D'deridex-class Overview

[Aaron]

Although, apart from the Odissey, the GCS that we saw in DS9 battles fared much better then the D'Ds we saw in DS9 battles.

Remember the two GCS doing a flyby on a Galor-Class, and all the GCS seen when they retake DS9.
We've seen many Excelsiors and Mirandas get destroyed, but as far as I remember, no GCS...

Yes but even if we go with the 10-12 GCS people often talk about being in DS9, that is still a loss rate of 30%.

[Sionnach Glic]

Hell, even if we go wild with the numbers and assume there are thirty GCS's, that's still a loss rate of 10%. That's pretty damn high for a ship, particularly one that has civilians and children on board.

And that's also if we just assume that no other GCS was lost during that entire time, and that the ones we saw go up were the only ones that did.

How many ships a class losses does hint at that classes overall survivability.

Uh, not really, no. Only 2 space shuttles have ever crashed, compared to millions of cars. Does that mean that space shuttles are a safer form of travel?
No, obviously not. Why? Because although only 2 shuttles were ever lost, they represent a substantial percentage of their group. The millions of cars that have crashed, however, represent a very small percent of total cars.

Numbers are rather pointless for this sort of thing. Proportion is what matters.

[m52nickerson]

How many ships a class losses does hint at that classes overall survivability.

It's not a matter of pure numbers, but of the number of ships lost as a proportion of the total number observed, and the manner in which they were lost. A ship destroyed by massive structural damage inflicted by concentrated and heavy enemy fire does not indicate a design flaw. A ship lost to an exploding fuel pod despite suffering no physical damage whatsoever does indicate a design flaw.

.....and a class with such a design flaw would still see a higher percent of the total number ships destroyed.

[m52nickerson]

Hell, even if we go wild with the numbers and assume there are thirty GCS's, that's still a loss rate of 10%. That's pretty damn high for a ship, particularly one that has civilians and children on board.

And that's also if we just assume that no other GCS was lost during that entire time, and that the ones we saw go up were the only ones that did.

How many ships a class losses does hint at that classes overall survivability.

Uh, not really, no. Only 2 space shuttles have ever crashed, compared to millions of cars. Does that mean that space shuttles are a safer form of travel?
No, obviously not. Why? Because although only 2 shuttles were ever lost, they represent a substantial percentage of their group. The millions of cars that have crashed, however, represent a very small percent of total cars.

Numbers are rather pointless for this sort of thing. Proportion is what matters.

I would agree with that. How many GCS there were total, and well as how many total Warbirds there were and how many that were destroyed can only be speculated to. We do see more Warbirds destroyed in trek, and those that are destroyed really don't seem to take very much damage at all.

[Deepcrush]

....and a class with such a design flaw would still see a higher percent of the total number ships destroyed.

Of course but you have to spend you accounts on the means at hand. Warships lost at war is different then flagships lost to gas leaks or poor engines. You have to count them apart.

[Teaos]

A its been pointed out numbers in this case matter for little. We may see more of one class blow up, but unless we include all the veriables such as what generation of ship (as they may improve with time), the way it was destroyed ect ect we will never really be able to compare them.

We simply do not have a good sample size for it. We see the GCS get into a lot of trouble because we see a lot of it.

[Captain Seafort]

We simply do not have a good sample size for it. We see the GCS get into a lot of trouble because we see a lot of it.

We see one ship routinely destroyed (and then un-destroyed by act of plot) or come close to destruction due to bad design. If all these losses or near losses were due to being attacked by Borg, or half a dozen warbirds, or similar, we wouldn't have a problem. They're not - they happen because of idiotic overreliance on active systems. If the computer malfunctions, or they loose power, they instantly lose all ejection systems.

As for sample size we've seen four Batch 1 GCSs - the Galaxy herself, the E-D, the Yamato, and Odyssey. Three of them blew up (although the Oydssey I'm prepared to pass on, given the nature of the damage sustained. That's a 50% loss rate among the early ships of the class. They apparently managed to fix the problem in time for the Dominion War, but it makes you wonder about the people designing Starfleet vessels if it took them the best part of a decade to atop the ships being death traps.

[Teaos]

My point was more of the fact that we don't see the day to day life of any other ships (Barring the Intrepid, Defiant and Conny obviously, all of which had problems to varying degrees) thus we can't say the other ships don't suffer similar problems.

We only ever see external shots of Akira class ships, usually for lengths of less than 30 seconds, hardly enough time to judge the designs strengths and weaknesses.

The GCS starships we see also tend to get into situations that the majority of the fleet wouldn't amplifying existing problems to levels you cant reasonably design for.

I'll be the first to admit the GCS had serious issues.

All I'm saying is we can't fairly compare it to other designs because we don't see those other designs in the same situations.

[Deepcrush]

Sorry teaos, I was editing my post when you posted. Hope I didn't step on anythign you said.

[Lt. Staplic]

How many ships a class losses does hint at that classes overall survivability.

It's not a matter of pure numbers, but of the number of ships lost as a proportion of the total number observed, and the manner in which they were lost. A ship destroyed by massive structural damage inflicted by concentrated and heavy enemy fire does not indicate a design flaw. A ship lost to an exploding fuel pod despite suffering no physical damage whatsoever does indicate a design flaw.

.....and a class with such a design flaw would still see a higher percent of the total number ships destroyed.

exactly, a higher percent (proportion) that's what we've been telling you, just saying that we've seen 10 D'Deridex's blow up and 3 GCS doesn't mean squat unless you follow that up with "out of x number DD's and y number GCS's"

If someone has the proportion of DD's we saw blow up and GCS's I can crunch the numbers real quick and see if the DD is statisticly different from the GCS based purely on seen survivability.

[Reliant121]

Plus we know there are far higher numbers of D'Ds. We see several throughout TNG, and loads in DS9. The episode with the Bajoran blockade on the moon, there must have been at least 5 if not 7 D'Deridex alone then. 7 in one episode? Far more than a GCS. And there are consistently higher numbers of them.

[Lt. Staplic]

how many blew up?

[Reliant121]

i cant remember now. but none were destroyed that episode.

[Lt. Staplic]

well, that's 1 for 9 that I'm aware of. 7 from that ep, and 2 from "Tin Man" where one was destroyed.

[Aaron]

well, that's 1 for 9 that I'm aware of. 7 from that ep, and 2 from "Tin Man" where one was destroyed.

That one was destroyed by Tin Man though and it was heavily implied that had the E-D been closer it would have been as well.