Purposing Federation Ships During the Dominion War

[Timo]

I'm not sure those attributes would necessarily make the ships special.

I mean, surely Starfleet would build every starship class to be the most advanced ever? Surely all of them would be designed for deep space tactical missions? And surely none of them would be designed for musical performance?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[jpch]

I'm not sure those attributes would necessarily make the ships special.

I mean, surely Starfleet would build every starship class to be the most advanced ever? Surely all of them would be designed for deep space tactical missions? And surely none of them would be designed for musical performance?

Timo Saloniemi

of course not, ex :ships like the Nova are designed for short range planetary research stated on screen not long range tactical missions.
not every ship was designed for the same things but in the Dominion war all ships were used because they were desperate.

 

[M.A.C.O.]

What i like best about NEM is that it shows just how tough the ENT-E is. In an uphill battle trying to fight and enemy they can't see, that is 3x the size of the ENT-E with 3x the fire power and 2x the shield power the ENT-E has. After the massive pounding the ENT-E takes from the Scimitar, having 2 large parts of the Valdore ship careen it to it, the enterprise starts taking physical damage with parts of the hull being blown away. This is right before Troi uses her telepathy to find the Scimitar and they do an awesome blitz on it with phasers, quantum and photon torpedoes. Had this been a fair fight, and by fair I mean no cloak the ENT-E could've come out triumphant.

During the Dominion campaign something as badass as the Sovereign or Prometheus would clean Dominion battleships. Phased Polaron weapons be damned!

 

[Timo]

What i like best about NEM is that it shows just how tough the ENT-E is.

...Or, more probably, what a softie Shinzon was.

After all, he wanted to get Picard alive. He couldn't go all-out on the E-E, as his only known means of getting Picard were to get Picard to surrender, or to slip a boarding party aboard. He tried the softest way first, disabling the starship's warp drive with demonstrated ease and then talking to his "dad". Only when daddy showed the first signs of actually being able to fight back (with the Troi trick) did he upgrade to the boarding party trick, and he accomplished that trivially easily, by immediately blasting a hole in Picard's shields in a location least likely to directly harm Picard.

When the boarding party got stuck, it appears Shinzon gave up, and chose to ignore Picard's safety - at which point he again quite easily destroyed half the bridge of the E-E, and rendered the E-E unbattleworthy. The fight was over, Shinzon won. And then our heroes turned the tables, using means other than the weapons of their unexceptionally performing starship to wrestle victory out of Shinzon's hands after all.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[M.A.C.O.]

^ I'll remind you that despite targeting weapons and shields only the scimtar never made the ENT-E lose shield or weapons. Tactically speaking the Scimitar is a fiercer fighting machine. But a large part of the ENT-E disadvantage was it couldn't target the Scimitar. Imagine a sniper camped 200 yards away with a thermal scope taking shots at a battalion of troops with only moon and starlight to aid the troops. Of course the sniper is going to score more fatalities and injuries. He's shooting a people that can't see and have to wait for the flashes of his rifle to go off before they can attempt any attacks.

Let's not forget how easily a Dominion Battlecruiser that is 2x the size and 3x as strong as a Galaxy class ship, stomped the Defiant class Valiant. The Sovereign class is roughly the same size as a Galaxy class. The Valiant had a technobabble weapon and it still suffered a crushing defeat. Hell against 3 Jem'Hadar ships the Defiant was nearly blown apart with all hands lost. The only thing that saved the Defiant in "The Search" and not the crew of the Odyssey in "Jem' Hadar" was the magical plot device known as "Hero Shields".


As noted the Scimitar is 3x the size of the ENT-E, with 52 disruptors (ENT-E has 16 phasers), 27 photon torpedo bays (ENT-E has 9 photon and 1 quantum), primary and secondary shields (ENT-E only has primary but also abalative armor), a perfect cloak and a planet engulfing thalaron biogenic weapon.

Given the circumstances I doubt any single ship could do better than the ENT-E did. Best the ENT-E could manage was a stalemate but attempting a kamikaze attack. Another great thing about the NEM fight is there is no technobabble fix to get the cloak deactivated or the shields down.

 

[Timo]

^ I'll remind you that despite targeting weapons and shields only the scimtar never made the ENT-E lose shield or weapons

She did drop the shields of the E-E a couple of times - shields in a particular direction. Moreover, she did so at will when wanting to insert a boarding party. At other times, it didn't appear to be a tactical goal worth pursuing...

We get something of a yardstick for how powerful the Scimitar is in this respect. A volley from her drops aft shields to 40%, but a collision with a piece of debris then drops fwd shields to 10% all of a sudden. It's this latter feat that Shinzon's disruptors later achieve against the ventral shields of the E-E. Not outlandishly powerful by any means, but it only drives home the point of E-E mediocrity; we have seen other starships deal with debris collisions of that sort, and their performance has been quite comparable to that of the E-E.

Given the circumstances I doubt any single ship could do better than the ENT-E did.

No dispute there. That doesn't make the E an outstandingly capable combatant, though.

Timo Saloniemi