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novemberyankee
Member Posts: 87 Arc User
I am not content with out ship classes. There is no way in the real world that an escort could kill a battlecruiser. I suggest a revamp of the class system. Perhaps to even include a console, that flies in 3 additional escorts, or smash. (REAL CHIEF)
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Somewhere in the dialog it was mentioned that it is the size of a typical escort so it was called that as a cover in the same way an armored fighting vehicle came to be called a "tank", the main difference from a real escort destroyer is that most of the science and all of the luxury systems, extra crew complement and their life support that are necessary on long boring deployments escorting other ships were omitted for extra power and weapon systems.
Also, the characters made jokes about how even the captain's quarters were little more than a closet with a bunk and wondered how Worf could stand to stay on the thing instead of having a cabin in DS9 like everyone else when not out on a mission.
One in-joke was that the sensors were supposed to be so sub-par for Federation (about Klingon quality) standards that the crew would tap into the sensors of the limpet bomb (that is what the weird "nose" was originally, they dropped the idea later on) to boost their sensor capabilities sort of like how today's jet fighters can with the sensors on their missiles.
This is a video game.. in 'the real world' those things don't exist.
So while you're statement is technically true since they reference things that don't exist, it's irrelevant in context to the game.
In the game, an Escort can kill a Battlecruiser and vice versa. And that's fine.
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A number of Navy's around the world are moving to smaller more agile ships, supplanting tradional armour and 'size' with cutting edge technology and stealth/anti targetting tactics.
There is an excellent article here, that explains why a small ship like a corvette, is both fast and lethal:
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2019/june/corvette-carriers-new-littoral-warfare-strategy
"If you're wondering how he eats and breathes,
And other science facts...(la! la! la!)
Then repeat to yourself its just a show,
I should really just relax.."
Also while on theoretical "flat featureless plain with bright illumination" a battlecruiser would never loose to destroyer or other smaller ship, however fights rarely if ever (even in space) would be fought in that theoretical battlefield and real battle fields would have features that would allow the smaller ships to ambush the larger ones (this was in a concern in many battles during WWI and WWII if the battle lasted until the night as "darkness" would one those things the smaller ships could exploit.
No we haven't - the largest ship class the Defiant ever took out UNASSISTED were other 'escorts' - AKA destroyers, frigate analogs and one light cruiser built by a race whose tech is 20-30 years behind Starfleet's.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
We have seen an out-dated version of the B'rel take out the Galaxy class though (granted they had to bypass the shields to do so).
"There's no time for this. Eliminate them."
"(incredulous) That is a Galaxy-class starship! We are no match for them!"
"Perhaps it's time we gave Mr. La Forge his sight back…"
- Soran and B'Etor
Without that trick, they would've been wiped out - and even the most advanced and superior force can be overcome by surprise...to say nothing of the fact the Enterprise D was a first gen Galaxy, which were notoriously fragile - the war refit was far less so. And all that still doesn't counter the point that the Defiant has NEVER taken out a target significantly larger than itself BY itself - it always had help in those situations. And in fact, the one time a Defiant class DID try to take out a larger class of ship without aid, it got utterly trashed.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
"Destroyers" were originally created as "Torpedo Boat Destroyers" because it turns out strapping some torpedoes to glorified fishing (P.atrol T.orpedo)boats could be a significant threat to giant battleships with turrets the size of said 'fishing boats'.
As a Star Trek analogy, those little Undine/8472 ships could annihilate entire Borg cubes with a single concentrated energy burst.
That said, I do find it silly that something like the La Sirena(a glorified Runabout) has more forward firepower and offensive capability than something like the Gal-X/Yamato. I mean, the La Sirena had its hands full with a single Snakehead Fighter; the Gal-X was seen punching straight through Negh'var battleships with a single shot.
So we're going to pretend that the mirror defiant didn't absolutely wreck the mirror negh'var then? Good to know.
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Actually it was for the most part. It wasn't until later when mirror dax and mirror bashear showed up that there was a second ship helping the mirror defiant at all. Up until that point it was the mirror defiant absolutely wrecking face, especially once Sisko had taken the helm. Once Sisko took the helm they couldn't touch the defiant. You also don't need to completely obliterate a ship to wreck them and put them out of the fight. Rendering them incapable of fighting back is bad enough which is what they did to the mirror negh'var. defiant was willing to keep peppering them and would have destroyed them had the negh'var not gone to warp.
If size comparison of the ships is your argument it's not going to help in this instance. sizes of ships in Trek have been inconsistent at the best of times and outright exaggerated at the worst. As a prime example, the real size of the Ent-J is just as big if not bigger than ESD itself and has over 1m crew on the ship. The version in game is nowhere close to that. On screen we've seen very little of the Negh'vars actually moving, and what we have seen shows them to be very slow at turning. Defiant can fly circles around that thing.
