Amasov Prime
lensfare-induced epileptic shock
Member # 742
posted
The majority seems to assume that Lakota was in fact some super-Excelsior with lots of new stuff, ablative armor nd other advanced systems. Where does this "urban legend" originate?
As far as I'm concerned Lakota was just a E-B subtype. First of all the sub-class is nearly as old as Excelsior herself, furthermore the fact that we just saw 2 of them (E-B and Lakota) doesn't mean there are just a few of them. The old Ambassador-paradox: just because we didn't see them during the war doesn't mean they are not longer part of the fleet.
And from the dialogue we just have Benteens astonished line about the Defiant's secretly upgraded systems but nothing about Lakota herself. I tend to say there's not a single point of evidence the ship was upgraded in any way.
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Registered: Nov 2001
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posted
When the Lakota fired quantum torpedoes at the Defiant O'Brien made some comment along the lines of 'those aren't standard fit on an Excelsior class'. He was clearly surprised that the Lakota had them.
And the Lakota fired several phaser beams from locations where there are no emitters on the E-B model, and from where no other Excelsior has ever fired phasers.
No idea about ablative armour though.
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Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I believe the episodes said something about the Lakota undergoing some sort of warp engine refit. Nothing about weapons, though, apart what Identity Crisis just said.
Amasov Prime
lensfare-induced epileptic shock
Member # 742
posted
The Quantums could have been part of a general fleet upgrade. (roughly one year later E-E and others had the new torpedos, too) It has been a long time but I remembered Benteens line about the Defiant. Not sure about the other things like engines though. And phasers coming from strange spots is not that uncommon; we've seen E-D fire phasers from the neck torpedo launcher before. (And this was a totally new kind of battle - the top-down-thing had never been done before, so they probably weren't sure where to place the phasers).
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posted
When the Lakota fired phasers against the Defiant, O'Brien said "somebody's been upgrading the Lakota's weapons. That's an awful lot of firepower for an Excelsior Class ship."
The idea of trying to escape was discussed aboard Defiant, and someone said something to the effect of "if they've upgraded the weapons, who knows what they've done to the engines?"
She'd been heavily upgraded in the weapons department, and managed to fight a Defiant Class starship to a stalemate, at least. While she may not have been some sort of uber-ship, she had certainly been rendered helluva-tough.
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posted
It's likely that the Lakota was more powerful than your average 24th century Excelsior, but I doubt that had much (or even anything) to do with her being of the Ent-B sub-type. I also think the Lakota's improvements/upgrades would have been relatively minor. For example, I highly doubt they made such radical changes as to add ablative armour.
posted
The Lakota never fired Quantum torpedos, though dialogue suggests she did carry them as a part of her refit. The idea was not that she was a regular Excelsior that they put to E-B spec as part of the refit; as far as I'm concerned, she was already part of that subtype.
The upgrade itself supposedly got her a bunch of upgraded phaser mounts in place of her regular mounts (and in numerous other places), quantum torpedos, and upgraded shields. The result was that the Lakota would be able to stand toe to toe with a Defiant for an extended period of time, assuming their crews were roughly equal. In that engagement, both ships were fighting to disable, not to destroy, and the implication is that if either side used q-torps, the fight would be over rather quickly.
By the end of the fight, dialogue stated that the Lakota was worse off, and one good hit from the Defiant could have finished them. They had had about two dozen casualties, where the Defiant had about a quarter that with two dead.
Fandom analyses conclude that the Lakota upgrade was not necessarily done fleet-wide... If an upgraded Excelsior is only as good as a tiny (but modern) Defiant, better to build a Defiant (or refit a smaller ship) for a similar amount of resources. On the flipside, they seem to have managed to refit the Lakota in a matter of weeks, which is ceertainly less time than it takes to build a new ship keel-up. They may have had field refit packages for lots of ships as part of the build up to the Dominon War, though not necessarily fleet-wide.
posted
My pet theory is that Lakota was part of a project to consolidate all the different modifications individual Excelsior crews have made to their respective ships. Lakota would be the testbed vessel for all the Ent-B varients, with another vanilla Excelsior running around for regular Excelsior mods. Of course, I have nothing to support this.
Slightly off topic, can anyone tell me what the heck was the Hood firing in "CFoE"? Her phaser beam differed from those seen from the Lakota, it was a lot thicker and yellower, IIRC. She could also take out an unshielded Cardassian OWP with one shot, when even the Defiant couldn't claim the same.
Maybe we owe the ol' Excelsiors more credit than we thought.
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Amasov Prime
lensfare-induced epileptic shock
Member # 742
posted
If I remember correctly the Hood "Tears of the Prophets" (that's the episode with the cardie weapon platforms) accidentialy bore Lakota's regitry. So if we were able to see the registry but not the name, we should argue about the Lakota being refitted to standard-Excelsior some time before the episode rather than about a phaser upgrade for Hood.
OK, OK, I shut up.
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EdipisReks
Ex-Member
posted
i see no reason why the Lakota type upgrades couldn't have been applied to the other Excelsior class ships as they went in for their reguraly scheduled maintenance. as was stated, these upgrades seemed to have only take a couple weeks and probably could have been done at an extended lay over. the upgrades certainly didn't make the ship super powerful, or anything, but it would have greatly increased the overall fleet strength (since the Excelsior class ships made up such a large proportion of the overall fleet). if anything, i think that the Lakota shows that at least some Excelsior class ships were hardly on their last legs, and it begs the question of how powerful other aging ships like the Ambassador class must be after having been upgraded over their lifespans.
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(Lots of nodding and grunting in agreement.)
But, but... Where do we get the information that the Lakota was recently refitted? Couldn't those modifications have been in place for several months or even years already?
It's not very plausible for our favorite DS9 noncom engineer to be constantly aware of the bigger picture of Starfleet's superweapon programs. Just because the Lakota came as a surprise to him doesn't mean it would have surprised, say, LaForge.
quote:Originally posted by David Templar: Slightly off topic, can anyone tell me what the heck was the Hood firing in "CFoE"? Her phaser beam differed from those seen from the Lakota, it was a lot thicker and yellower, IIRC. She could also take out an unshielded Cardassian OWP with one shot
ok i know this isn't the technically answer you were hoping for but..... we only see the most dramatic bits of the battle. Its no fun if for the first few minutes of the battle we watch the shields of all the ships holding is it? Plus the fact that the episode only lasts 45mins and the battles are supposed to last hours. So theres nothing to say that the platform the hood destroyed wasn't hit a number of times before, we just never saw it.
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Registered: Jun 2002
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![[Smile]](smile.gif)
(And this was a totally new kind of battle - the top-down-thing had never been done before, so they probably weren't sure where to place the phasers).![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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