Plot conveinience in the Enterprise's case - no story otherwise.
Sadly, the same can be said of just about any instance of combat in Star Trek, which makes it hard to really find any kind of benchmark for the capabilities of starships. It's all about plot armor and plot contrivances.
I love the Defiant, but I'll admit that a wing of Defiants protecting a Galaxy makes a ton more sense than a wing of Galaxies protecting a Defiant.
Anyway, I only wanted to make the point that the Galaxy class wasn?t as useless as it is all too often stated as being and the Odyssey?s destruction was a result of damage that no ship could have survived.
Honestly, all Federation cruisers need some attention, whether it be via Beam weapons, or the cruisers themselves. I honestly can't remember the last time I saw a Fed cruiser in Ker'rat or other PVP map... it's always Science ships and Escorts. That might just be me having an improbable string of cruiser-less PVP maps and not representative of the state of cruisers, though.
This my be nothing new but CRYPTIC has sadly a complete different philosophy when it comes to ships, then canon Star Trek.
In STO cruisers are doomed to serve as supporters for Escorts, while in "real" Star Trek Cruisers where the main ships and Escorts where small cheap short range specialists.
Obviously CRYPTIC wanted much more action focused space combat while it should be more tactical.
A Star Trek Game like STO should focus on managing your ship, and The Big ships should be harder to get but also unequally more powerful than "specialists" ships.
I just find it absurd that a ship from the size of the defiant can generate more firepower than a ship 10x the size. For me this just doesn't make any sense.
Not that they (CRYPTIC) degraded the iconic Star Trek ship to mere supporters for their beloved Escorts they also made them the most slow.
I just don't get it why Cruisers in STO made so slow. I can't remember any scene in TNG where the Big D was moving like a snail, quite the contrary it was for its size very maneuverable. In Universe it wouldn't make very much sense to design a ship with a turnrate of the Titanic.
In my oppinion CRYPTIC used every opportunity to make their beloved Escorts superior.
If i where to decide anything at CRYPTIC, i would give Cruisers roughly the same turnrate as Science ships. Even balance wise it doesn't make sense to make them so slow, they wouldn be able to create more firepower or anything else but it wouldn't be so tedious to fly a Cruiser. While CRYPTIC did everything to fulfill their affection for Escorts, they completey ignored anything canon says about ships and first and foremost what we came to expect from a Star Trek game.
It's not like i am a canon fanatic, really not, but when i buy a Star Trek game i expect Star Trek game to be inside. And that's what bothers me the most, CRYPTIC didn't care about Star Trek at all, they just made their own game and slaped a big "Star Trek" sign onto it.
Speaking about the Galaxy Class, if CRYPTIC wouldn't hate that ship so much they would have given it a universal Lt. BOFF a long time ago.
Obviously CRYPTIC sorted out every occasion where the Galaxy Class was shown as volunerable, and used that as benchmark, while they did the exact opposite with their beloved Escorts.
I absolutely hate the Galaxy class slow turnrate and its BOFF & Console layout.
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
I want to add one thing. Galaxy, to say the truth, is not bad design in itself. Actually, if we take into account that "trinity setup" that STO should be build around, Galaxy is pretty fine. It is mighty tank that should stay there, hold aggro and put enough pressure to be relevant in the fight and keep the aggro.
Now I think we all see the problem.
Star Trek Online is NOT a trinity game. It is singularity game with all it's aspects based around DPS. And in such setup there is really no place for dedicated tanks. Look at the "competition" - SW:TOR. It is also based around trinity setup. But in TOR for lot of group content there is a clear need for dedicated tank to keep the boss occupied while rest of team CC/DPS/Heal.
If we had such setup then Galaxy will be not worst ship in the endgame, but BEST (if rather specialized) ship for any tank worth the name.
Sadly STO sucks bettre the industrial vacuum cleaner when it comes to group content and it's setup. And basing all content around DPS makes ships like Galaxy look weak and pathetic. Sadly.
Fix the game, Cryptic, or make all ships tactical ones.
I want to add one thing. Galaxy, to say the truth, is not bad design in itself. Actually, if we take into account that "trinity setup" that STO should be build around, Galaxy is pretty fine. It is mighty tank that should stay there, hold aggro and put enough pressure to be relevant in the fight and keep the aggro.
Now I think we all see the problem.
Star Trek Online is NOT a trinity game. It is singularity game with all it's aspects based around DPS. And in such setup there is really no place for dedicated tanks. Look at the "competition" - SW:TOR. It is also based around trinity setup. But in TOR for lot of group content there is a clear need for dedicated tank to keep the boss occupied while rest of team CC/DPS/Heal.
If we had such setup then Galaxy will be not worst ship in the endgame, but BEST (if rather specialized) ship for any tank worth the name.
Sadly STO sucks bettre the industrial vacuum cleaner when it comes to group content and it's setup. And basing all content around DPS makes ships like Galaxy look weak and pathetic. Sadly.
Fix the game, Cryptic, or make all ships tactical ones.
While I like your thinking on this in general, I do feel compelled to point out a problem that the Galaxy-R has in this context.
The Galaxy-R is the most engineering-focused Starfleet ship in the game.
That's okay...at first glance since Engineering in this game should mean "defense", "repair" ir simply "tank".
However there's somthing that pretty much defeats this overspecialization of the Galaxy...the global cooldowns.
They mean that even if you stuff the ship with all those abilties, you're bound to run into some troubles with them.
That's why I've been using a Star Cruiser even after the Galaxy-R was introduced into the game...because the BO setup makes it a better tank.
And that's something that keeps plagueing the ship.
So even if this ship is designed to tank (something I have no problem with, I built my first engineer for this purpose) it's not even really good at that.
Lest we not forget that the Enterprise-D was taken out by a few shots from an outdated Bird-of-Prey, too.
1. The outdated BoP was able to ignore the D's shields completely. 2. It was at least a minute of the BoP beating up on the D, most of the strikes which were on the engineering hull including photon torpedo hits.
1. The outdated BoP was able to ignore the D's shields completely. 2. It was at least a minute of the BoP beating up on the D, most of the strikes which were on the engineering hull including photon torpedo hits.
That is true. See Best of Both Worlds - the defensive screen keeps out most of the damage, but the hull is remarkably flimsy.
Also, the threat of the Solar Missile thing kept the Enterprise in orbit, instead of taking wild maneuvers. They needed to constantly track the Missile thing in case it launched.
Plus, Data picked a bad time to install his emotion chip and start the Android Musical Band on the bridge. :P
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1. The outdated BoP was able to ignore the D's shields completely. 2. It was at least a minute of the BoP beating up on the D, most of the strikes which were on the engineering hull including photon torpedo hits.
