The writers seemed to fudge the numbers constantly, for the sake of story.
Quite so. But as the story has now been completed, we can take the numbers that have been given and interpret them as if they formed a coherent whole, and pray on our knees that no future movie or episode adds another confusing datapoint.
For example, it's unlikely that 2,800 ships would have been enough to definitively, decisively turn the war's tide in "Sacrifice of Angels" if the Dominion Axis already had 30,000 ships in the field. Clearly they didn't have those kinds of numbers at that point.
Agreed. Of course, we could argue that the 2,800 ships were only expected to decide the battle for the wormhole, not the entire war: they would have crushed the Alpha composite fleets present in the battle, resulting in a carnage rather than just a humiliating withdrawal.
I'd start from the assumption that the Dominion numbers (or weighed numbers - say, two Dominion ships for every Alpha one because the former had smaller ships on the average) would have been a bit below the combined total of UFP and Klingon numbers when the war began. The Dominion would have wanted numerical superiority, but the mining of the wormhole denied them that. The Feds in turn would have wanted more time to prepare, but the Dominion escalation denied them that. What followed, then, was a more or less even battle at multiple fronts, so a disparity in numbers does not appear likely. Note that at this point, Starfleet had struck a recent blow against Dominion shipbuilding assets.
After this, the numbers could vacillate whichever way, but we never quite get evidence of one side or the other being numerically superior. When the Romulans enter the equation, the key factor seems to be who gets to control the Romulan Neutral Zone, not who gets the fire support of Romulan starships. And when the Breen enter, the key factor seems to be their superweapon, not their numbers.
It's highly unlikely that the Federation would continue to produce ships and materiel in peacetime at the rate they did during the war. Thus, an armistice or treaty would have been advantageous to the Dominion Axis, because it would continue focusing its resources on gaining further numerical superiority, whilst the various factions in the Federation began debating the necessity of such a policy—no doubt to the dismay of its Klingon allies.
Well, as an aside, there's little evidence of wartime production of starships on the Alpha side to begin with. And at the time of this dialogue, the Dominion reescalation potential is limited to what the Cardassian home system can offer. If Sisko is afraid of the Dominion at that point, he must have knowledge of truly exceptional Dominion rebuilding abilities - after all, didn't the Cardassians start conquering their neighbors because their own star system wasn't providing them with sufficient resources?
Sisko shouldn't be considering wasting 40% of the combat force (which, for all appearances, was a major commitment for the Alphans, unlike the fleet that retook DS9 had been) unless the emergency were dire and concrete. Taking a risk like that might mean the end of the Federation, as a catastrophically crippled Starfleet would leave the UFP wide open to invasion by second-rate enemies even if the Dominion were defeated.
I still maintain that it's possible, even likely, that the Dominion transplanted an enormous amount of its overall production capability into the Alpha Quadrant in an attempt to conquer the Federation.
That would be an even more incredible technological feat than saying that a relatively insignificant fraction of Dominion production capacity was allocated and was able to best the Alpha capabilities. Uprooting of one's industries and moving them through a wormhole in a matter of months speaks of godlike powers, and should carry the connotation that the uprooted industries could be replaced at a moment's notice on the other side - and, further, that said industries could then be doubled within the next few months, and then increased by a third again, and so forth.
When Stalin moved his industries to beyond Ural in WWII, it didn't denote the loss of industrial capabilities to the west of the mountains. Rather, it denoted the vast overall industrial potential of the USSR, and the loss of the western assets was a largely unrelated and irrelevant event.
I'd much rather believe that the Dominion wasn't capable of such impromptu action, and was instead simply sending the standard expeditionary force it had available for major wars, with some nonstandard reinforcing elements to cope with the special circumstances.
If their resources were completely inexhaustible, after all, then why were only 2,800 ships poised at the wormhole's mouth after half a year of war, when, according to this school of thought, the Dominion was capable of effortlessly producing, say, 28,000?
Why would more ships be needed on this rather insignificant front if there indeed existed the capacity to produce 28,000? The beachhead force wouldn't be dependent on the wormhole for shipbuilding logistics, and would only fight over it for the need to get the Gamma/Alpha lines of command and communication open again.
The assumption of about 10,000 ships on each side to begin with would nicely allow for a Federation/Klingon balance commeasurate with prewar Federation/Klingon relations
- say, a 6,000/4,000 to 8,000/2,000 ratio. Originally, the Dominion would be crippled by the strikes against their shipyards, but slowly their effect would wane. Romulans would send in only about 1,000 ships, and the Breen would commit little but bravado and superweapons at first, there being no time to get their industries to contribute significantly before the war ended.
Such a scheme would also jibe with a two-digit number of Starfleet combat fleets, each with three-digit numbers of ships, as spoken of on screen.
A Dominion that can do whatever it likes by way of shipbuilding and troop production is wildly uninteresting—an unbeatable foe that would not have bothered resorting to trickery, sabotage, non-aggression pacts and other subtle methods to defeat the Federation.
Then again, we know that the Dominion rules on the Gamma side without having to resort to direct military force - the Jem'Hadar are semi-mythical bogeymen, the Founders a mere legend. The Dominion also prefers to enslave, not destroy. Subtlety and subterfuge would be in their blood, if they have any. And it would be necessary for setting up shop even if that shop could then proceed to outproduce all Alpha competition.
But we digress. Let us return to the matter at hand. Thanks.
Uh, huh? If this
isn't the matter at hand, I can't figure what is...
That is, I think the way the events unfolded is dramatically defensible and gets my supporting vote out of all possible scenarios. And the supporting vote takes the form of describing how I feel the events unfolded. For an "alternate" story, I'd simply have added a bit more dialogue on how the Dominion was outproducing everybody...
Timo Saloniemi
