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I think so, since the Remans/Romulans built the Scimitar and the Dominion have their rather huge ships, even the Mirror Universe has the giant NeghVar.

Is a Federation dreadnought possible, and what would it look like?

Do you mean 'possible' like maybe it exists offscreen and is never used because of <fanfiction> or do you mean 'possible' as in can they concievably build a 1km+ ship given their tech?

Probably, given the Federation has shown material science and such not on par with the two opposing empires.

Yeah, why not? As Ghost Rider points out, the Feds have around the same tech base as the Dominion and Klingons. I suspect the reasons why we haven't seen one are more doctrinal then science related.

You mean they don't bother using them to defend important worlds from attacks?

It's more likely in my view that they're just not worth it. Scimitar was just a death-star after all, Negh Var isn't really that big, D'deridex is air, etc.

Or we coudl bolt a rollbar and third nacelle on a Sovereign...

Given the Romulan warbird had a lot of empty space, it most probably made more sense to have several smaller ships to fight in space and make troop transports a separate ship altogether.

Stark wrote:You mean they don't bother using them to defend important worlds from attacks?

It's more likely in my view that they're just not worth it. Scimitar was just a death-star after all, Negh Var isn't really that big, D'deridex is air, etc.

Or we coudl bolt a rollbar and third nacelle on a Sovereign...

No I mean that they don't really jive with the Federations whole "seek out new life" thing. I imagine it would be hard to justify the expense of a km long warship and that it would be tough to justify "we come in peace" with a dreadnought. If they have them, they are probably restricted to Federation space itself. Though I would have thought they would have popped up in DS9, if they produced them.

I very much suspect the Federation has the TECHNOLOGY to build one if they wanted to, but what would be the point? A massively larger warship would by necessity use up massively more resources and as the Federation seems to mostly be able to hold its own with the ships they have (against AQ forces and the Dominion at any rate) that'd be a pointless thing to do. Sure, a dreadnought with 10 times the firepower/resilience of a Sovereign would be pretty much unbeatable. It would ALSO mean the OTHER 9 Sovereigns that COULD have been built with the same resources but weren't will NOT be available to deal with trouble ELSEWHERE.
You don't build warships as big as you CAN. You try to determine how big a warship you NEED, and then try to build as MANY of those as possible.

That isn't really true; you build the biggest ships you can to get an advantage. In ST it doesn't seem that bigger ships necessarily come with such an advantage, and since nobody else has ships more powerful than Sovereign, who cares? It's not like you need phaser-18s to penetrate 500 shields or whatever; everyone can hurt everyone else and phasers are physically small, so there aren't a lot of pressures pushing total ship size.

Frankly the Negh Var is evidence klingon tech sucks shit, looking at it's size/firepower.

I would have thought something like the Galaxy and the Sovereign were 'battleship' sized anyway.

Or maybe they were more like battlecruisers. Although the Excelsiors probably fulfill that role more aptly.

Wasn't the Scimitar just Shinzon trying to overcompensate? I bet the budget for that monstrosity wouldn't have been approved if he hadn't coup'ed all critics into grey dust.

Stark wrote:That isn't really true; you build the biggest ships you can to get an advantage.

No you don't. You build the biggest ship you THINK YOU NEED. That very well MAY include building the biggest ships you CAN, but only because you think you NEED them. There's numerous examples in real world history where nations did exactly that-NOT build the biggest ships they could, because they didn't see any need for them.

Stofsk wrote:I would have thought something like the Galaxy and the Sovereign were 'battleship' sized anyway.
Or maybe they were more like battlecruisers. Although the Excelsiors probably fulfill that role more aptly.

Battleship sized requires for there to actually BE any battleships around to judge them in relation to.

LordOskuro wrote:Wasn't the Scimitar just Shinzon trying to overcompensate? I bet the budget for that monstrosity wouldn't have been approved if he hadn't coup'ed all critics into grey dust.

