Galaxy Class in Dominion War

[Arpy]

If you put ANY OTHER STARSHIP in the same story the Galaxy faced, they’d do only as well, or worse. It’s called drama. Voyager battled a friggin Borg tactical cube.

The Galaxy is the second most powerful starship in the Federation fleet.

The only reason there were 12 of them at the start (if that’s even canon / there could have been fifty) is because it was brand spanking new. The only reason it took a while for them to be built if because of R&D. Once developed, the massive interstellar nation that is the Federation could have cranked out hundreds. Expecially if they’re just building the tactical sections.

I agree that we should have seen more stardrives (frankly, all the DS9 fleet battles were woefully lacking in ship classes of all parties, shield bubbles, weapons fires, ships maneuvers, ships distances, etc), but remember also that those saucers could have carried thousands of Federstion ground troops and matériel. Also consider that Galaxy firepower may have been necessary against large Dominion ships.

And I’ll repeat that no Galaxys were lost in the fleet battles we did see, and that the Odyssey was lost to a surprise maneuver only after it had successfully engaged in a battle and completed its mission against three Dominion ships, doing so without shields.

 

[Tomalak]

The Galaxy class was effective against the Borg? I don't know about that. In Q Who the Enterprise would have been destroyed had Q not intervened at the last moment. In TBOBW1 the Borg were intentionally pulling their punches so they could capture Picard, and in Part 2 I think they ignored the ship since they were more interested in getting to Earth, and when the ship was defeated it was because Data hacked Locutus and put the other Borg drones on the ship to sleep rather than anything unique about being aboard a Galaxy class ship.

Fair point, I should have said "less ineffective than other ships".

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Thinking of the battles we saw them in, the likes of Chin'toka then she would be essential. In peacetime she carried 1014 people, during war then the civilians and non-essentials would be replaced with troops, whilst her main shuttlebay would be able to hold a number of starfighters, her cargo bays full of arms and supplies for ground forces, not to mention sizeable medical facilities for rescue and recovery after the fighting has stopped.

 

[Qonundrum]

It might have been more 'realistic' to see Galaxy stardrive sections in battle. Hauling around that big saucer seems pointless and makes a lovely dartboard target.

Maybe Starbases have a big rack where you can slot all the saucer sections... assuming they'd have built any in the middle of a war.

But the saucer has big phaser strips who can fire multiple times

True, but:
1. The Galaxy Class was designed to separate the saucer, with its engineering section described as a formidable weapon.... I forgot which episode (season 1?) said it outright or nearly so, but as useful as the saucer's phaser arrays are, I suspect that the Engineering section, sans saucer, can produce far more powerful phaser beams without the overhead of the saucer's amenities juicing up the available power load. Even if the Saucer has its own method of creating and channeling power to its arrays, so there's more in terms of parallel and serial power.

2. @bolak's point about "dartboard target" his the bulls-eye -- hysterically funny, and is still the best euphemism ever .

3. I wrote point 2 before point 1

 

[Tomalak]

True, but:
1. The Galaxy Class was designed to separate the saucer, with its engineering section described as a formidable weapon.... I forgot which episode (season 1?) said it outright or nearly so, but as useful as the saucer's phaser arrays are, I suspect that the Engineering section, sans saucer, can produce far more powerful phaser beams without the overhead of the saucer's amenities juicing up the available power load. Even if the Saucer has its own method of creating and channeling power to its arrays, so there's more in terms of parallel and serial power.

Odd that we almost never see a Galaxy fighting without its saucer then. The separation was never said to make the ship more effective in battle, it was always presented as a means to evacuate civilians to safety.

In practice this wasn't particularly useful, or at least Picard never saw any value in it. The only canon statement is Riker's from BoBW - separating makes the ship less powerful because you lose the saucer impulse power.

Since evacuating families presumably wouldn't be a consideration during the Dominion War, it's not surprising we never see diminished Galaxy battle sections flying around.

 

[Kemaiku]

True, but they derive power from the warp core in the stardrive section. Which also powers the strips on the stardrive, through shorter internal conduits ( i.e. less transmission loss )*

Plus the shielding can be much tighter without the saucer, and we have on-screen confirmation that the stardrive alone is much faster and more agile.


* I know there's the old debate as to whether a longer strip can channel more power, so I suppose it depends on what side of that argument you reside

Given "phaser power" can run out, and the stated power levels in GJ's is nearly all the warp reactors output in one strip, I've assumed for years that at Green Alert, capacitors store energy for the phasers and use it. Boosted by more direct power occasionally from the core. The saucer in Best of Both Worlds could keep firing at full power when separated.

Bigger issue there is that if they have to fall back, the stardrive can warp away. The saucer not only exhuasts weapons power, but can't run.