I was just making a counterpoint to the argument that the Odyssey was holding up well under Jem'hadar weapons fire without shields.
Although, again, the power and durability of all starships in Star Trek change wildly depending on the story needs.
Although, again, the power and durability of all starships in Star Trek change wildly depending on the story needs.
Hence the pitiful destruction of the Enterprise D in Star Trek Generations.... by a tiny BOP no less. Pure Insanity regardless of whatever silly rational they came up with.
"The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward." - Rocky Balboa (2006)
Hence the pitiful destruction of the Enterprise D in Star Trek Generations.... by a tiny BOP no less. Pure Insanity regardless of whatever silly rational they came up with.
According to the TNG technical manual photon torpedoes are a matter-antimatter warhead. A 10 kg warhead would yield an energy equivalent around 100,000 times more energy than the Hiroshima bomb. Could you imagine something the size of the Enterprise surviving 100,000 Hiroshima bombs exploding at once? Of course not. It doesn't matter what the armor is made of. If even one photon torpedo gets through the shield and hits the hull, the ship is toast.
Presumably, the only reason the Enterprise-D was not destroyed by the bird of prey was because there is some kind of secondary shielding around the hull, maybe part of the structural integrity field, that absorbed or deflected most of the Klingon attack.
But at the energy levels that are established on the show, even one shot of one energy weapon against bare hull is probably more than enough to effectively destroy a ship regardless of its size.
I find it very hard to believe that a professional game developer would intentionally make one ship in a game worse than all the others simply to spite those who like it. The far more sane explanation is that the game balance isn't working quite like cryptic wanted it to. Based on canon it's reasonable to make the Galaxy class a pure engineering ship (the solution to virtually every episode on the show was either technobabble or diplomacy) while the Excelsior is a bit more tactical oriented (built in a time of war and all that). The problem is that in the STO engine DPS is king, and thus tactical will usually feel more useful than science or engineering.
Of course, if age truly was a factor, all the newer design would automatically outperform the ones from the shows, which would alienate many fans. Cryptic have the impossible task of balancing the task of both designing the next era in the Trek 'Verse and pleasing the fans who want to fly around in things they recognize.
According to the TNG technical manual photon torpedoes are a matter-antimatter warhead. A 10 kg warhead would yield an energy equivalent around 100,000 times more energy than the Hiroshima bomb. Could you imagine something the size of the Enterprise surviving 100,000 Hiroshima bombs exploding at once? Of course not. It doesn't matter what the armor is made of. If even one photon torpedo gets through the shield and hits the hull, the ship is toast.
Presumably, the only reason the Enterprise-D was not destroyed by the bird of prey was because there is some kind of secondary shielding around the hull, maybe part of the structural integrity field, that absorbed or deflected most of the Klingon attack.
.
1) Torpedoes of that power would probably vapourise the attacking ship right along with it. If torps using that level of power were used in a close quarter fight like the battle to retake DS9 both sides would nuke each other in a single salvo. torpedoes probably have multiple modes depending on the targets. So when you hear 'max yield full spread' its probably maximum for the target they are engaging to avoid back blast.
2) if that answer isnt enough consider the argument its writers inconsistant artistic licence at the time LOL
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I find it very hard to believe that a professional game developer would intentionally make one ship in a game worse than all the others simply to spite those who like it. The far more sane explanation is that the game balance isn't working quite like cryptic wanted it to. Based on canon it's reasonable to make the Galaxy class a pure engineering ship (the solution to virtually every episode on the show was either technobabble or diplomacy) while the Excelsior is a bit more tactical oriented (built in a time of war and all that). The problem is that in the STO engine DPS is king, and thus tactical will usually feel more useful than science or engineering.
Of course, if age truly was a factor, all the newer design would automatically outperform the ones from the shows, which would alienate many fans. Cryptic have the impossible task of balancing the task of both designing the next era in the Trek 'Verse and pleasing the fans who want to fly around in things they recognize.
yeah i agree, leaves the question why they made the task you described here even harder by setting the game nearly 40 years in the future of the last film? wouldn't it have been easier to just set the game shortly after the destruction of romulus?
personally i had already problems picturing TNG to be 100 years ahead of TOS. Made things kind complicated...every guest star from TOS that appeared in TNG was either 150 years or more old or was held in a transporter buffer for decades. The time setting of the 2 spinoffs was far better, DS9 directly after TNG, Voyager during DS9.
Enterprise for instance was a great show, and the time setting kind of made sense, because they wanted to show a pre-federation time...if they could have continued for another 2 seasons with the romulan war it would have been great. It may sound disturbing but space battles and the general tristesse of a war make good script material, especially for si fi.
on the topic: to really think the dev team dislikes the galaxy or cruisers in general is nonsense. however there is a lack of powerfull offensive high tier engineering powers. DEM and EWP just don't cut it in my opinion to really be that dangerous. However there are powerful DOFFs for those abilitys that really boost them, maybe that should be put into the commander level of those abilities.
That is true. See Best of Both Worlds - the defensive screen keeps out most of the damage, but the hull is remarkably flimsy.
Also, the threat of the Solar Missile thing kept the Enterprise in orbit, instead of taking wild maneuvers. They needed to constantly track the Missile thing in case it launched.
Plus, Data picked a bad time to install his emotion chip and start the Android Musical Band on the bridge. :P
Yeah, it seemd like the crew where doing almost any mistake possible, just to get rid of the Big "D", lol.
I find it very hard to believe that a professional game developer would intentionally make one ship in a game worse than all the others simply to spite those who like it. The far more sane explanation is that the game balance isn't working quite like cryptic wanted it to. Based on canon it's reasonable to make the Galaxy class a pure engineering ship (the solution to virtually every episode on the show was either technobabble or diplomacy) while the Excelsior is a bit more tactical oriented (built in a time of war and all that). The problem is that in the STO engine DPS is king, and thus tactical will usually feel more useful than science or engineering.
Of course, if age truly was a factor, all the newer design would automatically outperform the ones from the shows, which would alienate many fans. Cryptic have the impossible task of balancing the task of both designing the next era in the Trek 'Verse and pleasing the fans who want to fly around in things they recognize.
Excelsior build in a time of war?
Anyway, i find it just rediculus to make the Excelsior move faster and be able to generate more firepower than a Galaxy Class. I can't remember any occasion where a Excelsior was shown much faster than a Galaxy Class. Even if this ship where a bit more maneuverable, i don't think that the differences would be extreme like in STO.
But making the Galaxy Class firepower inferior to the Excelsior just show how little they know about their field of work IMHO.
