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Iconic Klingon Ship MIA
klingonwerewolf
Member Posts: 44 Arc User
The list of T6 ships continues to grow and many are proving to be welcome editions to the game while others are falling short of expectations. The latest addition is supposed to be a new Federation Carrier which will be the first T6 to feature at least two hangars and hopefully will satisfy all the supporters of the creation of a Fed carrier that started their rant way back before the Atrox even entered the game. There's even some really awesome concepts among the T6s like the upgraded Galaxy class known as the Andromeda while others make absolutely no sense what so ever such as the raptor that's also a carrier 
(last time I checked the raptors are supposed to be smaller vessels buildt for speed and firepower not launching fighters). Anyway the list keeps growing but there is one exceptional vessel that is perhaps the most iconically Klingon of any other ship and yet it keeps being left out. I am of course refering to the bird of prey. There should already have been at least a T6 bird of prey by now but from the look of things Cryptic seems to have totally abandoned it all together. A shame because it's far more uniquely Klingon than any T6 vessel and since The Search For Spock it has been the most identified with the Klingons than all other ships hands down.
Some would likely try to argue that a bird of prey wouldn't make T6 because the KDF would design other, larger, vessels for new defenses against the Iconians or that since the Iconian War is at an end they would rely on larger vessels for exploration but they would be dead wrong.
Here's why...
1. In the Dominion War arc of the DS9 series it was the bird of prey (Most notably the IKS Rotarran under the command of General Martok.) which proved to be most effective against the Dominion over all other ships (Including the Defiant, Galaxy class vessels, Romulan warbirds, and even the fortress-like Klingon battle cruisers). They were even more potent than fighters since they were nearly as numerous, just as agile, had FAR greater firepower, stronger defenses, and larger crew complements.
2. The Iconians are virtually identical to the Founders in both their attitudes and in the way they do things.
a) The Founders created servitor races (The Jem'Hadar and the Vortas.) that were totally dependant on them and worshiped them as gods. The Iconians did the very same thing with the Heralds.
b) The Dominion's fleets were made up of ridiculously huge (and overly costly) capital ships which acted as support vessels that launched smaller frigates and fighters that did most of the fighting for them as they were too large to maneuver very well and though they had the arsenal of a starbase they couldn't hit the broad side of a red giant during a full on assault from numerous small vessels working together. The Iconian fleets are also composed of impossibly massive capital ships which are mainly support vessels that launch fighters and frigates to do most of the fighting and have exceptionally poor targeting against smaller opponents as well.
c) The Founders used the Jem'Hadar as cannon fodder and treated even their closest allies (Even the Vortas.) like scum they wanted to scrape off their boot and yet they claimed to hold all of them in high regard since they were loyal members of the Dominion. They also believed themselves superior to ALL other forms of life in the universe. The Iconians claim to love their Heralds as dearly as someone might love their pets yet they too send them headlong into the meat grinder as expendable and replacable automatons to be slaughtered. They too believe themselves superior to ALL other forms of life, not just in this universe but also in fluidic space. (Ego much!) Both Founders and Iconians believed themselves so superior and their forces so much greater that they were untouchable to everyone and everything. (They should totally hang out.)
3. The bird of prey is a proven vessel that has been able to defeat and/or destroy ships said to be far stronger than it is on countless occassions through rather interesting tactics and has led the charge in every major conflict since its creation according to the various series and novels. It's safe to conclude that it's a tough little ship. (The mighty Enterprise D was rendered helpless by DaiMon Lurin's bird of prey in TNG episode 'Rascals' and shared mutual destruction with the Duras sisters' ship in Generations. The dreadnaught Enterprise D was also destroyed by what they refered to as battle cruisers but looked astonishingly like B'rel in TNG episode 'All Good Things'. Pecard also formally surrendered to Riker who was commanding a bird of prey at the time in TNG episode 'A Matter of Honor' but that one technically doesn't count. The first Constitution II Enterprise was also rendered helpless by a bird of prey in The Search For Spock resulting in Kirk setting it to self destruct but in its defense it was already heavily damaged from its previous battle with the Defiant and only had a crew of five no matter who those five happened to be. Enterprise A was at the mercy of yet another bird of prey in The Final Frontier and would have been destroyed if not for Spock having General Kord intervene.)
