Carriers in Star Trek

[Tribble]

It should be noted that the Defiant was captured on its first mission into the Gamma Quadrant. It cannot be overstated just how much intel the Dominion would have gained from that one action alone.

IIRC at that time shields were still useless against Dominion weapons / transporters and Dominion scanners could see through cloaks... so they were kind of at a disadvantage from the start. They did manage to blow up a Jem-Hader fighter without being destroyed in the process though, which is a better result than what happened to the Odyssey.

And to be fair the track records of other TNG-era ships' maiden missions isn't exactly stellar either. The E-D surrendered in its first episode and Voyager was stranded in the DQ due to Janeway's deep personal stupidity.

[Lord Revan]

To be fair The Enterprise surrendered to the Q a being so smore advanced then the federation that he might as well be a god and with The Voyager it was more a rash spur of the moment call that stranded not calmly made massively idiotic call, basically Janeway made a wrong call when under time constraint that happens and we shouldn't judge her too harshly for that (there's plenty of evidence to judge her later on).

it's easy to say we should do this when the enemy isn't breathing down our necks and we have all the time in the world to formula our plans.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Defiant would have won that fight if they hadn't been cloaked with shields down / weapons not powered. Remember they turned off all non-essential systems as well.

10 months later, they went up against 150 Jem Hadar ships, killed 12 of them and got out alive.

6 Battlebugs would not normally be an issue for the Defiant.

[Borgholio]

To be fair The Enterprise surrendered to the Q a being so smore advanced

I too, would surrender to a god of S'mores.

[Crazedwraith]

Strange thing about the Defiant. Starfleet doesn't seem to know just how good it is/the stock version isn't as good as the hero ship. There a couple of instances to spring to mind: In Homefront, Starfleet doesn't know about it's ablative armour. And second the Valiant can only pootle along at like Warp 4 until they run across Nog and he shows them the fix O'Brien developed to solve that issue. Combined it implies to me that the USS Defiant has had a lot of fixes and upgrades that have not been incorporated into the 'stock' version so Starfleet may not be aware of its full value.

Even so, the second point I'd make is that we don't know much a Defiant 'costs', it may be small but is also a collection of unique or very rare techs. Especially when it was built. Quantum torpedoes, armour, pulse phasers etc. Packing everything in a small tough hull, maybe that costs as much as more capable multirole cruiser like a Norway/Steamrunner etc. So they might not want to build them in peace time.

That's a Watsonian explanation. For a Doylist one, DS9 having a war fought with wolfpacks of Defiants making up the bulk of their forces, would be yet another strange co-incidental aping of B5 and it's Whitestar Fleet. They probably want to avoid that. Plus they already had the models for the variety of ships. (Though they did kitbash somemore for the fleet scenes)

[SilverDragonRed]

Would the Defiant-class be considered a dead end on the technology evolutionary tree, or a totally useless piece of junk?

[Lord Revan]

To be fair The Enterprise surrendered to the Q a being so smore advanced

I too, would surrender to a god of S'mores.

SO MUCH MORE ADVANCED. English is a second language for me I'm bound to make a typo or 2 from time to time.

[Borgholio]

To be fair The Enterprise surrendered to the Q a being so smore advanced

I too, would surrender to a god of S'mores.

SO MUCH MORE ADVANCED. English is a second language for me I'm bound to make a typo or 2 from time to time.

I know, just poking fun. I wish there was a god of S'mores though...I'd worship him over the FSM any day!

[Tribble]

To be fair The Enterprise surrendered to the Q a being so smore advanced then the federation that he might as well be a god

True, though it doesn't change the fact that within 20 minutes of meeting the new ship, it surrenders Also the E-D (and TNG Galaxy-class vessels in general) had the habit of blowing up if someone looked at them funny, and was ultimately taken out by a 20+ year-old BOP. Given the safety record of that thing, I think I'd actually be safer on the Defiant.

with The Voyager it was more a rash spur of the moment call that stranded not calmly made massively idiotic call, basically Janeway made a wrong call when under time constraint that happens and we shouldn't judge her too harshly for that (there's plenty of evidence to judge her later on).

it's easy to say we should do this when the enemy isn't breathing down our necks and we have all the time in the world to formula our plans.

Their torpedoes do have timers and can be transported onto another ship, given that they were trying to figure out a way to use the array while preventing the kazon from getting it one would have hoped that someone would have had enough brain cells to figure out the "leave a bomb behind" tactic. If anything, Chakotay needs to share some of the blame here as was supposedly an expert in "advanced tactics" and had been leading a guerilla war.

