Amph "You are of Bajor" A 'Trek' to 'Deep Space Nine'

Ohhh, I hated the mirror universe episodes. All of them. Every time I saw a mirror universe episode come up next on the episode list I was like "Ughhh..."

 

The only decent one was when Sisko took the not-Defiant to fight off not-Worf's battle cruiser. That was a pretty epic space battle, even though it was ultimately pointless. With the not-Defiant performing a ton of Millennium Falcon-type rolls around the cruiser's hull, it was a visual masterpiece.

 

Oh yeah, why do they keep saying that that the Defiant is the most heavily armed ship in Starfleet? That just seems patently ridiculous. The whole point of a small ship like the Defiant is maneuverability and maybe speed, while the whole point of a larger ship like the Galaxy-class is firepower and endurance. But if a ship of Defiant's size can outgun vessels six times its size, then whoever built those larger ships is doing something very, very wrong.

 

It actually soooooooooooooort of made sense, in that all of the power was geared towards basic scanners, shields, engines, weapons and cloak. NOTHING else.

Whereas on most of the bigger ships, there is still a vast scientific, support (food/replicators/etc), entertainment (holodeck, etc.), life support (Defiant crew is like 1/100th the crew), etc. requirement for power draw, no?

Literally the ship is designed for nothing else but fighting the Borg. Adapted to fighting the Dominion.

 

All the other Starfleet vessels were built with Science and exploration in mind I think was the point. The Defiant was built for war.

 

Isn't the Enterprise mostly able to take on Romulan and Klingon ships of roughly the same size, and win? So I'm not sure how much I buy the "Starfleet vessels are not warships" thing. Not to mention that once the Dominion War started, Starfleet started retrofitting its ships for war...so even if tiny little Defiant started out relatively well-armed compared to everything else in Starfleet, that should not have been the case later on.

 

The Defiant was a prototype ship designed and built for the Borg threat. It was deliberately over-gunned and the project was scrapped because it was too over-gunned

SISKO: Officially, it's classified as an escort vessel. Unofficially, the Defiant's a warship. Nothing more, nothing less.
KIRA: I thought Starfleet didn't believe in warships.
SISKO: Desperate times breed desperate measures, Major. Five years ago, Starfleet began exploring the possibility of building a new class of starship. This ship would have no families, no science labs, no luxuries of any kind. It was designed for one purpose only, to fight and defeat the Borg. The Defiant was the prototype, the first ship in what would have been a new Federation battle fleet.
DAX: So what happened?
SISKO: The Borg threat became less urgent. Also, some design flaws cropped up during the ship's shakedown cruise, so Starfleet decided to abandon the project.
O'BRIEN: What sort of design flaws?
SISKO: You'll have complete access to the ship evaluation reports but to put it simply, it's overgunned and overpowered for a ship its size. During battle drills, it nearly tore itself apart when the engines were tested at full capacity.

 

Starfleet vessels are not designed as warships true, but it just happens that they have weaponry that can match and take them out - if needed. They're designed to be multi-purpose, one of which requires having some damn good weaponry.

 

The Defiant: Tough. Little. Ship.

 

*Cushy peeks in sees current topic and departs again*

 

Little?!

 

I LOVE every single thing about this post!!!

 

Mmm, I'm going to have to say that if your science and exploration vessels can outgun whatever your opponents have, then they're basically warships. If the Romulans are stirring up trouble along the neutral zone and you send in some ships to deter them, well that's because those ships have weapons and fulfill the function of warships.

As for Defiant being very well-armed for its size, that I can accept...what I don't understand is why it's still said to be better armed than much larger ships in absolute terms. Why couldn't they build a Galaxy-sized ship that's also well-armed for its size? The Federation didn't exactly fare very well when they faced the Borg, after all. A larger ship would have a larger power source to draw on, and therefore better shields and more firepower. It's for that reason that the Tantive IV will never outgun the Executor no matter how many turbolasers you try to mount on it.

 

And then a couple blasts from a Breen ship destroy it just like that. At least Sisko got a Defiant 2.0 shortly afterwards.

 

Darn those Breen and their energy draining weapons!! Thankfully Starfleet engineers and scientists are the most brilliant in the quadrant and are always able to adjust shielding technology accordingly.

 

I'm going to say that it's designed as a science and exploration vessel with the overall superior technology to outmatch your opponents' warships.

 

Yeah, that's why Starfleet vessels are always really well lit. When a Federation starship drops out of warp in your system, everyone knows it.

 

Exactly. The Klingons and the Romulans both have cloaking tech, but the Federation makes a point of working out in the open where everyone can see them.

 

The Enterprise might not be designed for war, but it does have various shield-types.

"Shields Up" Shields
"Shields Weakening" Shields
"Shields Are Down to 10%" Shields