Can we just pretend Nemesis never happened?

Batman wrote:

Stofsk wrote:I would have thought something like the Galaxy and the Sovereign were 'battleship' sized anyway.
Or maybe they were more like battlecruisers. Although the Excelsiors probably fulfill that role more aptly.

Battleship sized requires for there to actually BE any battleships around to judge them in relation to.

This is one of the reasons why I think using direct conversions of naval ship roles to a starfleet (whether Trek or other franchises) breaks down as an analogy.

Batman wrote:No you don't. You build the biggest ship you THINK YOU NEED. That very well MAY include building the biggest ships you CAN, but only because you think you NEED them. There's numerous examples in real world history where nations did exactly that-NOT build the biggest ships they could, because they didn't see any need for them.

Uh, no. Can you read? I already noted how there are few size pressures for Star Trek ships, you don't have to shrilly repeat yourself.

since nobody else has ships more powerful than Sovereign, who cares?

Oops, you're an idiot.

I even explained it in baby talk for morons like you; there is nothing like the need to build a larger ship to mount larger guns to penetrate thicknesses of armour, because eveyrone can hurt everyone. Phasers are physically small. The driving force behind design appears to be FTL speed, range and power system endurance, not giant guns or huge shield generators.

Stark wrote:I even explained it in baby talk for morons like you; there is nothing like the need to build a larger ship to mount larger guns to penetrate thicknesses of armour, because eveyrone can hurt everyone. Phasers are physically small. The driving force behind design appears to be FTL speed, range and power system endurance, not giant guns or huge shield generators.

Incidentally, this is the other reason why I don't think a direct analogy works re: wet navy ship roles and starfleet ship roles.

Having said that, battleships are supposed to be the 'heavy hitting' capital ships, aren't they? Well, isn't that exactly what we see Galaxy-class ships do in the Dominion war episodes of DS9?

A minor sidenote, wasn't the Defiant an actual battleship prototype? As in "once we get rid of all the useless crew space and science labs, we get a much more compact ship"?

Stark wrote:

Batman wrote:No you don't. You build the biggest ship you THINK YOU NEED. That very well MAY include building the biggest ships you CAN, but only because you think you NEED them. There's numerous examples in real world history where nations did exactly that-NOT build the biggest ships they could, because they didn't see any need for them.

Uh, no. Can you read? I already noted how there are few size pressures for Star Trek ships, you don't have to shrilly repeat yourself.

I obviously do.

since nobody else has ships more powerful than Sovereign, who cares?

Oops, you're an idiot.

I'M not the one who claimed you build the largest ships you can you know.

I even explained it in baby talk for morons like you; there is nothing like the need to build a larger ship to mount larger guns to penetrate thicknesses of armour, because eveyrone can hurt everyone. Phasers are physically small. The driving force behind design appears to be FTL speed, range and power system endurance, not giant guns or huge shield generators.

You explained why that doesn't hold true for TREK. The very fact that you felt you NEEDED to very much indicates that you think it DOES hold true otherwise.

LordOskuro wrote:A minor sidenote, wasn't the Defiant an actual battleship prototype? As in "once we get rid of all the useless crew space and science labs, we get a much more compact ship"?

Well, see, here's the thing. The Defiant was designed from the ground up to be a warship. That means no families onboard, no holodecks, no science labs, no exploratory duties - its role was to fight and win battles. If that makes a ship a battleship, what the hell, why not?

Cpl Kendall wrote:

Stark wrote:You mean they don't bother using them to defend important worlds from attacks?

It's more likely in my view that they're just not worth it. Scimitar was just a death-star after all, Negh Var isn't really that big, D'deridex is air, etc.

Or we coudl bolt a rollbar and third nacelle on a Sovereign...

No I mean that they don't really jive with the Federations whole "seek out new life" thing. I imagine it would be hard to justify the expense of a km long warship and that it would be tough to justify "we come in peace" with a dreadnought. If they have them, they are probably restricted to Federation space itself. Though I would have thought they would have popped up in DS9, if they produced them.