Defiant would have won that fight if they hadn't been cloaked with shields down / weapons not powered. Remember they turned off all non-essential systems as well.

10 months later, they went up against 150 Jem Hadar ships, killed 12 of them and got out alive.

6 Battlebugs would not normally be an issue for the Defiant.

Exactly, I don't get why people see the Defiant as some kind of failure, since it's obvious that it can handle itself quite well. The Defiant-A (the renamed Sao Paulo) appeared to be just as good as the original, minus the cloaking device.

Strange thing about the Defiant. Starfleet doesn't seem to know just how good it is/the stock version isn't as good as the hero ship. There a couple of instances to spring to mind: In Homefront, Starfleet doesn't know about it's ablative armour. And second the Valiant can only pootle along at like Warp 4 until they run across Nog and he shows them the fix O'Brien developed to solve that issue. Combined it implies to me that the USS Defiant has had a lot of fixes and upgrades that have not been incorporated into the 'stock' version so Starfleet may not be aware of its full value.

While that's true at the time of Homefront (the Lakota was also heavily upgraded without most people knowing about it) by the time of "What you Leave Behind" Starfleet seems to be building Defiants to Sisko's specs as the Defiant-A seems to do as well as the original (minus the cloaking device).

IIRC, the Valiant was stuck at warp 3 and Nog's modification let them reach warp 4. Later on Nog is able to help them reach warp 6. Given that the Defiant's top speed is warp 9+, it's hard to say exactly what was causing the problem - IMO it's a combination of previous battle damage and the crew's inexperience.

Even so, the second point I'd make is that we don't know much a Defiant 'costs', it may be small but is also a collection of unique or very rare techs. Especially when it was built. Quantum torpedoes, armour, pulse phasers etc. Packing everything in a small tough hull, maybe that costs as much as more capable multirole cruiser like a Norway/Steamrunner etc. So they might not want to build them in peace time.

Or it could be that once the tech entered mass-production the costs went down and the Defiant actually became pretty cheap to build. Or it could be that it's fairly expensive to build, but not so cost prohibitive that they won't build any. We do see more Defiants than Intrepids or Sovereigns, so it seems like Starfleet decided to go ahead and build some.

That's a Watsonian explanation. For a Doylist one, DS9 having a war fought with wolfpacks of Defiants making up the bulk of their forces, would be yet another strange co-incidental aping of B5 and it's Whitestar Fleet. They probably want to avoid that. Plus they already had the models for the variety of ships. (Though they did kitbash somemore for the fleet scenes)

Also the writers and/or producers thought that the audience would be too stupid to figure out that there could be multiple ships of the same class and get all confused. It's why we never saw a Sovereign and only saw another Intrepid once, because they didn't want the audience to confuse them for the E-E or Voyager.

Would the Defiant-class be considered a dead end on the technology evolutionary tree, or a totally useless piece of junk?

That's kind of a loaded question isn't it? "Are the Defiants dead end or are they already useless and should be scrapped"?

Answer is: we don't know if they are a dead-end branch. We don't know how easy it is to build a Defiant (apart from the fact that we see more of them than the Sovereign and Intrepid), and we don't know how easy it is to upgrade one. It might be difficult, but then again it was able to accept a Romulan cloaking device with relative ease, so its hard to say. How hard would it be to add things like regenerative shielding and a better warp core? It's probable that it wouldn't be able to handle things like the Quantum-Slipstream drive that Voyager brought back (nor is it likely that any other ship could for that matter) but as for the rest we're not sure. The design was still relatively new at the time of ST: Nemesis.

What we do know is that after Sisko and co. worked out the kinks it became one of the most powerful / maneuverable warships in Starfleet, and given what we saw on screen I'd hardly call it a "useless piece of junk". At the very least the Defiant-class proved that the concept worked. I'm not saying Starfleet should be only building Defiants, but given their performance there is no reason to assume that they are failures destined for the scrap heap. It's pretty clear that the Galaxy-class is Starfleet's favourite though, given that we see so many of them (especially in EndGame, where there was ~11 waiting for the Borg Sphere compared to 2 Defiants, a Nebula, a Prometheus and a couple of Excelsiors / Mirandas).

