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Intrepid does seem to be prety reasonably balanced design although I think I might change out the computer system with having a full backup standard computer. The fact is that it has only been 10 years (I am actually thinking about and I don't think enough Intrepids could be built to replace all Excelciors and/or Miranda class. Kind of like the US still uses Spruance and Perry class vessels even though they are really obsolite.

Not all no, but quite a few should be in service given 10 years of shipbuidling time of a definate proven design.

The list list the class, lists the references they use for the class, the list then lists the name of a ship, the references that support the vessel, and then some small tidbits of information on the vessel. In some episodes, they show multiple ships of a class and the author does not see names just state it as:

<Unnamed Akira Class> [ 3+ ]
DS9 "What You Leave Behind"

The way it is listed, you can tell how official it is. Now, since only the movies are considered cannon, that gives what is considered truly official.

Nifty. While I find it hard to belive that Lakota spec refits were in the major battles shown in DS9, I would personally ensure that if I had em, they would be there if at all possible.

I must agree with the concept that the Miranda's days are numbered. It is how old? I believe that something like 80 years elapsed between the last of the TOS (not including the beginning of Generations) movies and the first TNG episode. Figuring that they were 20 or more years old already and them about 15 years may have gone on between the begining of TNG and the end of DS-9. Figure then 10 years, we are talking about 125 year old ships there. The last of the Excelsiors may have been commissioned 20 years aft the last movie, maybe up to 30, You have ships from 75 to 85 years old. Still, pretty darn old but much higher capabilities. One reason why I am considering old ships is that they might be able to steal some old mothball ships. My other conscept is that badly damaged Excelsiors may be brought back from the main lines and while being repaired being rebuilt at the same time.

Which is why I said I wanted to phase them out as soon as practical. They were good ships, but they just aren't good enough to compete with modern designs. Thats why if I had the option of crewing a Miranda or a new Intrepid fresh off the yards, I would decomission/mothball the Miranad and crew the Intrepid.

Akira [3+]
Excelsior [2+]
Galaxy [2]
Miranda [7]
Peregrine [7+]
Steamrunner [2+]

Small question, What are the[+#] for?

As a writer, we have to take ideas which seem to contridict each other and create somnething that makes sense.

Exactly what I had to do for "Terran Empire". Found it was easier to rectify most of them by setting it in a parallel Trek universe, where I could tweak things to better fit my view of the tech. (like cloaking devices not working for stealth when shields and weapons are used, not that they take obscene ammounts of energy and hence one cannot even have open portals with chemical rockets fireing from them as weapons. )

What I forgot to add is that it would also do terrible things to the Moral of races which are affected to be ordered to use their transporters when they know this trap might be used.
I could even see
Commader: "You will get on that Transporter"
Lead Marine: Draw blaster and fire

Assumes that:
1) enemy cares what happens to boarding parties (for instance it wouldn't work vs. Jem'Hadar)
2) enemy would continue to exercise a tactic that no longer works.

If I was the enemy CO, it would only work once, then I would send in assault shuttles to force the issue witha good old fassioned forced breaching.

I am really thinking in terms of "Could they create the assets, including planetary defense stations, to be able to drive away or destroy borg cubes.

Given adaquate time, Hell yes. Just gotta give em enough time to get their industry up and running and most of the problems of foreign militaries would go away.

What I mean was in terms of the Republic being formed in the first place. Would they trade with them, would they attempt to attack them, woudl they treat them as a real player? I woudl say that the Republic would not wish to share of the theoretical Voyager supertech taht they managed to acquire, wanting to use it themselves.

Federation - All depends on how deep the new post Dominion War/ Borg Incursion pro-military mindset goes in the Federation, as well as how violent/bloody/painful the split to form the Republic was.

Klingons - likely treat the Republic the same if not better (more pro military mindset is more agreeable to the Klingon warriors) than they treat the Federation.

Romulan - All depends on how deep the new post Nemesis desire for peace goes in the Romulan government. And weather or not they guage the Republic as a threat or not.

As for the Voyager ubertech, I aswell see virtually no reason why the Republic would want to spread it's key advantages over it's neighbours (that it may oneday wish to conquer) so readily just to get "throwaway" ships. Go for yards and now you might have something, for you can build ANY KIND OF SHIP YOU WANT/NEED rather than getting 2nd rate castoffs.

Assuming the size of the cloaking device in the TOS series where Kirk steals one, they seem to be relatively small and the Federation also has a old Bird of prey. The Klingons have sold the Maquis cloaking technology as well and that might be a pipeline to more recent technology. The Republic may even be able to buy it off the Klingons in my opinion.

They just might be able to buy it from the Klingons. I have my doubts as to weather the Klingons sold top of the line cloaks to the now dead and shattered Maquis. And like I said, they are very likley to have the plans for at least older cloak designs on file in the database, so making one, while not immediately top of the line, would be acceptable.

looking ast some calculations, I may have under calculated teh number of Federation ships. A size of 1200 to 1600 might be a more accurate number for combat capital ships.

Considering that they lost hundreds of ships in with IIRC 2nd fleet during the Dominion War in a single engagement, I still think that's a conservative estimate.

I will admit, Enterprise-E lacked the Transphasic Torpedoes and Albative Armor. If I didn't have access to them, obviously I could offer to trade it. However, there are a bunch of explainations as to why they didn't have it.
Debate among Starfleet Command to employ it (if they were, they are all stupid) Studying it so it be be put on ALL Federation ships (likely I'd say. After all, more then likely, Future Admiral Janeway brough back spec to make it perfect for Voyager quickly, instead of standard issue for her time Generators) or there is the chance Enterprise-E simply hadn't be fitted with them yet.
In reality, more then likely, the writer of Nemisis didn't know about them, or was told to ignore them.

The Enterprise E was over Earth for the intial marriage ceremony. Transphasic torps apparently can be fired DIRECTLY from standard photon tubes (no modification), of wich the Big E had quite a few photon tubes to use. Therefor, not chance that it "simply hadn't been fitted with them yet.

Ocham's Razor - Federation took most tech and is either studying it thoroughly for ways to improve it and place it in all refit schedules, or is keeping the entire thing under their hat for temporal concerns. Either way, I doubt the Republic would have access to it.

As for the Phase Cloak, I agree, that might have to be redeveloped. However, unless they executed everyone that survived the 'Pegasus incident' and completely purged all records of it from the Enterprise-D, it should be redevelopable fairly quickly.

Why? IIRC the only people to survive the Pegasus incident were then Ensign Riker and his then Captain. The Enterprise D would also have only a handful of individuals that know more than a working phase cloak was used. Geordi did most of the reinstalation IIRC, with maby a few other engineers to help him. If they are sworn to secrecy, the actual number of people with USEFUL information on just HOW A PHASE CLOAK WORKS would be QUITE SMALL. All you are likely to have is rumors and smalltalk amongst some crew of the E-D that they have a working phase cloak. That doesn't give you any clue as to how it works and what's it made up of. And judgeing from the problems the Romulans had getting one to work, it isn't something you want to have malfunction.

And that's if the prototype isn't looked away somewhere, possible in the hands of Section 31. After all, wouldn't it be in the best interest of the Federation to simply apologize to the Romulans, SAY it was destroyed, and then one day if the Treaty that keeps the Federation from using Cloaking tech is removed, start deploying Phase Cloaks? I mean , the Romulans know about the incident, so it could be done. I'm not going to try to figure out how. That's pointless without know more about the Treaty, how Starfleet Intelligence, Romulan Intelligence and Section 31 all work, etc.

Good theory, and one that I would personally do, just so that I have a working model handy should the need arise to have them in play. Just that it's highly unlikely that the Republic would have access to this hidden example right?

As for spare ships, I don't mean spare MODERN ships. I meant old ships floating a surplus depots. Like in the two-part episode with Spock. That federation depot they checked into had an old Klingon D-7 battlecruiser floating in it, and I think I spotted a few TOS Movie era hull designs too.

Getting them in NUMBERS is going to be the problem. After the Romulans lifted some of them for TNG "Unification I & II", I'm virtually certain that the Feddies seriously tightened security of their surplus depots. You might be able to lift some the first few times, but after that, you'll be facing a Fed Fleet sitting in the depot wondering why you want their old ships?

AS for the Breen, I don't care how old the space hulls are, same with the Gorn and Tholians. I just want metal shells with warp drives.

Not efficient use of your resources. You are giving away all your first rate tech edge for what ammount to disposable ships that are gonna get creamed by a modern battlegroup.

Also, the Breen where not in the war for that long. I've seen estimates they only lost 10% of there fleet before the Dominion lost, and I'm willing to believe that because of how few actual engagements the Breen where in. There biggest contributaition seemed to be the Energy-Dampening weapon.

But it's not battle losses I'm reffering to. It's imposed reduction of fleet strength by the F/K/R Alliance to ensure that there isn't another assault on Earth or another allied world. The Breen were on the loosing side, their weapons system cost quite a few ships, and they attacked Earth. I seriously don't see the Federation just letting what they did slide. Their fleet would be severely cut down in size if I was the F/K/R Alliance.

I'm glad we agree that the Cardi's probably don't have surplus ships. If they did have any 80+ year old hulls, Garek or whoever was in charge there would be an idiot it they were not putting them into service until better ships could be built.

Yup.

As for the weak ships and crunch time, like I said, I'm just taking the hulls and slapping weapons and shields on them. As long as they take some federation ships with them, I'm happy

But see, IMHO they WON'T take some Feddies with them. They are too ramshackle and old to do that.

Also, refits seem to require yard slips just as much as shipbuilding does in Trek, so I stand by my opinion that having a large fleet of alien vessels that require extensive refits to be combatworthy is a poor use of resources.

That still doesn't mean that they don't drool at the though of profit.
Let me put it another way. Real life, Look at post-war Iraq right now. There are companies just begging for the chance to help rebuild because of the profit to be had. Imagine going into Ferengi space and saying "hey, help me build ships cheap, and you can sell anything you want to prime-direct protected planets" they'd do it

Yes. But from the gist of your thrust, you want to keep this as quiet as you can. Now just who do you think Rom is going to be talking to when he inevitably learns that Ferengi are building a hell of a lot of warships for the new Republic? And what happens if Section 31 get's involved and decides that you are a threat to the Federation?

I know I don't have that right, but you also have to remember, i plan to conquer the Federation, and thereby GAIN that right.

And you're gonna tell this to the Ferengi?!?! They'll sell you out in a heart beat. And even if they honor a contract stating they can't, who's to say that a disgruntled employee won't blow the whistle to Nagus Rom or the Federation itself?

Like I said, far better to get YARDS, not ships. You get the yards, you can do whatever the hell you want in secrecy without anyone finding out what you want built.

(I'm assuming as commander of the Republic fleet, I was a fairly high ranking member of Starfleet, possible one of the top Admirals).

Which by no means guarrentees that you would have knoledge of any of the tech you want, let alone access to it.

I do realise all those species use different parts. The point is, I DON'T CARE. I'm just strapping weapons to them to go blasting with while I build good ships. Hell, I'd be happy just putting shields on them and using ramming tactics.

So you'd be willing to give your best tech to the enemy merely to get a throaway ship in return?!? That's like paying a million bucks for a Happy Meal in my books. Far better to buy the Mc D's Franchise (shipyards) IMHO.

I agree, the Holocrews COULD be a problem. However, i'm also not stupid. That can be protected agains. Write-protecthing the computer cores, and i mean PHYISCALLY doing it might be a start. Jamming fields to block subspace communications would be another.

Then the Federation would merley field that holodisruption weapon 7, Harry and the Doctor encountered. Relying on holograms is a Very Bad Idea. As a stopgap or supliment, yes. As actual crew replacement, no. Just to many things that can go wrong with that plan.

Also, like I said, I just want the ships to fight. Hell, after I took out starfleet, they'd all be recycled. I just want flying weapons

And with refitting all those hulls, you would be much farther ahead designing a simple warship from scratch and building it yourself rather than trying to refit a bunch of alien vessels to accept Federation weapons and power them adaquately and protect them enough to allow them to get to the fight without being blown to hell and gone by a stray photon before they even get into position.

For as effective as they would be to you, you'd be far better off making as many Deltaflyers or upgraded Tac-Fighters as you could, since they are throwaway ships anyhow.

AS for the 8 species, again, I just want battle wagons. Hell, like I said, even just using them to ram would be good.

Refitting can very well take LONGER to do than merely making a fresh ship if it's as extensive as you are proposing (new engines, new weapons, new defenses)

With redesign warp cores, I don;t mean brand new designs. I'm talking stuff like what Darth Wong has suggested. Stuff like more shut down methods, and maybe making it so that if the magnetic fields start to collapse, that causes something else that gets rid of the antimatter, etc.

Sure seemed like you did, for you said you wanted to use/incorperate Romulan MQS cores into Feddie designs in order to gain an advantage.

Sorry I misunderstood you.

