Why do Romulan ships suck?

[cwl]

After watching Nemesis (once again) I was rather dissappointed as to how quickly the Romulan warbirds in that were knocked out by the Scimitar.

it got me thinking about the other Romulan warbirds, the D'Deridex seen in TNG, DS9 and VOY.

despite the intimidating size those warbirds seem to be equally weak and vulnerable to enemy fire.

now from what I can tell the Romulans are an advanced race, with a modern military and technology. but their ships seem to be pretty underpowered.

thoughts anyone?

p.s. whats with the lack of Romulan ship designs ?

 

[iguana_tonante]

I dunno why they suck, but the question is: do they swallow?

 

[That Weirdo In The Corner]

The D'Deridex is a problem, the Romulans come out of hiding with this huge death machine, Picard about to break down and start pleading for mercy, oh hang on actually it's not that good and is pretty easy to beat. Although the Romulans do like to intimidate and it did intimidate when the federation first discovered it, it must have caused a lot of sleepless nights in Starfleet trying to find out it's specification and capabilities.
As for the Scimitar beating the Warbirds presumably Shinzon had detailed information on them and knew where the weaknesses in them were.

 

[cwl]

Shinzon might have known the weakness of the warbirds but still they were dispatched far too easily. they have shields for crying out loud. the Enterprise survived ages of pounding. plus there were two of them.

the thing is the D'deridex was weak and perhaps the newer warbirds were designed to remedy this but it doesn't seem to have worked.

 

[Anwar]

All Romulan ships suck one way or another:

The original BoP from TOS had an inferior warp engine, and only had that plasma torpedo weapon (no secondary weapons at all) which needed time to charge and be fired.

The Warbirds from TNG were a scare weapon: They look big but it's all just appearances and they aren't that tough in a fight.

That smaller destroyer in NEM was supposed to remedy this but I guess they were still smarting from the pounding they got from the Dominion.

 

[F. King Daniel]

One word: Narada.

Mobile Romulan mining rig > Romulan Warbirds

 

[That Weirdo In The Corner]

One word: Narada.

Mobile Romulan mining rig > Romulan Warbirds

Sad but true

 

[T'Girl]

The D'Deridex is a problem, the Romulans come out of hiding with this huge death machine.

But if you except the big empty space to ship encloses and the pylons for the engines, is it really that much bigger than a Galaxy Class?

Habital volume ~verses~` habitable volume.

One word: Narada.

But the Narada was battling ships 150 years it's inferior.

I'd imagine the Delta Flyer would have casually chopped it to pieces.

 

[cwl]

narada, urgh I hate that design. at least the nemesis warbirds looked good.

talking of nemesis. how was the Scimitar so good? a ship built by slaves.

 

[spooky spice]

"Why do Romulan ships suck?"

Cos you can't let the Bad Guys win!

 

[SonOfMogh]

Maybe Romulan ships are designed to allow maximum effectiveness from the cloaking devices.

Fair enough the Klingons have cloaking technology, but it's generally accepted that the Romulans possess more advanced cloaking capabilities. Maybe they choose a quantum singularity over an antimatter reactor because it's easier to mask, perhaps in addition to this their hulls are made of a weaker yet far less detectable material, and their shield system is less powerful for similar reasons.

Maybe all they really care about is cloaking ability and torpedo power. This would seem to tie in with the Romulan philosophy of decloak and kill everything, rather than prepare for a drawn out battle.

 

[ChristopherPike]

I actually like the Romulan ships. I don't know about more than the Klingon ships. Depends which. Definitely the one seen in Enterprise 'Minefield'. I wanted to see that in action again. Like the original 60's Bird-of-Prey but more sharp edges and green, something the Romulans were likely to design. I figure later on, they began developing ships from stolen intelligence from Earth Starfleet, particularly the nacelles...

A cool shot they sometimes did on TNG, was for the Ent-D to be seen through the empty space between the top and bottom wings. Just perspective and distance. Being so much further away but it make a Galaxy class ship small for a moment. 'Data's Day' is probably the moment I'm thinking of... where Riker says, "Somedays you get the bear and other days the bear gets you."

I'm definitely not a fan of that freakish monsterousity in Star Trek 2009. It was basically the Scimitar in thayalon radiation mode, then filtered through some nightmare Tim Burton might have, after eating too much cheese.

 

[Satyrquaze]

narada, urgh I hate that design. at least the nemesis warbirds looked good.

talking of nemesis. how was the Scimitar so good? a ship built by slaves.

The Great Pyramids were also built by slaves...

 

[cwl]

i dont buy the reliance on cloaks to be the source of Romulan ships weakness, the Klingons use cloaks and their ships are tough enough.

now the sneak attack is all well and good but the Romulans must have realised their ships are weak when the enemy starts firing back. now i did think of Russian strategy during ww2 and the cold war where they used mass produced but often poorly protected tanks with little regard for protection. the attitude that the tanks were disposable and quantity was superior to quality.

but it's hard to use that argument with the Romulans. their ships are clearly very resource intensive to produce, they are never seen in very large numbers and they are capital ships that are not disposable to the Star Empire - unlike for example Dominion bug ships or klingon BoPs.

also i think the pharaoh knew what his slaves were doing in egypt. the remans building a superbattleship in secret outfitted with incredibly advanced technology. the romulans must have known and they must have something better than the Scimitar.

 

[SonOfMogh]

i dont buy the reliance on cloaks to be the source of Romulan ships weakness, the Klingons use cloaks and their ships are tough enough.

I'm not saying an over reliance on cloaks makes them weaker, I'm saying it's possible that they can make them virtually completely undetectable by limiting certain aspects of the construction and not using certain systems and materials. Klingons on the other hand might be happier building the toughest possible ship and if the cloak allows them to get the drop on their opponent 50% of the time then it's a bonus.

Just a theory.

 

[Lanny77]

It's possible Shinzon learned the shielding frequencies of the ships of his Romulan co-conspiracists in order to take them out should they ever turn on him....which they did.

As for the D'Deridex....I got nothin'

 

[SonOfMogh]

Have we ever seen the D'Deridex trade fire with anything to get a real idea of it's capabilities?

The only instance I can think of is 'Message in a bottle', when one seemed to go down easy, but for all we know the 2 Defiants could have been literally hammering it with Quantum Torpedoes while the 2 EMH programs we discussing sex and arguing.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

narada, urgh I hate that design. at least the nemesis warbirds looked good.

talking of nemesis. how was the Scimitar so good? a ship built by slaves.

The Great Pyramids were also built by slaves...

The great pyramids didn't require advanced microfacturing, rare metals, and spacefaring abilities (contrary to what those silly ancient astronaut folks may say).

Oh yeah, and they weren't built in secret.

 

[SonOfMogh]

As much as I hate the Scimitar and think it's completely ridiculous.....

Perhaps it is stronger than anything the Romulans have built. Look at it this way, when an empire designs a new class of ship the look at several factors, which includes cost (or equivalent), maintenance, ease of potential refits, fuel supply etc etc. The Federation could easily build something twice the size of a Galaxy class with 3 warp cores and 30 quantum launchers, but since they could build dozens of Akiras for a similar coast it makes no sense to do so.

 

[cwl]

the Remans are a slave race ruled by Romulus. Remus is a slave planet with dilithium mines and heavy weapons. the place is guarded by Romulans.

the Scimitar would be like British India building a super battleship or Japanese Machuria building a better ship than the Yamato. or the American philippenes building a carrier superior to the Yorktown. all in secret as well.