 

[Leviathan]

...I wonder how many Defiant class they can churn out using the resources to build a Galaxy.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

What you do is build a saucer that is hollow and stick four Defiant Class ships in it, leave it behind and then Trojan horse their asses.

 

[valkyrie013]

My thinking, Why didn't we see different types of Galaxy Saucers? It can be changed out, so.. You could have a saucer that has a secondary warp core to power weapons, have extra torpedo emplacments, Pulse phasers, etc. bassically a "Tactical Saucer" I mean, have 10 forward facing torpedo launchers.. each with a 5 burst launch.. thats 50 torpedos!
Or how about a "Carrier Saucer" It being hollowed out for feddy figheters and runabouts?
Or how about a "kamekaze Saucer" one that could seperate and fly into say a ship yard or one of those "Extra Large" Jemhadar battleships?

 

[Timo]

There were at least a couple of Galaxies rolling off the line at Utopia Planitia when Voyager was launched (seen in 'Relativity'), which was three or four years prior to the outbreak of war.

Then again, every ship seen in that episode was of an already established type and had a relatively low registry for the day. Perhaps Utopia Planitia is dedicated to repair and refit rather than construction?

The Galaxy Class was designed to separate the saucer, with its engineering section described as a formidable weapon.... I forgot which episode (season 1?) said it outright or nearly so, but as useful as the saucer's phaser arrays are, I suspect that the Engineering section, sans saucer, can produce far more powerful phaser beams without the overhead of the saucer's amenities juicing up the available power load. Even if the Saucer has its own method of creating and channeling power to its arrays, so there's more in terms of parallel and serial power.

The quote comes from Worf in the early "Heart of Glory" where he's boasting to fellow Klingons. Might be he read correctly off the sales brochure, but the brochure was off the mark for lack of real operational experience. Might be he was embarrassed about the labs and kindergartens of the saucer and wanted to get rid of them in front of said fellow Klingons. Might be he was deliberately lying to these enemy agents in his role as the Chief of Tactical or whatever.

In any case, it's telling our heroes never consider separating the saucer for increased combat prowess. They only consider (and typically reject) separation for evacuation or as a ruse.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tomalak]

Then again, every ship seen in that episode was of an already established type and had a relatively low registry for the day. Perhaps Utopia Planitia is dedicated to repair and refit rather than construction?

In addition to construction you mean? It's certainly possible, though obviously Voyager was clearly being launched from there, and the Enterprise-D was built there per the dedication plaque.

 

[Dukhat]

From an in universe standpoint the Galaxy Class is supposed to be insanely expensive so was it odd to see so many on the front line in the Dominion war?

I'm not getting the "insanely expensive" part, since the Federation doesn't use money. And I'm not even sure that resource allocation would be a problem, since everything can be replicated. The only real drawback is that the larger the ship, the greater the chance that smaller fighter-type ships can disable or destroy it (a la the Odyssey.)

 

[Tomalak]

The only real drawback is that the larger the ship, the greater the chance that smaller fighter-type ships can disable or destroy it (a la the Odyssey.)

But this almost never actually happens. Odyssey was a freak occurance - her shields were compromised and the Jem'Hadar were instructed to ram her to make a statement.

It's not an ordinary Jem'Hadar tactic. Surely if it were, we'd see them ramming ships routinely in the course of battle? But this just doesn't happen. The only instance I can recall is in the first battle of Chin'toka, which was itself an act of desperation to cause as much damage as possible until the weapon platforms came online.

In Star Trek, small ships are only a threat to other small ships, unless there's some mitigating circumstances that compromises a big one. Big ships blow small ones out of the sky. Picard and co always laughed when some small ship tried to pick on them. There's a great shot in WYLB of a Galaxy sitting in space picking off smaller Jem'Hadar and Breen ships with one phaser blast. DS9 did the same to Klingon and Jem'Hadar ships.

The Defiant is seen as something special and remarkable because she's small but packs a punch associated with much larger ships. Small ships might be more manoeuvrable and able to evade weapons, but that's just postponing the inevitable.

 

[Arpy]

The Defiant was remarkable because it was a testbed for new weapons systems created to combat the Borg, after Wolf 359. Well before DS9's end, they were already refitting ships like the Excelsior Class Lakota with similar weapons, let alone ships from the 24th Century.

By First Contact, Riker was making quips about the "little" ship, after the Enterprise-E swooped down to save it. That's not saying anything definitive, given the Defiant had been in battle a while and Enterprise had just arrived on the scene, but these are movies, and the impression given is that bigger ships like the Sovereign are where it's at.

Also, consider that a sucker-punch ramming from a Jem'Hadar fighter is one thing, but even if it were a common tactic, Starfleet now knew what to expect, and they'd do so with shields. I doubt that in two centuries of interstellar war, no one thought to send shuttles warping into capital ships.

