Defiant upsizing?
- Thread starter Trek1970
- Start date
I'm not sure I understand what is being asked, especially as regards the word "upsized." You can't simply scale up a design. With something as complex as a starship, if it's a notably different size, then you've basically started from scratch and are designing something new, even if its intended purpose is similar to that of its inspiration.
I don't believe any pointless and implausible scaling of outer hull appearances for ships would take place in the "real" Star Trek universe.
If you're asking if Starfleet would build a new ship class with an intended mission profile identical to that of the Defiant, but make it much bigger than Defiant is, my question for you would be this: if bigger is better, why did they make the Defiant relatively small in the first place?
I don't believe any pointless and implausible scaling of outer hull appearances for ships would take place in the "real" Star Trek universe.
If you're asking if Starfleet would build a new ship class with an intended mission profile identical to that of the Defiant, but make it much bigger than Defiant is, my question for you would be this: if bigger is better, why did they make the Defiant relatively small in the first place?
RobertScorpio
Pariah
I hope you have been saving every penny you have since 1970, building starships is expensive.
DontFeedPhil
Fleet Captain
I think it had to do with the Borg. At the time they designed the Defiant they were short on actual ships. That and in a battle with the borg its probably a better game plan to have lots of little tiny ships that way if one gets assimilated you dont lose 1-2000 people. If you had a battleship and it got infected wit the borg then the whole ship is gone. But if all you have is a little tiny fighter of a ship and it gets taken over you still should have alot more ships...Besides didnt they say that they defiant had the firepower of a ship many times it size? It was just basically a large weapons platform...
Well, I think these are all good suggestions, and agree with them...so much so that I don't really buy the bigger-is-better angle for combat ships in the Trek universe at all, which was really the point of my post.
Defiant had tons of problems and this, plus her compactness, saved her from seeming like a fanboy battlewagon. It's a rare win for the not-so-technically-inclined DS9 writers to have carried this through somewhat on their end.
I don't believe that Starfleet would build another class of starships specifically intended for combat, but if they did, it would probably be a more carefully engineered one delivering on many of the principles of the Defiant without as many drawbacks (though some are unavoidable--for example, the pulling in of the warp nacelles would bork warp performance). It might have a very general resemblance in terms of a compact planform, nacelle placement and such, but beyond this would have nothing more in common with Defiant than any other two starship classes built for, say, the purpose of exploration have with one another; surely it would not be a copy of Defiant, let alone have a similar appearance at a different scale. If anything, she might be even smaller, but as the size of Defiant is in dispute, there's wiggle room there.
The exception about the size point would be if some new, physically huge system that would be game-changingly important in combat required a new kind of ship to be built around it, but Defiant was really only using recognizable evolutions/alterations of existing systems.
Well to be fair the Defiant class had significant teething problems but seems to have been a staggering success in the Dominion War, I would be willing to bet they built as many as they possibly could, maybe a couple of hundred by the end of the war.
They probably would have a long post-war career as border patrol ships and for the various bushfire wars the Feds seem to get regularly involved in.
How many did we see during the war? 4 or 5? Considering that the DS9 Technical Manual suggests that the class was originally to consist of as few as six, and that the Federation building several hundred of anything would be a lot of trouble in wartime, this seems like a big leap to make even before tackling the idea of them building several hundred copies of a mothballed design that failed to meet Starfleet specifications in the first place. Building them as hurriedly as the original was built could only make things worse.
By name the Defiant, Sau Paolo and Valiant. Also there are several in the fleet at the end of "A Call To Arms" and we see two in the task force in "Message In A Bottle", so there are quite a few on screen appearances.
Well original plans are often fairly meaningless in real navies, I can't believe that plan would be carried through all the massive changes we see in the show.
Why? All navies try to standardise on designs in wartime to ensure they can build enough ships to keep pace, especially with small combatants. The Royal Navy and USN in WW2 built literally hundreds of escort ships to a handful of designs.
Well building anything new in a hurry causes problems, but how often after the Search did we hear of any of these? I can think of two occasions, once in "Shattered Mirror" where Sisko handily resolves them all for the Mirror crew and in "The Sound Of Her Voice" when the Defiant cannot go to her top speed of Warp 9.5 without taking weapons offline.
The design is built purely for combat and still manages a lot of science missions and diplomacy, and can still zip around faster than the early Nebula class' on-screen maximum speed (Warp 9.4 in that silly DS9 ep with the nutty professor).
I'ds say she was a big success and a logical standard design for the Feds in the Dominion War. We see a lot more Akira and Nebula class ships in the later DS9 battles so I would guess these were standards as well...
I doubt they'd want to upsize Defiant, the design works well as is.
I always felt Defiant was a response to the big disadvantage of Galaxy and Soverign class ships: they're so big & slow they can't dodge! A Defiant, on the other hand, presents a much smaller target.
I always felt Defiant was a response to the big disadvantage of Galaxy and Soverign class ships: they're so big & slow they can't dodge! A Defiant, on the other hand, presents a much smaller target.
If you mean upsizing from what was--let's face it--a god-awful MSD, then that could work fine. I couldn't see the Defiant really existing with less than six decks, two of which would be "rim" decks on the underside of the ship (going by window counts).
Actually, I've been thinking for a long time that somebody should design a six or seven deck MSD of the Defiant to be more consistent with its dialog/technological specs. At the very least, somebody needs to put the impulse engines in the right place.
Actually, I've been thinking for a long time that somebody should design a six or seven deck MSD of the Defiant to be more consistent with its dialog/technological specs. At the very least, somebody needs to put the impulse engines in the right place.
It kinda reminds me of a Defiant/Voyager fusion. Which wouldn't be a bad idea....
hellsgate
Commodore
Nah, I'm thinking Praetor's design is closer to a Nova-Class / Defiant-Class hybrid, taking into account general size, plus the saucer configuration, & secondary hull, minus the new Defiant-like nacelles.
There's also this Valiant-Class by k_merse
http://armada2.filefront.com/file/Valiant_Class;91866
http://screenshots.filesnetwork.com/16/files2/91866_2.jpg
http://screenshots.filesnetwork.com/16/files2/91866_4.jpg
There's also this Valiant-Class by k_merse
http://armada2.filefront.com/file/Valiant_Class;91866
http://screenshots.filesnetwork.com/16/files2/91866_2.jpg
http://screenshots.filesnetwork.com/16/files2/91866_4.jpg
Why thank you. 
And I agree, I'm not 100% happy with it. In fact, playing with the shapes for the engines was something I was trying to find a balance of and struggling with, which was why I hadn't taken it much further. I was drifting towards just using upper and lower nacelle 'braces' which evoke the Defiant's nacelle pods.
And I agree, I'm not 100% happy with it. In fact, playing with the shapes for the engines was something I was trying to find a balance of and struggling with, which was why I hadn't taken it much further. I was drifting towards just using upper and lower nacelle 'braces' which evoke the Defiant's nacelle pods.
