What ships SHOULD they have used in the Dominion War?

[Arpy]

I think it is part of it though. The Excelsior WAS something entirely new and uncomfortable... until it wasn't anymore. Transwarp seems to have never taken off, so the thing that MADE it so incredibly new and different was dropped. Now it's just... a newer type of ship.

In my head canon the “transwarp” drive did work…sorta. It’s why 24th Century ships are, per Janeway, twice as fast. And the reason for the updating of the warp scale—no warp 14 we saw in TOS.

But I mean it isn’t an exotic new drive (transwarp like the Borg use) or it wouldn’t need regular warp nacelles. It’s transwarp insofar as it’s faster (x2) than regular warp. Kind of like Reagan’s Star Wars program wasn’t actually about star wars.

 

[Arpy]

Is it just me or does this site have a lot more ads than it used to. I’m on an iPhone and I’m constantly swatting away ads.

 

[Ithekro]

A bit, yes.

 

[Macintosh]

In my head canon the “transwarp” drive did work…sorta. It’s why 24th Century ships are, per Janeway, twice as fast. And the reason for the updating of the warp scale—no warp 14 we saw in TOS.

But I mean it isn’t an exotic new drive (transwarp like the Borg use) or it wouldn’t need regular warp nacelles. It’s transwarp insofar as it’s faster (x2) than regular warp. Kind of like Reagan’s Star Wars program wasn’t actually about star wars.

Agreed. I've said this elsewhere, but in my head "transwarp" is just a generic term for any prototypical next generation warp technology. The Excelsior's transwarp drive was just the prototype version of what became the standard warp drive technology we see in the 24th century. The NX-01 was the transwarp "Great Experiment" of her day.

 

[Praetor]

Personally, I think it used to mean one particular thing and then fell into common usage to refer to most "faster than warp" warp technologies of a similar type. There must be some reason why "quantum slipstream" wasn't called "transwarp."

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

I posted this below in another thread, but realized it applied to the discussion here. You can read my earlier post for more info.

Perhaps transwarp did not fail, but simply was not used due to the "fins" or "vents" on warp systems found on the Excelsior and beyond that may have been able to get "regular" warp systems to perform at higher rates of speed. Then, "transwarp" as described in Star Trek 3 remains an unexplored technological option until Voyager.

I think you just inadvertently solved the question of what happened to transwarp drive: It could be that the tech did not have to fail, but when a "regular" warp core was tried out in the same space during testing, the added cooling from the "fins" in the neck, nacelles and "bulge" made warp drive just as effective in getting certain speeds.

The Ambassador and Galaxy have limited fins in the neck, but they still have fins in their nacelles, as do most other newer ships. That would also explain why Voyager was able to have Paris break the barrier so easily, it was not the tech that needed developed from scratch, but adapting it to a shuttle and tying to get even more speed out of it to approach warp 10.



I think that the version of the ship with two deflection crystals should have two cores, because otherwise there would need to be a system at the "split point" where the energy is sent to one crystal or the other

(This is unlike the Constellation-class which has two crystals at different ends of the impulse section. In that case I think the warp core is mounted transversely, going from one crystal to the other. I had some way of explaining the vertical core section in the Hathaway, that is not important now.)



Why couldn't this scene be on the Excelsior and the monitor was showing the status of the allied ship (NCC-1701-A)? The warp core placard in the hall could be what is showing Excelsior's status, and it would not need to be on two monitors at once.

A problem in continuity is exactly what that placard shows. It was made for Leah Brahm's lab. Leah refers to it as the "engine" she designed. We know that some of the Wolf-359 ships had TNG-style nacelles, but lower numbers, implying older ships, so Leah must have designed the TNG warp core, not the TNG nacelles. That means that showing that core on NCC-1701-A or NCC-2000 appears to be a problem with timing. The only solution I can think of is that the external appearance of the core in the 2290's is the same, but Dr. Brahms developed or changed something about the internal reaction chamber. Otherwise, it would not make sense to have this core, and especial not this placard, on either ship in ST:6.

 

[Tim Walker]

Thinking about the different size estimates for the Saber/Sabre class. Personally, I tend to favor a smaller size, using proven (instead of bleeding edge) technology. Allowing rapid construction, and reliability. And perhaps the one FC design that would see mass production.

In the novels the Saber seems to be moderately useful in non-combat roles, so I see continued production post-war.

 

[Ithekro]

Basically the alternative to the Defiant-class.

 

[Macintosh]

Thinking about the different size estimates for the Saber/Sabre class. Personally, I tend to favor a smaller size, using proven (instead of bleeding edge) technology. Allowing rapid construction, and reliability. And perhaps the one FC design that would see mass production.

In the novels the Saber seems to be moderately useful in non-combat roles, so I see continued production post-war.

Assuming the Sabre is ~190m long, she's still got quite a big internal volume because of how boxy she is – at ~300,000m³ she's got a substantially bigger internal volume than the Constitution-class or Miranda-class despite being significantly shorter! Easy to see how a ship that compact could be useful in non-combat roles as a sort of flexible super-scout or multi-role corvette.

Basically the alternative to the Defiant-class.