4. Klingons are expert tacticians but they also have limited resources. (ref. The Undiscovered Country) They know that while an enormous battle cruiser is very intemidating to opponents it's not very practical and they can build three, four, or even more birds of prey from the materials required to build just one of those massive ships. Also they would have learned from their experience with the Dominion and recognized the same flaws common in the Iconians thus realizing that they could use the bird of prey to do the general dog fighting while the Federation and Romulans used their large cruisers and warbirds to support them exactly as they did during the Dominion War. (ref. DS9 episode 'What You Leave Behind')
5. It was clarified more than once during the Iconian episodes that unlike the Dominion the Iconians lacked the ability to detect cloaked ships very easily if at all and in all of Star Trek history no ship has ever been as proficient at cloaking as the bird of prey aside from the Scimitar which was total BS in the first place. (Scimitar was supposedly built by the Remans yet they were a slave race that somehow rose to power and learned how to build a ship that had a flawless cloak allowing it to not only still fire but also astonishingly keep its shields up while active without any hint of giving away its position and had more armaments than a fleet of ships and was nearly as large as a Borg sphere. It was so powerful it was able to completely spank Enterprise E along with two Romulan heavy warbirds and was only just beaten back after being rammed head on by the Enterprise causing enough damage to render a Borg cube dead in the water and yet it was still able to move AND still muster up enough power to use its thalaron weapon which was also miraculously designed and constructed by the very same slave race despite the fact that they had been denied anything approaching a reasonable education or that Remus had all its resources mined and shipped to Romulus prior to any sort of Reman uprising. Oh yeah and they managed to build this TRIBBLE right under the Tal'shiar's noses without them simply deciding to vaporize them for their arogance and stupidity of daring to oppose them. Even with clone boy leading them and in any reality there's absolutely no way in Gre'thor this could happen! Can we say writers on crack?)
6. The Klingons are warriors not explorers. They have absolutely no need or use for an exploration vessel, especially one that might have lavish luxuries like those common to the Federation and Romulans. They totally hate luxury and extravogance believing it makes someone soft and weak. They have always relied heavily on surprise attacks using alpha strikes to their advantage, a tactic the bird of prey is specifically designed to excel at due to its small size and agility as well as its devistating weaponry that is all predominantly facing forward in order to concentrate fire on whatever unfortunate pa'taq they are flying toward. A smaller crew also means they grow closer as comrades and warriors making them far more loyal to their captains and each other as opposed to a much larger crew which may or may not even know one another well enough to say they can honestly trust each other. Klingons also revel in adversity, enjoying battles in which all the odds seem stacked against them and the bird of prey embodies that very same warrior's spirit since it's often out gunned and/or out classed as far as technology but possesses all the tools to overcome such obstacles in many ways mirroring Kahless' defeat of the Fak'Ihri.
Given all this I'd love to know what others think about a T6 bird of prey.
(last time I checked the raptors are supposed to be smaller vessels buildt for speed and firepower not launching fighters). Anyway the list keeps growing but there is one exceptional vessel that is perhaps the most iconically Klingon of any other ship and yet it keeps being left out. I am of course refering to the bird of prey. There should already have been at least a T6 bird of prey by now but from the look of things Cryptic seems to have totally abandoned it all together. A shame because it's far more uniquely Klingon than any T6 vessel and since The Search For Spock it has been the most identified with the Klingons than all other ships hands down.Some would likely try to argue that a bird of prey wouldn't make T6 because the KDF would design other, larger, vessels for new defenses against the Iconians or that since the Iconian War is at an end they would rely on larger vessels for exploration but they would be dead wrong.
Here's why...
