Negh'var - what type of warship is it?

[Deks]

Well, as I said, the Defiant is a dart when compared to other capital ships either way... so it wouldn't surprise me the mirror universe Negh'Var would look huge next to it (I think that was the point - to illustrate that bigger isn't better).

I think the Negh'Var in the regular universe is larger compared to other SF capital ships such as the Galaxy and Sovereign classes.

Furthermore, how much of the 'size' was attributed by optical illusion in the first place?
The camera was often played with when it came to SFX in order to make things look 'cool', so I wouldn't be surprised to count this as yet another 'visual FX issue'.

Other than that... sure, we can also say how that particular Negh'Var was indeed larger than the regular universe one... but it really didn't seem remotely powerful.
Then again, when Ds9 was battling Klingons, we've only seen, what... 2 torpedoes hit the Negh'Var flagship?

Also... that thing being able to knock out DS9's shield generators was ABSURD.
The shield generators looked completely unshielded.
I doubt the Negh'Var was technologically capable of firing through DS9's shields... because that's exactly what it looked like... yet another visual mess from Ds9.

 

[cwl]

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.

I believe that was an error, so I don't treat that as canon.

 

[cwl]

Well, as I said, the Defiant is a dart when compared to other capital ships either way... so it wouldn't surprise me the mirror universe Negh'Var would look huge next to it (I think that was the point - to illustrate that bigger isn't better).

I think the Negh'Var in the regular universe is larger compared to other SF capital ships such as the Galaxy and Sovereign classes.

Furthermore, how much of the 'size' was attributed by optical illusion in the first place?
The camera was often played with when it came to SFX in order to make things look 'cool', so I wouldn't be surprised to count this as yet another 'visual FX issue'.

Other than that... sure, we can also say how that particular Negh'Var was indeed larger than the regular universe one... but it really didn't seem remotely powerful.
Then again, when Ds9 was battling Klingons, we've only seen, what... 2 torpedoes hit the Negh'Var flagship?

Also... that thing being able to knock out DS9's shield generators was ABSURD.
The shield generators looked completely unshielded.
I doubt the Negh'Var was technologically capable of firing through DS9's shields... because that's exactly what it looked like... yet another visual mess from Ds9.

maybe the negh'vars disruptors are so powerful that they cause a lot of bleed through damage, so when targetting an area with shield generators they are capable of knocking those generators out.

 

[Deks]

Possible but unlikely.
There was no bleed-through effect shown at all.
There were no SHIELDS shown around the shield generators, period (then again, the fight scene between the DS9 and Klingons didn't show shield effects around the station AT ALL).

Ds9 had a penchant for ignoring shield FX in fleet battle scenes - but that was more or less understandable.
I just don't buy 1 hit and 2 shield generators go out.
Give me a break.

 

[captcalhoun]

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.

I believe that was an error, so I don't treat that as canon.

yes it was. an admitted error. they had no FX for a new class and just put in the K'tinga to fit. i'd call it a class that looks like a K'tinga, but isn't. Like the D7.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Incorrect. A new CG model was made, but rejected by TPTB. The D7/K'tinga was used instead. They chose to reuse the K'tinga in "Unexpected"

Even if it was an idiot goof, it's pretty damn visible. And, add to that, the rejected model was virtually identical to the K'tinga, anyway! (but with a few exoskeletal supports added and slightly modified nacelles)

 

[EmperorTiberius]

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.

Did you see those big guns on the front? Troop transports don't carry that kind of firepower. It's a battleship

 

[EmperorTiberius]

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

Battleship does come up in Conundrum, TNG if I'm not mistaken.

I get the impression that terms like Battlecruiser, Strike Cruiser etc simply mean warships that are designed to operate independently, sort of like Federation Cruisers (Explorers), but perhaps battlecruisers are less well rounded as they concentrate more on the "battle" part of their mission, but can still operate independently. Romulan Warbird comes to mind.

Other ships, which can't operate independently or for long are clearly classified according to purpose. You have Science vessels, Escorts, Surveyers, Scouts, Holoships, Tug Ships, Freighters, Hospital Ships, even Destroyers and fighters (according to DS9). These are all specialized vessels.

Within this context, you could probably use the terms battleship and battlecruiser interchangably.

 

[Timo]

Which is sort of amusing, because the battleships and battlecruisers themselves were used interchangeably in the World Wars, with disastrous results for the latter - thus tainting the battlecruiser concept for the rest of the 20th century. This could be taken as suggesting that any ship Starfleet scorns with the term "battlecruiser" is a deathtrap, a ship that will be inferior in battle...