I know the Trek holograms go nuts on occasion, or more then that. I'll risk it for a short term war.

I'm sure it will be a short term war. For you. Then the Republic will onceagain be part of the Federation.

I never said anything about high speed manevering with the asteroid ships. Aim, and go to full speed.

Which is likely to be really damn slow as otherwise the asteroid will tear itself apart due to it's inherent structural instability.

If they miss, that's okay. I could just cover them with warhead launchers to offset that.

Making the large rock in essence a large floating bomb wating to be blown up by enemy fire, hence defeating the purpose of the large rock in the first place.

Or just aim them at planets instead

If it can go to warp at all, it's gonna be pretty damn slow warp, cuz of the stresses. It's why we never see mobile asteriod weapons systems in trek. Getting em mobile is a bitch.

okay, the Isokinetic Cannon SOUNDS like a Mass Driver. Just a big honking one.

No, it isn't. Infact, its pretty damn tiny, for Voyager's outside appearance changed not a bit with it's instalation. And since it's never heard from again, I think that Janeway and co. got fleased by a 24th century used car salesman/infomercial host. Going from canon, it obviously didn't work out for them as well as advertized, else it would have been seen in later epps.

Also, if it was banned, why would Voyager be trying to buy one? I mean, Janeway for the most part tried to still follow regulations and treaties. If she wasn't, she could have gone to her engineering crew

Not talking about the Isokenitic cannon, talking about the other things on the wish list.

"okay, make a cloaking device, we have old romulan and klingon designs on file" or else she could have tried to buy one. I don't remember any other societies that used cloaking tech in Voyager, but it stands to reason that they did run into some.

They did. Voyager could have developed it's own cloaking device as well from the database. They didn't because that was the one rule that Janeway chose never to bend or break along the trek home. Every other one she did though, which just reinforces her stupidity. Just look at how manytimes being invisible would have saved Voyager's bacon, or a shuttles, or a crewmans...

Verteron Particle weapons being banned, I'm not sure about. It's POSSIBLE that they are. However, Pichard didn't say they'd violeted any weapons ban in that episode. More then likely, the writers forgot it.

Or they were banned as A RESULT OF THE EPP. Writers forgot it isn't a reason that's applicable in universe. (much as I'd sometimes like it to be)

Just plug the new cores in, In parellel to the old ones.

NOT. THAT. SIMPLE. Ships are designed. You cannot just go cutting up main engineering to slip in another warp core. Lord knows what else you'd have to redsign/move to get it to fit. That's a REALLY FRELLING BIG REFIT JOB. Far more efficient to redesign a ship with multiple warp cores and then build from scratch.

They all feed into the same grid, just run a power cord to it.

Yes, BUT, unlike your powerbar, you cannot merely plug in another light/warp core and place it wherever you like. What if right through where it would go is the central computer core? Or a primary power lead to the ventral phasers? Or a major EPS trunk? Or the datalink to the primary sensors? Everything in a ship is there for a reason, cuz that's where the designer said it fit best to get from it's point A to it's point B. Now if you go throwing in another warp core, you need not only to rearrange all that stuff to make room for it, you also need to link up with the AM feeds and the power out feeds, causing even more things to be rearranged. Then you have to worry about adaquate access for repairs/maintanance, not only for your new systems, but for the rearranged old ones. Then you have to worry about how safe the new systems locations are. What good is another reactor if it causes your power leads to become more exposed and hence easier to disable? It's nowhere near as simple a job as you are making it out to be. And it's very likely to take up even more resources/time/costs to do it rather than scratch build a new multi cored design.

I agree, that's more complicated and takes up more room with an M/AM reactor, but that's why I'm gutting the quarters down to next to nothing. Instead of 500 apartments, 50 apartments and lots of empty room for power grids

Again, if the refit is that extensive (look at TOS to TMP era Connie refit), then it's gonna take a HELL OF A LONG TIME TO DO. Hence, it isn't something you want to be doing if you wanna start a war.

Also, check this thread for a discussion on Alpha/Beta Quad race fleet numbers:

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=20671

Happy Target

You seem like someone I'd want on my team to figure these things out or help make them workable.

Part of my plans assumes I have lead time going into it.

Since we are rapidly sucking up this thread, I have a better idea.

I'm seriously considering turning this into a Fan Fic of sorts. Want to help me out by me bouncing ideas off ya and you giving me your imput?

If so., PM me

If not, that's life

Not all no, but quite a few should be in service given 10 years of shipbuidling time of a definate proven design.

Alright, a reasonable assumption might be that the core of Federation fleets are composed of Intrepid class vessels with older vessels rounding it out and slowly being phased out. Was is called a cruiser in the show or was there no designation, I cannot remember. Also, is it likely that the Republic would continue building Intrepid class or would they concentrate on Defiant class exclusively.

Nifty. While I find it hard to belive that Lakota spec refits were in the major battles shown in DS9, I would personally ensure that if I had em, they would be there if at all possible.

How would you tell the difference in fast moving screen. They could all be Lokota style refits or none of them could be. I don't know of anything concrete which we can use to tell. One sadvantage that the Excelsior might have over defiants is the ability to throw more torpedoes around and I cannot see how it would not have a higher payload of torpedoes.

Which is why I said I wanted to phase them out as soon as practical. They were good ships, but they just aren't good enough to compete with modern designs. Thats why if I had the option of crewing a Miranda or a new Intrepid fresh off the yards, I would decomission/mothball the Miranad and crew the Intrepid.

On your side, another advantage of the Intrepid is that you can crew 2 to 3 Intrepid class (Depending on what source you use for crew size) for on Miranda. In the same regard, you can crew 5 to 7 Intrepid class for one Excelsior.

Small question, What are the[+#] for?

My assumption from looking at the list is that the author attempted to count the number of ships during screen shots. In the action, it is hard to tell how many he/she actually saw but believes that at least that number of the class were counted and maybe more. I assume, for example, that there were far more Peregrine class.

Exactly what I had to do for "Terran Empire". Found it was easier to rectify most of them by setting it in a parallel Trek universe, where I could tweak things to better fit my view of the tech. (like cloaking devices not working for stealth when shields and weapons are used, not that they take obscene ammounts of energy and hence one cannot even have open portals with chemical rockets fireing from them as weapons.

Well, my biggest tweak is the problem with battles. As far as I can tell, in the last DS9 episode, the two fleets decide to drop out of space and decide to fight in the middle of open space. Now, what makes more sense to me is is that starships cannot enter FTL near a star and that the first battle was fought in the outer eddge of the Cardassian system. Of course, my concept produces problems like making the Picard manuever pretty much impossible.

Assumes that:
1) enemy cares what happens to boarding parties (for instance it wouldn't work vs. Jem'Hadar)
2) enemy would continue to exercise a tactic that no longer works.

If I was the enemy CO, it would only work once, then I would send in assault shuttles to force the issue witha good old fassioned forced breaching.

I agree with you. One of my first posts was about the development of assault shuttles to replace using transporters. I would also assume my enemy will do the same thing to me.wz

Given adaquate time, Hell yes. Just gotta give em enough time to get their industry up and running and most of the problems of foreign militaries would go away.

Also, given the defenses mounted on DS9, a trully incredible orbital defense platform could be built. I think one that could actually stop a borg cube might be possible as well. It wouls also make planetary attacks very dangerous.

Federation - All depends on how deep the new post Dominion War/ Borg Incursion pro-military mindset goes in the Federation, as well as how violent/bloody/painful the split to form the Republic was.

As a writer, I probably would seriously think about making it pretty messy to create a story about it. Also, I could see government leaders thinking that the Rebellion / Republic does not know what they are doing. Are there any examples of members of the Federation leaving the fedaration and what did the Fedartion do?

Klingons - likely treat the Republic the same if not better (more pro military mindset is more agreeable to the Klingon warriors) than they treat the Federation.

While far more pro-military than the Federation, they are not the bloody dagger in their teeth mindset that the Klingons seem to have. The Klingons really seem to lack any form of military discipline.

Romulan - All depends on how deep the new post Nemesis desire for peace goes in the Romulan government. And weather or not they guage the Republic as a threat or not.

I do want to keep a badguy, I am thinking that the grand peace movement fails at least partially.

As for the Voyager ubertech, I aswell see virtually no reason why the Republic would want to spread it's key advantages over it's neighbours (that it may oneday wish to conquer) so readily just to get "throwaway" ships. Go for yards and now you might have something, for you can build ANY KIND OF SHIP YOU WANT/NEED rather than getting 2nd rate castoffs.

Shipyards would be a very high priority and they may work on speading them out far more than the federation so one sucessful raid would not destroy a large portion of their manufacting ability.

One problem was that I did not watch alot of voyager and missed alot of the Ubertech. I was talking to a firend about Interphasic torpedoes. One problem I am having is would not teh Fedartion use thses weapons against the Republic and would it not create an almost unwinnable situation for the Republic.

They just might be able to buy it from the Klingons. I have my doubts as to weather the Klingons sold top of the line cloaks to the now dead and shattered Maquis. And like I said, they are very likley to have the plans for at least older cloak designs on file in the database, so making one, while not immediately top of the line, would be acceptable.

What would you give as advantages of top of the line over older cloaking devices, more effective or something more radical. Someone was telling me that in Nemesis that the Romulan ship was firing while in Cloak. I also would assume there might be some odds and sods left and as weakened as teh Cardassians are, the Maquis might be able to hold a bit of territory.

Considering that they lost hundreds of ships in with IIRC 2nd fleet during the Dominion War in a single engagement, I still think that's a conservative estimate.

You may be right but the problem is that depending on what I look at, I get numbers anyweher from only about 600 to about 6000. Also, the relative scarcity of starship in many key battles of the series / movies puts the question "Where are all the ships?" for example, assuming that the Federation even has 1000 heavy capital ships and assume a borg cube coming in, they shoudl have sent something on the order of 500 ships against it if we go by 'Enterprise' and that the Klingon homeworld can be reached in three days.

Getting them in NUMBERS is going to be the problem. After the Romulans lifted some of them for TNG "Unification I & II", I'm virtually certain that the Feddies seriously tightened security of their surplus depots. You might be able to lift some the first few times, but after that, you'll be facing a Fed Fleet sitting in the depot wondering why you want their old ships?

Well, I think it would be that you could succeed once not even a few times. There might be a smash and grab early in the war. The Reopublic would raid a Federation depot, steal anything they could quickly, and then smash the rest so that the Federation could not reactivate them.

Also, I would not want to use anyone elses ships. Reading reports of trying integrate American and British systems during ww2 and they are on the same planet and the same race, I don't want to imaging the problem of integrating technology from different races. I suppose it could be done but you could probably refit Excelsiors easier or build new ships. Also, the crews would be very unformortable in the ships of other races.

Not efficient use of your resources. You are giving away all your first rate tech edge for what ammount to disposable ships that are gonna get creamed by a modern battlegroup.

But see, IMHO they WON'T take some Feddies with them. They are too ramshackle and old to do that.

I agree again, also would the crews want to serve in they knew they were just being used as throw-away. I am sure Moral would suffer greatly. Always remeber the human aspect.

Also, I think of it this way, we rebelled against the Federation to get better freedom, we may be willing to die to protect that freedom but we are not willing to die to force ourselves on the rest of the Federation.

Which by no means guarrentees that you would have knoledge of any of the tech you want, let alone access to it.

I imagine that throwing asteroids at planets will go over very well <g>
His Rebublic would fall from their own peoiple rebelling.

You seem like someone I'd want on my team to figure these things out or help make them workable.

Well, I've put in a lot of time thinking out much similar stratedgies both for my own fan fiction and a story debate I'm involved in over at Spacebattles. It's all just a matter of taking modern day reasoning and making it fit in the Trek universe.

Part of my plans assumes I have lead time going into it.

Lead time is always a plus.

Alright, a reasonable assumption might be that the core of Federation fleets are composed of Intrepid class vessels with older vessels rounding it out and slowly being phased out. Was is called a cruiser in the show or was there no designation, I cannot remember. Also, is it likely that the Republic would continue building Intrepid class or would they concentrate on Defiant class exclusively.

IIRC it is about the size of and fulfills the role of a Cruiser. IMHO I would focus initally on making Defiant class ships to built up a sufficient picket force. Once that was done, then I'd begin to worry about other classes.

How would you tell the difference in fast moving screen. They could all be Lokota style refits or none of them could be. I don't know of anything concrete which we can use to tell. One sadvantage that the Excelsior might have over defiants is the ability to throw more torpedoes around and I cannot see how it would not have a higher payload of torpedoes.

The extra set of impulse engies is pretty obvious in most aspects. As is their phaser strips and quantum torpedoes. I never saw any of those in the Excelsiors in any of the major Fleet vs. Fleet engagements in DS9. (unlike the upgrades to the Galaxies) I'm perfectly willing to be shown otherwise though, as I am of the belief that if Starfleet had em, they sure as hell would have been involved. It's just that IMHO there is no canon evidence that they were. (shrugs)

On your side, another advantage of the Intrepid is that you can crew 2 to 3 Intrepid class (Depending on what source you use for crew size) for on Miranda. In the same regard, you can crew 5 to 7 Intrepid class for one Excelsior.