1. In the Dominion War arc of the DS9 series it was the bird of prey (Most notably the IKS Rotarran under the command of General Martok.) which proved to be most effective against the Dominion over all other ships (Including the Defiant, Galaxy class vessels, Romulan warbirds, and even the fortress-like Klingon battle cruisers). They were even more potent than fighters since they were nearly as numerous, just as agile, had FAR greater firepower, stronger defenses, and larger crew complements.
2. The Iconians are virtually identical to the Founders in both their attitudes and in the way they do things.
a) The Founders created servitor races (The Jem'Hadar and the Vortas.) that were totally dependant on them and worshiped them as gods. The Iconians did the very same thing with the Heralds.
b) The Dominion's fleets were made up of ridiculously huge (and overly costly) capital ships which acted as support vessels that launched smaller frigates and fighters that did most of the fighting for them as they were too large to maneuver very well and though they had the arsenal of a starbase they couldn't hit the broad side of a red giant during a full on assault from numerous small vessels working together. The Iconian fleets are also composed of impossibly massive capital ships which are mainly support vessels that launch fighters and frigates to do most of the fighting and have exceptionally poor targeting against smaller opponents as well.
c) The Founders used the Jem'Hadar as cannon fodder and treated even their closest allies (Even the Vortas.) like scum they wanted to scrape off their boot and yet they claimed to hold all of them in high regard since they were loyal members of the Dominion. They also believed themselves superior to ALL other forms of life in the universe. The Iconians claim to love their Heralds as dearly as someone might love their pets yet they too send them headlong into the meat grinder as expendable and replacable automatons to be slaughtered. They too believe themselves superior to ALL other forms of life, not just in this universe but also in fluidic space. (Ego much!) Both Founders and Iconians believed themselves so superior and their forces so much greater that they were untouchable to everyone and everything. (They should totally hang out.)
3. The bird of prey is a proven vessel that has been able to defeat and/or destroy ships said to be far stronger than it is on countless occassions through rather interesting tactics and has led the charge in every major conflict since its creation according to the various series and novels. It's safe to conclude that it's a tough little ship. (The mighty Enterprise D was rendered helpless by DaiMon Lurin's bird of prey in TNG episode 'Rascals' and shared mutual destruction with the Duras sisters' ship in Generations. The dreadnaught Enterprise D was also destroyed by what they refered to as battle cruisers but looked astonishingly like B'rel in TNG episode 'All Good Things'. Pecard also formally surrendered to Riker who was commanding a bird of prey at the time in TNG episode 'A Matter of Honor' but that one technically doesn't count. The first Constitution II Enterprise was also rendered helpless by a bird of prey in The Search For Spock resulting in Kirk setting it to self destruct but in its defense it was already heavily damaged from its previous battle with the Defiant and only had a crew of five no matter who those five happened to be. Enterprise A was at the mercy of yet another bird of prey in The Final Frontier and would have been destroyed if not for Spock having General Kord intervene.)
4. Klingons are expert tacticians but they also have limited resources. (ref. The Undiscovered Country) They know that while an enormous battle cruiser is very intemidating to opponents it's not very practical and they can build three, four, or even more birds of prey from the materials required to build just one of those massive ships. Also they would have learned from their experience with the Dominion and recognized the same flaws common in the Iconians thus realizing that they could use the bird of prey to do the general dog fighting while the Federation and Romulans used their large cruisers and warbirds to support them exactly as they did during the Dominion War. (ref. DS9 episode 'What You Leave Behind')
5. It was clarified more than once during the Iconian episodes that unlike the Dominion the Iconians lacked the ability to detect cloaked ships very easily if at all and in all of Star Trek history no ship has ever been as proficient at cloaking as the bird of prey aside from the Scimitar which was total BS in the first place. (Scimitar was supposedly built by the Remans yet they were a slave race that somehow rose to power and learned how to build a ship that had a flawless cloak allowing it to not only still fire but also astonishingly keep its shields up while active without any hint of giving away its position and had more armaments than a fleet of ships and was nearly as large as a Borg sphere. It was so powerful it was able to completely spank Enterprise E along with two Romulan heavy warbirds and was only just beaten back after being rammed head on by the Enterprise causing enough damage to render a Borg cube dead in the water and yet it was still able to move AND still muster up enough power to use its thalaron weapon which was also miraculously designed and constructed by the very same slave race despite the fact that they had been denied anything approaching a reasonable education or that Remus had all its resources mined and shipped to Romulus prior to any sort of Reman uprising. Oh yeah and they managed to build this TRIBBLE right under the Tal'shiar's noses without them simply deciding to vaporize them for their arogance and stupidity of daring to oppose them. Even with clone boy leading them and in any reality there's absolutely no way in Gre'thor this could happen! Can we say writers on crack?)