I agree, I've sometimes thought about whether the Defiant should really have been a Sabre-class ship. I love the Defiant as a concept but I've never been entirely convinced by its odd external design.

Also, this is tangential, I don't normally like STO designs as a rule but the Sabre-class successor the Da Vinci-class from STO is gorgeous.

 

[Tim Walker]

To counter the Bug Ships:

1. Construction of very large number of (210 meter long) Centaurs.

2. Construction of a handful of Defiants.

Larger vessels would face two problems:

1. In general, you can't build them fast enough to compensate for the enormous losses.

2. The larger shipyards would at first be full of ships pulled from mothballs, for refit. Later, full of damaged ships.

 

[KamenRiderBlade]

To counter the Bug Ships:

1. Construction of very large number of (210 meter long) Centaurs.

2. Construction of a handful of Defiants.

Construction of larger vessels would be severely constrained by two things:

1. In general, you can't build them fast enough to compensate for the enormous losses.

2. The larger shipyards would at first be full of ships pulled from mothballs, for refit. Later, full of damaged ships.

You forgot the hardest lesson, crew replacement, the Allies had major staffing issues.

There are 2x major solutions:
1) StarFleet creates their own "Attack Ship".

Spoiler: Venom Geek Media - Interceptor Class

2) Space Superiority Fighters, given high enough "Fire Power", was enough to take out Jem Hadar Attack Ships.
We saw fighters during the Dominion War, but was the design / load out done correctly?

IMO, it wasn't, the point of Fighters was to bring the fight to them and let StarShips fight at long range as mobile artillery.

Star Fighters should be doing the close range fighting and pinning / entrapping the larger ships into a zone and let larger StarShips be super long range Artillery Bombardment while Star Fighters are there to break down sub systems and to create vulnerabilities.

Odo showed that a smaller vessel like the RunAbout can take out a Jem Hadar Fighter, imagine a dedicated space fighter with more fire power was designed, it would work better.

Basically a "Fighter-Sized/Class" Defiant with StarShip grade Torpedoes.

Imagine how devastating that doctrine could be.

 

[Tim Walker]

I recently watched the Interceptor video. Could a new class of ship be designed and be put into production fast enough to be useful?

Reviewed the Trekyards episode on the Centaur. It was pointed out that there may have been only enough spare parts to throw together a handful of these ships.

Have to think that IRL people have been forced to make these sort of trade offs during war.

 

[KamenRiderBlade]

I recently watched the Interceptor video. Could a new class of ship be designed and be put into production fast enough to be useful?

Reviewed the Trekyards episode on the Centaur. It was pointed out that there may have been only enough spare parts to throw together a handful of these ships.

Have to think that IRL people have been forced to make these sort of trade offs during war.

Even in the Venom Geek Media Interceptor Class video, StarFleet didn't get them into mass production until the tail end of the Dominion War.
So they had to learn ALOT of hard lessons and do a "Crash Course" on making a "Attack Ship".

Hopefully we see more "Smaller Starships" like the USS ProtoStar & other ships of that size.

Of course the Interceptor Class is part of that StarShip size class.

 

[Tim Walker]

In a Nerd World Empire video, it was suggested that this trainer be armed to fight the Borg.

 

[Tim Walker]

In a Starship Reviews video it was commented that the last version of the Miranda....were Mirandas converted into drones. For the purpose of swarming a Borg cube.

 

[Dukhat]

Well, that’s not official.

 

[Arpy]

I normally dislike the idea — after all, if you can automate a starship to that extent, why even use crews — but it would explain why they’re throwing decrepit technology at the Dominion and slaughtering thousands upon thousands of people.

That said, there probably are some crew onboard or the windows wouldn’t be lit.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

Given that some of the Mirandas actually hung in the fight longer than most, I'm not 100% sold on them being drones, but I do think that the "fighters" absolutely should have been, regardless of how the Maquis or Bajorans used similar platforms in the past.

 

[Dukhat]

I've heard the drone hypothesis with the Mirandas before, but I don't really buy it. I can see them having minimal crews, since every Miranda we saw in TNG only had anywhere between twenty to thirty people. But drones? If the ship containing the guy controlling them gets destroyed, now you just have a bunch of empty starships floating around completely useless in battle. I mean, I suppose they could have been preprogrammed on their own, but I would think that would be a waste of a perfectly good starship. Make runabouts or shuttlecraft the drones, not starships.

 

[Arpy]

Trek doesn’t make sense with smaller drones. It’s Napoleonic or early 20th century warfare that was outmoded by the advent of the airplane, yet the Enterprise is not a spacecraft carrier, let alone a dronecraft carrier. Nor are any of its adversaries. Clearly there must be some in-universe reason why larger starships are better in combat.

So if Mirandas are larger drones, they’re either remotely controlled (though one imagines that tech could be disrupted), or they’re AI controlled—which would be closer to where the real world may be heading, and surely something they’d be capable of in Trek’s time, employing it perhaps here in a time of need. We’d already seen it in TOS with the M-5. I like to think that was an experimental version of existing AI technology (as again there will be by the real 23rd century), and there’s no reason there wouldn’t be useful versions of it or other AI’s a hundred years later.

All that said, again, why are the lights on if there are no crew?