[Prometheus Unbound]

Could someone sum up a list of issues they think exist with the Defiant. I'm happy answering point by point but at this stage of the thread I'm confused as to what the contention points are

[Tribble]

Could someone sum up a list of issues they think exist with the Defiant. I'm happy answering point by point but at this stage of the thread I'm confused as to what the contention points are

Going from this thread, the main list of issues people seem to think exist with the Defiant seem to be:

Too slow to be useful
Too expensive / difficult to build
Is a pure warship, and multipurpose ships are always better
Doesn't have long-range or stamina to compete with other ships
difficult to upgrade / can't be upgraded
Starfleet doesn't need it now that the war is over
Bad choice for size - too big to be a fighter, too small to be a multipurpose ship
limited payload / cargo space
Already obsolete with newer designs like the Sovereign and Prometheus
The original Defiant is not an embodiment of the class as a whole, and the class is generally much slower and weaker
Is actually pretty weak to begin with, does not have powerful weapons when compared to other ships and can be taken out fairly easily
Has poor combat record?
Ugly

I disagree with most of them except perhaps the last one, but that should be a pretty good summary to work with

[Crazedwraith]

I disagree with most of them except perhaps the last one, but that should be a pretty good summary to work with

Okay, so what is your explanation for no Defiant wolfpacks?

All I've suggested at least is some ideas why the class was not ubiquitous beyond, 'hurr durr, star trek is stupid'

[Tribble]

I disagree with most of them except perhaps the last one, but that should be a pretty good summary to work with

Okay, so what is your explanation for no Defiant wolfpacks?

All I've suggested at least is some ideas why the class was not ubiquitous beyond, 'hurr durr, star trek is stupid'

Apart from the fact that most of the Dominion War is from the perspective of the DS9 crew so we simply don't see 99% of what is going on?

Aside from the original Defiant, We see two unnamed Defiants as part of the fleet in "Call to Arms," two Defiants and an Akira in "Message in a Bottle," the Valiant, the Sao Paulo (later renamed Defiant-A) and two Defiants seen in Voy "Endgame." That's more than we see of Sovereigns and Intrepids, so by your logic the presumption should be that Starfleet built more Defiants than Intrepids and Sovereigns, right? Or ships like the Ambassador-class, which we hardly ever saw?

And given the Valiant's orders and that the majority of other Defiant appearances have them working in pairs, it looks like they do work in wolf-packs, or at least that Starfleet tends to assign more than one into the same task-force.

[Crazedwraith]

Yeah. We saw a few Defiants here and there. No-one's disputing that as far as I know. Compare to the numbers of Galaxys or Akiras we see though. Or Steamrunners to a lesser degree. It's clear that while a decent design the Defiant wasn't wildly successful the same way they were.

BabelHuber seemed to suggest they should have become the workhorse of the fleet and be built in vast numbers. Which it wasn't. And while I commented on the stuff about the design, the most likely Watsonian explanation is that it's a warship/combat optimised and that's not what Starfleet builds much of.

[Formless]

Crazedwraith, I think you are asking the wrong question (even if it was in response to someone else's stupidity). Remember, officially the Defiant class is an "escort," and while that is acknowledged in the show to be a Starfleet code word for "warship," (just as the Prometheus is officially meant for "deep space tactical missions," i.e. military deployments) it may nonetheless be a valid description of how Defiants are intended to fight. The ship may have a lot in common with Birds of Prey, which absolutely do operate in squadrons or packs, but tactically it would make sense from Starfleet's perspective to have Defiants supplementing the firepower of larger, preexisting vessels. Its just that the Defiant herself was attached to a station rather than a fleet and would later serve as Sisko's personal flagship after Admiral Ross made Sisko his adjutant. What we should expect to see isn't wolf packs of Defiants, we should expect to see Nebula class, Galaxy class, and Akira class ships flanked with Defiant class escorts whose job is to prevent those Jem Hadar battlebugs from using the same ramming tactics that destroyed the Odyssey. And that's precisely what we saw in Message in a Bottle: after the Romulan hijackers disabled the Nebula class ship Starfleet sent after the Prometheus, they upped the stakes by sending an Akira flanked by two Defiant escorts. And that was a mission where they were expected to face off against three Romulan Warbirds and potentially destroy the Prometheus herself to protect state secrets. Clearly they had high expectations of the little ships and the Akira they were flying with if they thought the three of them could fight outnumbered and outgunned.