At least they should give the Galaxy a thrid tac console and make its Ensign Engineering into a Lt. Universal.
yeah i agree, leaves the question why they made the task you described here even harder by setting the game nearly 40 years in the future of the last film? wouldn't it have been easier to just set the game shortly after the destruction of romulus?
personally i had already problems picturing TNG to be 100 years ahead of TOS. Made things kind complicated...every guest star from TOS that appeared in TNG was either 150 years or more old or was held in a transporter buffer for decades. The time setting of the 2 spinoffs was far better, DS9 directly after TNG, Voyager during DS9.
Enterprise for instance was a great show, and the time setting kind of made sense, because they wanted to show a pre-federation time...if they could have continued for another 2 seasons with the romulan war it would have been great. It may sound disturbing but space battles and the general tristesse of a war make good script material, especially for si fi.
on the topic: to really think the dev team dislikes the galaxy or cruisers in general is nonsense. however there is a lack of powerfull offensive high tier engineering powers. DEM and EWP just don't cut it in my opinion to really be that dangerous. However there are powerful DOFFs for those abilitys that really boost them, maybe that should be put into the commander level of those abilities.
Maybe it is nonsense, but why don't they just buff cruisers turnrate to a playable level. I mean it's not like they would do a lot more damage or do anything much better, it they where able to turn faster. But flying them would be way less annoying and it would give cruiser pilots a bit more active role.
I don't know it they don't like cruisers, but it looks like they would. I don't want to beat a dead horse by comparing cruiser to escorts, but they even made science ships even more fun and at least more versatile than cruisers.
In the end it depends on the availlable powers a ship can use. I think Engineering powers are just too passive and have too little impact in combat, except for the healing abilities.
And thats the point CRYPTIC and some of us disagree, in "real" Star Trek, Cruisers where NOT just supporters for Escorts. They where the Big guys on the Battlefield, able to inflict huge amounts of damage, and there was almost NO possibility to heal a friendly ship. They could extend their shileds, but not without dangerously weakening it and so on.
CRYPTIC just came up with some ship mechanics that have almost nothing to do with what we saw on the shows, just for the sake to make their game more exiting. But they sacrificed what made Star Trek ships unique and pressed them into a pattern they just don't belong. The Galaxy Class is one of most obvious examples, in my opinion it is made completely wrong.
I just don understand why they had such trouble in finding the right role for Star Trek ships. Other games did a much better job in doing this, like Bridge Commander, Armada or even Birth of the Federation. If Cryptics devs cared and took a little time to play (especially) BotF they could have learned a lot of how to implement Star Trek ships into a Game.
I agree that high tier Engineering powers like DEM or EWP are way too weak. Especially DEM is almost nonexistent when using. I think it should get at least one or two other additionaly effects, like a heal prevention or a high increase of critical damage or an increase of critical hits.
BTW. Enterprise was great, but most of the times inconsequent, just like other ST series too.
Sadly, i think the internet communities did their share to kill it.
If TNG already had internet communities i think it wouldn't had survived the first season, lol.
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
Although a more flexible set up would be nice, I think if anything, the Galaxy's a good pointer to how cruddy low-tier engineering powers really are. Because hardly anybody uses anything but EPTS1 in those slots, they get almost no attention.
A good question would be why does EPTS1 get to harden shields for the whole duration, but EPTW1 only gives you a limited flat-rate damage bonus on top of the energy levels?
Also, like science team, engineering team can be a bit of an "own goal", because neither will be anywhere near as much use defensively as tactical team, and you can throw hazards or aux2sif around for hull heals.
And aside from emergency power to... and engineering team, there's nothing else out there for engineering ensign powers. This hamstrings the Galaxy the most, as it can't even be all that good a healer when you compare it to the Starcruiser, Odyssey or Ambassador.
If the Fleet Galaxy-R had received the same upgrades as the Fleet Negh'var, it would've been just fine.
1) Torpedoes of that power would probably vapourise the attacking ship right along with it. If torps using that level of power were used in a close quarter fight like the battle to retake DS9 both sides would nuke each other in a single salvo. torpedoes probably have multiple modes depending on the targets. So when you hear 'max yield full spread' its probably maximum for the target they are engaging to avoid back blast.
2) if that answer isnt enough consider the argument its writers inconsistant artistic licence at the time LOL
Well, that is why they have energy shields, so they don't get "vaporized" by the photon torpedoes. My point was that that energy against the bare hull would obliterate any small ship, like a Galaxy. Since the Enterprise D was not vaporized by the B'rel's torpedo which completely penetrated the primary shielding, I can only assume that it has some kind of secondary shielding along the hull, possibly part of the structural integrity field.
I would also assume that the "Ablative armor" on the Defiant was not simply some kind of alloy, but was actively "energized" by some sort of energy absorption field.
It is established in canon that a 25 isoton explosion could destroy an entire city (so I would assume that this would be in the 1-100 megaton TNT range) and that a class-6 photon torpedo could contain at least 200 isotons of antimatter potential energy.
So yes, the amounts of energy in a B'rel's photon torpedo launcher would be more than enough to completley destroy a Galaxy Class ship if it hit bare hull. I presume the reason the Enterprise was able to "survive" the attack was due to the massive amount of secondary shielding it possessed.
Note also that in space, much of the blast effect of a detonation is lost, so the damage is mainly done through radiation and direct contact nuclear disruption. Not saying that isn't -alot- of damage, but that combined with the hull materials of a starship, a torpedo hitting a ship is going to do alot of localized damage rather than a large area-of-effect hit.
Also, the BoP in question knew it had no chance in open battle with the -D, and only the fact it was firing on an unshielded ship let it engage in a minutes-long battle that -still- did not destroy the -D (that was secondary damage from multiple hits). Compare that to what happened when the -D got it's own hit in.
That the Galaxy-class continuously took damage in its career that would scrap another ship (including a Sovereign-class) is a testament to the engineering capabilities of these ships.
The episode you refer to was 'The Jem' Hadar'. The ship in question was the (Galaxy-class) USS Odyssey. And I HATE the Odyssey being used as somekind of benchmark for the Galaxy class - NO ship woud have survived the Jem Hadar kamikaze run that took the Odyssey out. If anything, that episode showed how durable the Galaxy class is - the Odyssey's shields were stated, in dialouge, to be useless against the Jem Hadar's ship weapons, but it wasn't weaponsfire that took her out, it was having her main deflector rammed.
I disagree. A different ship, say an escort (not necessarily a defiant-class), could potentially have done two things: Actually blown up the ships before they impacted, and/or moved out of the way, seeing as how they possess incidental things like speed and maneuverability.
The Galaxy wings seen in Sacrifice of angels were seen to smack the Cardassian ships around, clearing a path for the oh-so-wonderful (and catastrophically overrated) Defiant to break through the lines. And THAT was their point - not to break through the line themselves, but to make certain that others could. They kept the proverbial hole open for them and kept the larger ships off their back.
