Defiant For The Borg? Makes No Sense

[The Badger]

Well, we know some materials can not be replicated. Latinum, for example, and dilithium. And there have been episodes where the plot revolved around attempts to get a substance that the Federation needed but didn't have handy ('The Most Toys' springs to mind). So the idea that certain materials are hard to come by, even given the Federations advantages, is perhaps not so outlandish.

Problem is ... the writers made SF in such a capacity that they don't follow rational/logical way of thinking when it comes to fleets/upgrades and whatnot.

Perfectly true, but whatever the writers reasons, the fictional universe of Star Trek turned out a certain way. Now we can point our fingers and sneer at what we perceive as mistakes, or exercise our minds to try and account for them. Personally I prefer the latter. It's more fun!

And let's make no mistake about it. In the absence of any data, all this discussion about how long to build a Defiant class is meaningless. We are not putting forward any well supported arguments, we are just batting personal opinions back and forth, like medieval philosophers arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Now, it may be that I've missed something somewhere, that there was a scene on screen that gave some indication as to the speed of the construction. If so could someone kindly point me towards it.

In the absence of such data, it all comes down to personal preference. Even though I know it is not canon, I consider the DS9 TM to be a useful resource. That states quite unequivocally that the ablative armour, of the sort used by the Defiant, requires rare materials and has a long manufacture time.

 

[Deks]

But the TM is not canon ... so it cannot really be applied to what was witnessed on-screen.
Also, for a space-faring organization as the Federation and given their technology ... I find it hard to think construction times of star-ships are large.
It flies in the face of rationale and logic really when you apply the time differential, scientific and technological advancements.
We are like cave men by comparison which is why I cringe when contemporary perceptions and science is applied to Trek, when in fact, marginally little would be of comparison.
They made huge technological leaps thanks to their altered perceptions (post WWIII), also due to the Vulcans (who beat humans into space by about 2000 years), and later on by bringing in the remaining 148 species into the fold.

On the aspect of replication ... I agree that some materials would have been non-replicable ... this still doesn't jibe that years after it's conception the technology would STILL be difficult to produce ... especially in Trek.
It's just a way to dumb down the technology and increase the drama (something I detested with Trek on a regular basis as it was an insult to intelligence).

 

[The Badger]

But the TM is not canon

Perfectly true, I stated that myself.

... so it cannot really be applied to what was witnessed on-screen.

Again true. But that was the point I was trying to raise in my last post. We don't have any canon indication of the construction time of a Defiant class, so ultimately it is down to personnel opinion.

Looking back over my previous posts I realise I may not have been clear. I spoke earlier about my impression that Defiants took a long time to build. All these references to the DS9 TM were an attempt to explain where I got that impression from. Please don't think I was in any way insisting it would take a long time.

Some of the arguments raised for a quick build time do indeed make a lot of sense. The only reason I don't accept them as 'fact' is that I prefer an empirical approach, and so far there is no relevant data. It is a logical hypothesis though.

 

[Deks]

I can accept the possibility that the Defiant would take some time to build initially when it was in experimental stage ... because it might likely feature technologies previously not in use on a grand scale (although they would retain basics of the previous techs).
But by the time Dominion War started, I saw footage of numerous ships (Klingon and Federation) that also featured several other Defiant class ships which also indicates that they obviously constructed more.

What we do know though is that the writers often dumb down the tech in order for the drama to flourish ... even when they could have retained both.

 

[The Badger]

Oh yes, there are certainly more Defiants about. In an interview Ron Moore stated "we just decided that the Fed was now cranking out Defiant-class vessels based on Sisko's recommendations to SF Command."
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/6952/raolchat.txt

And yes, once the initial prototype stage was complete construction time would almost certainly be reduced dramatically.

I just don't think it would be as extensive as the "thirty Defiants for the cost of one Sovereign" suggested earlier in this thread.

 

[tharpdevenport]

Plus you haven't specified why the Defiant itself is a bad design against the Borg.

How about: it's not big enough to store enough quantum torpedoes to take out a Borg cube or inflict enough damage to make a different?

And let's not forget the Borg can adapt; I reall no on screen reference to the Borg beign incapable of adapting to quantum torpedoes.

And as we saw in "The Best of Both Worlds", a single Borg cube (against the Mars perimeter defense) can handle mutilple small targets at once.

Nimble? Quick? A single Borg cube took out 42(?) ships at the Worf battle, and -- if not for the Enterprise -- almost every ship in "First Contact". So it can handle multiple vectored moving & fighting targets, which means multiple locks and firings going on at once. Defiant would stand no chance at all.

And lest we all forget, again -- if not for the Enterprise -- the Definant was abotu to bite the dust in "First Contact", meaning it failed.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

How about: it's not big enough to store enough quantum torpedoes to take out a Borg cube or inflict enough damage to make a different?

Nor is any single ship Starfleet has. Which is why they always attack the Borg with a fleet.

And as we saw in "The Best of Both Worlds", a single Borg cube (against the Mars perimeter defense) can handle mutilple small targets at once.