As for how they intended the Defiant class to operate in battles against the Borg when she is such a small craft, I'm betting that they had Riker's tactics in mind from Best of Both Worlds, where he likewise used small ships (shuttles) and maneuvers designed to confuse the collective consciousness to penetrate their defenses (like spraying antimatter all over the place to confuse their sensors), and boarding tactics on top of that. Remember, starfleet also looked into new hand weapons to fight the Borg such as the pulse phasers Voyager was equipped with and the TR-16 sniper rifle slugthrower, so they obviously had a bunch of different ideas in mind for just how best to deal with Borg threats. Its probably not as simple as "we need a ship with guns as big as possible that won't rip apart the space-frame." You need all the wits you can muster to fight the Collective.

Now, if we want to talk ship classes that seemed to be obsolete right out of the gate, the Intrepid class is actually one of the least seen in the show when you get down to it. Sure, Admiral Ross made the Bellerophon his flagship, but we only actually saw it once onscreen, and we saw no other Intrepids participate in the war. Later, when Voyager arrived back home, the fleet intended to intercept the Borg sphere had no Intrepids in it, although OoU this was likely because they didn't want anyone to mistake one of those ships for Voyager herself. And they never used it in the 26'th century during ENT from what little we saw. Maybe it was because the loss of Voyager on her first mission hurt starfleet's confidence in the design, or maybe it just made them take a closer look at those bio-memetic gel packs and realized it was probably a bad idea to use computers that can literally be disabled by an infestation of ticks and fleas. But whatever the case the only major non-kitbashed ship class that is more scarcely seen is the Sovereign class. In terms of ship count, the Defiant class is a relative success.

[Lord Revan]

We should also remember that we saw a rather small part (if an important part) of the Dominion War, so it's possible that there was Defiant wolf-packs of screen, we should remember that what see on-screen isn't always the whole truth.

[Crazedwraith]

Yes. The Defiant wolfpacks probably formed the vanguard for a fleet consisting entirely of Sovereigns and Intrepid class ships as well.

[Lord Revan]

Yes. The Defiant wolfpacks probably formed the vanguard for a fleet consisting entirely of Sovereigns and Intrepid class ships as well.

no need to be snide, I just pointed out that our evidence is incomplete and we should be careful as to what conclutions we make from it (that also includes that we shouldn't assume there's massive fleets of ships we generally don't see). However we can probably assume that Enterprice (NCC-1701-E) did fight in the Dominion War even though we never saw it do that.

[Crazedwraith]

Fair enough, we don't know what happen off screen. But we have no evidence for it so we can't just assume there were tons of Defiant class there. There were NULL Defiants in other fleets. I personally would assume there were more there than in the fleets that we did see. Which was max of three but usually only the Defiant herself.

[Tribble]

Pretty much the only thing we know is that there are more Defiants in the fleet than Intrepids and Sovereigns, but less than Steamrunners, Akiras and Galaxies. Since you have been implying that the Defiants must have been a failure if they weren't that numerous, I presume that the Intrepids and Sovereigns must be even more of a failure since we see less of them?

[Crazedwraith]

In the case if Intrepids maybe. In the case of Soveriegns are absolute top of the line, first rate style vessels. You wouldn't expect to see a lot of them.

And to be clear, I might have given that impression but I don't see the Defiant class as a failure. They're good at what they do but it's clear to me their not becoming the next Miranda or Excelsior and being the backbone of the fleet for the next century. Again, not trying to argue they're crap. Just against BabelHuber's notion that they should be the be all, end all for Starfleet.

[Lord Revan]

In the case if Intrepids maybe. In the case of Soveriegns are absolute top of the line, first rate style vessels. You wouldn't expect to see a lot of them.

And to be clear, I might have given that impression but I don't see the Defiant class as a failure. They're good at what they do but it's clear to me their not becoming the next Miranda or Excelsior and being the backbone of the fleet for the next century. Again, not trying to argue they're crap. Just against BabelHuber's notion that they should be the be all, end all for Starfleet.

I think the problem is that when people here don't seem to take the needs of Starfleet into account, also they seem to misunderstand what "effective deterrent" means, it doesn't mean "I can beat you when ever I want" but rather "it's not worth the cost to fight me".

After all even founder of the klingon philosophy (such as it is) said "to win a battle but loose an empire is no victory" and "to end a battle to save an empire is no defeat".

That said UFP must maintain a balance of seeming so hard to beat that trying to do so would spell the end of the Klingon Empire, while same time seeming not strong or aggressive enough to seem a clear threat to the Klingons. Purely military designs like the Defiant-class (bare in mind that both the Sovereign and the Intrepid are still multi-role explorers not warships) can tip the balance too much on the "threat" side of things if overused.

