Help me w/some Q's and observations about The Valiant

[Photon]

So the Valiant is gallybanting the Federation and come across a Cardassian Warship, it engages it and fights to (basically) a draw.

Then a weaker Valiant encounters a (clearing throat) Jem Hadar Heavy Battle Ship. Asides from a Cube, the most powerfuly ship ever in the AQ.
The Valiant goes to toe to toe w/the Dominion ship takes all sorts of punishment (w/out ablative armor, mind you) and finally succumbs after being pounded on for (starship time) a while

Now Cardassian Keldons and Galors aren't all that in comparison to Dominion ships or even Klingon,Fed and Romulan.
So, why the seemingly discrepancy? Just for to make it more interesting.

 

[Frodo Lives]

Huh?

You haven't pointed out any discrepancy, dude. What are you getting at?

Is it the Valiant's supposed lack of ablative armour? Cause we don't know for sure it didn't have it.

What are ya talkin' about Gary?!

 

[Kegek]

The difference of being taken by surprise and having a strategy thought out, I presume. The Valiant only went toe-to-toe as long as it did because of its strategy.

Plus foolhardiness. The Valiant didn't know when to retreat the second time, it did the first.

 

[Frodo Lives]

Oh, gotcha, took a few re-readings.

Yeah, pretty much what Kegek said. But also we don't know what sort of modifications the Dominion may have made to the Galor class after the Cardassians joined up. They could've taken their tech-level up a notch to match the Federation's and had their fleet refitted.

That, coupled with the element of surprise may have given the Galor the edge it needed to go toe-to-toe with a Defiant class.

And the Valiant wasn't weakened when it encountered the Jem Hadar battleship, unless you count it's appalling shift in commanders.
Nog was supposedly able to use the knowledge he'd learnt from Chief O'Brien on the Defiant to bring her back up to full-strength.

 

[nx1701g]

The Valiant - it was explained in the episode - was ambushed by the Keldon Class Warship. That was why it was a draw.

As Kegek said the strategy helped them last as long as they did.

 

[Photon]

Haven't we read somewhere that the Defiant class' achiliie's heal was its sensors?

 

[Jono]

They never said that the Valiant was attacked by a Keldon, they just said they got in a battle with a Cardassian battle cruiser. Which could be a Galor, Keldon or another class of vessel.

You have to take into account the crew. The Valiant had 7 fully trained officers and 30-odd cadets. During the battle the officers were killed, which would have seriously affected the vessel's performance. Red Squad are meant to be good but they are still only cadets and the lose of officers with years of experience and knowledge would have hampened them.

But they managed to recoved destroy the Cardassians and then continue to live for several more months. Everytime they scored a victory by destroying any enemy ship would have just inflated their already huge egos up to the point where we see that they think they can take on a much more powerful warship and win.

 

[Gojirob]

If they had just gone home, even w/o taking out a single enemy ship, they would have been heroes. If they'd gone back when they found Jake and Nog, they'dve been legends.

 

[Timo]

...And nobody need have found out what the dying captain really told the leading cadet to do with the ship.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gojirob]

I won't say this question divides fans, but I have seen some disagreement on it : Was Nog, at the end of Valiant, truly over his hero-worship of Watters and Red Squad, or was there still a tinge (or more) of this romantic view of their efforts? On the one hand, his shabby treatment of Jake in the ep can simply be regarded as more of the back-and-forth between them. But his admonishment at the end about Jake's presumed article almost sounded like a Fox News promo to me, at least at the time. I would think that the truthfulness or bias-averseness of Jake, who could easily have puffed himself up after 'Nor The Battle To The Strong', would not be in question to his best friend, yet it almost seemed to be.

Maybe in reading all this into it, I'm just wishing they'd done a true follow-up.

 

[Kegek]

^
Or at least another Jake episode. "Valiant" was basically his last vehicle.