Which is why one big ship is a much worse idea than a bunch of little ships. A bunch of little ships still take longer to get cooked.

Nimble? Quick? A single Borg cube took out 42(?) ships at the Worf battle, and -- if not for the Enterprise -- almost every ship in "First Contact". So it can handle multiple vectored moving & fighting targets, which means multiple locks and firings going on at once. Defiant would stand no chance at all.

And lest we all forget, again -- if not for the Enterprise -- the Definant was abotu to bite the dust in "First Contact", meaning it failed.

The Enterprise was at the Neutral Zone. The battle in First Contact had to have lasted hours - at the very least. More likely days, considering distance and assuming the Enterprise moved at warp speed instead of plot speed. There's no way Enterprise could have come in just a few minutes - nor the fleet, nor the cube.

Since you have no way of determining whether the Defiant was in the fight for 1 minute or 30 minutes or 6 hours, you have no data which tells us Defiant "failed". Any war machine breaks down when shot repetitively. Defiant isn't a failure any more than the P-51 Mustang or the Constitution-Class.

 

[The Badger]

Plus you haven't specified why the Defiant itself is a bad design against the Borg.

How about: it's not big enough to store enough quantum torpedoes to take out a Borg cube or inflict enough damage to make a different?

True. But then, no single Star Fleet vessel is. So make more than one.

And let's not forget the Borg can adapt; I reall no on screen reference to the Borg beign incapable of adapting to quantum torpedoes.

Individual Borg use shields and adapt to phaser fire. Borg ships do not use shields. They have adapted to high frequency energy based attacks, to which their power distribution system is vulnerable. There has never been any indication that they ever defend against torpedoes.

And as we saw in "The Best of Both Worlds", a single Borg cube (against the Mars perimeter defense) can handle mutilple small targets at once.

Agreed. That single cube had no trouble dealing with three drones flying straight toward it and making no attempt to evade.

Nimble? Quick? A single Borg cube took out 42(?) ships at the Worf battle, and -- if not for the Enterprise -- almost every ship in "First Contact". So it can handle multiple vectored moving & fighting targets, which means multiple locks and firings going on at once. Defiant would stand no chance at all.

Thirty nine ships at Wolf 359. Large, (relatively) slow and unmanoeuvrable ships.
And as they did so badly, the Defiant design can't really do much worse, can it?

And lest we all forget, again -- if not for the Enterprise -- the Definant was abotu to bite the dust in "First Contact", meaning it failed.

We have no idea how long the Defiant had been in the fight. Lest we all forget, other ships were quickly destroyed. Though heavily damaged, the Defiant was salvaged and later returned to active duty.

 

[tharpdevenport]

How long, though, the Defiant was in the fight is irrelevant, because it was damaged beyond fith and almost destroyed. If a fleet, or at least a dozen ships of that class had been sent, maybe the story would be different, but just one failed miserably.

The answer isn't ships. They need other technilogical weapons. Maybe artificially created unstable worms holes that can be opened at moments notice, to suck i na cube and deposit it elsewhere and there's been no indication it could survive a sudden and rough journey to who knows where. Cut off from the Hive mind, it would be useless whereever it ends up. Or other creative ideas we couldn't think of.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Right, one-shot superweapons.

Anyone want to remind me what happened the last time one of those was deployed against a Borg Cube?

 

[Unicron]

That might be viewed as a special case, since the Borg were able to adapt to said weapon with "inside" knowledge.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

True.

But deploying superweaposn against the Borg is only going to draw more of their attention. They've only sent single ships - probes, as it were. Provoking them with a bigger stick would be tantamount to suicide in my opinion.

 

[The Badger]

It would be a mistake to assume that the Defiant class would be Star Fleet's only response to the Borg threat. It is the most famous one, because it featured so heavily in DS9. For all we know there could be many more.

Consider the Akira class. Although never stated on screen, and hence of debatable canonicity, there were claims (by designer Doug Drexler, I believe) that it carried no less than fifteen torpedo launchers. The Prometheus class, silly multi vector attack mode aside, may well have been developed as an anti Borg weapon. Even if it wasn't specifically designed for the Borg, the possibility that it would fight them would surely have occurred to it's designers.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

I'm sure Starfleet has more anti-Borg prototypes than they know what to do with, if Starship development is anything like aircraft development.

The Defiant was likely intended as part of a complete combat "system", if you will.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

I'm sure Starfleet has more anti-Borg prototypes than they know what to do with, if Starship development is anything like aircraft development.

The Defiant was likely intended as part of a complete combat "system", if you will.

Agreed. I'm sure that Scientist "A" tried to come up with "uber-super-duper-Anti-Borg cannon #1" and Scientist "B" tried to come up with "super-duper-uber-anti-borg forcefield" and so forth...

But when we talk "Defiant," we're not looking at a single Defiant being a "superweapon." Nor carrying a "superweapon" (since the weapons and system on the Defiant are part of other designs as well).

It's all about what design choices were made. It wasn't a "failure," because it was obviously never intended to be the "one shot super-weapon." It makes perfect sense, to me, only under one condition... a "swarm" of smaller, less expensive ships that are as combat-capable as most larger ship designs are, if not moreso.