[BabelHuber]

There's a fairly persistent pattern of maximum sustainable speed being at least .4 to .5 warp factors below emergency maximum, with cruising speed being a good deal below that.

There is also a fairly consistent pattern of Federation starships having protruded Warp nacelles.

Does this .4 to .5 difference also apply to ships with nacelles integrated into the hull?

The Federation isn't stuck with the options "build Defiants" and "rely on obsolete ships."

No, the options are

- Build cruisers
- Bulid less cruisers plus a plethora of cheaper, specialized ships plus dedicated warships

There is not a lot of evidence of Federation ships being sent around for pure 'flag-showing.' The closest they come is diplomatic missions and the like. For those, a Defiant could do about as good a job as another ship... but from the point of view of the Federation it would send entirely the wrong message to send their envoys aboard a lean, mean, fighting machine.

Why? The message would be very clear: We are peacefully negotiating with you in good faith, but note that we also can take different measures if necessary.

My argument is that the specific resources utilized on the dedicated warships could more efficiently be used on the cruisers. Or, for that matter, light multirole frigates.

Even a light multirole frigate is a waste of money if an even cheaper freighter can do the same job. I'm talking about optimizing efficiency by better utilizing of resources, and I don't think you can achieve much solely with multirole ships.

If the science crew is a problem, just stop putting science crews aboard the ship.

And if the engineering crew is a problem, just stop putting engineers aboard the ship!

It may well be that a ship which does not require trained engineers to operate will have performance so low that it is effectively useless. There's no point in building a pirate-chaser that is too slow to catch the pirates, or too weak to beat them when it catches them.

Pirates are no uniform fraction in ST! You can have low-tech pirates in a backwater area where a few Peregrines are enough to keep them at bay. Even using cheap frigates would be a waste of resources here.

Then you have pirates who are much better equipped, so you better send some cruisers.

And then you have areas where there are no pirates, but you still have to protect trade and to make sure that no illegal cargo is transported, When the area is sparsely populated, you'd use the cheap frigates because you have longer missions (one frigate has to patrol a large area).

We don't actually see much evidence of Mirandas being in use except after the emergency war mobilizations of the late TNG and mid-DS9 era. In which case I see no reason to assume the Mirandas ARE in regular use- but in a war emergency they have to be brought out of storage and recrewed. Sure, a frigate design might be better in some ways, but not in others, and you'd have to build those ships, whereas the Miranda hulls are already sitting around waiting to be used.

No. From the start of the Dominion war, we immediately see Mirandas. It's clear that they are still in active use and that they have to be used for frontline service.

I'd expect mothballed ships to be used for second line duty, since the ships which performed these missions during peace time would be technically superior.

Additionally, you again ignore the fact that using Mirandas is resource-heavy because they are outdated, but require a crew with the same qualifications as a newer vessel! Not to speak of spare parts etc. - you need an extra logistic chain for those, which adds costs!

Hence it would still be much more valuable for the Federation to have small, standardized cheap ships performing second line duty, while crews with good qualification need to have a good ship! It's borderline insane to waste qualified personal in death traps at the front line!

Why would the Federation council give up being able to decide whether it is more important to deliver the medicine or secure the neutral zone, by removing the choice from their hands by reducing the size of their multirole fleet?

Because the Federation council should recognize that their logictics network is seriously fucked up if cruisers have to be regularily used for "emergency" missions.

So instead of using cruisers as a stopgap measure, they should establish a strategy to supply their colonies in a way that doesn't waste valuable resources.

Perhaps it made sense to have a fleet of only multirole ships when the Federation was small, let's say in teh ENT period. But by TNG, it is clear that this strategy is suboptimal.

[BabelHuber]

We should also remember that we saw a rather small part (if an important part) of the Dominion War, so it's possible that there was Defiant wolf-packs of screen, we should remember that what see on-screen isn't always the whole truth.

But we saw the most important battle, the battle of Cardassia Prime.

The Federation went all-in, but the deciding factor was that the Cardassians switched sides.

If the Federation would have fleets of Defiants, Intrepids and Souvereigns, we would have seen them in this battle. But they were not there, so these fleets most probably don't exist (Occams Razor).

[BabelHuber]

Just against BabelHuber's notion that they should be the be all, end all for Starfleet.

I'm talking about a fleet with lots of specialized ships, with Peregrines, freighters, frigates, cruisers and warships!

I'm not proposing to replace cruisers with Defiants, but leaving everything else as-is. Is this so hard to get?