6. The Klingons are warriors not explorers. They have absolutely no need or use for an exploration vessel, especially one that might have lavish luxuries like those common to the Federation and Romulans. They totally hate luxury and extravogance believing it makes someone soft and weak. They have always relied heavily on surprise attacks using alpha strikes to their advantage, a tactic the bird of prey is specifically designed to excel at due to its small size and agility as well as its devistating weaponry that is all predominantly facing forward in order to concentrate fire on whatever unfortunate pa'taq they are flying toward. A smaller crew also means they grow closer as comrades and warriors making them far more loyal to their captains and each other as opposed to a much larger crew which may or may not even know one another well enough to say they can honestly trust each other. Klingons also revel in adversity, enjoying battles in which all the odds seem stacked against them and the bird of prey embodies that very same warrior's spirit since it's often out gunned and/or out classed as far as technology but possesses all the tools to overcome such obstacles in many ways mirroring Kahless' defeat of the Fak'Ihri.
Given all this I'd love to know what others think about a T6 bird of prey.
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And yes, T6 BoPs are on the way. Just have patience.
It is a little ironic that you made reference to me writing a book though because that's actually what I do for a living nowadays. lol
It's simply bizarre that there isn't at least one T6 BoP by now.
Also, as you really should know already, T6 BoPs are coming. Your post is not going to accelerate their arrival by as much as a second.
Trust but verify is the key. I'm half decently trusting, but I have yet to be able to verify. Even if they do hit, It would have to be impressive. They cannot just slap a T6 sticker on the side of the hull and call it new.
The sad thing is, they can and may.
Everything else will be hearsay, allusions in podcasts by Geko or other devs, or (TOS-violating and thus better not linked in the forums) datamining.
They did that with the Tier 5 Retrofits of the B'rel, Voyager, and Defiant.
I too agree that everyone got ripped off somewhat with the T5 B'rel as it was definitely not what it should have been. It's ability to fire while cloaked does make it fairly useful against particularly troublesome enemies in PVE but it's far too delicate to fight like it should.
Condescending statement much. For all you or anyone else knows one or more of the devs might just read my post and decide 'This guy has a lot of love for the BoP.' and decide to help the process along a little bit. It certainly doesn't hurt to post about missing ships regardless since it clearly finally paid off for everyone that kept panting over a Fed carrier which numerous people claimed would never see the light of day.
Just be patient.
P.S. Would be nice though. Be on it like flys on a freshly dropped Cow patty.
First off it's hardly pages of text and some people do indeed read all of a post regardless of how long it is. Secondly I have been playing this game long before Romulans were a playable faction and I am aware of so-called unofficial confirmations but I still put no stock in anything that isn't 100% OFFICIALLY confirmed. I've learned throughout my life never to trust something that someone says WILL happen until it actually does. As for being some random guy... Lots of people were "some random guy" until something got them noticed.
Exactly why I never asked WHEN it was going to be introduced or even IF. I simply pointed out legitimate reasons why it already should have been added and asked for everyone's oppinions on what it should be like as well as if others believed as I do that it should have already been added to the T6 roster and how annoying it is to have to watch every sort of ship EXCEPT the BoP introduced each time one is added. Some of the ships didn't even make the most remote sense such as the flightdeck raptor. Of course it also makes no sense to have raptors being a larger vessel than a BoP to begin with as the only mention or appearance of a raptor in the canon material was in the Enterprise series and it was nowhere near as impressive as a BoP.
Well I suppose they can, and in fact have. The point is if that's the way it's going to be, then NO DEAL!
