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That ol' Akira/Defiant gripe
maabir
Member Posts: 13 Arc User
I said it once and it still bugs me so I'll say it again: The Akira class is not a Commander class vessel, the Defiant is. That simple. A 100+ crewed vessel, that according to cannon was designed to be a heavy combat and exploration starship is clearly a ship meant to be commanded by a captain. A 50 man crewed escort no mater how well gunned is meant to be commanded by a commander. As a result you have a well designed battle cruiser that is under gunned, under protected, and under equiped.
while I love the Defiants design, firepower, and toughness it is simply made to be commaned by a starfleet commander. Even in the series, Sisco was given the ship while still a commander. He only held on to it when promoted because it proved to be a good ship and it was his perogative to hold on to it. But more often than not it was commanded by Worf or Dax who were both commanders. It doesn't do a fine class like the Akira justice to be sold short like that.
Usualy I am not so nit-picky but this one realy sets my teeth on edge.:mad:
while I love the Defiants design, firepower, and toughness it is simply made to be commaned by a starfleet commander. Even in the series, Sisco was given the ship while still a commander. He only held on to it when promoted because it proved to be a good ship and it was his perogative to hold on to it. But more often than not it was commanded by Worf or Dax who were both commanders. It doesn't do a fine class like the Akira justice to be sold short like that.
Usualy I am not so nit-picky but this one realy sets my teeth on edge.:mad:
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■ Type: Heavy Cruiser.
■ Accommodation: 500 officers and crew; 4,500 personnel evacuation limit.
■ Power Plant: One 1,500 plus Cochrane warp core feeding two nacelles; one impulse system.
■ Dimensions: Length, 464.43 meters; beam, 316.67 meters; height, 87.43 meters.
■ Mass: 3,055,000 metric tonnes.
■ Performance: Warp 9.8 for 12 hours.
■ Armament: Six type-10 phaser emitters; two photon torpedo launchers.
From the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual
A quote from the designer Alex Jeager:
"Set nestled between the catamaran split secondary hulls the bridge is nicely protected. Just on either side of the bridge in a notch on top of the secondary hulls are the shield generators. This further protects the command unit of the ship since one of its duties is launching smaller craft, communication protection is a must. At the back of the bridge there are emissary docking hatches and just below that the circular hatch is the captain's lifeboat. The rear view at the back of the saucer is the main shuttle bay and shuttle control center. This area is also well protected tucked down between the hulls and below the weapons pod flanked by the Nacelles. This serves as a safe haven for the smaller craft in a fire fight and a calm entry point. Also in this protected center region are most of the sensor arrays for the transporters and communications with the remainder of the sensors atop the weapons pod. Moving forward the notch in the front of the saucer is the forward launch bay doors(3). This is for the fast exit of small craft into battle. There are extra shield generators on either side of this notch as this would be a target for enemy ships. Surrounding most of the saucer section is the phaser array strip. Also on the saucer there are flanking torpedo launchers. At the rear of the saucer are the impulse engines. Underneath is the deflector dish, 2 flanking phaser arrays and a forward facing torpedo launcher. You'll also notice that the Akira class utilizes the escape pods from the Sovereign Class, but the panel details more like the Galaxy class. That's because I imagined this ship was commissioned right before the "E" and served as a testbed for the new escape pods. At the rear is the weapon's pod with spreads of both photon and quantum torpedo launchers. And of course the warp nacelles. This overall design makes for a much more narrow side profile and a more friendly crew environment as the engineering folks are no longer in 'the bowels' of the ship
I get that it's your favorite ship but a dozen appearances of an Akira does not make it more important to Star Trek, or more iconic, then the Defiant. I don't even like the Defiant but I understand that it's use in DS9 and it's designation as a "warship" has to mean something.
I understand that but it is still too big and powerful a design for the layout (Bridge Oficers, Cosoles and general stats) to be at commanders rank. The Defiant class is. I understand its iconic standing and I think it should be tricked out accordingly but it defies this old Treckies common sense. It just bothers me.
That's the point. They are both warships. The Akira is simple a bigger and more powerful one.
I also think that putting the Defiant in the rank it belongs doesn't make it any less iconic. Just from my point of view makes it more "Treck".
My point exactly. All the other ship class rankings make sense from a pragmatic perspective except the Akira. The only reason for this I can see is from a marketing perspective. The Defiant is beter known, so it must be a Captain level ship. But why not just give it some special ability to agknowledge this and keep its general lay out where it makes some sense i.e. at commanders rank.