Which for me has always been avery annoying aspect of Trek. Trek is FULL of Bad guys. The Cardassians, the Romulans, the Klingons the Dominaion... Aside from the Vulcans, virtually every "Large" power in Trek is a militaristic group out to get everyone else! Now obviously this is largely Writers fiat... if the galaxy was full of Vulcans, there wouldn't be much Story would there?

But you would think, you would just think that after all this time the Federation would have got the idea to turn just a LITTLE bit more militaristic in the way they do things! Alas, once more we have the writers to blame for this. After all we can't have actually force of arms save the day OH NO! It always HAS to be the noble and virtuous principles of the Federation that saves things rather then, oh, lets say a fleet of battleships >_<

Who cares, you ridiculous tryhard? We are talking about Star Trek and not a naval history trivia quiz!

If you're saying the federation could build signficantly more 'powerful' ships than Sov but doesn't because it's useless, you're agreeing with me while showing te world you're a stupid cunt.

If you're saying they'd never build anything more powerful than Sov unless there was a doctrinal need, you're ignorant of history and agreeing with me AND a stupid cunt.

So do we actually have a disagreement or what?

Crossroads Inc. wrote: Which for me has always been avery annoying aspect of Trek. Trek is FULL of Bad guys. The Cardassians, the Romulans, the Klingons the Dominaion... Aside from the Vulcans, virtually every "Large" power in Trek is a militaristic group out to get everyone else! Now obviously this is largely Writers fiat... if the galaxy was full of Vulcans, there wouldn't be much Story would there?

But you would think, you would just think that after all this time the Federation would have got the idea to turn just a LITTLE bit more militaristic in the way they do things! Alas, once more we have the writers to blame for this. After all we can't have actually force of arms save the day OH NO! It always HAS to be the noble and virtuous principles of the Federation that saves things rather then, oh, lets say a fleet of battleships >_<

*shrug* Well they do always come out on top regardless of whether they have them or not.

Lets just bolt that third nacelle and roll bar on the Sov and call it a day.

Edit: FFS, fixed my quote tags.

Stofsk wrote:Well, see, here's the thing. The Defiant was designed from the ground up to be a warship. That means no families onboard, no holodecks, no science labs, no exploratory duties - its role was to fight and win battles. If that makes a ship a battleship, what the hell, why not?

Well, if the thing has better combat performance than larger ships, then being smaller is an advantage.

Of course I've seen very few episodes with the Defiant in it, mostly the introduction when Sisko explains what it is, Trials and Tribbleations, and First Contact, so I'm not particularly aware of its performance.

The Defiant is pretty much the White Star of DS9. (Oh yeah, I went there.) When Sisko's flying it, it can tip the balance of power in the Mirror Universe. Although perhaps I'm being uncharitable; Thomas Riker of all people humiliated the Cardassian Empire with it.

Later on a bunch more are built and they show up in big battle scenes from time to time, but the generic examples aren't empire-shatteringly good. Guess that cloaking device works wonders.

Oh, and a generic Defiant flown by a bunch of cadets goes up against a Dominion Battleship and gets reamed, but considering the sheer tonnage difference there it takes the big ship a hell of a long time to swat the Defiant. So really, I think of them as mini-Galaxies that are less explosion-happy, and the Federation should be churning the things out twice a week.

Worf managed to almost lose to an Excelsior flying the Defiant, but the Excelsior was seriously upgunned with the latest Starfleet console-exploders and both sides were trying extremely hard not to kill anyone.

Does Worf ever win anything when in command of the Defiant? Seriously the guy's an Alabtross. As far as I can recall. He gets the shit pounded out of him by the Lakota, is totally disabled fighting the borg, gets chased away during the Siege of AR-558 and accidently blows up klingon civilians in one episode.