Which is great. It means you can not only have new hulls in service, but are able to crew MORE new hulls than the older designs. Larger fleets are always nice.

My assumption from looking at the list is that the author attempted to count the number of ships during screen shots. In the action, it is hard to tell how many he/she actually saw but believes that at least that number of the class were counted and maybe more. I assume, for example, that there were far more Peregrine class.

Ahh, ok. I wonder how many of those are recounts though, for with cuts and scene shifts, it's a royal pain to figure out which ship is which. Made even worse as most of the CGI models had the same registry and name on em from what I've heard.

Well, my biggest tweak is the problem with battles. As far as I can tell, in the last DS9 episode, the two fleets decide to drop out of space and decide to fight in the middle of open space. Now, what makes more sense to me is is that starships cannot enter FTL near a star and that the first battle was fought in the outer eddge of the Cardassian system. Of course, my concept produces problems like making the Picard manuever pretty much impossible.

Damn producers/writers/tech advisers ignoring TOS style warp fighting...

For an in universe reason, it's likely because if you have two massive fleets fighting in a massive furball at warp, it's gonna be a real pain to ensure that there are not accidental collisions, both with nearby planetary bodies and other ships. Seems the simplest explanation, as it doesn't contradict the other evidence that says they can indeed and regularly do go to warp inside a star system/near a planet/near a star.

I agree with you. One of my first posts was about the development of assault shuttles to replace using transporters. I would also assume my enemy will do the same thing to me.wz

I would have transporter inhibitors onboard my ships that are only deactiveated when authorized transporting is allowed and only have it drop in the transporter room. That's how the TE operates, cuz it's just to easy to transport in boarders/KO gass/Nerve gass/beam out people in a military situation once the shields fail.

From Nemesis, it would seem that starfleet agrees with me now for their new refit schedule. The Big E lost a arc of her primary shields, yet there seemed to be a secondary, lowerpowered shield grid that likely incorperated anti transport measures as well that works on a deck by deck basis. That's why they "lost the shields on deck 29 and the Remans beamed over".

Also, given the defenses mounted on DS9, a trully incredible orbital defense platform could be built. I think one that could actually stop a borg cube might be possible as well. It wouls also make planetary attacks very dangerous.

I know. Which is why I said Hell Yes they could, but only if given enough time and resources. We KNOW they can build a whuppass offensive weapons system emplacements (by what they did to DS9 to upgrade her offensive and defensive ability) Now if you ringed your worlds with em, they could very likley obliterate most conventional assaults, even by Borg Cubes.

As a writer, I probably would seriously think about making it pretty messy to create a story about it. Also, I could see government leaders thinking that the Rebellion / Republic does not know what they are doing. Are there any examples of members of the Federation leaving the fedaration and what did the Fedartion do?

Off the top of my head, none. But the Federation is also not forcing worlds to join, which leads me to think they won't force worlds to stay either. There are many worlds within the Federations boarders that are not Federation members. If someone else knows of a member world leaving, please post it, cuz my memory is drawing a blank on any examples.

While far more pro-military than the Federation, they are not the bloody dagger in their teeth mindset that the Klingons seem to have. The Klingons really seem to lack any form of military discipline.

I know. Which is why I think that the Klingons would treat the Republic the same or slightly better than they do the Feddies. Their strong support for a strong military is a good thing to build a friendship uppon. If not, then they should treat them at least the same as they do the Federation, for the Republic and Federation are not THAT different from eachother.

I do want to keep a badguy, I am thinking that the grand peace movement fails at least partially.

Then Romulans are your most obvious culprit. The Klingons would have both little reason to attack, and likley to little resources to pull it off.

Shipyards would be a very high priority and they may work on speading them out far more than the federation so one sucessful raid would not destroy a large portion of their manufacting ability.

But only disperse them enough so that you can still defend them with a concentrated fleet presence and fixed fortifications. Otherwise, ONE strike won't take em all out, but a BUNCH of weaker strikes would do the job instead.

One problem was that I did not watch alot of voyager and missed alot of the Ubertech. I was talking to a firend about Interphasic torpedoes. One problem I am having is would not teh Fedartion use thses weapons against the Republic and would it not create an almost unwinnable situation for the Republic.

All depends. They could be banned by a new treaty the Federation signed with the other major powers in order to maintain peace and the balance of power. Or they could be banned for fear of REALLY messing up the timeline. Or they could merely be studying them in preparation for their instalation fleet wide. We just don't know one way or the other.

What would you give as advantages of top of the line over older cloaking devices, more effective or something more radical.

From canon, the advantages are that older cloaking devices weren't perfect if you knew what to look for. They blocked most sensors, but still had something that gave them away, but was usually not something that was actively scanned for or old style sensors weren't capable of high enough fidelity to pick up the likley subtle differences. Modern sensors often CAN pick up older style cloaks in some way, so the newer ones likley minimise or change the stuff that "leaks through" the cloaking system to be detectable by sensors.

(shrug) For a fan fic, you could tweak the cloak to be as good or bad as the plot requires.

Someone was telling me that in Nemesis that the Romulan ship was firing while in Cloak. I also would assume there might be some odds and sods left and as weakened as teh Cardassians are, the Maquis might be able to hold a bit of territory.

Maquis were wiped out by the Dominion for the Cardassians duiring the Dominion War. And the Reman Warbird Schimitar could indeed fire while cloaked, and had shields while cloaked, with no known betraying sensor signiture. Laforge: "His cloak is perfect."

Also, the relative scarcity of starship in many key battles of the series / movies puts the question "Where are all the ships?" for example, assuming that the Federation even has 1000 heavy capital ships and assume a borg cube coming in, they shoudl have sent something on the order of 500 ships against it

And we know they didn't because?... They were fighting the thing for like 2 days IIR First Contact Correctly. Lord knows how many ships the Cube blew through in that time.

Well, I think it would be that you could succeed once not even a few times. There might be a smash and grab early in the war. The Reopublic would raid a Federation depot, steal anything they could quickly, and then smash the rest so that the Federation could not reactivate them.

Most of em looked pretty smashed already. There weren't to many complete hulls in the depot scenes I've seen. A few yes, but most have likely been scavenged for spares and the like. Sorta like going into a wrecking depot and looking for a used car that runs. (shrug)

Also, I would not want to use anyone elses ships. Reading reports of trying integrate American and British systems during ww2 and they are on the same planet and the same race, I don't want to imaging the problem of integrating technology from different races. I suppose it could be done but you could probably refit Excelsiors easier or build new ships. Also, the crews would be very unformortable in the ships of other races.

EXACTLY MY POINT! Far better would be try to get working shipyards with your carrots rather than a bunch of ships that are 2nd rate and very likley require extensive refits to be spaceworthy, let alone battleworthy.

I agree again, also would the crews want to serve in they knew they were just being used as throw-away. I am sure Moral would suffer greatly. Always remeber the human aspect.

He did. He wanted to place holograms on them to run em IIRC. Still not a very good idea, but at least it isn't a totally bad one.

I assume that most of the Federation's "Top admirals" are as much political appointees as they are good officers. You may get some good fleet service admirals but none of the top brass. Granted, I would rather have fighting admirals.

Me to. And the fighting admirals are likley even LESS knoledgable of Starfleet and Federation's little secrets than a desk jockey would be.

crews would not be a major problem.

Agreed. You should have a sufficiently large population base, as well as most would likley be eager to serve in the military given the reasons they split in the first place.

I imagine that throwing asteroids at planets will go over very well <g>
His Rebublic would fall from their own peoiple rebelling.

Likely. While there is a fundimental difference of opinion between the Republice and the Federation over how the defensive side should be run, I personally cannot see such a large gulf in how OFFENSIVE operations should be conducted. IMHO the Republic would be "We won't start any wars, but we sure as HELL will FINISH THEM!"

One suggestion to enhance the equipment of your Republic from the start:

Some years prior to the declaration of the Republic, just make use of the planets that want to leave the Federation, and secretely build up a ship yard X years before. A small amount of Starfleet Officers could train crews in secret. Even if you lack the ressources to build up a huge fleet there, you can produce and man a few, let´s just say a few dozen, dedicated warships.

Additional to 1/3 of Starfleet, you would have power at your hand that can give you the edge.

Additionally, the project could be set up in a way that a massive ramp-up of efforts could immediately start after the decaration.

This way you wouldn´t have to start up from scratch and you wouldn´t have to rely on fancy technology and trades.

Just my 2 cent.

^ Good idea. Especially if this is something that's been simmering for quite some time and not a knee jerk reation to the latest hippy, we don't need a military crap.

I'd standardize on ship designs, at least on the military side. I'd try to keep it to the Akira, Defiant, Sovereign, and maybe one or two more. Its foolish to have 8 million different classes, each with its own logistic support structure.

That's a good idea actually, and a good point.


I'd go like this
Warship/Battleship: Soverign Class (upgunned with a weapon's pod)
Secondary Warships/Support Fighters: Defiant
Missle Cruisier: Akira Class
Exploritory Ships: Intrepid, possibly Galaxy

the rest of Starfleet I'd moth ball/phase out. Heck, if I could fit 16 warhead launchers on a Soverign, I'd be tempted to mothball the Akira class, unless they are a much quicker build.

I'd keep only Sovvies, Akiras, Intrepids and Defiants, which would act as battleships, cruisers, destroyers and gunships respectively. Everything else would be mothballed, sold, or canniballized for parts.

IIRC it is about the size of and fulfills the role of a Cruiser. IMHO I would focus initally on making Defiant class ships to built up a sufficient picket force. Once that was done, then I'd begin to worry about other classes.

Alright, you would work hard to maintain any new vessels you manage to acquire (Akira, Defiant, Galaxy, Intrepid, Nebula, Norway, Soveriegn, Steamrunner, and any others - any you assume are old classes?) but mainly work on building Defiants. I would add to your concept some sort of missile boat as a support vessel. If the Akira is the best design but might also consider a smaller design for faster production. Also, a strong consideration would be to refit some of the ships into torpedo ships, that might be easier to do than upgrading other weapon systems. Any old ships would be kept on a hostilities only basis but upgraded excelciors would be kept in mothball status while I probably would scrap Miranda, Centaur, Ambassador, and Constellations.

The extra set of impulse engies is pretty obvious in most aspects. As is their phaser strips and quantum torpedoes. I never saw any of those in the Excelsiors in any of the major Fleet vs. Fleet engagements in DS9. (unlike the upgrades to the Galaxies) I'm perfectly willing to be shown otherwise though, as I am of the belief that if Starfleet had em, they sure as hell would have been involved. It's just that IMHO there is no canon evidence that they were. (shrugs)

I read a long time ago on a USS Excelsior web site and think I remeber it from the movie Generations that NCC 1701-B USS Enterprise had those extra set of impulse engines. It has been a while so I cannot remeber from visual evidence but the list also lists the Enterprise-B being of the improved Enterprise class. I don't know if we could tell from many of the longer distance screne shots if they have the extra impulse engines. Also, I have some captured screen shots and it looks like the Lakota has standard style phaser mounts. Remeber that the Enterprise-D once fired phasers from its torpedo launchers so if the beams look like array style shots, that could just be lazy artists. It has been so long since I have seen taht episode that I cannot remember.

Which is great. It means you can not only have new hulls in service, but are able to crew MORE new hulls than the older designs. Larger fleets are always nice.

Another trade would appear to be that Akira needs a crew of around 500, which is anywhere from slightly less than an Excelsior to almost a third less. I would definately prefer an Akira as a support platform for a Defiant over an Excelsior.

Ahh, ok. I wonder how many of those are recounts though, for with cuts and scene shifts, it's a royal pain to figure out which ship is which. Made even worse as most of the CGI models had the same registry and name on em from what I've heard.

In honesty, the writer may have made mistakes or may have only counted the number seen on the screen at one time. My assumption is that the writer did the best he could and that he is at least close.

For an in universe reason, it's likely because if you have two massive fleets fighting in a massive furball at warp, it's gonna be a real pain to ensure that there are not accidental collisions, both with nearby planetary bodies and other ships. Seems the simplest explanation, as it doesn't contradict the other evidence that says they can indeed and regularly do go to warp inside a star system/near a planet/near a star.

Space is still massive, a "furball" in space is far less likely than one might expect. The trek writers really need a "here is why" type so that space combat can be done by a set of rules by what is possible and not possible. One of my problems is that while space is huge, so is a star and it might actually have an effect on space combat and running into a star is a bad thing. I know we may disagree on this concept but then again I don't believe that the combat system for 'Starfleet Battles' works like the episodes for example.

