Size of the Dominion.

[All Seeing Eye]

I was thinking about the Dominion and wondering how big it actually is, I mean we've always been under the impression that its huge but if you think back to when Dukat shut down the mine field to the wormhole there were only something like 2800 ships on the other side waiting to come through. Now I would have thought the Dominion would have sent something bigger than that in order to ensure the war would be won within days and to ensure that they had a force large enough to control the vast area of territory they would eventually control. So it seems to me that the Dominion isn't really that big after all and is probably just as big as the Federation perhaps, but it does seem to be contradictory to the fact the Dominion has been around for over 2000 years and the Federation has only been around for about 215 years. I would have thought in 2000 years the Dominion would be in control of the entire Gamma Quadrant and maybe parts of the Alpha and Delta, thats a long time to conquer planets and 2000 years previous would tend to have us believe most planets were pre-warp, the majority of Alpha and Beta Quadrant races were still pre-industrial.

So what do you think the answer is? does anyone have a clue as to how big the Dominion might actually be? is it that they are in fact small and are merely powerful due simply to their technology and Jem'Hadar? or are they a vast empire with tens of thousands of ships?

 

[Anwar]

The Star Charts book has the Dominion's size as around 14.000 LY.

 

[Damask]

You also have to assume that not all of the Dominion's resources were focused on the Alpha quadrant.

 

[Photon]

Looking at different cartography there seems to be alot of unDominion territory "behind"the wormhole.

The Dominion seems it would give up territory if it meant psuedo-control.

 

[Cyke101]

Was it 2800 or 28,000? If it's 2800, let's remember that the Battle to Retake DS9 had 610 Starfleet ships, so 2800 would've steamrolled right through them. If it's 28,000, then everyone's screwed, if only for the sheer amount of enemy forces concentrated on a single point.

 

[scorpius1701]

It was inconsistent around the time of the war. 2800 ships is a huge amount. This is actually a big problem i had with DS9 and the war arc. They are losing literally hundreds of ships when at Wolf 359 a loss of 40 was a devastating defeat. How many ships have to be lost before the war is lost? When Bashir says they cant keep taking these kinds of losses, my rection was "well hell if theyve already lost that many isnt it pretty much over?" I think it could have been handled much better. Please nobody hate me for making the hated comparison but in Babylon 5, getting and keeping ships for a fleet is a big issue. DS9 sort of gave the impression that losses could pretty much be replaced quickly. So yeah, if the Federation is going around with 100 ships at a time and the Dominion has thousands, id say the Dominion is bigger.

 

[warriorsfan]

I was thinking about the Dominion and wondering how big it actually is, I mean we've always been under the impression that its huge but if you think back to when Dukat shut down the mine field to the wormhole there were only something like 2800 ships on the other side waiting to come through. Now I would have thought the Dominion would have sent something bigger than that in order to ensure the war would be won within days and to ensure that they had a force large enough to control the vast area of territory they would eventually control.

I think you are reading way too much into that number. You have to remember that they wouldn't send every ship they had through the wormhole, they would have to keep a large fleet behind to defend their territory in the Gamma quadrant and keep all those conquered planets in line. So they may have had 20,000 ships in the Gamma Quadrant for all we know. And those 2800 ships they sent through may have just been the first wave. It could have been followed by several thousand more ships over the next several weeks.

 

[Jono]

The Federation isn't the first quadrant power to exist in their area of the galaxy. We've heard of several powerful empires that existed before but eventually collapsed.

As for the Dominion we don't know how aggressive their expansion was over those 2,000 years. They might have vast periods where the Dominion is static. Founders live for centuries, so they would view time differently then species with much shorter life-spans.

2,800 ships is a fair amount to assemble. We also don't know how long that fleet sat waiting, were they there since the start or was the fleet only assembled once word got through that the minefield was definitely coming down. If that is the case it takes time for ships to assemble. With Wolf 359 one of the biggest issues was that Starfleet just didn't have much time to organise a force to met the Borg thanks to the Borg's superior propulsion technology. As people have also mentioned, you can't pull all your assets into one campaign/area. You need to keep forces to defend against other attacks and to maintain order.

 

[NKemp3]

You also have to assume that not all of the Dominion's resources were focused on the Alpha quadrant.

