posted
I believe that most people here can agree on the Defiant being starfleets meanest "war" ship (as opposed to starship) sporting the most firepower relative to cost...
And just considering it's size starfleet should be able to produce a great number of these ships.
But we dont see great fleets of just Defiant's. Not even squadrons or smaller detachments (for a lack of better words).
Now why is that?
Im thinking this is more of a political and economical decision within Starfleet / federation.
Starfleet would not wanna end up with hundreds or thousands of a single purpose class like the Defiant after the war. Their normal starships being better suited for the peace-time allround duties.
The Federation as a whole dont want to provoke other powers like say the klingon empire or the romulans into even a relatively peacefull armsrace. (Dont wanna militarize the alpha / beta quadrant)
Are these reasons any good or do you think my braincells are lacking oxygen?
In answer to your question, I must go with !. If pressed, I suppose ? might be appropriate.
To actually answer your question, Starfleet's production capabilities were probably hampered quite a bit by the war -- more stuff they gotta produce then starships, y'know, and they probably don't have any shipyards specificly configured to construct Defiant-class. So the ships of that class they WERE able to build were probably spread around through the combat fleets.
Several things to keep in mind about the Defiant Class:
1) It was originally intended specifically to fight the Borg. It was borne out that it didn't do so well at that (see First COntact).
2) We've seen fleets with several Defiant Class ships in the background of various wartime fleet shots. Are they all Defiant's... well, no... of course not. There would be very little point in assembling a fleet entirely composed of one class of ship. MOstly because those ships were probably scattered throughout the Federation. The fleets were probably assembled from ships that happened to be in the area. Later in the war, they may have done some strategic movement of resources, but why consolidate all your Defiants in one place?
3) During Wartime, I seriously doubt that the Federation was all that concerned with being politically correct in the view of their enemies. They would've mobalized whatever the heck they felt like. In the wake of the war, the Defiant Class ships could be given escort or patrol duty.
Registered: Oct 1999
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78stonewobble
Ex-Member
posted
Well the Defiant class did fare somewhat better than the other federation ships in STFC. But youre right... It wasnt exactly whoopin borg a** either :/
Maybe the mental image of fleets of defiants was wrong. I do know that most fleet tactics of the 20th century (probably 24th too) uses different classes for different combat tasks. EG. DDG's for asw, aegis CG's for AAW, and a combination of surface and airborne assets for asuw... And so on...
And allthough fleets like the 9th are mentioned in the dominion war they werent acting as whole combat elements. Eg. scripts mention's only parts of fleets.
I agree that in wartime the federation would disregard ethics (they were in an alliance with both the Klingons and the Romulans too).
But when hostilities ceased they would cut severely back on production of such an aggressive class(IMHO). Maybe even in time mothballing Defiant's and from time to time upgrading them.
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quote:Originally posted by 78stonewobble: I agree that in wartime the federation would disregard ethics
I don't think there's anything unethical about constructing warships to fight a war. You were talking about the political ramifications of building tons and tons of warships. That's different from ethical considerations. DS9 showed us that even the *warship* Defiant could serve a number of roles including limited scientific missions. I doubt that the Defiant class would ever be mothballed to fit political concerns, especially not so soon after a sustained conflict and with so many on-the-fence neighbors in an uncertain position. It's possible that, in time, the Defiants would be refit to suit a more varied mission profile... but I doubt they would be mothballed so quickly.
Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
To have an entire fleet of Defiant class ships even for war makes the fleet horribly out of balance. For a full fledge war like the Dominion war, you need troop transports, flagships, supply ships, escorts, smaller ships for less noteworhty duties. The Defiant is overpowered to be a mere escort for a few freighters that's on the other side of the Galaxy.
I can understand where most would get the idea to have a really large fleet of Defiants. I once figured out that a perfect fleet (single fleet like the 9th fleet) would have been a few lagre ships like the Galaxy class, a single flagship type like the Sovereign, with escorts surrounding theose large ships, like the Defiant class, and possibly the Miranda class. Here's an example:
1 Sovereign (Lead ship, in the center of the fleet) 9 Galaxy class (Surrounding the Sovereign class, also flagships for 9 smaller fleets within the main fleet) 36 Akira class (4 per Galaxy wing) 180 Defiant class (10 per Galaxy wing) 270 Sabre class (15 per Galaxy wing)
Tagging along in the back somwhere would be a mass of secondary ships composed of transports, freighters, science ships to support the main fleet. Possibly even a carrier or two for fighter support.