I would have transporter inhibitors onboard my ships that are only deactiveated when authorized transporting is allowed and only have it drop in the transporter room. That's how the TE operates, cuz it's just to easy to transport in boarders/KO gass/Nerve gass/beam out people in a military situation once the shields fail.

In combat, gasses would be close to useless against the republic due to wearing some type of hostile environment suit in combat. This is comman in more that just Webers novels, at least David Drake and Elizabeth Moon do this. Each suit woudl also have a jammer to inhibit transporting which the commander would have the codes to lock out (after all, if you are using transporters, it would be a nice idea to be able to transport that crewmember whio is trapped by a support beam out of the compartment.

I know. Which is why I think that the Klingons would treat the Republic the same or slightly better than they do the Feddies. Their strong support for a strong military is a good thing to build a friendship uppon. If not, then they should treat them at least the same as they do the Federation, for the Republic and Federation are not THAT different from eachother.

You are correct that the fedartion and the Rupublic would be more alike than different and the Republic would have no particular interest in Klingon Territory.

But only disperse them enough so that you can still defend them with a concentrated fleet presence and fixed fortifications. Otherwise, ONE strike won't take em all out, but a BUNCH of weaker strikes would do the job instead.

One item that can be done with all the scrapped hardware is that the weapon systems can be used in the fixed fortifications. There would also have to be a balance between the number of shipyards and the defenses. If you are building alot of Defiant class, there should also be some ships working up near the shipyard. Onther trick would be to build a couple of secret shipyards. Maybe put them in orbit of a neutron star, white dwarf, or white giant.

All depends. They could be banned by a new treaty the Federation signed with the other major powers in order to maintain peace and the balance of power. Or they could be banned for fear of REALLY messing up the timeline. Or they could merely be studying them in preparation for their instalation fleet wide. We just don't know one way or the other.

Hmm, I have to think about what introducing a Los Angeles class submarine would do in ww2. Ther is nothing that could deal with it and it "Might' even be carrying a few nukes if it was from during the Cold War. A possibility might be that the technology is being developed in a secret facility where the locvation of the base is exposed and the facility might be destroyed. The weapon (that I have heard of) that seems the most dangerous is the intraphasic torpedoes and am curious what defenses you think could stop it. I am thinking that shields from the same timeline could stop teh torpedoes.

From canon, the advantages are that older cloaking devices weren't perfect if you knew what to look for. They blocked most sensors, but still had something that gave them away, but was usually not something that was actively scanned for or old style sensors weren't capable of high enough fidelity to pick up the likley subtle differences. Modern sensors often CAN pick up older style cloaks in some way, so the newer ones likley minimise or change the stuff that "leaks through" the cloaking system to be detectable by sensors.
(shrug) For a fan fic, you could tweak the cloak to be as good or bad as the plot requires.

One of the New advantages the republic cloaks might have is the ability to fire while cloaked but not shielded (like in Undescovered Country). I would not want to do this with a major combat vessel but this would work for deFiants which the armor would keep the ship in good stead. This of course was probably be concept when building the Bird of Prey.

Maquis were wiped out by the Dominion for the Cardassians duiring the Dominion War. And the Reman Warbird Schimitar could indeed fire while cloaked, and had shields while cloaked, with no known betraying sensor signiture. Laforge: "His cloak is perfect."

My belief is that the Federation (and everybody else) would emediately begin working on a way of detecting the cloaking device. It could come to some type of new technology or it could be just creating even more sensitive sensors. It could be like the submarine technology war that has gone on between the US, British, and Russians. You would have to expect that the Romulans would use the cloaking devices if they attack the Republic. It could make a storyline where the Republic has massive losses the first battle and then develops defenses against it. How did the Enetrprise detect the ship to be able to fire back? I woudl think taht some sort of spray phaser (like a present day naviagtional laser) which does not damage but when teh beam hits, you fire at that location.

With the Maquis, I just that in history the term 'wiped out' has been used when the actual situation is not quite as extreem. My assumption is that some secret bases survived and that some ships survived (Half dozen). They then formed some sort of new colony, maybe in a very secret place to start. I know it is not cannon but it seems quite possible.

And we know they didn't because?... They were fighting the thing for like 2 days IIR First Contact Correctly. Lord knows how many ships the Cube blew through in that time.

I can see that but it really does not seem that a Borg cube can survive the hits of 500 starships by the amount of damage the ships seen in combat seemed to be doing. The Defiant seemed to be doing alot of surface damage very quicky. Two days of that alone would seem to have destroyed the cube. Do you assume one cube or a fleet of cubes came in? Boy, i wish that Paramount made more sense. <g>

Most of em looked pretty smashed already. There weren't to many complete hulls in the depot scenes I've seen. A few yes, but most have likely been scavenged for spares and the like. Sorta like going into a wrecking depot and looking for a used car that runs. (shrug)

Being that I have gone to wrecking yards to pick up parts for my car, there are usually a few cars that are run and I would assume that you would have a mix of mothballed ships (Probably Constitutions, Constellations, Mirandas, and Excelsiors) which might be towable away and then refitted for additional service. Whatever they cannot get (parts / ships, ect), they would blow away so that they cannot be used. If there were crews, they would probably give a bit of time for the crews to be able to evacuate.

He did. He wanted to place holograms on them to run em IIRC. Still not a very good idea, but at least it isn't a totally bad one.

I don't really trust holograms from the very few episodes I have seen about them. The same with any kind of android and I do not really like the idea of transporter clones either. For a solid fleet of good vessels, you should have plenty of crews available.

Some years prior to the declaration of the Republic, just make use of the planets that want to leave the Federation, and secretely build up a ship yard X years before. A small amount of Starfleet Officers could train crews in secret. Even if you lack the ressources to build up a huge fleet there, you can produce and man a few, let´s just say a few dozen, dedicated warships.
Additional to 1/3 of Starfleet, you would have power at your hand that can give you the edge.
Additionally, the project could be set up in a way that a massive ramp-up of efforts could immediately start after the decaration.
This way you wouldn´t have to start up from scratch and you wouldn´t have to rely on fancy technology and trades.

These are all good ideas but I don't know how I will play it in my story.

I'd standardize on ship designs, at least on the military side. I'd try to keep it to the Akira, Defiant, Sovereign, and maybe one or two more. Its foolish to have 8 million different classes, each with its own logistic support structure.

I agree but I would not scrap fairly new ships just because they are not one of those classes.

Kitsune wrote: Remeber that the Enterprise-D once fired phasers from its torpedo launchers so if the beams look like array style shots, that could just be lazy artists. It has been so long since I have seen taht episode that I cannot remember.

Chalk that up to YATI(Yet Another Trek Inconsistentcy) and lazy FX dept. That torpedo launcher was also used as a tractor beam emitter at one time, so I seriously doubt that the Feds could put all three systems in that small of an area.

Alright, you would work hard to maintain any new vessels you manage to acquire (Akira, Defiant, Galaxy, Intrepid, Nebula, Norway, Soveriegn, Steamrunner, and any others - any you assume are old classes?) but mainly work on building Defiants. I would add to your concept some sort of missile boat as a support vessel. If the Akira is the best design but might also consider a smaller design for faster production. Also, a strong consideration would be to refit some of the ships into torpedo ships, that might be easier to do than upgrading other weapon systems. Any old ships would be kept on a hostilities only basis but upgraded excelciors would be kept in mothball status while I probably would scrap Miranda, Centaur, Ambassador, and Constellations.

Agreed, but for most I would wait untill I had a place to send the crews before doing so (you likley already thought of this, but it never hurts to make sure). Beaching the crews of your older designs that are being scrapped isn't the best sloution. Far better to wait till you have shipyards online and new ships to tansfer them to.

I don't know if we could tell from many of the longer distance screne shots if they have the extra impulse engines. Also, I have some captured screen shots and it looks like the Lakota has standard style phaser mounts. Remeber that the Enterprise-D once fired phasers from its torpedo launchers so if the beams look like array style shots, that could just be lazy artists. It has been so long since I have seen taht episode that I cannot remember.

And if we cannot see them, we still have no way of knowing for sure that they were present. (shrug) I believe that if they were in service, they would be there. Just that we don't have the canon evidence to back it up.

Another trade would appear to be that Akira needs a crew of around 500, which is anywhere from slightly less than an Excelsior to almost a third less. I would definately prefer an Akira as a support platform for a Defiant over an Excelsior.

But one has to suspect Federation crew numbers, for they no doubt include the science personelle. Most of those could be elminated from the crew totals as they won't be onboard the new warship versions. Though I would likley offset most of those losses in marines and more engineers and medical staff, for better security, damage control and triage.

In honesty, the writer may have made mistakes or may have only counted the number seen on the screen at one time. My assumption is that the writer did the best he could and that he is at least close.

I agree.

Space is still massive, a "furball" in space is far less likely than one might expect.

Agreed. But given the TNG+ Era generally short ranged engagements, it equates to a couple hundred ships to a side in a limited volume manuvering at FTL, I think that both sides use impulse to limit colisions. Especially since there appears to be no C&C independant of the Bridge, no Combat Information Centers to help organize a fleetwide engagement and no dedicated combat datalink to keep at least allied ships from accidentally hitting eachother (system of data transmission that tells other ships of manuvering intentions before they show up on sensors).

Given that no one in the Trek universe in the TNG+ Era is especially competent/advanced in the military department, it would seem that fighting at impulse and short range is done by both sides to minimise blue on blue incidents and collisions. Fighting at warp greatly increases the likleyhood of collisions at low ranges between fleets (as the high FTL speed greatly reduces the effective reaction times a helmsman has to change course when something flits across their path). It also limits sensor systems, forcing far greater occurance of BVR fighting. If a allied ship takes damage, it could be mistaken for an enemy without being able to see it's visual profile, so this is also something to consider. (I don't really like it, and would be far more happy with some tactical means of supressing the formation of a warp field bubble being the cause of the shift to virtually exclusive STL battles.)

The trek writers really need a "here is why" type so that space combat can be done by a set of rules by what is possible and not possible.

Yes. They need an explicit tech bible and need to be forced to stick to it and it's particulars. It is something I have done for Terran Empire, and it is something I am watching my new fellow co-writer like a hawk over. I want to have excellent internal consistancy, as the lax nature of it in canon is one of the things irritates me the most about Trek.

One of my problems is that while space is huge, so is a star and it might actually have an effect on space combat and running into a star is a bad thing.

Agreed. Given high FTL speeds, a very slight miscalcualtion could result in collision with a nearby spacial body very quickly.

I know we may disagree on this concept but then again I don't believe that the combat system for 'Starfleet Battles' works like the episodes for example.

Yup. There should be a standardized set of guidelines in place from the beginning for use in ALL things related to Trek.

In combat, gasses would be close to useless against the republic due to wearing some type of hostile environment suit in combat. This is comman in more that just Webers novels, at least David Drake and Elizabeth Moon do this.

And rightly so. And ESPECIALLY so with a system like the transporter available. One would think that a spacefaring race that knew of the transporter would take every precaution to protect against all the ways it could be malevolently used. (mutters curses about low budgets for TOS setting precident that Trek doesn't use at the bare minimum HASMAT suits to protect against such attacks)

Each suit woudl also have a jammer to inhibit transporting which the commander would have the codes to lock out (after all, if you are using transporters, it would be a nice idea to be able to transport that crewmember whio is trapped by a support beam out of the compartment.

Great minds think alike. I was just about to suggest such a thing.

One item that can be done with all the scrapped hardware is that the weapon systems can be used in the fixed fortifications. There would also have to be a balance between the number of shipyards and the defenses. If you are building alot of Defiant class, there should also be some ships working up near the shipyard. Onther trick would be to build a couple of secret shipyards. Maybe put them in orbit of a neutron star, white dwarf, or white giant.

Good, good.

The weapon (that I have heard of) that seems the most dangerous is the intraphasic torpedoes and am curious what defenses you think could stop it. I am thinking that shields from the same timeline could stop teh torpedoes.

Likely that future defenses can stop/limit interphasic torps. Otherwise, it's basically a one shot kill weapon and I really don't like that idea. It also would mean that future ships are photon boats that are designed for the express purpose to spit out as many of the intraphasic torps as quickly as possible against as many targets as possible.

My own pet theory is that they are primarily/exclusively anti-Borg weapons that somehow induce a cascade failure of some sort in the Borg ships due to the Borg ships unique design in realtion to just about everybody elses ships in the Trek universe. In a ship with very little centralized systems, where everything is dispersed to almost every section of the ship equally, I would think this is a potential achillies heel as well as a strength. (shrugs) Again, we just don't know enough about how they function to decide one way or the other how effective they would be agianst both future defenses and non-Borg ships.

One of the New advantages the republic cloaks might have is the ability to fire while cloaked but not shielded (like in Undescovered Country). I would not want to do this with a major combat vessel but this would work for deFiants which the armor would keep the ship in good stead. This of course was probably be concept when building the Bird of Prey.

