If a small, well armed starship(such as Defiant) is to go face to face with a larger, advance starship(such as Sovereign) in a confrontation, which will win the battle?

As weapon technologies progress through time, militaries always find themselves ending up with bigger guns, whether if it is tanks, ships, or airplanes; there are several explantions for this "bigger is better" trend:

1. Strength
-In the case of Star Trek, a larger starship will be able to carry more weapons(bigger tropedo storge) at higher power, since that the size of the weapon is always proportional to it's destructive power(bigger phaser crystal = more power for the phaser output).

2. Defense
-The size of a bigger starship also means that it can be fitted with much more armors, better shield(larger generators at more locations), more sophisticated senors, and most importantly, it will be able to "take more hits"(important components of the starship can be spread out at different places, or having more back-up devices)

3. Efficiency
-The large body of professional personnels will be able to carry out ship tasks with more man-power and resourses avaiable.

So, does a smaller ship stand a chance? Of course! I have no dought that Definant have a good chance of taking on any big ship in the Star Trek universe one on one with victory at its' hand, but as a die-hard fan of "BOTH" DS9 and TNG I'll have to say that Soverign class definately have higher favour of winning the battle.

Anyway, each has it's own benefits. BUT, Starfleet is not primarily a military organization, so the usefulness of small, heavily armed ships come to an end when there is no battle to be fought.

Larger ships are most certainly better for exploration, as they can just hold more...stuff.

The Sovereign has a lot of surface area. It is simply a target too big to miss. However, it has a lot of sophisticated weaponry, shielding, and armour. Theoretically, it CAN take a lot of hits, but when it is constantly being pounded from all signs, all those defenses would simply be delaying the inevitable.

Now, the Defiant is a very small, but well armed ship. Also, it's pretty fast, therefore it could fly circles around the Sovereign. You saw how well the Defiant did against the Negh'Var. Same situation. The Defiant would be moving too fast for the Sovereign to get a good lock.

Now don't get too comfy though. The Sovereign's weaps ARE strong, so if the Defiant gets hit, it WILL hurt. Alot.

In such a battle, anything can depend on the situation. Things such as the expertise of the pilot, pre fight damage, etc can determine who wins and who loses. Just because the Defiant is small doesn't mean that it will win every single spacefight. Just look at the Valiant, it got SQUASHED by the huge Jemmie battleship.

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I can resist anything.......
Except Temptation

The Defiant was able to hold it's own when both ships fought. But then again, neither used quantum torpedoes, just phasers and pulse cannons. The Defiant did more damage to the Lakota, even with the upgrades.

What I'm trying to say is that the deciding factor in a battle between a *small* ship and a *big* ship would be the crew on the ships. Now, if the crew of the Defiant Class USS Valiant went up against Picard and his crew onboard the Enterprise-E, guess who will win?

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Sometimes I run
Sometimes I hide
Sometimes I'm scared of you
But all I really want is to hold you tight
Treat you right, be with you day and night
Baby all I need is time

A always thought about a ship like the Defiant in those days and how wonderful it would perform in such a situation. Imagine my satisfaction when I first saw "The Search" ;-)

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oh behave!!

As to the Big vs Small question, there are plenty of parallels in the real world. Who would win in a fight? A lioness or an elephant? A tyranosaurus rex or a velociraptor?

It depends who attacks first and how lucky they are. The potential is to go either way, depending on the skill of those in command. Which is faster? Subspace fields mean they are effectively equally fast, albeit the bigger one needs mre energy to be so nimble. And whose to say a small ship would get a chance to circle the bigger opponent? Long-range detection and one good blast from a galaxy-class phaserbank and your sneaky little attacker gets a nacelle blown off.

The benefits of a small craft size only become a winning formula if you move in packs. A battle group of Defiants would be a terrifying sight, whereas a convoy of galaxies would be worried about bumping into each other as they manouvered.

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"I cannot live out that life.
That man is bereft of passion... and imagination!
That is not who I am!"

In WWII and WWI it is the "PACK" that made the German submarine famous.

And for TSN, I think SF will be more likely to fit larger generators or maybe more of them on a larger starship just because it gets more internal space.

Granted that Defiant's agile manoueverbility may gives it some advantages, but with long range sensors and sophisticated targeting systems around, I doubt that it will be a decisive factor in winning a battle.

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"Reality is a condition that occurs because of a lack of alcohol."
- Albert Einstein

The shots of the Galaxy in WYLB - make sense actually stayput and fire! fire! fire!

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"All the lonely people, where do they all come from" - Eleanor Rigby, The Beatles.

This is actually great strategy. The Galaxies provide cover fire for the faster ships. The enemy would have to focus on one or the other and could be attacked by either the Galaxy or the fighters, which ever one was being ignored.

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx