with about 50 tubes firing 10 torps per tube.

And Starfleet needs THIS why?

Even with adaptation a Borg cube would be history.

The Borg have demonstrated an alarming capacity to adapt to conventional weapons; simply stacking MORE of them won't make much of a difference. You have to hit them with something they've never seen before, or else you're screwed.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Why would starfleet design the Defiant class to fight the Borg? it makes no sense.

To fight the Borg and have any chance of winning you need a ship or weapon capable of slinging out Quantum Torpedos likes there's no tomorrow and having a huge stockpile of them.

In TNG we found out that Galaxy class ships can fire something like 10 torpedoes in one shot (a spread) and even in Voyager i'm sure Janeway has ordered a spread of torpedoes before and yet when we look at the battle on First Contact all the ships just fire the odd torpedo, we never even see ships firing spreads of torpedoes and yet these ships can supposedly fire 10 at a time.

So what's going on here?

Starfleet should be building ships for planetary defence capable of shooting hundreds of torpedoes, a vessel capable of firing a spread of 10 torpedoes every second. A Borg cube would be history.

Where are the huge leviathan sized torpedo slingers?

You're making the same mistake so many people make when thinking about starship design.

"Bigger is better."

Instead, "more is better," especially in the case of combat vessels.

A squadron of 30 or so "Defiants" would cost about the same as one "Sovereign." And if you destroy one, the rest keep right on fighting at full strength. If you do 50% damage to a Sovereign, it's probably out of the fight entirely.

Think about what the Borg are. They focus on decentralization in terms of all their technology. Lots of independent parts, fighting as part of a unified whole.

The Defiant is the Federation's equivalent to that. A single Defiant is pretty capable by itself. A swarm of Defiants is devastating.

Make sense?

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Weaker than most photon torpedoes?????!!!!!

Only 2 things have ever survived being hit by quantums on screen. The Scimitar and the power source for orbital weapon platforms at Chin'Toka. Everything else in all of Trek canon, movies, TV shows etc etc has been destroyed or disabled if hit by quantums.

The same could be said of photons, of course.

We really don't know what to make of the difference in destructive capability - there's not as much to go on as there is with photon torpedoes.

 

[The Badger]

A squadron of 30 or so "Defiants" would cost about the same as one "Sovereign." And if you destroy one, the rest keep right on fighting at full strength. If you do 50% damage to a Sovereign, it's probably out of the fight entirely.

Well, I always got the impression that the Defiant class would require a relatively large amount of resources to construct, specialist materials and so on. So I don't think it would simply be a case of '30 Defiants to one Sovereign'.

However, I do think that it would be worth the expense to produce a large number of them. They are resilient, so the enemy would have to devote a lot of effort and firepower to take just one out. Meanwhile the rest of the fleet would be doing a lot of damage.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

A squadron of 30 or so "Defiants" would cost about the same as one "Sovereign." And if you destroy one, the rest keep right on fighting at full strength. If you do 50% damage to a Sovereign, it's probably out of the fight entirely.

Well, I always got the impression that the Defiant class would require a relatively large amount of resources to construct, specialist materials and so on. So I don't think it would simply be a case of '30 Defiants to one Sovereign'.

However, I do think that it would be worth the expense to produce a large number of them. They are resilient, so the enemy would have to devote a lot of effort and firepower to take just one out. Meanwhile the rest of the fleet would be doing a lot of damage.

Well... compare the size of the Defiant (or rather, the most commonly accepted size) to that of the Sovereign.

Compare the volume of the "warp coils" of both ships.

Compare the size of the power generation system (not the OUTPUT, necessarily but the physical size of the powerplant).

Look at the "luxury items" on a Defiant class. Not a whole lot of frills... science labs... luxury accomodations... well-stocked sickbay facilities... cargo bays... etc. JUST what you need to be a combat vessel, effective for short-term deployments to "the action."

When I first wrote that line, I was thinking "20 or so." But when you recognize that the Defiant is about the same size as the Sovereign's Bussard Collector on a single warp nacelle, well... I think 20 is a bit too low of a number.

We can compromise and say "25" if you like, though.

 

[The Badger]

I was thinking that things like ablative armour and rapid pulse phasers might require a lot of specialist materials, and hence ramp the price up a bit.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

They did already. It's called the "Galaxy Class Starship."

I'm talking about something that can fire more volleys than a Galaxy class.

And Starfleet needs this why?

If a Galaxy can fire 10 torps from 1 tube then they should build a ship with about 50 tubes firing 10 torps per tube.

And Starfleet needs THIS why?

Even with adaptation a Borg cube would be history.

The Borg have demonstrated an alarming capacity to adapt to conventional weapons; simply stacking MORE of them won't make much of a difference. You have to hit them with something they've never seen before, or else you're screwed.

Go watch First Contact when the cube is at Earth, the cube get's hit by several torpedoes and huge chunks of the Borg cube get's blown off from them (when the defiant come onscreen look to the left and watch a torpedo hit the cube). They were clearly STILL working after all that time battling the cube.

Hit a Cube with enough torpedoes and the thing will be destroyed regardless of how well adapted they are. Even if the Borg had a skin tight shield adapted to defend against torpedoes the ship has only so much power and energy to create that shield and will eventually get drained from so many strikes.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I'm talking about something that can fire more volleys than a Galaxy class.

And Starfleet needs this why?

And Starfleet needs THIS why?

Even with adaptation a Borg cube would be history.

The Borg have demonstrated an alarming capacity to adapt to conventional weapons; simply stacking MORE of them won't make much of a difference. You have to hit them with something they've never seen before, or else you're screwed.

Go watch First Contact when the cube is at Earth, the cube get's hit by several torpedoes and huge chunks of the Borg cube get's blown off from them (when the defiant come onscreen look to the left and watch a torpedo hit the cube). They were clearly STILL working after all that time battling the cube.

Go watch Best of Both Worlds where the Enterprise hits the Borg ship with no less than twelve photon torpedoes without making a dent. For that matter, go watch Q Who where the ship shrugs off four torpedoes with no effect.

Besides, even if one assumes that the effects in first contact weren't just dramatic frill for the movie audience (kewl splosions = good movie) much has been made of the Borg's ability to REGENERATE being their primary advantage; as Shelby explained, the Borg ship could continue to function even if 78% of it was inoperable; then, as in First Contact, Starfleet's best shot barely scratched the surface.

You will never defeat the Borg using sheer brute force; they're too smart for that, and besides, the writers won't let you. They can only be defeated with better tactics and new defensive weapons, you have to try to outsmart them or surprise them. Otherwise, you could hit a cube with a thousand photon torpedoes and only slow it down, in which case you are immediately screwed if the collective decides to send TWO ships after you.

Hit a Cube with enough torpedoes and the thing will be destroyed regardless of how well adapted they are.

And how does this help you when your entire fleet runs out of photon torpedoes just in time to watch the SECOND Borg cube drop out of warp on top of them? Or the third? Or the fourth?

Seriously: you can't out-muscle the Borg. It's just not going to work.

 

[Scout101]

A squadron of 30 or so "Defiants" would cost about the same as one "Sovereign." And if you destroy one, the rest keep right on fighting at full strength. If you do 50% damage to a Sovereign, it's probably out of the fight entirely.

Well, I always got the impression that the Defiant class would require a relatively large amount of resources to construct, specialist materials and so on. So I don't think it would simply be a case of '30 Defiants to one Sovereign'.

However, I do think that it would be worth the expense to produce a large number of them. They are resilient, so the enemy would have to devote a lot of effort and firepower to take just one out. Meanwhile the rest of the fleet would be doing a lot of damage.

Missing the biggest advantage: Crew size. Each Defiant-class would be run with far fewer crew, so if you lose a few, it doesn't kill you. Losing crewmen 1000 at a time when a Galaxy or any other big ship goes down is devestating. Not 100% sure of the crew complement of a Defiant, but even if you can only crew (at battle-strength, not full staffing) 5 Defiants for each Galaxy, that's still a huge positive. And with less space for scientific equipment, medical suite, holodeck, etc, she's much more lean and combat-geared.

Suppose those pulse-phasers were probably also designed to rotate frequencies more often, in the hopes that some of each volley gets through...

 

[SilentP]

[Each Defiant-class would be run with far fewer crew, so if you lose a few, it doesn't kill you. Losing crewmen 1000 at a time when a Galaxy or any other big ship goes down is devestating. Not 100% sure of the crew complement of a Defiant, but even if you can only crew (at battle-strength, not full staffing) 5 Defiants for each Galaxy, that's still a huge positive.

I think that somewhere, it was established that the Defiant has a compliment of about 40, though I can't remember if it's a non-canon source that says so. If we were to say 50 as a round number for a Defiant, and a Galaxy has say...1000, that's 20 Defiants that could be crewed for the same number of officers as a single Galaxy. However you'd be needing far more command level personnel (Commanders at the very least, Lt. Commanders at a push) to command each ship, and tactical officers.

 

[Scout101]

In the sort of event where you need to scramble 20 Defiants in a hurry, you could probably make do with Lts running the ships. Not like they are long-term assignments at that point. Besides, in the Navy, plenty of lower grades Captaining smaller ships, wouldn't be out of line.

 

[Birdog]

In the sort of event where you need to scramble 20 Defiants in a hurry, you could probably make do with Lts running the ships. Not like they are long-term assignments at that point. Besides, in the Navy, plenty of lower grades Captaining smaller ships, wouldn't be out of line.

I knew a Navy Captain that commanded an SSBN when he was a Lt. Cmdr. That's a lot of firepower for an O4.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Not 100% sure of the crew complement of a Defiant,

47

Suppose those pulse-phasers were probably also designed to rotate frequencies more often, in the hopes that some of each volley gets through...