A small, mobile target, that is only temporarily highlighted by its own weapons fire would be the best application of a fire while cloak with no shields device. Larger ships are bigger targets, and they have beam weapons, which makes counter targeting a very simple thing. But with a small target like the Defiant, that primarily has Quantums and PPCs for weapons, I is much harder to trace back fire for counter attack. Also, ablative armor need not be limited to the Defiant. It should be on the upgrade list for all serving ships when their turn comes in the refit slips.

My belief is that the Federation (and everybody else) would emediately begin working on a way of detecting the cloaking device. It could come to some type of new technology or it could be just creating even more sensitive sensors. It could be like the submarine technology war that has gone on between the US, British, and Russians. You would have to expect that the Romulans would use the cloaking devices if they attack the Republic. It could make a storyline where the Republic has massive losses the first battle and then develops defenses against it.

Agreed. If I was the Feddies and knew that the Romulans had access to a currently perfect cloaking system, I sure as hell would be doing my damnedest to find a way to counter it. Being able to sneak right up to your target and launch your assalut while STILL hiding in perfect sensor blindness is a VERY BIG advantage in combat.

It could make a storyline where the Republic has massive losses the first battle and then develops defenses against it. How did the Enetrprise detect the ship to be able to fire back? I woudl think taht some sort of spray phaser (like a present day naviagtional laser) which does not damage but when teh beam hits, you fire at that location.

They basically sent low powered phaser fire through nearly every emitter in a spray and pray approach. Then when the phasers hit the cloaked schimitar, all weapons in arc trained on her position and fired for as long as they could keep her projected course accurate.

With the Maquis, I just that in history the term 'wiped out' has been used when the actual situation is not quite as extreem. My assumption is that some secret bases survived and that some ships survived (Half dozen). They then formed some sort of new colony, maybe in a very secret place to start. I know it is not cannon but it seems quite possible.

IIRC Eddingtion himself said that they were wiped out. And even if they aren't a small, secret colony isn't much of a threat/potential ally IMHO.

I can see that but it really does not seem that a Borg cube can survive the hits of 500 starships by the amount of damage the ships seen in combat seemed to be doing. The Defiant seemed to be doing alot of surface damage very quicky. Two days of that alone would seem to have destroyed the cube. Do you assume one cube or a fleet of cubes came in? Boy, i wish that Paramount made more sense.

Ochams Razor - Ships were not all together to start with. They were likley pulled from everywhere, and engaged the Cube as they came into battle. Hence it wasn't a 500 vs 1 the whole time. Also, if given some time between waves/concentrated assaults by regroupped Federation forces, the Cube could very well have "Healed Itself" like it did in "Q Who" aafter the E-D's photons blew huge gaping holes in it. The hulls seemed to bend back to normal and grow back together into a seamless Borg hull again.

Being that I have gone to wrecking yards to pick up parts for my car, there are usually a few cars that are run and I would assume that you would have a mix of mothballed ships (Probably Constitutions, Constellations, Mirandas, and Excelsiors) which might be towable away and then refitted for additional service.

Which is why I said a few, with most being unoperable without extensive repairs/refits. Also, I have my doubts that they would keep such valubale commodities as dilithium onboard. And I really think that they have totally no antimatter aboard. The chances of the containment failing would be to great on an old, minimal powered ship with no crew and virtually no manned supervision. So you'd have to bring some fuel as well to get those handful of likely operable ships active under their own power.

I don't really trust holograms from the very few episodes I have seen about them. The same with any kind of android and I do not really like the idea of transporter clones either.

Given the canon history with all of those, I both completely understand and wholeheartedly agree. Hence my point that I think that relying on Holograms for your "suicide junkheaps o'Doom" is a VBI.

For a solid fleet of good vessels, you should have plenty of crews available.

Agreed. Just that for his proposed use for the ships, finding a human/non-synthetic crew would be very hard to do. They ammount to little more than suicide ships.

I'd standardize on ship designs, at least on the military side. I'd try to keep it to the Akira, Defiant, Sovereign, and maybe one or two more. Its foolish to have 8 million different classes, each with its own logistic support structure.

Well really they shouldn't have THAT different needs than their fellows. Internal systems should be virtually the same with things that can be reapired with spares and without a major refit/shipyard layover. Other than that, I would agree that the plethora of designs we have seen isn't the best way to go about things. Far better to have a handful of similar hulls that have vastly different interiors to support their mission objectives.

Agreed, but for most I would wait untill I had a place to send the crews before doing so (you likley already thought of this, but it never hurts to make sure). Beaching the crews of your older designs that are being scrapped isn't the best sloution. Far better to wait till you have shipyards online and new ships to tansfer them to.

Yes but also do forget you want a commissioning crew. Actually, you probably would have commissioning crews bringing ships into service and you woulkd have commissioning crews. As a ship gets closer to being mothballed / scrapped, the crews are reduce while as a ship gets closer to being commissioned, the crew is increased. It will likely be that the crews will not be transfered and the stapping need for trained crews to form petty officers, it is likely that the crews will be spread all over the fleet.

And if we cannot see them, we still have no way of knowing for sure that they were present. (shrug) I believe that if they were in service, they would be there. Just that we don't have the canon evidence to back it up.

I take it you agree that the evidence simply does not exist to support either claim. In that case, is it not the writers choice to see how they want the story to be constructed.

But one has to suspect Federation crew numbers, for they no doubt include the science personelle. Most of those could be elminated from the crew totals as they won't be onboard the new warship versions. Though I would likley offset most of those losses in marines and more engineers and medical staff, for better security, damage control and triage.

Also, don't foget that you will probably want a larger tactical staff, especially oif you want a real CIC.

Agreed. But given the TNG+ Era generally short ranged engagements, it equates to a couple hundred ships to a side in a limited volume manuvering at FTL, I think that both sides use impulse to limit colisions. Especially since there appears to be no C&C independant of the Bridge, no Combat Information Centers to help organize a fleetwide engagement and no dedicated combat datalink to keep at least allied ships from accidentally hitting eachother (system of data transmission that tells other ships of manuvering intentions before they show up on sensors).

Given that no one in the Trek universe in the TNG+ Era is especially competent/advanced in the military department, it would seem that fighting at impulse and short range is done by both sides to minimise blue on blue incidents and collisions. Fighting at warp greatly increases the likleyhood of collisions at low ranges between fleets (as the high FTL speed greatly reduces the effective reaction times a helmsman has to change course when something flits across their path). It also limits sensor systems, forcing far greater occurance of BVR fighting. If a allied ship takes damage, it could be mistaken for an enemy without being able to see it's visual profile, so this is also something to consider. (I don't really like it, and would be far more happy with some tactical means of supressing the formation of a warp field bubble being the cause of the shift to virtually exclusive STL battles.)

Maybe it is the military history buff in me or maybe it is the other science fiction I have read, but I have a problem with starships fighting at what looks like a couple of kilometers in most cases, making manuevers at so slow speeds that a ww2 plane seems to be faster, and other such things that seem rediculous at face value. I wish writers would stop putting ranges in to dialog as well because it just seems crazy. I just tend toi think the writers of both sides (graphics and dialog) have no clue.

Having a CIC is one of the very specific items I would fix on the Republic ships. Flag officers would also have flag staffs as well to support their admirals.

Agreed. Given high FTL speeds, a very slight miscalcualtion could result in collision with a nearby spacial body very quickly.

Also, if you can FTL inside of a system, you would expect a much greater tactical use of the ability that the picard manuever. For example, in David Drakes "Lt. Leary Commanding" shows theoretically how hyperspace attacks could be used and similar tatcics should be doable for Warp drives.

Likely that future defenses can stop/limit interphasic torps. Otherwise, it's basically a one shot kill weapon and I really don't like that idea. It also would mean that future ships are photon boats that are designed for the express purpose to spit out as many of the intraphasic torps as quickly as possible against as many targets as possible.

My own pet theory is that they are primarily/exclusively anti-Borg weapons that somehow induce a cascade failure of some sort in the Borg ships due to the Borg ships unique design in realtion to just about everybody elses ships in the Trek universe. In a ship with very little centralized systems, where everything is dispersed to almost every section of the ship equally, I would think this is a potential achillies heel as well as a strength. (shrugs) Again, we just don't know enough about how they function to decide one way or the other how effective they would be agianst both future defenses and non-Borg ships.

Hmm, I take it these torpeodes take out a borg cube with one hit and seem to be uneffected by borg shields? Maybe use the buzz word 'adaptive shields' for new shield generators. Athor defense might be point defense and the heavy use of decoys until this new shield can be developed. Another situation might be as a said, a raid on the development facilities. Probably not destroy everything but put devlopment back to the point where it will not be useful until the end of the war.

Better watch it, Trekkies will probably be saying that Intraphasic torps can take out a stardestroyer in one hit <g> That may be a question that shoudl be asked.

A small, mobile target, that is only temporarily highlighted by its own weapons fire would be the best application of a fire while cloak with no shields device. Larger ships are bigger targets, and they have beam weapons, which makes counter targeting a very simple thing. But with a small target like the Defiant, that primarily has Quantums and PPCs for weapons, I is much harder to trace back fire for counter attack. Also, ablative armor need not be limited to the Defiant. It should be on the upgrade list for all serving ships when their turn comes in the refit slips.

I agree but I did not think it was important enough to mention.

They basically sent low powered phaser fire through nearly every emitter in a spray and pray approach. Then when the phasers hit the cloaked schimitar, all weapons in arc trained on her position and fired for as long as they could keep her projected course accurate.

Pretty similar to my concept.

IIRC Eddingtion himself said that they were wiped out. And even if they aren't a small, secret colony isn't much of a threat/potential ally IMHO.

Thinking more in the roles of advisors, suggesting ideas on how to deal with the Federation, ideas like that, and a possibility that the Republic may rescue the remaining Maquis.

Ochams Razor - Ships were not all together to start with. They were likley pulled from everywhere, and engaged the Cube as they came into battle. Hence it wasn't a 500 vs 1 the whole time. Also, if given some time between waves/concentrated assaults by regroupped Federation forces, the Cube could very well have "Healed Itself" like it did in "Q Who" aafter the E-D's photons blew huge gaping holes in it. The hulls seemed to bend back to normal and grow back together into a seamless Borg hull again.

My razor is a bit differently, my thoughts are that Paramount screwed up and did not think it through. They seem to have no clear idea on how many ships are in combat in most cases and do not think combat though. What you are suggeting is that the Federation allowed themselves to be defeated in detail. I can believ it out of the Federation or the writers but I think the writers simply screwing up is by far the most likely solution. I mean, ships are suppose to take more that 2 days to get from the Romulan Neutral to Earth. I would estimate that it would be several weeks at least from TOS evidence.

Which is why I said a few, with most being unoperable without extensive repairs/refits. Also, I have my doubts that they would keep such valubale commodities as dilithium onboard. And I really think that they have totally no antimatter aboard. The chances of the containment failing would be to great on an old, minimal powered ship with no crew and virtually no manned supervision. So you'd have to bring some fuel as well to get those handful of likely operable ships active under their own power.

That is what i suggested towing because there is at least a couple of examples of Federation starships towing others. I don't think there are any which they could litterally steal ships under their own power in a smash and grab. They may be able to use subderfuge by the reactivation crews really working for the republic or by infiltrating personnel.

Well really they shouldn't have THAT different needs than their fellows. Internal systems should be virtually the same with things that can be reapired with spares and without a major refit/shipyard layover. Other than that, I would agree that the plethora of designs we have seen isn't the best way to go about things. Far better to have a handful of similar hulls that have vastly different interiors to support their mission objectives.

The problem is when you want a battleship or a light cruiser, you would need a few different hulls but the different interiors is a very good idea. For example, the US Spruance and Kidd destroyers use the same hull and is shared with the Ticonderoga class cruisers. Still, most US Vessels share most of the same systems.

It will likely be that the crews will not be transfered and the stapping need for trained crews to form petty officers, it is likely that the crews will be spread all over the fleet.

Agreed. TNG+ era Starfleet needs an Enlisted rankset, rather than just crewmen and O'Biran.

I take it you agree that the evidence simply does not exist to support either claim. In that case, is it not the writers choice to see how they want the story to be constructed.

Yep. Since we just have no proof either way, I feel it's up to the writer to mold the details to better suit his storyline. Within reason of course, but still Author's perogative given no contrary evidence.

Also, don't foget that you will probably want a larger tactical staff, especially oif you want a real CIC.

(Shrug) Given that I now have marines aboard to take over many of the security details jobs (save MP duties I would think, security greenshirts can still do that), it should free up quite a few of the ships customary security officers to staff the CIC. If more are needed, they'll certainly be added, but they shouldn't be that many.

Maybe it is the military history buff in me or maybe it is the other science fiction I have read, but I have a problem with starships fighting at what looks like a couple of kilometers in most cases, making manuevers at so slow speeds that a ww2 plane seems to be faster, and other such things that seem rediculous at face value. I wish writers would stop putting ranges in to dialog as well because it just seems crazy. I just tend toi think the writers of both sides (graphics and dialog) have no clue.