I dont think they put all the thoughtt you are. They put the most famous ships of each series from each class. TNG DS9 and Voyager. When you got to be captain you got to chiose the tv series ship of your choice.
I like the Akira more than the Defiant as well, the important thing in situations like this is to look at the fleet level versions of the ship. When you do that it becomes more about the stats, and they seem to represent what we know about the two ships pretty well. The fleet Akira is more tankable, while the defiant has a bit more punch and maneuverability.
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Actually according to cannon (actually in the show itself) the Akira named the Spector NCC-63549 lead the attack to recapture the Prometheus. It was escorted by the two defiant class star ships as back up, and its ALOT bigger then the defiant. In the same way destroyers would help escort cruisers.
its an absurd notion to think the defiant could out gun an akira, the defiant was only a match for an 80 year old light cruiser. the excelsior is a MUCH older design, the akira is state of the art and has at least 50% more volume then an excelsior. it could take out an excelsior, or 2, easily.
ive long griped that the akira and defiant were at the wrong tier, glad im not the only one who noticed.
Sigh. Not this bogus argument AGAIN. I really suggest that you go back and watch "Paridise Lost" and "Homefront" again. It is explicitly stated that the Lakota had undergone significant upgrades to it weapons system, which made sense since it was the only starship that was guarding the entire Sol system. O'Brien explicitly states that the Lakota had "... a LOT of firepower for an Excelsior class ship". So any suggestion of the Lakota operating under 23rd Century weapons specifications is completely untrue.
Additionally, there is precedent even as far back as TOS that a much smaller ship that's designed for attack can put a whoppin' on a much larger capital ship. In "Journey to Babel", the Orion ship was handly beating Kirk's Enterprise, the same Enterprise which according to Scotty, could handle and survive the attack of the equivalent of 400 photon torpedos (from Nomad in "The Changeling"). The small Orion scout ship was almost putting as much of a pounding on the Enterprise as Nomad, which was also significantly smaller than the Enterprise.
Also, applying your logic, given the volume and the crew size of a typical Borg Cube (129,000+ Drones according to Data in "Q-Who") it would take 100+ Galaxy Class Ships (GCS)to match the firepower of an average cube (1000 Crew * 100+ GCS) = 100,000+ Crewmembers. We would NEVER survive any one on one (or five on one in STF's)encounters in this game if we apply your logic.
You can't have it both ways. Either sheer volume and crew size are always decisive and determinative in battle or other factors (such as design intent of the vessel) matter. You can't pick and choose what you to be the deciding factor and ignore other info that is explicity stated from the episodes.
im just going to disregard all the TRIBBLE that has nothing to do with anything, and focus on the excelsior vs akira.
it doesn't mater how upgraded the lakota was, its not going to be able to beat a cruiser that is larger then it, brand new, and built with everything and more that the lakota was upgraded to have.
the lakota wasn't even upgraded enough to have a single exterior detail changed on it, it didn't even have phaser arrays. obrian remarking that it had a lot of firepower for an excelsior class hardly means its a heavy hitter compared to anything else. i seriously doubt any excelsior in the 2360s was operating with the same firepower it did when it was launched, even the least upgraded example probably has twice the firepower of the original
the lakota is about 15 times larger then the defient, theres your david and goliath. a tiny new ship built only to battle is a match for an 80 year old general purpose workhouse thats 15 times larger then it, thats still commendable.
an akira that has the same level of tech as a defient, hilariously more torpedo firepower, an array that can hit as hard as a 2 or 3 shot quad cannon burst, and the fact that its almost 23 times larger then the defiant, means the defiant is completely out of its league.
Can you back those calculations up or are you just making up numbers for a ships weapons again?
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citation needed. its phasers were more powerful, and it had advanced torpedo ammunition loaded, anything beyond that is fanwank.
the lakota was the enterprise b model, before that it was the original excelsior model. they tacked on bits to it so they could damage something without damaging the core model itself in generations. they didn't bother tacking on anything new to the model for the lakota's showing, they certainly could have if they wanted to make the thing look significantly tougher.
an excelsior brought as close to modern spec as possible is still a ship with up to 80 year old bones. an entirely new constriction of similar size will always be better then an updated old design. in this case they arent even of similar size, the akira has almost 1.5 times more volume then an excelcior
in a thread on a now dead forum there were attempt to calculate how powerful some of the best shots of a galaxy class were and compare them to how powerful the defiant's pulse cannons were. i cant remember details, but the closest thing to a conclusion was that 4 to 5 seconds worth of constant cannon fire was about as powerful as a galaxy's best shot. judging by the length of the akira's largest array, i just threw in a ball park number based on what i could remember. go a head and disregard that bit if you wish, it changed nothing.
