Negh'var - what type of warship is it?

[cwl]

what type of warship is the Negh'Var?

She's the biggest ship in the Klingon fleet. She's a lot bigger than the Vor'cha class.

She appears to have a lot more firepower and much stronger protection than the Vor'Cha.

But I don't know whether the ship is an actual battleship or not?

She looks like a troop transport/ assault ship.

I would have thought a battleship would be built in large numbers while a dedicate assault ship would be less numerous which fits into what we see of the negh'var. the mainstay of the klingons in the Dominion war was the vor'cha and BoPs.

 

[Sandoval]

Just the next generation on from a Vor'cha I'd imagine, bigger, stronger, faster, all that jazz.

 

[F. King Daniel]

IIRC, Worf called them "attack cruisers" when they attacked the USS Pasteur in the alt-future of "All Good Things"

 

[T'Girl]

I took it to be something like the old monitors, heavily armed and shielded, but slow moving and unmalnuverable.

 

[Timo]

They didn't have the big underwing pods "yet" in that episode, though - and those pods appeared to make all the difference in the battle against DS9, firing beams that collapsed the station's shields after several minutes of pounding from dozens of other large ships had failed to do so.

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/neghvar.htm

Might be that the ship serves different functions depending on whether she has the pods or not. During DS9, she appears to be a unique and decisive vessel, while "AGT.." and "Endgame" both feature a future where multiple vessels of the class perform seemingly secondary duties and fight against puny opponents. In "Endgame", the fighting is done with the pods, though, as the tiny opponent proves to be a tough nut to crack.

We might consider the original Negh'Var a dedicated "assault command ship", with special assets for command, control and communications tasks, and with big siege guns (or "monitor guns", as you beat me to it ^) for use against slow or fixed targets. Her size might hobble her in conventional ship-to-ship work, though. But the hull would serve as a nice basis for future run-of-the-mill cruisers as opponents would grow in strength and earlier platforms would become too small and weak to carry and power up the required weaponry. The clumsy pods might be left ashore at that point, though.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[cwl]

She was able to shrug off torpedos from DS9 with ease, which suggests she is very well protected.

Somehow I still think the Vor'cha is the main Klingon ship in the TNG era as it's new and seems to be powerful for its size.

 

[Timo]

Klingons tend to take a holistic view to fighting (and I'm not referring to aggression-boosting bloodwine barrels here); their fighting vessels probably are all intended to be fairly generic and capable of all types of operations. Sure, the ones shaped like the Bird of Prey probably are more capable of atmospheric and landing operations than the ones shaped like the Negh'Var, but they still get used in frontline space combat a lot.

Thus, it could well be that the Negh'Var was always intended as the successor to the Vor'Cha, and was not given any special mission as such - but may have been given the ability to embark special gear for special tasks, much like the K't'inga ships in "Way of the Warrior" seemed to be equipped with rather unique red bombardment beams, perhaps specifically for the task of breaching the DS9 defenses (as the ships would have been outdated in more generic combat duties).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[captcalhoun]

it's a Negh'var class battlecruiser. if we're to believe the novels, all the larger Klingon warships like the D7, K'tinga and Vor'cha carry a lot of ground troops. it's SOP for invading and conquering planets or for carrying out offensive ops on enemy turf.

 

[Satyrquaze]

The way it traded shots with DS9 I'd personally put it into the Dreadnought classification.

Failing that battleship works, I'm sure the Klingons have those.

 

[T'Girl]

Dreadnoughts are battleships.

 

[Anwar]

Well, it's not a term used anymore but IIRC Dreadnoughts were one class above Battleships. "Heavy Battleships" pretty much.

 

[Satyrquaze]

Dreadnoughts are battleships.

I'd like to think that there is some sort of label distinction between the USS Missourri and the Bismarck as an example. Even if it is a colloquialism.

 

[Timo]

...Especially if it's all recycled terminology, rather than the original muddled 19th - 20th century thinking. One'd think these folks would get it right the second time around!

We know that battle cruisers exist in Trek, but we don't know if that refers to the 20th century concept where big, fast ships carry battleship armament but cruiser armor. The 23rd century definition might be completely different - say, "Battle Cruiser" might be the only type of cruiser with sufficiently heavy shielding for sustained combat, while ships like Kirk's will fold like a paper bag if engaged by multiple enemies for an extended period of time.

We don't know what "Attack Cruiser" means, either. That's not a real-world concept, so we're free to speculate here. All combat consists of attack in addition to defense, but here the word might refer specifically to the attacking of planets and fortifications, rather than the freely flowing art of starship combat. We know the Vor'Cha is especially good at this sort of thing, as per "Return to Grace" where this ship type is said to be required in order to reduce a Klingon fortress that's impenetrable to Bird of Prey attacks. The fanfic term "Strike Cruiser", applied to assorted Starfleet vessels, might similarly specify a bombardment and invasion support mission. Or then it could refer to something else altogether.

The term "Battleship" is not part of Star Trek dialogue, although it does get glimpsed in an off-focus computer graphic in VOY "Drone". There it refers, out of all things, to the Defiant!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The_Baroness]

A big one. That is all.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Don't forget the insanely huge upscaled Mirror Universe version, as seen in "Shattered Mirror"

 

[Timo]

...For all we know, the Regent obtained its blueprints the same way Smiley got the Defiant's - but simply told his engineers to scale up everything by a factor of 4.7, just because!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

Do we even know the Negh'Var of the mirror universe was upscaled?
The thing is already very large in the regular universe... so who's to say it's not the same size in the mirror?

The Defiant may have looked small by comparison... but one has to keep in mind that the Defiant is very small by default.

 

[cwl]

In the Mirror universe I believe the Regent's flagship was about 5x the size of a regular negh'var. It was absolutely massive.

 

[cwl]

Klingons tend to take a holistic view to fighting (and I'm not referring to aggression-boosting bloodwine barrels here); their fighting vessels probably are all intended to be fairly generic and capable of all types of operations. Sure, the ones shaped like the Bird of Prey probably are more capable of atmospheric and landing operations than the ones shaped like the Negh'Var, but they still get used in frontline space combat a lot.

Thus, it could well be that the Negh'Var was always intended as the successor to the Vor'Cha, and was not given any special mission as such - but may have been given the ability to embark special gear for special tasks, much like the K't'inga ships in "Way of the Warrior" seemed to be equipped with rather unique red bombardment beams, perhaps specifically for the task of breaching the DS9 defenses (as the ships would have been outdated in more generic combat duties).

Timo Saloniemi

By the Dominion Wars the K'tingas are over 100 years old are clearly look obsolete. In the end it was the Negh'Var that brought down the DS9 shields. This shows that she's a lot morepowerful than other Klingon ships.

I still like the K'tinga but she's more comparable to the ageing Excelsior than anything more modern in Starfleet.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Do we even know the Negh'Var of the mirror universe was upscaled?
The thing is already very large in the regular universe... so who's to say it's not the same size in the mirror?

The Defiant may have looked small by comparison... but one has to keep in mind that the Defiant is very small by default.

The windows along the neck and wings were replaced with multiple rows of much smaller windows.

But, IIRC, a few toward the front of the ship (which are barely seen) were left unchanged - they'd be huge.

By the Dominion Wars the K'tingas are over 100 years old are clearly look obsolete.

Try 200. First on-screen appearence in "Unexpected", set 2151.