If you want to think the Defiant wouldn't be able to pull that off on screen, you're certainly entitled to that opinion. However I doubt either of us will ever convince the other of our position.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
Also... anyone notice how the OP hasn't responded yet? I think we got another "Ring and Run" thread.
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Now that one I will give you. No ship is the answer in all cases
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
Indeed the right tool for a right task, but by same token smaller ships aren't this useless thing that you use just because you can't afford better. in-case of the Defiant it trades in speed and range for greater fire power and smaller size (IIRC the Defiant-class has max warp speed of 9.5 and fire power similar to that of the GCS), which would make it good Escort and Patrol duties within UFP space but a poor choice for a long range explorer or any other ship that needs to operate for an extended period outside the primary logistical network of the UFP.
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but I'm actually kind of entertained.
so, plz...continue
That said I was considering more from the point of view of "what design compromises Starfleet Corps of Engineers had to make for the Defiant-class", after you can't really have design that's good in everything.
um, no. in the real world the Russian Navy had small missile boats that carried missiles capable of mach 3 at 10 miles that's 16 seconds to react. if the ship was alert and looking for a threat, and the computer was 100% in charge yeah it could probably intercept 4-6 missiles, but these things carry 8. and thats at 10 miles, what about if it was 5 miles away? and even if they get all of them how close did they get? you think parts of the missile wouldn't shred a Navy ship? it would be like shooting a tin can with a shotgun.
There's also the misconception on firepower. What the Defiant has is effectively the same energy output as a star ship five times its size, the ship had, by all accounts Quad Phaser Cannons which are dramatically more potent than the arrays on a regular star ship. It also had at least three regular phaser arrays as secondary weapons. And to dust things off at least 4 multipurpose torpedo launchers.
Does it sacrifice anything to do this? Sure! Unlike the floating hotels that are most Federation Cruisers, the Defiant is more like a Submarine as far as amenities go, and you can forget about fancy astrometrics labs, hydroponics bays, or anything else that isn't designed for the purpose of making the Defiant turn on a dime, move at structurally suicidal speeds or turn other ships into drifting scrap.
Is it as durable as a "cruiser"? Hell no. They had to give it the Trek equivalent of ERA just to stop it getting popped when the excuse for shields inevitably failed.
"Escorts" have moved on from the dinky, 5 deck Defiant (I suspect only Hobbits serve on two of those decks), the Prometheus for example is slightly longer than the old Constitution class. The Tempest is also roughly the same size as the venerable Connie and has a crew of 200, it's basically a 25c Connie with enough firepower to punch like a ship five times its size and dance like an attack fighter.
As for the op's "In the real world escorts can't kill a battle cruiser", in this day and age they totally can. It's why nobody makes surface combatant ships over 15,000 tons any more.
They sac'd the family accomidations, and skimped on the science capabilities. She focused almost entirely on combat, and her interior is relatively spartan because of it. Probably more akin to modern submarines more than modern warships.
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Definitely like a submarine, there was even an oblique reference to hotbunking so like a WWII submarine there probably are not enough bunks for everyone to have their own, much less the kind of crew quarters that most Starfleet ships seem to have. Another bit of throwaway dialog mentioned that they were only meant for deployments of a month or so.
They always could, destroyers carried torpedos as their main weapons back in the day and spread of torps from a destroyer could ruin a battle cruiser's day if it hit. There's a reason fleets didn't just want to recklessly chase each other during the night in battles during WWI or WWII and it was mostly because that was the best time for Destroyers to get into torpedo range.
There's also stories of destroyers harassing the Bismark so that slower battle ships and cruisers could catch (and also so that the crew of the Bismark could get no rest, if battle cruisers couldn't be harmed by destroyers then battleships certain wouldn't be and this OP would have been pointless (which it was not).
Not quite. The Bismarck was stuck moving in an unrecoverable turn to port and ended up crawling back toward the pursuing KG5 and Rodney. Granted the four Tribals and the Piorun spent the night harassing her, but aside from forcing Bismarck's crew to remain on alert, they had no effect on the actions of the ship itself, they merely maintained contact.
Were torpedos dangerous? Yes, but without stacking the deck heavily in their favour destroyers were not a threat to a capital ship that could stand off and rapidly turn them into scrap because they simply didn't have the range.
The OP is fundamentally flawed because it assumes that the paradigm of pre-WW2 BB dominance is somehow still a thing in Star Trek, which it isn't because Starfleet made Defiant a ship designed from the ground up to hurt Borg Cubes and dance around like a hefty starfighter. At that point you can imagine how other galactic powers would respond, especially after the Dominion War.
For a WW2 surface combatant equivalent, imagine a Tribal class destroyer with the speed and manoeuvrability of a PT boat,
8 supercharged 14" guns and armour that would shrug off the first salvo or two of anything short of Yamato. That is what Defiant is, that is what every Raptor and "Escort" since represents.
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