Far better to go with the system Andromeda set out. Dialog always overrules what you see in graphics. This way, they can keep the uber ranges and effects, but allow for a good looking SFX scenes to keep their audience wowed. While I personally wouldn't object to a more B5ish style, where we rarely see combatants in the same shot, leaving range up to dialog to supply, some don't like this form of battle.

Having a CIC is one of the very specific items I would fix on the Republic ships. Flag officers would also have flag staffs as well to support their admirals.

Agreed wholeheartedly, on both counts.

Also, if you can FTL inside of a system, you would expect a much greater tactical use of the ability that the picard manuever.

Picard manuever only worked because the Ferengi were using STL sensors only. FTL sensors would have picked up the position change instantly and the Ferengi would have fired on the new postion instead of the old one.

But I do agree that tactical FTL should be seen far more than it is given the canon constraints it has (which are few). I chalk it up to poor tech advisers or no one writing paying them any attention. There is no in universe reason I can come up with to explain it adaquately.

Hmm, I take it these torpeodes take out a borg cube with one hit and seem to be uneffected by borg shields?

Pretty much. One hit the side of a cube, blew a huge gaping hole in it with a big showy green hued fireball, then another flew through the fireball and split seconds later the cube disintigrated.

Athor defense might be point defense and the heavy use of decoys until this new shield can be developed.

My pet theory is that PD is innefective vs torpedoes because they use overloaded shield grids that stop all incoming fire cold but are self destructive while in use, meaning that they aren't good for ships. Sure they'll have a momentary time period of invulnerablility, but then they'll have no working shields. This seems to be supported by cannon, as uber/really powerful shields are often accompanied by a glow similar to that which a photon and other torpedoes mysteriously put out. (shrugs) Lack of PD is quite inexplicable otherwise, especially given how potent phasers are vs unshielded and small targets.

For the decoys, they have all the tech needed to make quite convincing/effective ones, just that they never seem to be employed. Again, it's innefective tech advisers.

Better watch it, Trekkies will probably be saying that Intraphasic torps can take out a stardestroyer in one hit <g> That may be a question that shoudl be asked.

While I tend to like Trek slightly better than Wars (though its really almost a tie), I honestly try not to succumb to such unssuportable conclusions. I try to apply the mostlikely and simplests explanation IMHO. Since the Interphasic torps were only seen used vs Borg in canon, and not vs other ships even though we had the chance (especially in endgame with Harry's ship), they seem to likely be of utility at least primarily aganst Borg. (shrugs) If certain Trekkies don't like it, I say back it up and disproove my theory via cannon. Since they can't, mine's as applicable given what we know as any other wild assed guess.

I agree but I did not think it was important enough to mention.

Well given that it's quite effective against current gen weapons (refer to Defiant's and Enterprise E's high survivablity in a combat environment) I think it's quite a potent development in Federation defensive tech.

Pretty similar to my concept.

Agreed.

Thinking more in the roles of advisors, suggesting ideas on how to deal with the Federation, ideas like that, and a possibility that the Republic may rescue the remaining Maquis.

Could be useful for that, but most of their approaches involved failed dealings with the Federation. Use em as an example of what not to do.

My razor is a bit differently, my thoughts are that Paramount screwed up and did not think it through. They seem to have no clear idea on how many ships are in combat in most cases and do not think combat though.

While more likley, it isn't in-universe.

What you are suggeting is that the Federation allowed themselves to be defeated in detail.

Unfortunately yes, but given warp speed limitations and the lack of central defensive Fleets, It's also the most likley reason. The Federation never seemed to keep more than a handful of ships near even Core worlds like Earth (refer to the ammount of times TMP era movies had only a hanful of ships to 1 ship in Sol system (ST: TMP, ST: TSFS, ST: TFF, TNG "BoBW", ect.)) Given the unexpected Borg assault, and the likley fleet dispositions being shifted towards other boarders (Klingon conflict, Dominion threat), there were likely only a few vessels that could be rapidly assembled as a roadblock to the Cube. Hence, because Warp is so slow FTL relative to other means of FTL engines, it would take time to get from dispersed positions to a rally point in the Borg Cubes path. Time that the Federation really didn't have. Hence I feel quite strongly that they pulled together every ship they could to start off with before the Cube hit the area, then other ships came as fast as they could. Resulted in a running battle to Sol that never threw the max number of ships against the Cube.

I can believ it out of the Federation or the writers but I think the writers simply screwing up is by far the most likely solution.

Agreed. But again, it doesn't apply to in-universe behaviour, and hence isn't really a reason.

I mean, ships are suppose to take more that 2 days to get from the Romulan Neutral to Earth. I would estimate that it would be several weeks at least from TOS evidence.

Depends on the location of the ship on the Romulan Neutral Zone. Enterprise E is both quite high crusespeed and high max speed, and could have been patrolling the closests part of the Romulan Neutral Zone.

Most likley, chalk it up to another warp speed inconsistancy (not as major as ST: V's or TNG "The Search" but still there are a lot of them throughout Trek. Goes back to innefective tech advisers or lack of enforced tech bible. Trek seems to sacrifice it's established capablities in order to provide for the story, rather than have the story mold itself to the previously established rules of the Trek universe. )

That is what i suggested towing because there is at least a couple of examples of Federation starships towing others. I don't think there are any which they could litterally steal ships under their own power in a smash and grab. They may be able to use subderfuge by the reactivation crews really working for the republic or by infiltrating personnel.

Towing is the most likely. Although I'm not 100% sure we've ever seen a tractor beam used at warp. To my knoledge there is not reason why it couldn't be, nor a stated prohibition on it, just that every example off the top of my head has been at impulse.

The problem is when you want a battleship or a light cruiser, you would need a few different hulls but the different interiors is a very good idea. For example, the US Spruance and Kidd destroyers use the same hull and is shared with the Ticonderoga class cruisers. Still, most US Vessels share most of the same systems.

I know, but there is an amazing plethora of hulls in Trek, especially the kitbashes seen in DS9. While some are cool, their place in the fleet isn't one that a navy would do. Pick some standardized hulls for each class then stick with them. When you have tens of designs for individual classes, it doesn't make much sense.

Agreed. TNG+ era Starfleet needs an Enlisted rankset, rather than just crewmen and O'Biran.

I seem to remeber an episode where one of the crew members almost got into huge trouble because he lied about being part Romulan. He was definately enlisted, still the amount of enlisted you actually see can be counted on one hand.

(Shrug) Given that I now have marines aboard to take over many of the security details jobs (save MP duties I would think, security greenshirts can still do that), it should free up quite a few of the ships customary security officers to staff the CIC. If more are needed, they'll certainly be added, but they shouldn't be that many.

I would keep security and tactical/weapons two different jobs. After all, the tactical guys have to learn to translate what looks like garbage into meaningful tactical displays. You stated in a previous message that Jordie said that the Romulan's ships cloak was perfect. He is an engineer, sensor officer, and many otehr jobs. Who can say that if a tactical officer who's main training is in sensor operations and tactical operations could not have penetrated the cloak by an understanding of sensor ghosts and other anomoleys.

Far better to go with the system Andromeda set out. Dialog always overrules what you see in graphics. This way, they can keep the uber ranges and effects, but allow for a good looking SFX scenes to keep their audience wowed. While I personally wouldn't object to a more B5ish style, where we rarely see combatants in the same shot, leaving range up to dialog to supply, some don't like this form of battle.

I would not mind either system but they talk about closing to 500 meters or something rediculous like that. I used to take the dialog as overruling the graphics and that is how many people I have spoken in the past feel. If they do go back to dialog being the true ranges and speeds, they need to give the weapons sci-fi type ranges and use them in epsiodes. Something like "Federation Phasers tyke XX have a range of 10,000 km, close range is anything less than 2,000 kilometers", as a made up example.

I was suprised how much better restrained Timothy Zahn was when he wrote up a story in "The Service of the Sword" although he still has a gadget fedish which seems a bit bizarre. I know like likeusing ideas which simply are not in trek but his is a bit beyond me.

But I do agree that tactical FTL should be seen far more than it is given the canon constraints it has (which are few). I chalk it up to poor tech advisers or no one writing paying them any attention. There is no in universe reason I can come up with to explain it adaquately.

That is kind of my point in other areas, because paramount cannot conceive of certian cocepts does not mean that I do not want to use them. In many ways, the universe does become "Kitsune's version of Star Trek"

Pretty much. One hit the side of a cube, blew a huge gaping hole in it with a big showy green hued fireball, then another flew through the fireball and split seconds later the cube disintigrated.

Seems pretty impressive.

My pet theory is that PD is innefective vs torpedoes because they use overloaded shield grids that stop all incoming fire cold but are self destructive while in use, meaning that they aren't good for ships. Sure they'll have a momentary time period of invulnerablility, but then they'll have no working shields. This seems to be supported by cannon, as uber/really powerful shields are often accompanied by a glow similar to that which a photon and other torpedoes mysteriously put out. (shrugs) Lack of PD is quite inexplicable otherwise, especially given how potent phasers are vs unshielded and small targets.

I would use that crew are not trained to do this and it is not considered effective. I don't like the concept of the torpedo being invulnerable. If you go with non-cannon materials (which seem reasonable), probes are basically just modified torpedoes and there is an example where Cardassians manage to shoot down a probe. The idea of shorting down torpedoes is also in at least one novel. I must admit the idea is also just simply cool to me. I am also thinking that an additional cool idea would be a multiple warhead torpedo which split to hit several incoming torpedoes. About 1/2 of all torpedoes carried on a ship might be replaced by these.

For the decoys, they have all the tech needed to make quite convincing/effective ones, just that they never seem to be employed. Again, it's innefective tech advisers.

Well, my idea would reduce the shuttle compliment because they will replace conventional shuttles. I am also thinking that a bomber may replace some of the normal shuttles to compliment fighters.

While I tend to like Trek slightly better than Wars (though its really almost a tie), I honestly try not to succumb to such unssuportable conclusions. I try to apply the mostlikely and simplests explanation IMHO. Since the Interphasic torps were only seen used vs Borg in canon, and not vs other ships even though we had the chance (especially in endgame with Harry's ship), they seem to likely be of utility at least primarily aganst Borg. (shrugs) If certain Trekkies don't like it, I say back it up and disproove my theory via cannon. Since they can't, mine's as applicable given what we know as any other wild assed guess.

Might be worth a discussion of star wars vs star trek. On the side of which I like better, I will say that I like the first three movies of star wars far better than anything that Paramount has put out for Star Trek, I do not care for most of the books and I do not really like the last two movies. The problem is that there is not "Cannon" reason why a super weapon would only be effective against only one class of target with the type of effect which the interphasic torpedo seemed to do to the borg cube.

Well given that it's quite effective against current gen weapons (refer to Defiant's and Enterprise E's high survivablity in a combat environment) I think it's quite a potent development in Federation defensive tech.

I pretty much assumed that many Federation ships and virtually all Repoublic ships would have ablative due to the Defiant gaining the armor at seaming very low cost.

Thinking more in the roles of advisors, suggesting ideas on how to deal with the Federation, ideas like that, and a possibility that the Republic may rescue the remaining Maquis.

It could also show an example where the Cardassians finds a remaining colony of Maquis, want to destroy it and find that teh Republic is not as nice as the Federation.

Unfortunately yes, but given warp speed limitations and the lack of central defensive Fleets, It's also the most likley reason. The Federation never seemed to keep more than a handful of ships near even Core worlds like Earth (refer to the ammount of times TMP era movies had only a hanful of ships to 1 ship in Sol system (ST: TMP, ST: TSFS, ST: TFF, TNG "BoBW", ect.)) Given the unexpected Borg assault, and the likley fleet dispositions being shifted towards other boarders (Klingon conflict, Dominion threat), there were likely only a few vessels that could be rapidly assembled as a roadblock to the Cube. Hence, because Warp is so slow FTL relative to other means of FTL engines, it would take time to get from dispersed positions to a rally point in the Borg Cubes path. Time that the Federation really didn't have. Hence I feel quite strongly that they pulled together every ship they could to start off with before the Cube hit the area, then other ships came as fast as they could. Resulted in a running battle to Sol that never threw the max number of ships against the Cube.

I have concepts that could have prevented that and some other explanations but I don't like when paramount does such poor planning. The time involved could have prevented all but a few ships to join the battle but they break their own tech constantly as well. Pretend that the Enterprise was actually much closer than the Romulan Neutral zone (maybe use the term on-route instead of actually being there) and that they should have gathered their fleet before engaing the Borg. Allowing themselves to be beaten in deteail is something I could see the Federation doing.

Towing is the most likely. Although I'm not 100% sure we've ever seen a tractor beam used at warp. To my knoledge there is not reason why it couldn't be, nor a stated prohibition on it, just that every example off the top of my head has been at impulse.

