Another prespective on why we didn't see any Ambassadors during the DW would be that we're always following the Defiant around, and the Defiant was always leading the charge. Maybe, for whatever reason, the Ambassador is simply not suited for an assault role, and is hanging just behind the chargers with all them New Orleans, Cheyenne, and whatever else we didn't see.
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Registered: Apr 2001
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Back to the differences between the two types of Ambassadors, I think Jonah has come up with a really good idea. We know that some of the Ambassadors are explorers, and the Horatio was explicitly named as a heavy cruiser. Jonah suggested that the refitted version seen as the Yamaguchi and Zhukov could be the heavy cruiser version, built as such from the yard. The regular version seen as the Enterprise-C is the explorer version.
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I have to disagree, although it's a very good idea that some starships have intended variants for specific roles (like the Venture).
As to there being diffrent types of Ambassadors: I think that's what the Apollo was. I think the "Heavy Cruiser" term refers to all Ambassadors after the much larger Galaxy class came about and is used to avoid confusion. After all, Starfleet refers to the Defiant as an escort while the Cardassians call it a Warship (the Nebula too for that matter!). I think the diffrences have to represent a design upgrade: after all, the Galaxy is a new class and still has at least one upgrade that we've seen in the Venture and the Excelsiors had their upgrade too while still keeping the class name. That's not to say that there could still be older Ambassadors without the upgrade still in service at the fringe of Fed space.
The Ambassador was probably the fleet's main exploration ship even into the DS9 era and many were likely "out there" during the war. I really like the idea of Ambassadors in the fleet action: we just didint see them atthe rear or as the main ships of the second wave of ships. All I know is that my own fleet o' models includes the USS California with it's registry of NCC-60218 and she does'nt have the second shuttlebay, so there. That makes it canon.
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The Cardassians call any Starfleet starship with decent weaponry (i.e. not a freighter) a "warship" -- because their own fleet is nothing but warships anyway.
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Plus, the classification of Defiant as an escort was a deliberate misnomer. Probably to hide its existence and for various politcal reasons. You can probably bet that the Prometheus has a similar classification. Executive shuttle, perhaps.
There is always an upgrade for a reason, though not necessarily for a specific mission. The Venture, for example, was the ONLY ship we've seen that way - the USS Galaxy and all other ships of her ilk seen after "WOTW" were not equipped with the extra phaser banks. It was obviously not a fleetwide upgrade.
posted
Didn't they reuse that "WOTW" shot in another episode? Was that ship also suppossed to be the Venture, or was it another one?
And does anyone have any idea why those extra phaser banks were left on? Was it a concious decision designed to show an upgrade, did they get glued on too tightly to remove, or did someone simply forget to take them off?
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quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: Didn't they reuse that "WOTW" shot in another episode? Was that ship also suppossed to be the Venture, or was it another one?
It was reused in one of two or both of these episodes: "Dr. Bashir, I Presume" &/or "Sacrifice of Angels"...I'm pretty sure it was both...
As far as if it was the Venture or not, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be, as nothing indicated otherwise as it was reused footage...
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Yep. For all we know, the Venture was the flagship of the ninth fleet's Starfleet contingent. Since the fleet was HQed there under General Martok, it could have been one of any number of ships there weekly, for all we knew.
Tying this back to the Ambassadors, there are any number of examples of USN warships of the same class being outfitted with different weapon complements. Some Los Angeles class submarines were refitted with vertical launch systems for Tomahawk cruise missiles; ditto for at least one class of destroyers. Some classes have a helicopter bay tacked on to some ships, while others do not. The Ambassador (and to a more extreme extent, the Enterprise-B/Lakota variant of the Excelsior) class could easily be like this. It need not be a specific upgrade, nor does it necessarily make one ship superior to her yardmates. Nor is it necessarily indicative of a complete Movie-E-style refit or overhaul.
posted
With at least 150 members as of First Contact, I'm sure that there are still a significant number of Ambassador Class starships around. It's just we so far have focused on a small percent of Federation Space. No matter what or who explored it, 8,000 light years is still freaking big.
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Registered: May 1999
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After the Breen attack on Earth and the fall of Betazed, I'm sure either an Ambassador or a Galaxy (along with several smaller ships)was stationed near any remotely strategic Fed member-world system.
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Then again, what good is one starship against an invasion fleet? It probably can't even put up a delaying action, and will be wastefully lost when a simple subspace alarm buoy could have been sacrificed in its stead. Better bundle up your ships in a few potent fleets and hope that those fleets manage to get to places before the enemy does.
Or perhaps spread them out evenly and allow them to pull together into fleets wherever necessary? Which takes us back to deploying one per planet, come to think of it.
If the two variants of Ambassadors are divided into "explorers" and "heavy cruisers", I'd argue that the Enterprise is the heavy cruiser while the Yamagochi is the explorer. After all, the latter has a bigger sensor array beneath the saucer, and a more extensive shuttlebay arrangement.
posted
The fleet shots we saw were pretty unrepresentative of the fleet as a whole based on previous eps; we saw what, seven different classes regularly? (Galaxy, Miranda, Excelsior, Defiant, Akira, Steamrunner, Sabre). So I have no problems with the Ambassadores being elsewhere or simply not seen in the shots we saw.
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quote:Originally posted by Wraith: The fleet shots we saw were pretty unrepresentative of the fleet as a whole based on previous eps; we saw what, seven different classes regularly? (Galaxy, Miranda, Excelsior, Defiant, Akira, Steamrunner, Sabre). So I have no problems with the Ambassadores being elsewhere or simply not seen in the shots we saw.
For that matter, we really didn't see all that many Steamrunners or Sabres in the same extent that we saw the Akiras.
Then we have those 2 or 3 other 'kitbash' designs that popped up (ie "Centuar") as well, Ambassadors could very easily been the "big guns back home" defending the assets of the Federation, as they are 'big guns', big enough to be a last lines of defense, but not as big at the Galaxies which were the first lines of defense.
Think about it, something had to be defending Earth, Vulcan, Andor, Betazed...etc...
And again, the Exeter was at least mentioned (and Akagi) as two other classes not seen but evidently present....plus all of those mentioned on the okuda-gram diplays that served in various fleets.
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Why are some people up about consigning some classes to rear guard? This would make sense if some ships are decisively defective or outdated, but nothing we've seen of the Ambassador class indicates this. They've flown combat missions before (Wolf 359, arguably the Romulan blockade), and we've seen innumerable times how almost any Starfleet ship can be really really powerful. I don't see why what few Ambassadors there are would not be used on the front lines.
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