I never got the sense that even the majority of the Dominion's forces were in the AQ. For the original poster to suggest that the Dominion was no bigger than the Federation seems false. The Dominion had only some of its forces in alien territory, the AQ, and almost beat the combined forces of the Federation, the Klingons and the Romulans. If those reenforcements had come through the wormhole instead of being banished by the Prophets, the AQ would have fallen. Only after that and only after the wormhole was sealed off by the Prophets and only after the ability to produce the needed new Jem' Hadar troops and ships was severly affected and only after the Romulans joined the war, did the Dominion reach out to the Breem

 

[NKemp3]

It was inconsistent around the time of the war. 2800 ships is a huge amount. This is actually a big problem i had with DS9 and the war arc. They are losing literally hundreds of ships when at Wolf 359 a loss of 40 was a devastating defeat. How many ships have to be lost before the war is lost? When Bashir says they cant keep taking these kinds of losses, my rection was "well hell if theyve already lost that many isnt it pretty much over?" I think it could have been handled much better. Please nobody hate me for making the hated comparison but in Babylon 5, getting and keeping ships for a fleet is a big issue. DS9 sort of gave the impression that losses could pretty much be replaced quickly. So yeah, if the Federation is going around with 100 ships at a time and the Dominion has thousands, id say the Dominion is bigger.

True. But even back in the day when the Federation claimed its loss of 40 ships at Wolf 359 was huge I said to myself that's a mightly small fleet for an AQ power that has a lot of territory to cover and protect. The TNG numbers used back then were frankly too low as were perhaps the DS9 numbers used for the loss of the Obsidian Order and the Tal'Shiar ships in "The Die Is Cast". I think that limitation was because production could not put a lot of ships on the screen at the time. But once the use of CGI became more in play with the Trek shows, DS9's writers were free to use higher numbers.

 

[Plecostomus]

Well here are my thoughts.

Given that we know that Starfleet is divided into sub-fleets (Ninth, Seventh, whatever) perhaps a loss of 40 ships from one subfleet is a HUGE blow... to that subfleet. Also remember these ships were pulled from patrols around the core worlds to protect Earth so this might be the smaller close-knit Homeworld Defense Fleet, and any losses would be really profound.

Then there is the psychological aspect of loosing 11,000 lives and 40 ships mere lightyears from Earth. It would have the same effect as someone nuking a carrier battlegroup 25 miles off the coast of Boston. Yes the US Navy would suffer a huge setback but they have other carrier groups and sailors ready to deploy... but the media would have a field-day with the situation and public opinion would be affected.

And finally as for the totals in Deep Space Nine.... after Wolf the Federation must have ramped up production expecting the Borg to show up. Given the manufacturing abilities of replicators, and who knows what other 24th century technologies they could be spitting out dozens of new "Liberty Ship" Ablative-Miranda Class ships a week while rebuilding/refitting/reactivating the Excelsiors to take up slack while more Nebula, Galaxy and Akiras are built... while the Sovereign and Intrepid are undergoing final build and testing.

The bottleneck wouldn't be ship-building in the Federation's case, they have the ability to knock ships together quickly... it's replacing the crew and the experience they represent. Starfleet doesn't clone its crews, they train volunteers.

 

[Deks]

For SF to be able to defend Federation territory which is 8000 ly's across, I'd say that they must have thousands of ships at their disposal in order to do so.
Which is one of the reasons I never bought into the premise that only 2800 ships would pose a serious enough threat to take down the Feds, the Klingons and the Romulans.
Pardon me, but 3 very large powers fighting at the same time (ok ... 2 of them at the start) should have been able to fend off the Dominion forces.
The Federation should have been able to go on it's own against the Dominion.

The Dominion lacks TW drives just like the Feds.
Granted, they had about 2000 years of head start, but I don't think they were expanding continuously ever since then because in that case they would have encompassed the Wormhole end in the G.Q. entirely for one thing and extended most of their reach to the A.Q. if not the D.Q (probably).

Most of the Dominion worlds are kept in check through the Jem'Hadaar.
They wouldn't even need ships that much for the task because they can simply keep them stationed in large numbers on a planets surface to maintain order.
And most of the planets the Dominion holds are already under tight control because they fear of what the Jemmies might do to them.

It is possible that the number of ships the Dominion sent during the war (2800) was most of their main fleet in addition to what they already had in the A.Q. at the time, because if the dialog we witnessed was correct, the Dominion was mostly relying on those forces to aid them in their victory.

I find it hard to buy the Federation has about 1000 ships at it's disposal.
If SF wants to be effective in safeguarding the Federation, and with the amount of resources they have, they could easily hold 8000 ships (each away 1 LY from one another) for defensive purposes and another 1000 or 2000 for exploratory purpose.
Heck, you can also divide that to 4000 ships for defensive measure and another 2000 for exploration.
It's not a problem.
Yet I think the writers messed up plenty of 'credibility' factors because they wanted to increase the drama.

Granted, the Dominion held an edge with their weapons in the beginning, but that was taken cared of before the war even started.
The only other edge they retained are the suicidal tactics and the ability to breed clones of fully trained/capable soldiers/commanders ... and faster ship production facilities.
But still, the number of ships they sent to the A.Q. initially and just as the war started should have been within the reach of the Federations ability to defend on it's own.