That sounds like "tanking," which they can do quite well in game. They sit there and get shot at while the escorts go and do the important thing. Sounds like "working as intended," no?
Besides of which, from a non-story point of view, they were not the 'hero' ship - we didn't really see much of ANY other ship, and I, frankly, found it laughable that of all the ships present the Defiant was the only ship to break through the enemy lines. But let's not kid ourselves - no matter how much of an uber-ship it was made out to be most of the time, there is no way in hell that the Defiant would have gotten anywhere near DS9 without the aid of the larger ships and the Klingons
Well see, that goes back to my original point: In TNG (where the enterprise was the hero-ship), you don't really see the D laying about with the smackdown. You see them getting shot and not doing anything about it. You see them facing off with enemies and potential enemies, posturing and trading verbal barbs till everyone decides to go home. You see it being ineffectual against the borg. Yes, they talk about the enterprise being all mighty and powerful, but it's never actually performs that way.
Really most of what it's weapons are shown to actually be effective against is empty, uncrewed ships and inanimate object. Oh, wait. They did lay at least one one smackdown. The D really pwned the mama Gekli.
On the flip side, DS9 showed the defiant in many actual combat situations, where it blows up many and diverse opponents. Yes, a couple of them got blown up. But one fell victim to new, advanced weapons. The other was crewed by cadets, and commanded by an inexperienced, egomaniac suffering from drug-abuse.
So really, there's nothing about the galaxy class being poor at combat that doesn't mesh with the canon. If you really want to fly around in a galaxy, and be like picard, then you should really resign yourself to doing non-combat missions or getting beat up on. That'll mesh with the canon, too.
its hilarious to watch this defense of the excelsior, even in the 2360s its antiquated, its not even using phaser arrays. since arrays had been around for at least 30 years by then, and no tng era excelsior had been uprated with them, it just proves that starfleet didn't feel it was worth it to go through with such an overhawl, and was happy with them as they were, doing all the inglorious thing they needed ships for inside the federation.
and admirals rode around in them because decades earlier that was the ship they were captains of. so they basicly got to keep it when they needed to leave the office. its not like a federation admiral would be on a front line and need to be in command of the most powerful ship, they didn't lead fleets into battle. every admiral having a galaxy class is a silly thing that would not exist in the federation.
they could have easily fabricated a phaser ring to place on the excelsior model to cover the turret hardpoints, but they never bothered. even when they made the cgi models they didn't bother! you can lament that all you want, but its on screen canon that they didn't bother bringing the excelsior up to even 2330s level spec. the in game excelsior and galaxy should swap station setups, it would make more sense.
we only saw them in later battles in DS9 because there was such a surplus of them. they did have some combat worth, it was comparable to a defiant class in battle. a modern starfleet ship could match all the firepower they could put on an ancient excelsior hull on a ship 16 times smaller.
any excelsior that survived the domionion war would not have been kept around much longer. everything from the soverign class to the saber class was in some way a direct replacement for the excelsior and for the role it had served for so long. the ship being in STO, and being an end game ship is an hilarious joke.
My Excelsior works just GREAT, sonny! Ole Betsy's got a lot more life in 'her still!
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Note also that in space, much of the blast effect of a detonation is lost, so the damage is mainly done through radiation and direct contact nuclear disruption. Not saying that isn't -alot- of damage, but that combined with the hull materials of a starship, a torpedo hitting a ship is going to do alot of localized damage rather than a large area-of-effect hit.
Also, the BoP in question knew it had no chance in open battle with the -D, and only the fact it was firing on an unshielded ship let it engage in a minutes-long battle that -still- did not destroy the -D (that was secondary damage from multiple hits). Compare that to what happened when the -D got it's own hit in.
That the Galaxy-class continuously took damage in its career that would scrap another ship (including a Sovereign-class) is a testament to the engineering capabilities of these ships.
Actually, you have it backward. The total energy released by the warhead is the same no matter whether it detonates in orbit or at sea level. In space, the atmosphere is of extremely low density compared to a planet's surface, which means the intensity of the energy released will be higher at equal radii because the rate of atmospheric absorption is lower.
Either way it drops off at the inverse square of the distance, but in space, very little energy goes into heating the atmosphere.
I disagree. A different ship, say an escort (not necessarily a defiant-class), could potentially have done two things: Actually blown up the ships before they impacted, and/or moved out of the way, seeing as how they possess incidental things like speed and maneuverability.
That sounds like "tanking," which they can do quite well in game. They sit there and get shot at while the escorts go and do the important thing. Sounds like "working as intended," no?
Well see, that goes back to my original point: In TNG (where the enterprise was the hero-ship), you don't really see the D laying about with the smackdown. You see them getting shot and not doing anything about it. You see them facing off with enemies and potential enemies, posturing and trading verbal barbs till everyone decides to go home. You see it being ineffectual against the borg. Yes, they talk about the enterprise being all mighty and powerful, but it's never actually performs that way.
Really most of what it's weapons are shown to actually be effective against is empty, uncrewed ships and inanimate object. Oh, wait. They did lay at least one one smackdown. The D really pwned the mama Gekli.
On the flip side, DS9 showed the defiant in many actual combat situations, where it blows up many and diverse opponents. Yes, a couple of them got blown up. But one fell victim to new, advanced weapons. The other was crewed by cadets, and commanded by an inexperienced, egomaniac suffering from drug-abuse.
So really, there's nothing about the galaxy class being poor at combat that doesn't mesh with the canon. If you really want to fly around in a galaxy, and be like picard, then you should really resign yourself to doing non-combat missions or getting beat up on. That'll mesh with the canon, too.
Actually, in canon they repeatedly make reference to the Galaxy Class being the most tactically powerful ships in the Federation (presumably until the Sovereign) and being one of the most tactically powerful ships known to Federation.
By contrast, the Defiant is shown being about on par tactically with a retrofitted 100 year old cruiser.
Actually, in canon they repeatedly make reference to the Galaxy Class being the most tactically powerful ships in the Federation (presumably until the Sovereign) and being one of the most tactically powerful ships known to Federation.
By contrast, the Defiant is shown being about on par tactically with a retrofitted 100 year old cruiser.
Gul Dukat considers the Defiant to be one of the most heavily armed ships in the sector in one episode. That's pretty high praise.
The fight against the Lakota is easily explained as neither ship wanting to cause grievous damage to the other -- they're both Starfleet, they don't want to shoot to kill. Hardly a true benchmark for power.
Though the truth of it is (and I think I even said so in this thread) that the power and durability of any ship, Hero or Background, is incredibly inconsistent. It all depends on what the story requires of the ship, and at least before they started using CGI, what ship models they had on hand to film.