Send a fleet of Sovereigns up against the Borg, or an identical number of Defiants, and the Sovereigns will almost certainly do better in combat. But the advantage of the Defiant only works if you have a lot more defiants for every one Sovereign.

FYI, we never saw the Sovereign prove itself particularly effective in combat, either. We saw it get the crap torn out of it by the Borg, then by the Son'a, then the Remans. The "good guys" never won, with that ship, due to "overwhelming force of arms," did they?

 

[Saquist]

Constitution Class NCC-1700 USS Constitution
Miranda Class NCC -1837 USS Lantree
[2266]-Romulans destroy Federation Outpost
[2267]-First Klingon War
[2285] Excelsior class NX-2000

-Constellation Class 2893(USS Stargazer)

[2293] -Khitomer Confrence
2311 -Tomed Incident: results in 53 year Romulan isolation
-Earliest Ambassador class (Zhukov NCC-26136)
- Earliest Niagra Class USS Wellington (NCC - 28473)

2344 - Enterpise C destroyed at Narendra III
2346 -Khitomer Massacre by Romulans
2347 -Start of Cardassian War
-Steamrunner USS Appalachia (NCC-52136)
-New Orleans class USS Rutledge (NCC 57295)
-Nebula Class NCC 60205 USS Honshu
-Sabre Class USS Yeager (NCC-61947)
-Akira Class 63549 USS Thunderchild

2355 -USS Stargazer disabled by Cardassian war ship.
2356 -Galaxy Class NCC 70637 (USS Galaxy)

2362 - Massacare at Setlik III
2363 - Galaxy class (USS Enterprise D)

Federation Produces 68,637 units in 78 years. (879 units a year)

2366 -Defiant Class Development Project
2367 -Wolf 359 - Cardassian Truce Demilitarized Zone
-Nova Class USS Equinox NCC-72381

2368 -Danube Class NCC -72452 (Rio Grande)
-Defiant Class (NX 74205)
-Intrepid Class (NCC-74600)

2371 -NCC -74656 (Voyager) / Type 9 shuttlecraft
2371 -Defiant pulled from Storage
2372 -Enterprise E launched
2373 -Battle of Sector 001 / Voyager encounters 8472 / DS9 start of the Dominion War.

( Federation produces 257 units)

2374 -Prometheus Class NCC-74913

Federation produces 314 units a year.

2375 -Briar patch. - Scout 75227 / Voyager encounters (USS Equinox) / End Dominion war.

This is a summary of Ship Building history that uses the Registry versus history in Star Trek. It attempts to shed light On Star Fleets ship building practices and why Star Fleet has such big registry numbers.

It may or may not imply that the registry is infact genuine and progressive. For instance, by registry, many ships including the Nebula class are assumed to be not newer but older than the Galaxy Class even though they are seen after the Galaxy.

 

[msbae]

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?

If that is the case, Starfleet doesn't need to design anything new. The Defiant used ordinary torpedo launchers. The only thing making the Quantum torpedoes special (as far as I know) is the continuum-twist device that increases their explosive yield.

 

[Saquist]

According to Voyager Quantum tubes are different and Photon tubes require modification to accomodate them.

But like I said before most of the ships in First Contact...including the Sovereign were vastly under gun. The quantum torpedo was the only deciding factor..


Sabre
Norway
Steamrunner
even the Nebula have very few phaser arrays 4 or less...(that's right or less)
These ships were so old and ancient, so non-combatant they could only be considered last ditch defenses. Even Akira with 15 tubes has only 3 phasers.

But that just goes to what a bad movie first contact was. The studio by this point really didn't take TNG seriously as the series was. The execution of the plot was one non-sequitor and plot contrivance after another with a mounds upon mounds of useless dialouge that didn't further the story along at all.

It was a Borg Shooting gallery.
Ultimately the Box Office showed that's what the fans wanted.

Under the right supervision First Contact could have been epic.

WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN

1. Early Earth Military controled by narcotiics.
2. The ravaging effects of World War III (Nuclear Winter) The Post Traumatic Horror.
3. The results of General Greens massacre
4. All these precursors to the Federation could have been effective deterents for the Borg and Enterprise. Instead they retooled Picard to have another melt down in the middle of combat about the Borg.

Asking questions of First Contact is would be like over critiquing your kids refrigerator art work. You're only going to get so much out of them untill they are motivated to do more. Every TNG movie was the waste of Millions of dollars.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

These ships were so old and ancient,

lolwhut?

 

[Deks]

I was under the impression that the ammount of phaser strips makes no difference so long as the ship has more or less full coverage.

Depiction on-screen was messed up at best actually, since in most engagements ships fired shorter bursts of phaser beams ... they could have simultaneoulsy fired several beams from the same strip (something that was only one once or twice in all of Trek).

But if one strip cannot put out 2 or 3 beams of equally maximum power ... then perhaps it would be better to break the strips in several smaller segments and just shunt a lot of power through each of those simultaneously at one target.