federation and klingon ships are apples and oranges. they arent general purpose, they are combat vessels. klingon ships fit the defiant's description, just a warp core, armor and weapons. starfleet ships are general purpose and can become out dated more easily, apparently. thus all the new classes over the years.
since the days of the excelsior and ktinga being newish designs, phasers have gone through a paragon shift, the old banks arent put on new designs in favor of better in every way phaser arrays. klingons disruptors have gone through no such fundamental change, new versions are likely designed to fit in the same foot print as older versions to easily upgrade currently in service designs.
not having arrays obsoletes a design hard, it apparently wasn't even worth it to starfleet to retrofit arrays onto excelsior for some reason. out of universe, they could have easily put arrays on excelsiors and mirandas that they built in cgi, but they didn't unfortunately. they could have build a phaser strip to fit over the ball turrets on the lakota model too, but they didn't.
claiming the lakota is massively upgraded in every way is fan TRIBBLE, an analysis of canon weapons fire and its effect is a bit more scientific then that. im not saying that conclusion is absolutely correct, but there was enough consistency to see a pattern, and approximate. throw it out, i don't care. based on evidence i have seen i more or less believe it
'thats a lot of firepower for an excelsior class ship' isn't all that much to go on. speculation about its warp drive by kira/worf/whoever is just that, speculation. they could only tell that its phasers were stronger then they expected. there isn't dozens of examples of the lakota in action to draw a conclusion from, like there is for galaxy and defiant weapons fire.
none of that is important, its really as simple as
lakota=defiant (regardless of how upgraded the lakota is)
akira>lakota (has everything the lakota has and more, 15 torp launchers, 1.5 times the size)
so
akira>defiant
the rest of this is all pieceing things together were there is information gaps, with varying levels of fan TRIBBLE effecting people conclusions on things. im not saying im immune from that, though i think the conclusions i have drawn are closest to accurate, naturally.
when i site size differences, im getting volume numbers from here
http://st-v-sw.net/STSWvolumetrics.html
when i talk about phaser arrays and their length, im drawing conclusion from their technical description from the TNG tech manual and what you see them do on screen.
http://www.paragonsigma.com/tempuploads/startrek/Star%20Trek%20-%20TNG%20Technical%20Manual%20182%20Pages.pdf
im do my very beat to be subjective on these thing, and only say things based on canon and near canon information. i cant show off the output numbers behind galaxy array/defiant cannons anymore, so if you want to nitpic that i cant show my work, discard the point.
However, we have no idea what the Defiant and Lakotas output is in destructive power. In such a situation, I will assert again that we must rely upon what we have been shown, in its entirety, by the shows.
Frankly, Defiants performance was much more consistant than that of the galaxy class, TNG included. There is only one instance in Star Trek where the Galaxy class destroys roughly its mass in matter in one shot, during its first engagement with the borg. The Defiant is consistently shown destroying ships of its size in one burst, through the entirety of DS9. In both TNG and DS9, the Galaxy cannot even one shot ships smaller than itself bar one or two occasions where the species are confirmed as significantly lower on the tech scale to the point of using lasers or something.
You seem to think that the only way a federation weapon can be effective is if it is on a long strip, but the klingons and romulans achieve nearly the same and sometimes more destructive power from a single emitter. Is it really so far fetched that the federation could do the same? From what we see in DS9, where a couple defiant bursts can take out a Dominion battleship, I think it is safe to say it is certainly the truth. And thusly, (heheheh thusly) I assert that its completely possible the Lakota was sporting quite powerful weaponry. Even if you deny this, it is just one battle shown in DS9 alongside many others, and it is important to note that both ships were holding back so judging it like a real test of mettle is not the wisest idea.
But back to the Akira comparison.
As for torpedo loadout, a volley of quantum torpedos destroys a breen cruiser in DS9, it literally rips the ship to pieces. I can't remember if the Akira can pack quantums, but if it doesn't that certainly evens the score a good deal. While I like the Akira more and think it could become a better ship with the right tuning and phaser cannon additions, the canon events lead me to believe that its phasers would not do the trick in a comparison, given what we know about Galaxy class ones.
But if you really want to stick to the one time where the Defiant could have been shown as an under-performer, and the one time the Galaxy wrecked like none other, I guess thats cool. The rest of us who value the scientific method like star fleet does will probably err on my side.
Its fun though, and I saw you pvping, any reason you prefer the D7 skin to the K'tinga one?
