Why don't they just make the ship out of the black box?

[Triskelion]

*SPOILERS*

RE the Narada:

Ok. I know these are stupid questions, but here goes:

Why would a civilization have mining ships that outclass & obliterate entire enemy fleets? If they'd had the foresight to deploy such a vessel in defense of the Empire, they may have prevented the destruction of Romulus in the first place? Um?

If the answer is that mining is commerce and could afford the expenditure of vaster resources in shipbuilding, then what good is a military fleet? And why wouldn't the Fed have it's own versions of such a vessel?

If a Romulan warbird uses a quantum singularity as a power source, could it not be turned into a weapon such as a portable black hole?

 

[RoJoHen]

The answer lies in the comic (which I think it kind of unfortunate, but there you go). The Narada was a simple mining vessel that was later outfitted with Romulan/Borg technology, and that is why it is so ridiculously powerful.

 

[chardman]

I'm guessing that the Narada is only slightly advanced by late 24th century standards, and is probably outclassed by most military vessels of that era.

It only seems so damn powerful and indestructible when compared to mid 23rd century ships. And a heck lot of technological innovation can happen in a single century.

To put it into perspective: Imagine how powerful and indestructible a single modern fighter jet would seem compared to a whole squadron of WWI era biplanes.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

*SPOILERS*

RE the Narada:

Ok. I know these are stupid questions, but here goes:

Why would a civilization have mining ships that outclass & obliterate entire enemy fleets? If they'd had the foresight to deploy such a vessel in defense of the Empire, they may have prevented the destruction of Romulus in the first place? Um?

The Narada doesn't outclass anything that isn't (by the late 24th century) hopelessly obsolete. Picture, say, an Iranian oil tanker whose paranoid lunatic captain has stocked with a vast supply of RPGs in the (not completely unjustified) fear that his ship might get boarded by the U.S. Navy. After spending several minutes shooting rockets at an American helicopter, his ship goes through a weird looking thunderstorm, and suddenly he's nose to nose with the USS Brooklyn circa 1875 with a big flashy American flag on the mast; tanker Captain gets thirty guys on deck with RPGs and basically blows Brooklyn out of the water. To the crew on the Brooklyn, the tanker is a massive beast with heavy weapons and they mistakenly assume to be a warship, just because a relatively mundane 1960s weapon system will basically shred a wooden warship like a paper target. Against an ironclad, the fight won't be as one-sided, and this--I think--is what happened with the Enterprise. The Narada still outclassed the ship by sheer size and power alone, but Enterprise had the capacity to hold its own for longer than the rest of the fleet.