It is established in canon that a 25 isoton explosion could destroy an entire city (so I would assume that this would be in the 1-100 megaton TNT range) and that a class-6 photon torpedo could contain at least 200 isotons of antimatter potential energy.
I don't want to counter this point specifically, but rather use it as an example.
Star Trek as a whole, throughout all of its series and movies, has been incredibly inconsistent. They've shown the Enterprise-A warping from Earth to the center of the Galaxy in a matter of hours -- easily a 30,000 Light Year journey, or longer. On the flip side, Voyager is supposed to take 70 years to travel 70,000 light years. Also, in one Season 4 episode of TNG, Geordi describes the Enterprise's warp engines as having "millions of light years" on them, implying that that's how much they've traveled.
Photon torpedoes are supposed to travel at Warp 1, but not only do we actively see that this isn't the case (we usually see torpedoes move so slow, you could catch them with a net), but a projectile moving at that speed wouldn't need a matter-antimatter warhead -- the relativistic speeds alone would obliterate the target.
The term "Isoton" is actually a great example. It's a made-up unit of measurement, and not once has anyone on screen explained precisely what "isoton" means. At one point, Janeway offers someone 12 isotons of ore, which means that they'd have to be able to store that much ore on their ship. Now, Voyager's a pretty small ship, and we see their cargo bays, so we know about how much storage space they have. If Isoton is larger than Megaton, they definitely do not have room to store even one isoton of anything, let alone 12.
In short, Star Trek says things and then adds numbers to make it sound impressive, but for the vast majority of the time none of it means anything.
Actually, in canon they repeatedly make reference to the Galaxy Class being the most tactically powerful ships in the Federation (presumably until the Sovereign) and being one of the most tactically powerful ships known to Federation.
By contrast, the Defiant is shown being about on par tactically with a retrofitted 100 year old cruiser.
If you had read what I said, I pointed out:
Yes, they talk about the enterprise being all mighty and powerful, but it's never actually performs that way.
You're absolutely correct, they talk about it being very powerful. But it's just that, talk. Whenever it's in a confrontation it either doesn't fight or else it performs very poorly in the fight. That's what we call hype. Hype that it doesn't live up to.
You're perfectly free to fly around in some galaxy hull and call yourself mighty and powerful, if hype gives you some kind of pleasure. Then, when you actually take it into combat you can perform poorly. Thus you'll be going along perfectly with the canon. :P
The intrepid cryptic hasn't shown love to. It's got great shields and a good support boot section that's about it but do you see everyone shining about that no so stop with the QQ
-"There is no such thing as an I win button!""Um, Sir. Whats this button that says (I win) for then?"
Gul Dukat considers the Defiant to be one of the most heavily armed ships in the sector in one episode. That's pretty high praise.
The fight against the Lakota is easily explained as neither ship wanting to cause grievous damage to the other -- they're both Starfleet, they don't want to shoot to kill. Hardly a true benchmark for power.
Though the truth of it is (and I think I even said so in this thread) that the power and durability of any ship, Hero or Background, is incredibly inconsistent. It all depends on what the story requires of the ship, and at least before they started using CGI, what ship models they had on hand to film.
I don't want to counter this point specifically, but rather use it as an example.
Star Trek as a whole, throughout all of its series and movies, has been incredibly inconsistent. They've shown the Enterprise-A warping from Earth to the center of the Galaxy in a matter of hours -- easily a 30,000 Light Year journey, or longer. On the flip side, Voyager is supposed to take 70 years to travel 70,000 light years. Also, in one Season 4 episode of TNG, Geordi describes the Enterprise's warp engines as having "millions of light years" on them, implying that that's how much they've traveled.
Photon torpedoes are supposed to travel at Warp 1, but not only do we actively see that this isn't the case (we usually see torpedoes move so slow, you could catch them with a net), but a projectile moving at that speed wouldn't need a matter-antimatter warhead -- the relativistic speeds alone would obliterate the target.
The term "Isoton" is actually a great example. It's a made-up unit of measurement, and not once has anyone on screen explained precisely what "isoton" means. At one point, Janeway offers someone 12 isotons of ore, which means that they'd have to be able to store that much ore on their ship. Now, Voyager's a pretty small ship, and we see their cargo bays, so we know about how much storage space they have. If Isoton is larger than Megaton, they definitely do not have room to store even one isoton of anything, let alone 12.
In short, Star Trek says things and then adds numbers to make it sound impressive, but for the vast majority of the time none of it means anything.
You are confusing two different systems of measurement. When they are talking about explosive yields in isotons, they are referring to the energy that would be released by an isotone of some standard explosive material.
It is similar to how a thermonuclear bomb weighs less than one ton but can have a 1 million ton explosive yield, because the first unit measures mass and the second unit measures energy released by a ton of TNT.
Also, the Defiant being the most powerful ship in the sector is not exactly high praise considering that a sector in canon seems to be only a few light years in diameter.
You're absolutely correct, they talk about it being very powerful. But it's just that, talk. Whenever it's in a confrontation it either doesn't fight or else it performs very poorly in the fight. That's what we call hype. Hype that it doesn't live up to.
You're perfectly free to fly around in some galaxy hull and call yourself mighty and powerful, if hype gives you some kind of pleasure. Then, when you actually take it into combat you can perform poorly. Thus you'll be going along perfectly with the canon. :P
But in all seriousness, writers are not perfect. Particularly writers on time constraints. They can't be bothered to look up ever spec, about every ship, every time, even if they themselves wrote it first. :rolleyes:
But that's true of everything, so you can't really blame them. But this is a videogame, where you can take the time to look at everything, and decide what is best for the most awesome. They... haven't done that.
Exactly. That's an excellent example of what I'm talking about. If you examine that video you notice that much of the footage is of galaxies shooting at inanimate objects, probes, and derelict, uncrewed ships. Probably nearly half of the video doesn't portray shooting at anything that: A. Has a crew, B. Can move, and C. Can fight back.
Most of the rest is combat in which the enterprise loses or at best ends in a draw. For example, all the footage vs the borg cubes. The enterprise D never won a space engagement vs the borg, yet that is a significant portion of the video.
You see a bird of prey blown up, and you two (at least) galaxies being required to take out one galor. What else is shown where a galaxy successfully engages another space ship that is crewed and has the ability to both move and fight back?