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oh its a ktinga, its just set to all grey
also the fleet skin sucks on it, that cool orange red paneling the other fleet ships get with the skin the fleet ktinga gets none of, truly the most half assed model in game. thats not even the worst part, when your camera moves far enough away from a ship, it swaps to a low quality model seamlessly, but in the ktinga's case the low quality model it switches too has glowing warp nacelles and a glowing deflector in the front of the 'mission pod'. its like low and high quality model are switched, and no amount of posting about it for years has gotten it addressed. now its playable at end game, so its doubly unacceptable. but anyway...
in DS9 there are few instances were a galaxy class is shown fireing a shot that uses even a quarter of the emitters it has available. the only time i can think of is in the odyssey fight. each emitter, of the 200 it has on its dorsal array, holds its own energy. the more of the array that is part of that moving glow effect on screen, the more emiters there are adding energy to the shot. this directly effects how powerful the shot will be, the number of emitters used is the variable that determines shot power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d734afLFPds&playnext=1&list=PLF37F38EA72A03613
in the odyssey fight, it is said that their weapons are having literally 0 effect against the jem hadar shields, and that their shields were having literally no effect against the jem hadar weapons. and as you can see the bug ships were literally under the saucer before the odyssey even started fighting. it was a truly absurd battle.
when the galaxys fired on that galor, they were using a tiny amount of their array for some reason. shooting to disable i guess? the weak shots against the cardasian weapons platforms were wile they were basically invincible, perhaps they were love taps to see if that shield was still on line? there really was no good examples to draw from ds9 at all for the galaxy fireing anything resembling full power shots.
there is a scene when the cardasians turn on the dominian that a galor destroys a breen ship in 1 beam hit, much like that volly of quantum torpedoes and that 4 second long phaser cannon burst did. that cardasian beam may be vastly underestimated, or even the defients firepower isn't that amazing. remember how much of that borg ship the enterprise could carve up, or how rapidly it could put a ton of torpedoes into play from that single huge launcher? that is firepower.
as for ships like the excelsior, its my theory that under the hull there is a large number of phaser emitter pre fire chambers, and only a single firing part of an emitter attached to them all. so the ship does without the externalized array, and its all internalized.
i doubt the excelsior has enough room for even the number of emitters an ambassador class has in any of its longest arrays though. the lakota having more firepower then expected proboly just means its equipped with type 10 phaser emitter equivalents, as apposed to older type 8 or 9 they mostly had at the time.
regardless, it would take a SIGNIFICANT amount of internal volume to cram the equivalent of a longish phaser array inside the hull like that, at that point they might as well rebuild the exterior of the excelsior's saucer and put a proper array that takes up much less internal volume. an excelsior just cant have that much firepower due to all that in my opinion.
Just wanted to point a part or two of your post out.
You say that only once do we see the Galaxy destroy roughly its own mass in a single shot, yet we see the Defiant do it all the time.
The Galaxy has a mass of 4,500,000 metric tonnes.
The Defiant has a mass of 355,000 metric tonnes.
4,500,000/355,000=12.68
So the Galaxy can destroy roughly twelve and a half times in one shot what the Defiant can in one burst.
Another way of putting it would be to say that a single Galaxy could destroy 12 Defiants in one blast, yet it would take 13 Defiants to destroy a Galaxy in one burst.
Just sayin.
As for the latter part of the post, I think I have a reason for why the Galaxy seemed so inept in combat against smaller vessels a large amount of the time.
Mind this is just my own opinion.
I look at the Federation and by extension Starfleet as akin to the USA.
The USA has the potential to wipe most nations and threats off the face of map itself.
Yet they never do! Instead they seem to take the most laborious route possible to remove them. Given we are indeed working with rather "limited" space in which to be blowing stuff up here on this planet. I look at the Ent-D's methods in a similar light.
She does indeed appear to be capable of destroying them outright. But wouldn't that kind of fly in the face of the standards and morals of the Federation to just outright blast everything out of the sky in an absurd show of force for every threat?
Not a total explanation, but one nonetheless.
I think that a similar attitude would explain the Galaxy shots against the Galor class in Sacrifice of Angels.
Limiting loss of life. If you watch in those battles there are really only two groups that destroy outright.
That is the Defiant, a Warship and the Klingons.
The Klingons attacks almost always seem to result in the total destruction of the targeted ship.
The same seems to be true of the Defiant as well.
The Klingons doing it makes sense. They don't take prisoners and they don't really care anyways.
The Defiant doing so also seems to make sense. It is a Warship after all, and its primary purpose isn't exactly a broad one.