 

[Timo]

The curious thing there is that ramming worked just fine against implicitly shielded targets at Chin'toka in "Tears of the Prophets" and against an explicitly shielded one in ST:NEM.

If shields won't stop kinetic energy attacks, then ramming always works, and it's just a matter of how one rams. Ramming the enemy with photon torpedoes is less expensive than ramming him with Miranda class ships, but if Starfleet has some of the latter to burn, why not use them that way (under remote control, of course)? All sides in WWII did that with their aircraft, not just the losing and desperate sides.

Now, what we don't have a solid reason to trust is the worth of warp ramming. The only time this was even suggested in "BoBWII" was inconclusive, as the action was not taken. Riker probably would assume ramming had already been attempted at Wolf 359 or Jupiter or Mars, considering the situation. Obviously, it had failed. Perhaps he considered warp ramming instead of the more conventional sort simply because he knew nothing else would work, and he didn't know for certain that warp ramming would not? All the field manuals still might read that ramming is only effective at sublight, what with warp negating inertia or whatever - but Riker would have nothing to lose there (except his life and stuff).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

Oh, and missed this:

If you put ANY OTHER STARSHIP in the same story the Galaxy faced, they’d do only as well, or worse. It’s called drama. Voyager battled a friggin Borg tactical cube.

...A tiny thing. The Enterprise-D always tackled strategic cubes!

The Galaxy is the second most powerful starship in the Federation fleet.

What would be the first, then?

The only reason there were 12 of them at the start (if that’s even canon / there could have been fifty) is because it was brand spanking new. The only reason it took a while for them to be built if because of R&D. Once developed, the massive interstellar nation that is the Federation could have cranked out hundreds. Expecially if they’re just building the tactical sections.

But we know for a longstanding fact that Starfleet cannot build starships. Not in the numbers it needs to perform its mission - because Star Trek is based on the failure of Starfleet to perform its mission, leaving it all to our heroes who arrive in the nick of time, without wingmen or reinforcements.

The Dominion War is especially telling in this respect, as we see no new starships in that war. Nothing carries a registry number higher than those of prewar ships, and the only types not seen before are blatantly old designs with Excelsior or Miranda components. And the only newbuild we even hear of is the Sao Paulo - an actual construction project completed during the war years, or another failed prototype dragged out of the scrap yard?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Arpy]

^ The most powerful starship in the Federation fleet is its flagship, the Sovereign Class Enterprise.

I'm perfectly comfortable not taking the DS9 fleet battles too seriously. Waaaaaay too much wrong with them. Wolf 359 to defend the very capital of the Federation had 40 starships amassed, then in DS9, there were countless fleets in the hundreds, and some looked like they were in the thousands. If we ever revisit any of those battles in the future in depth, I think you'd see new ship classes pop up left and right. And less stock footage. And shield bubbles. And...

 

[USS Firefly]

^ The most powerful starship in the Federation fleet is its flagship, the Sovereign Class Enterprise.

I'm perfectly comfortable not taking the DS9 fleet battles too seriously. Waaaaaay too much wrong with them. Wolf 359 to defend the very capital of the Federation had 40 starships amassed, then in DS9, there were countless fleets in the hundreds, and some looked like they were in the thousands. If we ever revisit any of those battles in the future in depth, I think you'd see new ship classes pop up left and right. And less stock footage. And shield bubbles. And...

Maybe Starfleet recalled ships after Wolf 359 and building more ships for defense

 

[Timo]

^ The most powerful starship in the Federation fleet is its flagship, the Sovereign Class Enterprise.

Neither the E-E nor the class she represents has ever been established as being particularly powerful. To the contrary, the E-E was considered a worthless asset in the fight against the Borg, and relegated to serving as the locale for Picard's house arrest. And she was never seen fighting the Dominion, either, FWIW.

As for "flagship", only the E-D was ever considered that. No bloody nil, A, B, C or E.

I'm perfectly comfortable not taking the DS9 fleet battles too seriously.

Then again, much of Trek is like that. You either take transporters seriously, or then dismiss them as a stupid shoestring-budget gimmick and decide that the heroes "really" fly to planets in cool shuttlecraft.

In the end, in television, what you see is what you get, rather literally. Hoping for more (or less) generally sets you up for disappointment. Especially as Trek rather diligently follows general visual continuity and sticks to what was the hottest hot on the cheap in the 1960s, only with a bit of 2010s polish.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ithekro]

Well they did have more time to recall forces to use against the Dominion. From the loss of USS Odyssey to the start of the war was three years. And they knew they could only realistically come from one place, the Bajoran Wormhole. So moving starships from the far side of the Federation and bringing up the reserves is something they would have had time to do.

Wolf 359 took place just over a year after USS Enterprise encountered the Borg, and they expected having more time.