Even in a highlight reel, the galaxy performs poorly and they have to include carefully edited footage of when it loses battles and/or runs away from things. :cool:
to be fair TNG had a horrible budget and FX like space combat costs something i think is referred to as money
so instead the writers write stories that manly focused on confrontations they could talk there way out of or the confrontation was not even something they could fight but had to figure out.
it also goes back to picard's character. he did not want to fight instead he rather preferred a peaceful conclusion to ending conflicts so the Ent-D never actually had a chance to show what it could or could not do as it was always holding back.
almost every time picard ordered them to fire it was to disable or at a lower power setting. only time i think they went full on to an enemy was the borg
Exactly. That's an excellent example of what I'm talking about. If you examine that video you notice that much of the footage is of galaxies shooting at inanimate objects, probes, and derelict, uncrewed ships. Probably nearly half of the video doesn't portray shooting at anything that: A. Has a crew, B. Can move, and C. Can fight back.
Most of the rest is combat in which the enterprise loses or at best ends in a draw. For example, all the footage vs the borg cubes. The enterprise D never won a space engagement vs the borg, yet that is a significant portion of the video.
You see a bird of prey blown up, and you two (at least) galaxies being required to take out one galor. What else is shown where a galaxy successfully engages another space ship that is crewed and has the ability to both move and fight back?
Even in a highlight reel, the galaxy performs poorly and they have to include carefully edited footage of when it loses battles and/or runs away from things. :cool:
Um, you mean two galaxies blowing up one of the most powerful ships the Cardassians had with two shots and withstanding and being able to fend off three Jem Hadar attack ships (despite their shielding being vulnerable) up until the point where one rams it?
And how about the fact that the Galaxy class ship was able to survive multiple attacks from the Borg and even do a bit of damage when an entire fleet of federation ships were not able to even make a dent in a single cube?
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Sadly, the same can be said of just about any instance of combat in Star Trek, which makes it hard to really find any kind of benchmark for the capabilities of starships. It's all about plot armor and plot contrivances.
I love the Defiant, but I'll admit that a wing of Defiants protecting a Galaxy makes a ton more sense than a wing of Galaxies protecting a Defiant.
Honestly, all Federation cruisers need some attention, whether it be via Beam weapons, or the cruisers themselves. I honestly can't remember the last time I saw a Fed cruiser in Ker'rat or other PVP map... it's always Science ships and Escorts. That might just be me having an improbable string of cruiser-less PVP maps and not representative of the state of cruisers, though.
In STO cruisers are doomed to serve as supporters for Escorts, while in "real" Star Trek Cruisers where the main ships and Escorts where small cheap short range specialists.
Obviously CRYPTIC wanted much more action focused space combat while it should be more tactical.
A Star Trek Game like STO should focus on managing your ship, and The Big ships should be harder to get but also unequally more powerful than "specialists" ships.
I just find it absurd that a ship from the size of the defiant can generate more firepower than a ship 10x the size. For me this just doesn't make any sense.
Not that they (CRYPTIC) degraded the iconic Star Trek ship to mere supporters for their beloved Escorts they also made them the most slow.
I just don't get it why Cruisers in STO made so slow. I can't remember any scene in TNG where the Big D was moving like a snail, quite the contrary it was for its size very maneuverable. In Universe it wouldn't make very much sense to design a ship with a turnrate of the Titanic.
In my oppinion CRYPTIC used every opportunity to make their beloved Escorts superior.
If i where to decide anything at CRYPTIC, i would give Cruisers roughly the same turnrate as Science ships. Even balance wise it doesn't make sense to make them so slow, they wouldn be able to create more firepower or anything else but it wouldn't be so tedious to fly a Cruiser. While CRYPTIC did everything to fulfill their affection for Escorts, they completey ignored anything canon says about ships and first and foremost what we came to expect from a Star Trek game.
It's not like i am a canon fanatic, really not, but when i buy a Star Trek game i expect Star Trek game to be inside. And that's what bothers me the most, CRYPTIC didn't care about Star Trek at all, they just made their own game and slaped a big "Star Trek" sign onto it.
Speaking about the Galaxy Class, if CRYPTIC wouldn't hate that ship so much they would have given it a universal Lt. BOFF a long time ago.
Obviously CRYPTIC sorted out every occasion where the Galaxy Class was shown as volunerable, and used that as benchmark, while they did the exact opposite with their beloved Escorts.
I absolutely hate the Galaxy class slow turnrate and its BOFF & Console layout.
Now I think we all see the problem.
Star Trek Online is NOT a trinity game. It is singularity game with all it's aspects based around DPS. And in such setup there is really no place for dedicated tanks. Look at the "competition" - SW:TOR. It is also based around trinity setup. But in TOR for lot of group content there is a clear need for dedicated tank to keep the boss occupied while rest of team CC/DPS/Heal.
If we had such setup then Galaxy will be not worst ship in the endgame, but BEST (if rather specialized) ship for any tank worth the name.
Sadly STO sucks bettre the industrial vacuum cleaner when it comes to group content and it's setup. And basing all content around DPS makes ships like Galaxy look weak and pathetic. Sadly.
Fix the game, Cryptic, or make all ships tactical ones.
While I like your thinking on this in general, I do feel compelled to point out a problem that the Galaxy-R has in this context.
The Galaxy-R is the most engineering-focused Starfleet ship in the game.
That's okay...at first glance since Engineering in this game should mean "defense", "repair" ir simply "tank".
However there's somthing that pretty much defeats this overspecialization of the Galaxy...the global cooldowns.
They mean that even if you stuff the ship with all those abilties, you're bound to run into some troubles with them.
That's why I've been using a Star Cruiser even after the Galaxy-R was introduced into the game...because the BO setup makes it a better tank.
And that's something that keeps plagueing the ship.
So even if this ship is designed to tank (something I have no problem with, I built my first engineer for this purpose) it's not even really good at that.
That is true. See Best of Both Worlds - the defensive screen keeps out most of the damage, but the hull is remarkably flimsy.
Also, the threat of the Solar Missile thing kept the Enterprise in orbit, instead of taking wild maneuvers. They needed to constantly track the Missile thing in case it launched.
Plus, Data picked a bad time to install his emotion chip and start the Android Musical Band on the bridge. :P
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I was just making a counterpoint to the argument that the Odyssey was holding up well under Jem'hadar weapons fire without shields.
Although, again, the power and durability of all starships in Star Trek change wildly depending on the story needs.
Hence the pitiful destruction of the Enterprise D in Star Trek Generations.... by a tiny BOP no less. Pure Insanity regardless of whatever silly rational they came up with.
According to the TNG technical manual photon torpedoes are a matter-antimatter warhead. A 10 kg warhead would yield an energy equivalent around 100,000 times more energy than the Hiroshima bomb. Could you imagine something the size of the Enterprise surviving 100,000 Hiroshima bombs exploding at once? Of course not. It doesn't matter what the armor is made of. If even one photon torpedo gets through the shield and hits the hull, the ship is toast.