Drama ...

 

[Timo]

when the Federation claimed its loss of 40 ships at Wolf 359 was huge

When did we hear such a claim?

If anything, the losses were brushed off in "BoBW", with Shelby saying that the fleet (perhaps the 3rd Fleet rather than entire Starfleet?) would be back up in a year. No big deal, except of course that any loss of life during supposed peacetime would be something of a shock.

And when we returned to the issue of casualties in "The Drumhead", nobody said it was "huge". Admiral Satie just rattled off the numbers, 39 ships and 11,000 people, without implying they had strategic significance. Their significance lay purely in Picard's guilt, not in the effect they would have had on Starfleet fighting capacity.

Granted that in "The Wounded", Starfleet is said to be spread thing. But this is not attributed to the losses at Wolf 359 in any way.

Granted, they had about 2000 years of head start, but I don't think they were expanding continuously ever since then because in that case they would have encompassed the Wormhole end in the G.Q. entirely

Even conquering something like 30% of Gamma would be pretty good going in just two millennia, given the lack of high speed propulsion. And the vicinity of the wormhole mouth always seemed like the farthest hinterland of Dominion, an area where the expansion of Dominion influence had only recently been felt - no doubt the reason why the Founders chose to hide in that neighborhood!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[trash80]

The Dominion seemed pretty pragmatic so maybe they only expanded if they felt there was any point in doing so. The density of star systems in a galaxy isn't uniform, maybe they reached a large expanse of largely empty space and decided there was no value in further expansion.

 

[dispatcher812]

Well how many ships does Starfleet Have? The Federation?

 

[Cyke101]

Well how many ships does Starfleet Have? The Federation?

Ron Moore estimates that Starfleet has about 30,000 ships, all of various sizes from Sovereigns to itty bitty cargo vessels. He makes that judgement based on the registry numbers of the older ships we saw in TNG (like the Excelsiors) all the way up to Voyager's registry number in the 74000s. The kicker is, though, Moore himself says its a guess on his part and it was never said in any of the shows anyway, so 30,000 is an educated guess, but for now probably a non-canon number.

 

[Timo]

The thing is, the number of (combat) starships at the Klingon Empire's disposal would seem to be much lower than that - only something like a couple of thousand could be fielded to fight the Breen at a cinch moment, seemingly the total Klingon capacity. Starfleet shouldn't be significantly stronger than that, not when Klingons apparently remain a credible threat to the Federation during the uneasy years of prewar alliance - and during the brief Klingon-Federation war in DS9.

Of course, much of the Starfleet ship strength might be in form of combat-incapable vessels. I'd still keep the total in the 10,000 range, perhaps below. This would also jibe with the idea that there are less than twenty combat formations called "Fleets", each with just a 300-600 ships, as indicated in DS9. If there were more Fleets, we should have heard of them just like we heard of those with numbers below ten. And if the Fleets were bigger than that, it would be difficult to explain why the Seventh explicitly only had a couple of hundred vessels originally, and why the Fleets donating elements to the effort to retake DS9 could not donate more.

...Although no doubt the Federation could mobilize all sorts of transports and auxiliaries from non-Starfleet sources during the war, or rapidly build (small and cheap) warships, to satisfy pretty much everybody's personal idea of total ship numbers.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[All Seeing Eye]

The Federation has about 150+ member worlds, its likely each member world has several colonies each, maybe about 10 each making that an extra 1500 further planets to protect, to ensure the safety of those worlds from even a small attack you'd probably want at least 10 Starships per planet (or perhaps 15 for a member world and 5 for a smaller colony), that alone puts the number of ships at Starfleets command at 20,000 ships.

 

[Timo]

But we know that the standard defense is zero starships per planet. Whenever Kirk or Picard goes to visit a Federation world, his is the only starship there. This typically holds true even for Earth, except in the anticipation or aftermath of some calamity.

It would appear that Starfleet largely keeps its ships garrisoned somewhere away from the inhabited worlds. If their mode of deployment is such that they rush to wherever they are needed whenever they are needed, there is no reason to assume that there would be one per planet or anything like that.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Well I don't mean they keep 10 ships stationed at a planet all the time, I mean it would make sense mathematically to ensure that all planets could be defended by at least 10 ships. To have less than 20,000 ships leaves the Federation completely defenceless throughout the majority of its territory. The Dominion should have been able to work out which planets were being defended and just attack those that wern't, even when Weyoun pointed out that Chintoka was left very weak the system still had some squadrans of Jem'Hadar fighters.
The Federation surely during time of war would have some ships defending their planets and then larger fleets for more major worlds meaning the Federation should in actual fact have even MORE ships than 20,000, the 20,000 ship mark would just be the standard defence number.