Dunno about that. Small, weak but cloak-capable ships have always been described as deadly threats to the big Enterprise. It was that way in "Balance of Terror". It was that way in ST3:TSfS and ST6:TUC. At least the Klingons themselves thought it would be that way in TNG "A Matter of Honor".
Back in the days of the dramatic inspiration for this sort of combat, the submarine was a deadly threat to the largest warships not only because of the invisibility thing, but because a torpedo was a decisive one-shot-kills weapon. The same was true of the plasma cloud in "Balance of Terror". In ST3, the Klingons seemed to fire to disable only (the new gunner dare not have used lethal force, considering what happened to his predecessor), but the full power of the BoP weapons might still have been a threat even to a fully shielded hero ship. In ST6, Chang was toying with his prey and still essentially pounding the hero ship to pieces.
Granted that most of the TNG era combat shows torpedoes as non-decisive weapons against shielded ships. Perhaps shielding has improved in the intervening almost-century? But torpedoes still remain decisive against unshielded targets: a single one can obliterate a starship or a massive space station, as in "Unnatural Selection" or "Conundrum". It would make sense, then, that Soran's shield trick would render the E-D very, very vulnerable.
Looking at this from the other angle, we don't have clear proof that capital ship weapons could truly destroy a BoP with trivial ease. The only time anything like that happens is in "Redemption" where the main gun of the Klingon attack cruiser blows up a large BoP with a single shot - but that's an unshielded BoP.
It would seem that size doesn't matter nearly as much as shield status does. The relative weakness of the BoP against the E-D would have been a moot point once the E-D lost her shields. It would be a bit like two knights in armor duking it out with rapiers instead of broadswords, banging futilely at each other for the better part of an hour - and the bigger one suddenly going stark naked. He'd be dead in seconds.
Timo Saloniemi
Back in the days of the dramatic inspiration for this sort of combat, the submarine was a deadly threat to the largest warships not only because of the invisibility thing, but because a torpedo was a decisive one-shot-kills weapon. The same was true of the plasma cloud in "Balance of Terror". In ST3, the Klingons seemed to fire to disable only (the new gunner dare not have used lethal force, considering what happened to his predecessor), but the full power of the BoP weapons might still have been a threat even to a fully shielded hero ship. In ST6, Chang was toying with his prey and still essentially pounding the hero ship to pieces.
Granted that most of the TNG era combat shows torpedoes as non-decisive weapons against shielded ships. Perhaps shielding has improved in the intervening almost-century? But torpedoes still remain decisive against unshielded targets: a single one can obliterate a starship or a massive space station, as in "Unnatural Selection" or "Conundrum". It would make sense, then, that Soran's shield trick would render the E-D very, very vulnerable.
Looking at this from the other angle, we don't have clear proof that capital ship weapons could truly destroy a BoP with trivial ease. The only time anything like that happens is in "Redemption" where the main gun of the Klingon attack cruiser blows up a large BoP with a single shot - but that's an unshielded BoP.
It would seem that size doesn't matter nearly as much as shield status does. The relative weakness of the BoP against the E-D would have been a moot point once the E-D lost her shields. It would be a bit like two knights in armor duking it out with rapiers instead of broadswords, banging futilely at each other for the better part of an hour - and the bigger one suddenly going stark naked. He'd be dead in seconds.
Timo Saloniemi