Presumably, the only reason the Enterprise-D was not destroyed by the bird of prey was because there is some kind of secondary shielding around the hull, maybe part of the structural integrity field, that absorbed or deflected most of the Klingon attack.
But at the energy levels that are established on the show, even one shot of one energy weapon against bare hull is probably more than enough to effectively destroy a ship regardless of its size.
Of course, if age truly was a factor, all the newer design would automatically outperform the ones from the shows, which would alienate many fans. Cryptic have the impossible task of balancing the task of both designing the next era in the Trek 'Verse and pleasing the fans who want to fly around in things they recognize.
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1) Torpedoes of that power would probably vapourise the attacking ship right along with it. If torps using that level of power were used in a close quarter fight like the battle to retake DS9 both sides would nuke each other in a single salvo. torpedoes probably have multiple modes depending on the targets. So when you hear 'max yield full spread' its probably maximum for the target they are engaging to avoid back blast.
2) if that answer isnt enough consider the argument its writers inconsistant artistic licence at the time LOL
yeah i agree, leaves the question why they made the task you described here even harder by setting the game nearly 40 years in the future of the last film? wouldn't it have been easier to just set the game shortly after the destruction of romulus?
personally i had already problems picturing TNG to be 100 years ahead of TOS. Made things kind complicated...every guest star from TOS that appeared in TNG was either 150 years or more old or was held in a transporter buffer for decades. The time setting of the 2 spinoffs was far better, DS9 directly after TNG, Voyager during DS9.
Enterprise for instance was a great show, and the time setting kind of made sense, because they wanted to show a pre-federation time...if they could have continued for another 2 seasons with the romulan war it would have been great. It may sound disturbing but space battles and the general tristesse of a war make good script material, especially for si fi.
on the topic: to really think the dev team dislikes the galaxy or cruisers in general is nonsense. however there is a lack of powerfull offensive high tier engineering powers. DEM and EWP just don't cut it in my opinion to really be that dangerous. However there are powerful DOFFs for those abilitys that really boost them, maybe that should be put into the commander level of those abilities.
Excelsior build in a time of war?
Anyway, i find it just rediculus to make the Excelsior move faster and be able to generate more firepower than a Galaxy Class. I can't remember any occasion where a Excelsior was shown much faster than a Galaxy Class. Even if this ship where a bit more maneuverable, i don't think that the differences would be extreme like in STO.
But making the Galaxy Class firepower inferior to the Excelsior just show how little they know about their field of work IMHO.
At least they should give the Galaxy a thrid tac console and make its Ensign Engineering into a Lt. Universal.
Maybe it is nonsense, but why don't they just buff cruisers turnrate to a playable level. I mean it's not like they would do a lot more damage or do anything much better, it they where able to turn faster. But flying them would be way less annoying and it would give cruiser pilots a bit more active role.
I don't know it they don't like cruisers, but it looks like they would. I don't want to beat a dead horse by comparing cruiser to escorts, but they even made science ships even more fun and at least more versatile than cruisers.
In the end it depends on the availlable powers a ship can use. I think Engineering powers are just too passive and have too little impact in combat, except for the healing abilities.
And thats the point CRYPTIC and some of us disagree, in "real" Star Trek, Cruisers where NOT just supporters for Escorts. They where the Big guys on the Battlefield, able to inflict huge amounts of damage, and there was almost NO possibility to heal a friendly ship. They could extend their shileds, but not without dangerously weakening it and so on.
CRYPTIC just came up with some ship mechanics that have almost nothing to do with what we saw on the shows, just for the sake to make their game more exiting. But they sacrificed what made Star Trek ships unique and pressed them into a pattern they just don't belong. The Galaxy Class is one of most obvious examples, in my opinion it is made completely wrong.
I just don understand why they had such trouble in finding the right role for Star Trek ships. Other games did a much better job in doing this, like Bridge Commander, Armada or even Birth of the Federation. If Cryptics devs cared and took a little time to play (especially) BotF they could have learned a lot of how to implement Star Trek ships into a Game.
I agree that high tier Engineering powers like DEM or EWP are way too weak. Especially DEM is almost nonexistent when using. I think it should get at least one or two other additionaly effects, like a heal prevention or a high increase of critical damage or an increase of critical hits.
BTW. Enterprise was great, but most of the times inconsequent, just like other ST series too.
Sadly, i think the internet communities did their share to kill it.
If TNG already had internet communities i think it wouldn't had survived the first season, lol.
A good question would be why does EPTS1 get to harden shields for the whole duration, but EPTW1 only gives you a limited flat-rate damage bonus on top of the energy levels?
Also, like science team, engineering team can be a bit of an "own goal", because neither will be anywhere near as much use defensively as tactical team, and you can throw hazards or aux2sif around for hull heals.
And aside from emergency power to... and engineering team, there's nothing else out there for engineering ensign powers. This hamstrings the Galaxy the most, as it can't even be all that good a healer when you compare it to the Starcruiser, Odyssey or Ambassador.
If the Fleet Galaxy-R had received the same upgrades as the Fleet Negh'var, it would've been just fine.
Well, that is why they have energy shields, so they don't get "vaporized" by the photon torpedoes. My point was that that energy against the bare hull would obliterate any small ship, like a Galaxy. Since the Enterprise D was not vaporized by the B'rel's torpedo which completely penetrated the primary shielding, I can only assume that it has some kind of secondary shielding along the hull, possibly part of the structural integrity field.
I would also assume that the "Ablative armor" on the Defiant was not simply some kind of alloy, but was actively "energized" by some sort of energy absorption field.
It is established in canon that a 25 isoton explosion could destroy an entire city (so I would assume that this would be in the 1-100 megaton TNT range) and that a class-6 photon torpedo could contain at least 200 isotons of antimatter potential energy.
So yes, the amounts of energy in a B'rel's photon torpedo launcher would be more than enough to completley destroy a Galaxy Class ship if it hit bare hull. I presume the reason the Enterprise was able to "survive" the attack was due to the massive amount of secondary shielding it possessed.
Also, the BoP in question knew it had no chance in open battle with the -D, and only the fact it was firing on an unshielded ship let it engage in a minutes-long battle that -still- did not destroy the -D (that was secondary damage from multiple hits). Compare that to what happened when the -D got it's own hit in.
That the Galaxy-class continuously took damage in its career that would scrap another ship (including a Sovereign-class) is a testament to the engineering capabilities of these ships.
I disagree. A different ship, say an escort (not necessarily a defiant-class), could potentially have done two things: Actually blown up the ships before they impacted, and/or moved out of the way, seeing as how they possess incidental things like speed and maneuverability.
That sounds like "tanking," which they can do quite well in game. They sit there and get shot at while the escorts go and do the important thing. Sounds like "working as intended," no?