...An interpretation that well matches our visual evidence of Klingon battlecruiser performance against a Starfleet heavy cruiser!

Similarly, Kruge could be deriding Kirk's vessel in ST3.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Anwar]

Why would being called a "Battleship" make people think it was a weaker, inferior vessel?

 

[Timo]

It wouldn't. Being called "battlecruiser" would, because those ships are mostly known for their unsurpassed ability for blowing up and sinking in mere minutes.

It's a reputation that's hard to shed because there hasn't been actual naval warfare after those days of infamy.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[RAMA]

It wouldn't. Being called "battlecruiser" would, because those ships are mostly known for their unsurpassed ability for blowing up and sinking in mere minutes.

It's a reputation that's hard to shed because there hasn't been actual naval warfare after those days of infamy.

Timo Saloniemi

Well only if you were to equate them with the early to mid-20th century battlecruisers...which were the result of naval technology and tactics of the time...and I don't. If battlecruisers are considered more powerful in the 24th century then its the result of that time period's needs. In the late 20th century the only ship one might have considered battlecruisers were the Kirov Class, which were 10,000 tons heavier than normal cruisers and far more heavily armed. They might make a better analogy in history.

 

[Saquist]

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

I think those were torpeodes it fired on DS9

 

[Timo]

Well, balls of fire, at any rate. In "Endgame", the same locations emitted narrow green beams. No way of telling whether the "Way of the Warrior" charges were physical projectiles or disruptor bolts - and whether there even is a difference. But the things really appeared to make a difference against the station's shields.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Saquist]

I think they were definitely torpedes because they looked like every orther torpedo in the show and the episode. The trade mark rotating rays around an orb and slightly yellow at the core.

Disruptors are seen in the same episode in bolt form and beam and they look nothing like what Negh'var fire. Even the modders that have analyzed the episode agree they are torpedoes canonicaly. because in the game they have to simulate the effect and it fits visually what Trek calls a torpedo.

At the time I found this I thought it was a beam weapon too just because I saw beams hit the station. The beams came from the flanking Vorchas.

 

[Timo]

Makes sense. Beams of any color weren't having an effect, even when coming from big and bad ships like the Vor'Cha. Really big torps could be game-changers.

It's just too bad that the pods on the Negh'Var don't appear to have obvious holes for the torps to emerge from. But they do have little drums that are very similar to the ones on the DS9 pylons...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Saquist]

I was surprised to see while I was looking at the scene that the Vorcha took a direct phaser hit first (that normally took out the bird of Preys) and then a torpedo strike to the same spot just split open the ship massively.

Many think these are quantums because they are so much more powerful that the standard torpedo. But I think these are just heavy yield base torpedoes.

But I like the idea that the Klingons were just throwing themselves at the station...they came prepared.

 

[EmperorTiberius]

I was surprised to see while I was looking at the scene that the Vorcha took a direct phaser hit first (that normally took out the bird of Preys) and then a torpedo strike to the same spot just split open the ship massively.

Many think these are quantums because they are so much more powerful that the standard torpedo. But I think these are just heavy yield base torpedoes.

.

I'd like to think that the Vor'cha probably suffered prior shield damage. ds9 was unleashing volley after volley at Klingons

 

[Deks]

Plus, while it's never been officially confirmed on-screen, Starbases and stations were stated to come equipped with type XII phasers (which would probably be a lot more powerful than type X for example).

But I also don't think that a Vor'cha class ship would suffer catastrophic shield failure after just 1 phaser blast from a starbase.

BoP's were a different story because those ships weren't really all that powerful in the first place, so I can imagine them being destroyed easily.

Still, as I said, Ds9 FX team had a penchant for ignoring shield effects during fleet engagements (even though they could have gotten away with skin tight shield FX for example which would be simpler to make compared to a bubble) which was one of the reasons why the Klingon ships were showed to explode rather fast.

 

[Saquist]

I think it was done mostly for dramatic effect too. (obviously) But I never bought the whole, "shield effects are too expensive" explanation.

But the torpedoes are killer...
That D-7 was gutted down the middle.

One Vorcha took a direct torpedo hit and survived.
While another Vorcha blew with 4 direct hits on the same vector (very impressive)
That D-7 took 4 torpedo hits to separate sections but when the next volly came...the next two on the back of the ship blew right through the belly. Total of 6 direct hits.
While every time one hit a BOP it blew sky high.

Best special effects I had ever seen in a TV series. It's too bad they when to CGI after the Dominion attack on the station. But this was DS9's most balanced battle believe it or not. The Klingon ships were always shown firing in every scene and any holding back by the station seemed to be purposeful. WotW may have been Trek's finest hour.