My two examples are how did the Enetrprise get the USS Hathaway in TNG "Peak Performance"
and when the Federation fleet was retreating after one of the major DS-9 battles. While it might be implied in TNG "Peak Performance", in the fleet being towed after the major DS-9, I seem to remeber stars flying by.

I know, but there is an amazing plethora of hulls in Trek, especially the kitbashes seen in DS9. While some are cool, their place in the fleet isn't one that a navy would do. Pick some standardized hulls for each class then stick with them. When you have tens of designs for individual classes, it doesn't make much sense.

Well, the amount of classes that the US had during ww2 were immense but at least half of them were modified versions of the older class as well as pre-war classes. It might also be said that they have ships filling many different roles. Then agfain, the number of different classes that for example FASA sugegsted was crazy and the number that seemed to be shown on deep space nine seem the same. In many cases, one hull can be used for several different roles and would reduce logistics.

I was thinking that the fedarion has lost various ships over time that could have been potenially captured by foreign powers or later puchased by foreign powers. For example, how intact was the Enterprise-C when it fought the Romulans. Crew at least survived.
I was thinking that the Romulans could have massed a fleet of operational Federation vessels and use them against the Federation with the suggestion being that the Republic is actually behind the attack. That could swing the Federation ibnto definately going to war with the Republic.
I Was thinking one Ambassador class suggesting it is the Enterprise C but keeping it vague, as well as two Excelsiors, two Constellations, and three Miranda (which I still prefer calling them Avengers <g>)

I seem to remeber an episode where one of the crew members almost got into huge trouble because he lied about being part Romulan. He was definately enlisted, still the amount of enlisted you actually see can be counted on one hand.

IIRC he was refered to as Crewman for rank. So my post stands that they need an enlisted RANKSET, not just crewmen and O'Brian.

I would keep security and tactical/weapons two different jobs.

Myself as well. I merely meant the same department would handle MP and tactical chores. Sorry for not making it clear.

He is an engineer, sensor officer, and many otehr jobs.

Don't forget helmsman from Season 1.

But he's primarily an engineer, and since the standard sensors couldn't pick up the Scimitar, he was probably trying to McGuiver up something that would and failing. Sensors seems to primarily be an Opps station job in TNG.

Who can say that if a tactical officer who's main training is in sensor operations and tactical operations could not have penetrated the cloak by an understanding of sensor ghosts and other anomoleys.

Agreed, but there WERE NO sensor ghosts or anomoleys to chase down. The cloak WAS PERFECT to current gen Federation sensors. The Enterprise never even got a sniff of her while she was cloaked. Her cloak was several steps beyond known scanning tech.

If they do go back to dialog being the true ranges and speeds, they need to give the weapons sci-fi type ranges and use them in epsiodes. Something like "Federation Phasers tyke XX have a range of 10,000 km, close range is anything less than 2,000 kilometers", as a made up example.

At least that yes. And for God's sake stick to them!

That is kind of my point in other areas, because paramount cannot conceive of certian cocepts does not mean that I do not want to use them. In many ways, the universe does become "Kitsune's version of Star Trek"

I would use that crew are not trained to do this and it is not considered effective.

Both of which I find really unlikely. I mean, even the Federation must have historians of how old Pre WW III Earth had point defense. And given how easy it is to line up a phaser array and that they can detect them, if not from sensors due to never mentioned ECM, at least visually. Lack of PD because of ignorance or lack of training is a very, VERY inexcuseable thing. Also, why if not for my reason would it not be considered effective? Trek regularly detects torpedoes, and can target and hit things that small otherwise.

I don't like the concept of the torpedo being invulnerable.

To each their own.

If you go with non-cannon materials (which seem reasonable), probes are basically just modified torpedoes and there is an example where Cardassians manage to shoot down a probe.

Which merely proves my point that for some reason, Torpedoes are exempt from this. Them being invulnerable to weapons fire seems to be the best in-universe explanation I've come across/been able to dream up.

I must admit the idea is also just simply cool to me.

Rightly so. PD is a staple of all good military sci-fi out there that I'v come across.

am also thinking that an additional cool idea would be a multiple warhead torpedo which split to hit several incoming torpedoes. About 1/2 of all torpedoes carried on a ship might be replaced by these.

I just added the micro torps used for runabouts to small launchers scattered about the ships. Used them as a PD suppliment.

Well, my idea would reduce the shuttle compliment because they will replace conventional shuttles. I am also thinking that a bomber may replace some of the normal shuttles to compliment fighters.

That works. Or go with a more limited variety based on modified probe casing.

The problem is that there is not "Cannon" reason why a super weapon would only be effective against only one class of target with the type of effect which the interphasic torpedo seemed to do to the borg cube.

There's no canon reason why they wouldn't either. Thats the problem. Lack of info, so all we can do is guestimate and speculate.

I pretty much assumed that many Federation ships and virtually all Repoublic ships would have ablative due to the Defiant gaining the armor at seaming very low cost.

Agreed.

It could also show an example where the Cardassians finds a remaining colony of Maquis, want to destroy it and find that teh Republic is not as nice as the Federation.

And then proceeds to kick the whipped dog Cardies in their scaled butts. If the Feddies can do so (merely chose not to), a more militaristic version of them should hand what little the Cardassians have for a fleet post Dominion War their heads.

The time involved could have prevented all but a few ships to join the battle but they break their own tech constantly as well.

Which is THE major gripe I have with Trek (and something they are doing surprisingly well on in Enterprise so far), and the reason for many of my other gripes. People may say "but writers should be free to tell their story". I say, if they can't adapt their story enough to fit some in-universe constants, they shouldn't be script writing for the show.

and that they should have gathered their fleet before engaing the Borg. Allowing themselves to be beaten in deteail is something I could see the Federation doing.

The way I see it, they gathered as much as they could, but if they waited for more to show, they cube would have beaten them to Sol system and assimilated Earth before they would arrive. (shrug) (Prays that the new FTL drives Voyager uncovered are implimented fleet wide to allow faster mobility)

My two examples are how did the Enetrprise get the USS Hathaway in TNG "Peak Performance"

Quite likely FTL tractoring. But we don't see it so...

in the fleet being towed after the major DS-9, I seem to remeber stars flying by.

This is the epp right after they lose DS9 right? No, those ships were at impulse, or else the star rainbow streak was very very understated.

Well, the amount of classes that the US had during ww2 were immense but at least half of them were modified versions of the older class as well as pre-war classes.

Which is just fine by me. I'm perfectly willing to accept subclasses (Miranda/Saratoga/Soyouz(SP?) or Excelsior/Enterpirse B/Lakota or the various flavours of Dominion War Galaxies). But a plethora of totally different spaceframes is not something one should have. Now I'm not saying that the Federation should go the Klingon route, keeping basic designs and spaceframes in service for 100 to 200 years, but a happy medium between the two could be struck.

In many cases, one hull can be used for several different roles and would reduce logistics.

Agreed. Even the same basic hull with minor or even somewhat major modifications would be better than making a seemingly new class for every new tech advance that comes along or every new mission profile.

I was thinking that the fedarion has lost various ships over time that could have been potenially captured by foreign powers or later puchased by foreign powers. For example, how intact was the Enterprise-C when it fought the Romulans. Crew at least survived.
I was thinking that the Romulans could have massed a fleet of operational Federation vessels and use them against the Federation with the suggestion being that the Republic is actually behind the attack. That could swing the Federation ibnto definately going to war with the Republic.
I Was thinking one Ambassador class suggesting it is the Enterprise C but keeping it vague, as well as two Excelsiors, two Constellations, and three Miranda

That's a pretty intreguing concept. Highly unlikely to work against the Feddies alone in canon (as without the Republic to blame, the Feddies are more than likly to pierce the ruse of the ex Feddie ships), but very believable subterfuge on the Romulans part to get the Federation and the Republic to go to war with eachother. If there is even a little animosity between the two because of the split, it's even more likley to work.

IIRC he was refered to as Crewman for rank. So my post stands that they need an enlisted RANKSET, not just crewmen and O'Brian.

I'm not even supposed to be here. I'm just "Crewman Number Six." I'm expendable! I'm the guy in the episode who dies to prove how serious the situation is! I've gotta get outta here!

Seriously though, I aways imagined that there was some form of rank structure for enlisted just that Paramount was so screwed up that they never did it properly. I don't know what putting a structure in woudl cause any real problems ut would make a story far more believable.

Myself as well. I merely meant the same department would handle MP and tactical chores. Sorry for not making it clear.

On present US Navy ships, weapons are under the control of Gunners Maters and otehr rates, the Sensors are under Operations Specialist and similar rates, and Internal security is controlled by the master at arms. I can probably create a more complete list if needed but fields are often quite specialized. There would probably be a seperate enlisted branch which works on phasers from the one that works on photon torps for example.

But he's primarily an engineer, and since the standard sensors couldn't pick up the Scimitar, he was probably trying to McGuiver up something that would and failing. Sensors seems to primarily be an Opps station job in TNG.

Generally, I consider McGuivering to be pretty close to worthless is such a job, to re-route a system that was just lost might be another. He might even lose what he is trying to do that by trying to rewire the system in that case.

Agreed, but there WERE NO sensor ghosts or anomoleys to chase down. The cloak WAS PERFECT to current gen Federation sensors. The Enterprise never even got a sniff of her while she was cloaked. Her cloak was several steps beyond known scanning tech.

Only really has to be one step ahead and we have already mentioned that the Federation should / would be working on a defense against it. My one side question would if the Romulans themselves actually have the system because my understand was that the Romulan who captained the ship was rouge and his own people might have developed it. Remeber, I have never seen the episode.

Both of which I find really unlikely. I mean, even the Federation must have historians of how old Pre WW III Earth had point defense. And given how easy it is to line up a phaser array and that they can detect them, if not from sensors due to never mentioned ECM, at least visually. Lack of PD because of ignorance or lack of training is a very, VERY inexcuseable thing. Also, why if not for my reason would it not be considered effective? Trek regularly detects torpedoes, and can target and hit things that small otherwise.

Well, I have a modern example with this. The concept of the torpedo interceptor for naval ships is not impossible but Russians / Soviets are the only ones who developed the system. US Ships also were very volunerable to missiles that got through the out defenses until the CIWS was developed and ended up being a failry late development compared with the missiles. It could simply be that the Fedeartion considered that the hit ratio would be too low to be worth it.

am also thinking that an additional cool idea would be a multiple warhead torpedo which split to hit several incoming torpedoes. About 1/2 of all torpedoes carried on a ship might be replaced by these.

I just added the micro torps used for runabouts to small launchers scattered about the ships. Used them as a PD suppliment.

The only reason why I suggested my ideas is that it could use the existing launcher and would not take any ship upgrades. Now, the addition of the lighter launchers might be a good addition later. Face it, even the use of decoys completely changes the way the Universe fights <g>

That works. Or go with a more limited variety based on modified probe casing.

At least as a trick to make it look like you go elsewhere but I think a larger decoy as torpedo bait might be a better idea.

There's no canon reason why they wouldn't either. Thats the problem. Lack of info, so all we can do is guestimate and speculate.

True and there is some good stuff on the Star Wars vs Star Trek group - I am thinking that they skip frequency to pass through the shields (something that can be fixed) and then have a heavy explosive force (maybe 2 quantum torpedo loadouts) with a shidl to pass trhough teh outer lyers of the borg hull due to the fact that a beamed photon torpedo blew up a borg sphere in a similar fashion. The idea makes it alot less of a super-weapon.

A scary alternative weapon is create a torp which is fired from the shuttle bay which is really large (more like a small starship) which has say a 500 kg anti-matter warhead. that would pretty much smash any target. Pretty expensive but less expensive than losing a starships.

And then proceeds to kick the whipped dog Cardies in their scaled butts. If the Feddies can do so (merely chose not to), a more militaristic version of them should hand what little the Cardassians have for a fleet post Dominion War their heads.

I don't know if I will do things this way though but might be a good way of showing how serious the Republic is.

This is the epp right after they lose DS9 right? No, those ships were at impulse, or else the star rainbow streak was very very understated.

I could swear that they were at warp. Oh well...been a long time.

Which is just fine by me. I'm perfectly willing to accept subclasses (Miranda/Saratoga/Soyouz(SP?) or Excelsior/Enterpirse B/Lakota or the various flavours of Dominion War Galaxies). But a plethora of totally different spaceframes is not something one should have. Now I'm not saying that the Federation should go the Klingon route, keeping basic designs and spaceframes in service for 100 to 200 years, but a happy medium between the two could be struck.

In my own materials, I call the Miranda class the Avenger class and consider the Miranda to be a later upgraded version of the vessel. The number of classes probably would not be excessive if it was not for the huge amount of classes that they seem to show in some of deep space nine vessels. The DS9 books seems to indicate that they were slapped together but not sure if that should be the case.