Well see, that goes back to my original point: In TNG (where the enterprise was the hero-ship), you don't really see the D laying about with the smackdown. You see them getting shot and not doing anything about it. You see them facing off with enemies and potential enemies, posturing and trading verbal barbs till everyone decides to go home. You see it being ineffectual against the borg. Yes, they talk about the enterprise being all mighty and powerful, but it's never actually performs that way.
Really most of what it's weapons are shown to actually be effective against is empty, uncrewed ships and inanimate object. Oh, wait. They did lay at least one one smackdown. The D really pwned the mama Gekli.
On the flip side, DS9 showed the defiant in many actual combat situations, where it blows up many and diverse opponents. Yes, a couple of them got blown up. But one fell victim to new, advanced weapons. The other was crewed by cadets, and commanded by an inexperienced, egomaniac suffering from drug-abuse.
So really, there's nothing about the galaxy class being poor at combat that doesn't mesh with the canon. If you really want to fly around in a galaxy, and be like picard, then you should really resign yourself to doing non-combat missions or getting beat up on. That'll mesh with the canon, too.
My Excelsior works just GREAT, sonny! Ole Betsy's got a lot more life in 'her still!
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Actually, you have it backward. The total energy released by the warhead is the same no matter whether it detonates in orbit or at sea level. In space, the atmosphere is of extremely low density compared to a planet's surface, which means the intensity of the energy released will be higher at equal radii because the rate of atmospheric absorption is lower.
Either way it drops off at the inverse square of the distance, but in space, very little energy goes into heating the atmosphere.
Actually, in canon they repeatedly make reference to the Galaxy Class being the most tactically powerful ships in the Federation (presumably until the Sovereign) and being one of the most tactically powerful ships known to Federation.
By contrast, the Defiant is shown being about on par tactically with a retrofitted 100 year old cruiser.
Gul Dukat considers the Defiant to be one of the most heavily armed ships in the sector in one episode. That's pretty high praise.
The fight against the Lakota is easily explained as neither ship wanting to cause grievous damage to the other -- they're both Starfleet, they don't want to shoot to kill. Hardly a true benchmark for power.
Though the truth of it is (and I think I even said so in this thread) that the power and durability of any ship, Hero or Background, is incredibly inconsistent. It all depends on what the story requires of the ship, and at least before they started using CGI, what ship models they had on hand to film.
I don't want to counter this point specifically, but rather use it as an example.
Star Trek as a whole, throughout all of its series and movies, has been incredibly inconsistent. They've shown the Enterprise-A warping from Earth to the center of the Galaxy in a matter of hours -- easily a 30,000 Light Year journey, or longer. On the flip side, Voyager is supposed to take 70 years to travel 70,000 light years. Also, in one Season 4 episode of TNG, Geordi describes the Enterprise's warp engines as having "millions of light years" on them, implying that that's how much they've traveled.
Photon torpedoes are supposed to travel at Warp 1, but not only do we actively see that this isn't the case (we usually see torpedoes move so slow, you could catch them with a net), but a projectile moving at that speed wouldn't need a matter-antimatter warhead -- the relativistic speeds alone would obliterate the target.
The term "Isoton" is actually a great example. It's a made-up unit of measurement, and not once has anyone on screen explained precisely what "isoton" means. At one point, Janeway offers someone 12 isotons of ore, which means that they'd have to be able to store that much ore on their ship. Now, Voyager's a pretty small ship, and we see their cargo bays, so we know about how much storage space they have. If Isoton is larger than Megaton, they definitely do not have room to store even one isoton of anything, let alone 12.
In short, Star Trek says things and then adds numbers to make it sound impressive, but for the vast majority of the time none of it means anything.
If you had read what I said, I pointed out:
You're absolutely correct, they talk about it being very powerful. But it's just that, talk. Whenever it's in a confrontation it either doesn't fight or else it performs very poorly in the fight. That's what we call hype. Hype that it doesn't live up to.
You're perfectly free to fly around in some galaxy hull and call yourself mighty and powerful, if hype gives you some kind of pleasure. Then, when you actually take it into combat you can perform poorly. Thus you'll be going along perfectly with the canon. :P
The intrepid cryptic hasn't shown love to. It's got great shields and a good support boot section that's about it but do you see everyone shining about that no so stop with the QQ
You are confusing two different systems of measurement. When they are talking about explosive yields in isotons, they are referring to the energy that would be released by an isotone of some standard explosive material.
It is similar to how a thermonuclear bomb weighs less than one ton but can have a 1 million ton explosive yield, because the first unit measures mass and the second unit measures energy released by a ton of TNT.
Also, the Defiant being the most powerful ship in the sector is not exactly high praise considering that a sector in canon seems to be only a few light years in diameter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d734afLFPds
I love that video...
But in all seriousness, writers are not perfect. Particularly writers on time constraints. They can't be bothered to look up ever spec, about every ship, every time, even if they themselves wrote it first. :rolleyes:
But that's true of everything, so you can't really blame them. But this is a videogame, where you can take the time to look at everything, and decide what is best for the most awesome. They... haven't done that.
Exactly. That's an excellent example of what I'm talking about. If you examine that video you notice that much of the footage is of galaxies shooting at inanimate objects, probes, and derelict, uncrewed ships. Probably nearly half of the video doesn't portray shooting at anything that: A. Has a crew, B. Can move, and C. Can fight back.
Most of the rest is combat in which the enterprise loses or at best ends in a draw. For example, all the footage vs the borg cubes. The enterprise D never won a space engagement vs the borg, yet that is a significant portion of the video.
You see a bird of prey blown up, and you two (at least) galaxies being required to take out one galor. What else is shown where a galaxy successfully engages another space ship that is crewed and has the ability to both move and fight back?
Even in a highlight reel, the galaxy performs poorly and they have to include carefully edited footage of when it loses battles and/or runs away from things. :cool:
so instead the writers write stories that manly focused on confrontations they could talk there way out of or the confrontation was not even something they could fight but had to figure out.
it also goes back to picard's character. he did not want to fight instead he rather preferred a peaceful conclusion to ending conflicts so the Ent-D never actually had a chance to show what it could or could not do as it was always holding back.
almost every time picard ordered them to fire it was to disable or at a lower power setting. only time i think they went full on to an enemy was the borg
Um, you mean two galaxies blowing up one of the most powerful ships the Cardassians had with two shots and withstanding and being able to fend off three Jem Hadar attack ships (despite their shielding being vulnerable) up until the point where one rams it?
And how about the fact that the Galaxy class ship was able to survive multiple attacks from the Borg and even do a bit of damage when an entire fleet of federation ships were not able to even make a dent in a single cube?