I kind of think that's what Enterprise was doing with its "antimatter spread" thing, firing off every emitter they had in a short pulse with a slightly different frequency. The "antimatter spread" thing was probably just some pyrotechnics they added to keep the Borg from figuring out what the hell was going on; as all of us know, a weapon is very hard to analyze when you can't figure out what it does.

 

[Saquist]

Why would starfleet design the Defiant class to fight the Borg? it makes no sense.

To fight the Borg and have any chance of winning you need a ship or weapon capable of slinging out Quantum Torpedos likes there's no tomorrow and having a huge stockpile of them.

In TNG we found out that Galaxy class ships can fire something like 10 torpedoes in one shot (a spread) and even in Voyager i'm sure Janeway has ordered a spread of torpedoes before and yet when we look at the battle on First Contact all the ships just fire the odd torpedo, we never even see ships firing spreads of torpedoes and yet these ships can supposedly fire 10 at a time.

So what's going on here?

Starfleet should be building ships for planetary defence capable of shooting hundreds of torpedoes, a vessel capable of firing a spread of 10 torpedoes every second. A Borg cube would be history.

Where are the huge leviathan sized torpedo slingers?

The first problem is that that all the ships in First Contact other than Defiant and Sovereign were much older than the Galaxy so that Launcher wasn't available.

Second:
The Akira:
The Sabre:
The Norway:
The Steamrunner are not offensive ships. They sport five phaser arrays or less...commonly three. The Akira has 15 tubes but only 3 phaser arrays. Most of those ships didn't seem to have tubes.

 

[kv1at3485]

I see the wonders of refitting are prohibited from older ships.

 

[SchwEnt]

Why would starfleet design the Defiant class to fight the Borg? it makes no sense.

To fight the Borg and have any chance of winning you need a ship or weapon capable of slinging out Quantum Torpedos likes there's no tomorrow and having a huge stockpile of them.

In TNG we found out that Galaxy class ships can fire something like 10 torpedoes in one shot (a spread) and even in Voyager i'm sure Janeway has ordered a spread of torpedoes before and yet when we look at the battle on First Contact all the ships just fire the odd torpedo, we never even see ships firing spreads of torpedoes and yet these ships can supposedly fire 10 at a time.

So what's going on here?

Starfleet should be building ships for planetary defence capable of shooting hundreds of torpedoes, a vessel capable of firing a spread of 10 torpedoes every second. A Borg cube would be history.

Where are the huge leviathan sized torpedo slingers?

How did you determine that the only way to fight the Borg is to sling out massive quantities of quantum torpedoes?

From TNG days, a key weakness was that the Borg couldn't rapidly adapt to changing phaser frequency settings.

The Defiant main offensive feature (seemed to be) the rapid-fire pulse phasers.

So...to my mind, I always envisioned it as using the phaser frequency settings to full effect against the Borg.
Each four-burst pulse has a different phaser frequency setting.
And each rapid fire burst quickly and randomly changes the phaser frequencies between shots.

Not only do the Borg get pummeled with multiple phaser hits, but repeatedly and at changing random settings they can't adapt to quickly enough.

Sounds like a perfectly designed Borg Buster weapon.
And deploy it on a fast manueverable platform like the Defiant.

The Defiant as a Borg Buster makes a whole lot of sense to me.
Especially when combined in a swarm/fleet of Defiant-types.
Much better than some sort of super-capital ship with dozens of torpedo tubes.

 

[StarshipDefiant]

How many Defiants are there currently in Starfleet?

Afaik we had the Defiant, then the Valiant, (which was destroyed), after the Defiant was destroyed we had the Sao Paulo, (which was renamed to the Defiant), in two Voyager episodes, the one where the Doc gets sent to the Promtheus and the finale, we see two Defiants in both of them (I think). This means that Starfleet had managed to build at least 4 Defiants by 2378, one every two years.

It makes you think how many they have now?

There's a little bit more then that, actually the number is probably closer to a dozen, that's even using the assumption that some of the ships we saw appeared more then once. There's the three named ships, the two flanking the Akria in the VOY episode, two acting as an honor escort to Voyager in the finale and there's a number of them seen in the fleet that Defiant and the Bird of Prey join at the end of the DS9 season finale, mind you the DS9 ones long with Defiant were 2373/2374 so there's a few in service within a couple years of Defiant itself entering service. To be on the save side, I would say theres about half a dozen that had been built (MA says 'several' but I have bad eyes so I can't acuatly count on the screencap provided), counting the destroyed one(s) and possible double appearences.

 

[The Badger]

I'm talking about something that can fire more volleys than a Galaxy class. If a Galaxy can fire 10 torps from 1 tube then they should build a ship with about 50 tubes firing 10 torps per tube.

Pardon me, but isn't that that the philosophy behind the Akira class?

Though I don't think it's ever been mentioned on screen, I believe the designer stated that the Akira had some fifteen(!) torpedo launchers. Whether these are multiple launch systems is a different matter.

And it would be wiser to have several Akiras overwhelming the target than one massive target that might get taken out before it can fire all it's torpedoes.