That's a pretty intreguing concept. Highly unlikely to work against the Feddies alone in canon (as without the Republic to blame, the Feddies are more than likly to pierce the ruse of the ex Feddie ships), but very believable subterfuge on the Romulans part to get the Federation and the Republic to go to war with eachother. If there is even a little animosity between the two because of the split, it's even more likley to work.

What cannon evidence suggest to you that the tactic would not work. They needs to expect that teh Republic would have made some changes to their ships.

Kitsune wrote:In my own materials, I call the Miranda class the Avenger class and consider the Miranda to be a later upgraded version of the vessel. The number of classes probably would not be excessive if it was not for the huge amount of classes that they seem to show in some of deep space nine vessels. The DS9 books seems to indicate that they were slapped together but not sure if that should be the case.

Totally unrelated post but are u eve gonning to right more of your Avenger fanfic?

Totally unrelated post but are u eve gonning to right more of your Avenger fanfic?

I really hope to finish the middle chapter(s) of Avenger and may have enough information to finish it now. It is mostly going to be set during the final episode of DS-9 and did not remeber well enough about the episode. Trying to work in her reaction to Cisco and others.

Rebellion is planned as a follow on story to Avenger and that is much of what I have been getting ideas for.

I'm not even supposed to be here. I'm just "Crewman Number Six." I'm expendable! I'm the guy in the episode who dies to prove how serious the situation is! I've gotta get outta here!

Seriously though, I aways imagined that there was some form of rank structure for enlisted just that Paramount was so screwed up that they never did it properly. I don't know what putting a structure in woudl cause any real problems ut would make a story far more believable.

Could very well be. But as it stands now, TNG+ era Starfleet enlisted ranks are pretty messed up. (also never saw any in any hallway shots)

On present US Navy ships, weapons are under the control of Gunners Maters and otehr rates, the Sensors are under Operations Specialist and similar rates, and Internal security is controlled by the master at arms. I can probably create a more complete list if needed but fields are often quite specialized. There would probably be a seperate enlisted branch which works on phasers from the one that works on photon torps for example.

Well so much division isn't really needed. Most of their jobs are taken by automation in Trek ships. But if MP duties require a seperate branch (I would have the Marines handle Ship security with standard secuirty as a backup), then by all means create them. I was pictureing them as more of a sub category of current security greenshirts/yellow.

Generally, I consider McGuivering to be pretty close to worthless is such a job, to re-route a system that was just lost might be another. He might even lose what he is trying to do that by trying to rewire the system in that case.

Probably. Just that that isn't how Trek tech works. SFCE are miracle workers afterall.

Only really has to be one step ahead and we have already mentioned that the Federation should / would be working on a defense against it. My one side question would if the Romulans themselves actually have the system because my understand was that the Romulan who captained the ship was rouge and his own people might have developed it. Remeber, I have never seen the episode.

Even the ones that were one step had something to look for. IMHO the gap is wider with the current gen Feddie sensors vs Reman cloak than it is or ever was vs Romulan cloak.

The Romulans likely do have it. The Remans built the Scimitar because the Romulan military let them (wanting them to incite the coup, so that if it failed, blame wouldn't fall on them most likley SIGH. One of the many things in Nemesis that's best left to minimialist thinking.). Hence, I would be very surprised if they didn't have plans for the ship, the superweapon and the perfect cloak somewhere.

Well, I have a modern example with this. The concept of the torpedo interceptor for naval ships is not impossible but Russians / Soviets are the only ones who developed the system.

Hence it's likely impractical for some reason. That or it was deemed non vital as in the current world, how often are US warships going to come under torpedo attack.

US Ships also were very volunerable to missiles that got through the out defenses until the CIWS was developed and ended up being a failry late development compared with the missiles.

Then in the 300 odd years torpedoes have been in widspread use without a countermeasure, I'd say it's a really, REALLY, REALLY late development. No excuse for it to take this long as they can both target and hit targets as small as a photon.

It could simply be that the Fedeartion considered that the hit ratio would be too low to be worth it.

Torpedos don't miss that often. This reason shows even worse judgement than not incorperating a anti-torpedo system earlier, for they are willing not only to put Starfleet personnelle in harms way needlessly, but their FAMILIES as well.

The only reason why I suggested my ideas is that it could use the existing launcher and would not take any ship upgrades.

Useful. Only requires munitions retooling rather than starship refit (not a concern in my fan fic). Drawback is that you have to offload anti-capship torps from the que to slot em in.

Now, the addition of the lighter launchers might be a good addition later.

Yep, cuz then you can fire both PD and anti-capship torpedoes at the same time.

Face it, even the use of decoys completely changes the way the Universe fights

Well and thoroughly it does.

At least as a trick to make it look like you go elsewhere but I think a larger decoy as torpedo bait might be a better idea.

If torpedoes were fired with an ounce of sense then yes. But given their usual dribble fire on target, a large torpedo decoy would be quickly toast with the rest of his buddies hitting you. That's why a smaller/more prevalent/faster launched decoy is better IMHO even if it doesn't have the legs a larger one would.

A scary alternative weapon is create a torp which is fired from the shuttle bay which is really large (more like a small starship) which has say a 500 kg anti-matter warhead. that would pretty much smash any target. Pretty expensive but less expensive than losing a starships.

Way ahead of you. Terran Empire starfleet uses something the size of a shuttlepod as it's heavy torpedo. Lots of antimatter, or quantum warheads on newer versions. Big showy explosions.

I don't know if I will do things this way though but might be a good way of showing how serious the Republic is.

Just make the Cardassian CO a young hothead with more thirst for battle than brains. Then he can fire first, forcing the issue when all the Republic wanted was for the Cardassians to withdraw.

The DS9 books seems to indicate that they were slapped together but not sure if that should be the case.

They sure looked that way,, and I heard that to, but IMHO that's the absolute worst thing they could have done. Less structurally sound, less stable warp field geometry, ect. To fit things in the hulls they cobbled together, they would have had to virtually redesign the entire interior. Far better building newships from scratch like the Defiant classes rather than waste yard slips on these Frankenstein ships.

What cannon evidence suggest to you that the tactic would not work.

Improper IFF settings. Out of date passcodes. Ect. After TWOK, Starfleet very likley changed its protocol for contact with an unexpected starship that APPEARS to be friendly but who's intentions are not known and all records say she shouldn't be there.

They needs to expect that teh Republic would have made some changes to their ships.

I know, which is why I said with the Republic involved in the mix, it's very likley that the Romulans would do something as devious as this to weaken the Federation. Hence they will have something OTHER than the Romulans to blame (and in their minds far more likley culprits I would think. Just look at how some people get very edgy, irritated and defensive when one scorns and ignores their beliefs. Picture the Feddies as the galaxies Bleeding Heart Liberals, then picture just how POed they will be with the Republic for saying that one of their primary ideals is wrong. ) when the ships are discovered to NOT belong to Starfleet.

HappyTarget wrote:Improper IFF settings. Out of date passcodes. Ect. After TWOK, Starfleet very likley changed its protocol for contact with an unexpected starship that APPEARS to be friendly but who's intentions are not known and all records say she shouldn't be there.

Um dont they already have such protocals? Wasn't Kirk just ignoring them?

Um dont they already have such protocals? Wasn't Kirk just ignoring them?

Yes they seemed to, merely taking precautions like raising shields untill identity can be ascertained and the like. What I mean was that Kirk seemed to have the latitude to choose to ignore them. This was very likely fixed afterward, so that it was manditory action rather than one capable of being overlooked by a Flag Officer.

Could very well be. But as it stands now, TNG+ era Starfleet enlisted ranks are pretty messed up. (also never saw any in any hallway shots)

Maybe they are like monkeys in a cage, they do not let crewmembers out of their wheels. Seriously, I would just use the American naval rank system with a few minor chnages like chaging "Seaman" to "Crewman" but otherwise just use that ystem since that is what they seem to use for officers.

Well so much division isn't really needed. Most of their jobs are taken by automation in Trek ships. But if MP duties require a seperate branch (I would have the Marines handle Ship security with standard secuirty as a backup), then by all means create them. I was pictureing them as more of a sub category of current security greenshirts/yellow.

One of the reasons the Us Navy has seperate master at arms is because they act on police duties on a ship. Nw, there would only be three or four security specialists and one of their roles would be similar to modern master at arms. I assmume that enlisted screw up and have to be punished and the master at arms manages that.

Even the ones that were one step had something to look for. IMHO the gap is wider with the current gen Feddie sensors vs Reman cloak than it is or ever was vs Romulan cloak.

The Romulans likely do have it. The Remans built the Scimitar because the Romulan military let them (wanting them to incite the coup, so that if it failed, blame wouldn't fall on them most likley SIGH. One of the many things in Nemesis that's best left to minimialist thinking.). Hence, I would be very surprised if they didn't have plans for the ship, the superweapon and the perfect cloak somewhere.

That makes sense

Hence it's likely impractical for some reason. That or it was deemed non vital as in the current world, how often are US warships going to come under torpedo attack.

There are plenty of examples of defense system being easy to develop and yet they are not or military tactics which would be easy to develop. Another classic example is the USS Monitor against the CSS Virginia. If the Monitor had simply fired under the waterline or had used full charge shots istead of half charge rounds, would have easily destroyed the Virginia. Often it is stupidity that loses the battles not genius which wins the battle.

Then in the 300 odd years torpedoes have been in widspread use without a countermeasure, I'd say it's a really, REALLY, REALLY late development. No excuse for it to take this long as they can both target and hit targets as small as a photon.

It took the US Navy something like 20 years to develop the CIWS. Remeber that we do not live in a time of stable military developemnt which the Federation does seem to. Everybodies technology is approximately compatable and no one has made any large gains. They also make many mistakes such as underequipped ground troups so we cannot say that they will always make the samrt choice.

Torpedos don't miss that often. This reason shows even worse judgement than not incorperating a anti-torpedo system earlier, for they are willing not only to put Starfleet personnelle in harms way needlessly, but their FAMILIES as well.

No, that is not what I mean, the ratio of hits of phasers against incoming torpedoes. The point defense shots would reduce the number of hits but not stop them completely.

Useful. Only requires munitions retooling rather than starship refit (not a concern in my fan fic). Drawback is that you have to offload anti-capship torps from the que to slot em in.

Also fits with modern weapon desgins with VLS being able to fire a variety of different ordnance (For example the Mk 41 can fire ESSM, VLS ASROC, SM2 missiles, and Tomahawks)

If torpedoes were fired with an ounce of sense then yes. But given their usual dribble fire on target, a large torpedo decoy would be quickly toast with the rest of his buddies hitting you. That's why a smaller/more prevalent/faster launched decoy is better IMHO even if it doesn't have the legs a larger one would.

Hmm, maybe a decoy dispenser would work. Basically, the ship is launched like a shuttle but fires off decoys to try and trick incoming torpedoes. Being seperate from the main ship might make the system more flexable.

Just make the Cardassian CO a young hothead with more thirst for battle than brains. Then he can fire first, forcing the issue when all the Republic wanted was for the Cardassians to withdraw.

That sounds reasonable.

They sure looked that way,, and I heard that to, but IMHO that's the absolute worst thing they could have done. Less structurally sound, less stable warp field geometry, ect. To fit things in the hulls they cobbled together, they would have had to virtually redesign the entire interior. Far better building newships from scratch like the Defiant classes rather than waste yard slips on these Frankenstein ships.

There are examples of Navy ships being built from the components of otehr ships but in a more limited sense than star trek suggest. A trek example might be that you have several crippled Excelsior class vessels and pull the saucer from one, the secondary hull from another, and the warp drives from another. They would all be from the same class though. Merging Enterprise class and Excelsior class is something different.

Improper IFF settings. Out of date passcodes. Ect. After TWOK, Starfleet very likley changed its protocol for contact with an unexpected starship that APPEARS to be friendly but who's intentions are not known and all records say she shouldn't be there.

What is TWOK?
I am suggesting that the ships claim to be Republic ships when they attack the Federation, not Federation vessels.

I know, which is why I said with the Republic involved in the mix, it's very likley that the Romulans would do something as devious as this to weaken the Federation. Hence they will have something OTHER than the Romulans to blame (and in their minds far more likley culprits I would think. Just look at how some people get very edgy, irritated and defensive when one scorns and ignores their beliefs. Picture the Feddies as the galaxies Bleeding Heart Liberals, then picture just how POed they will be with the Republic for saying that one of their primary ideals is wrong.) when the ships are discovered to NOT belong to Starfleet.

I was discussing the idea of 'Rebellion' witha friend. He thinks that the crews of federation starships are set up so that a crew would never rebel. He also suggested that the Starfleet Academy would weed out any independent thinkers who might rebel. I noted Roa Lerin and Tom Riker (who basically have Will Rikers values before he met Picard) both rebelled against the Federation. The crew of the Enterprise seems to mostly been from Earth which makes we wonder about crew policies.

Kitsune wrote: What is TWOK?

TWOK= The Wrath Of Kahn. The second star trek movie.