While the BOP has lost out to Power Creep and proliferation of Universal Stations over the years, it still is the one thing the KDF has that is still unique. "Battlecruisers," Cruisers that are DHC capable are no longer KDF unique. Carriers are no longer KDF unique. Universal Stations at one time was only found on the Bird of Prey, but that ended a very long time ago. The basic idea of the Bird of Prey is not run-of-the-mill. No ship anywhere has the combo of All Universal Stations with at least a Battle Cloak. Cryptic tried to make Raiders have the BOP feel but they failed and it hasn't caught on anywhere.
Also, Cryptic has shown that you can attach Hybrid Station to a Universal Station. They did that with the T6 JHSS. I'd expect the T6 BOP to get a Hybrid LtCmdr slot. I'd prefer Intel and if not, Pilot. Anything but Command, please...
Don't worry, soon as I get my KDF Tac up to speed. The Iconian War will see a BoP in action. I just got my last "Freebie" ship, and now she is geared up. I'm at the point where I'm waiting for the Cardassian Revamp to start leveling again.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Actually, reading that I have to admit that you're probably right on the money. The increasing amount of Universal seating in STO and the fact that Universal seats only support 1/2 (2/3 if a hybrid Spec) of the current ability categories, the Romulans having Battle Cloaks everywhere and Traits to make them even better, the Pilot Ships being both versatile and maneuverable with a full loadout and 5 fore weapons... they're all going to make it tougher to make a decent BoP. The BoP category just has so many design concessions for features that are no longer all that unique, or even valuable, that it's going to be a royal pain in the aft to make a proper one. *sigh*
In the Foundry, too: I make a policy of automatically docking one star in KDF missions if there were no non-Klingon dialogues available, because neither of my two KDF toons is a Klingon.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Also yet another reason for Cryptic to never want KDF specific content any more. Sure, they made their bed here because they wrote the KDF with non-Klingons in its midst, but the Federation -pardon, faction-agnostic- couch is very comfy.
In the canon material the D7 was the Klingons' standard (and only) vessel shown in the original series while the K'tinga was its replacement later but neither one are even remotely iconicly Klingon. They share countless visual features in common with Federation ships, they are both cumbersome and slow, and they both have aft facing weapons that could potentially cover an escape attempt (totally not Klingon like). They were also later replaced as the Klingons' standard cruisers by larger, far more powerful, vessels. The B'rel was the first and only ship that truly says Klingon in every way. It has absolutely no visual features in common with Federation ships, it is fast and highly maneuverable, and all its weapons face foreward leaving no way to cover its escape if its crew decided to be cowardly pa'taqs. Traditionally it is dishonorable for a Klingon to retreat from a battle and that's something reflected in the B'rel's design. No other ship ever shown has that built into it.
Not looking to get into a pissing match with you, but this is a bit much. Who said that just because a vessel has aft armament that the ship is retreating? The nature of ship to ship space combat makes it necessary to have weapons that can cover various firing arcs...and yes, even to the vessel's rear. In-game the BOP can fire aft. The D7/Ktinga were the early designs. And being that early designs are upgraded and improved upon...why haven't we seen, in-game, an upgrade for this battlecruiser? According to Cryptic, the BOP is supposed to be given a T6 variant. But, still...no mention whatsoever of a T6 K'tinga. Not disagreeing with your observation regarding the need for a new BOP, just saying, D7/K'tinga design was the first seen in the shows. It should be brought forward.
Some folks have posted that the design is too old and therefore not worth upgrading. But if you look at some written material, FASA Klingon Ship Recognition Manual, it details how version after version of this cruiser was created based on changing demands/threats. I understand that Cryptic can't rely on Sci-Fi material put out by other companies, but this "made-up" history simply makes logical sense, even in light of all this being Sci-Fi.
Cryptic can't say there can't be a T6 K'Tinga given that the K'Tinga hull model has been in use by the Klingon Empire for over 300 years. (We already been told they aren't going to replace Eave's D4 Model with the K'Tinga model used in Enterprise).