Just an example. When you look at the DS9 battles, there's no real formation except that the largest ships would be in the center. I'm sure there is, but the real world answer is basically the SFX guys have no clue what they're doing in fleet formations. I'll admit neither do I, but I am basing it all off the US Navy fleet formations. All based around the carriers.
Registered: Jul 2000
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78stonewobble
Ex-Member
posted
*me swears at his english teacher...*
I just mean that IMHO you dont see many Defiants on screen compaired to how many that starfleet could build.
Cant agree more with you matrix on the mixed fleet thing.
Problem is... we dont really know which classes go where in trek... or any tactics offcourse.
Since it's a 3d environment maybe they use some kind og wingman approach. Most starships have their weapons fore and I guess they would cover each other from aft (or try to).
Shields are another thing... Maybe they overlap or atleast help cover some areas when they put the most valuable assets in the center?
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posted
The problem I have with Starfleet's fleet is the many classes of ships they have. We can all guess what their roles are, but if each single class Starfleet has is for a different role in the fleet, then I can understand what they were trying to do with the Galaxy class, put most of those roles into a single class, or group of classes.
It's also 400 years from now, so a battleship could mean the same thing as a warship. A frigate could mean the same thing as a destroyer and so forth. Remember the 1800's with ships like the USS Constitution was called a frigate, but was one of the first cruisers. 20th century frigate term came from the US Destroyer Escort from WWII.
What I am trying to say is that without a spoken or written paper on each class and ship's role is in Starfleet, we can not really make a good formation or fleet. In the most likely case, Starfleet needs every single ship in the fleet, 120 years old or 120 hours old.
Registered: Jul 2000
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First, we know that a Defiant can be built in a year or less by a total stranger to the concept ("Shattered Mirror"), and that it is allegedly also the most powerful ship in the quadrant ("Defiant"). On the other hand, we never saw the planned fleets of Defiants -- suggested by Sisko's "new Federation battle fleet" comment in "The Search, I" -- where they were most needed, although we have seen a couple here and there.
Possible explanations (all of them could be part of the reason):
1) The Defiants use either rare and expensive materials or large quantities of regular materials -- hence, Starfleet doesn't have enough for an entire fleet of Defiants.
2) The Defiants are difficult to render operational. Both the Sao Paulo and the Valiant needed adjustments to make them more like the original Defiant, meaning that O'Brien isn't keeping Starfleet up-to-date on everything (he didn't tell them about the ablative armor either). The other Defiants could well be inferior to the original one.
3) The aforementioned political reasons -- a low Defiant production rate might have been a prerequisite for the alliances with the Klingons and the Romulans, although I don't believe that Starfleet would agree to this unless the alliances brought in more firepower than would be achievable by building a fleet of Defiants.
I don't think that Starfleet would spread out its Defiants to satisfy fleet formation requirements, especially not in the final WYLB battle where we've seen only one.
posted
we have no fucking idea how much the Defiant class costs to build, so i can't agree with the statement that the ship class has the best firepower to cost ratio.
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posted
Indeed. As Edy pointed out, we not only have no idea how much a Defiant costs, we actually have no fucking idea how much one would cost. That makes all the difference.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Boris: I think Dukat said that the Defiant was "one of the most heavily armed ships in the quadrant"... not the most powerful. I don't know if that makes any differece in the discussion since it obviously turned out to be untrue anyway. The Defiant had troubles with Breen ships, Cardie ships, and Klingon ships.
posted
All this said, it might also be that the Defiants are invisible not because they are rare, but because...
...Well, because the few times a Defiant actually made a difference, it was performing a solo mission (or at most pairing with a BoP). Perhaps a large percentage of the ships are actually fitted with cloaks for solo special ops? Or perhaps they are good for that use even without cloaks?
It might be that Starfleet simply found out that it's a phenomenally bad idea to make a Defiant part of a big fleet. Not that the Defiant is a bad ship. Just that it's a bad fleet ops ship.
posted
I believe the DS9TM states that only the Defiant had the cloaking system. No other ships of the class were fitted with one.
Registered: Mar 1999
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