Hypothetical Starfleet ship roles

[Praeothmin]

How do you know the reverse isn't true?

Indeed, we don't, which is why concluding that the Defiant has better or more armor then the Sovie because of the hits it took cannot be validated, just as the opposite, saying the Sovie has better armor because it took greater hits cannot be validated.
That's my point, we're faced with unknowns which prevents us from making definitive claims (unless, that is, someone has that information ).

[m52nickerson]

For the phasers being more powerful dependent on size, why are the most powerful phasers and shields only on the biggest ships, with the biggest mass and biggest reactors to power them? does it not stand to reason that they are bigger to get a better output, but require the larger mass and power source to power them, hence they are fitted to the larger ship?

Yes, but that does not mean there is not an upper limit to shield and phaser size and power.

Prove there is? How can you say that there is a limit to how high a phaser can charge, or how high a shield can charge?

How about the fact that we don't see super large ships but only a few times. Or that fact that the Federation does not have a larger battleship.

[Sionnach Glic]

Although I disagree with him on most points in this debate, Praethorim has a point here, Deep.

The Sov's hull was breached by weapon A.
The Defiant's hull was breached by weapon B.
From this, there's no way to tell whether the same result would have happened had weapon B been fired on the Sov, and weapon A on the Defiant.

How about the fact that we don't see super large ships but only a few times.

Given the UFP's industrial strength, it's quite clear that they have the capability to make a ship about a KM long if they wanted to.

Or that fact that the Federation does not have a larger battleship.

That can be attributed to the UFP's consistant anti-military stance.

[m52nickerson]

More space = more room for fuel, torpedoes, reactors, etc. Design it well, rather than the somewhat slender Sov, and you could fit in two or three cores the size of the Sov's.

If it was that easy why don't we see it?

Of course you can, but armour (and hull) with bloody great holes in it will inevitably be weaker than homogeneous plating.

The windows are not that big. Yes it would be weaker, then it could, but that does not mean weak overall.

The Defiant's hull is proven to be stronger than the Sov's, since it took repeated hits in the episodes I mentioned while the Sov suffered hull breaches to single hits. The Sov can probably take more damage due to it's size, but individual hits do a lot more damage.

...and those hit were of equal power?

[Praeothmin]

That can be attributed to the UFP's consistant anti-military stance.

Which has been changed a bit in the last years, because it is a stance that yielded the Sovie, the Defiant, the Prommie and the Akira.
These ships are pretty clearly warships (except for perhaps the Akira), and are also the latest ships designed and built by the Federation.

[Sionnach Glic]

If it was that easy why don't we see it?

No idea. Probably due to some form of stupidity. Point is, there's nothing suggesting it can't be done. If you have evidence to refute that, put it up.

The windows are not that big.

That windows are there at all is a problem.

Yes it would be weaker, then it could, but that does not mean weak overall.

If spots on your hull are weaker than the rest, the overall strength of the hull will go down quite a bit, and create numerous weak points an enemy can exploit.

Which has been changed a bit in the last years, because it is a stance that yielded the Sovie, the Defiant, the Prommie and the Akira.
These ships are pretty clearly warships (except for perhaps the Akira), and are also the latest ships designed and built by the Federation.

Aye, their stance was changed mostly from necessity.

[Captain Seafort]

Evidence? We've never seen two Sovs go up against each other.

But we have seen a Sovie go against a very powerful ship, the Scimitar, and if it hadn't been cloaked, the E-E would have fared far better against it.

Not the statement made, which was "The Sovie has the capacity to resist its own guns".

Does the Sovie really have less or equal armor to, say, a GCS?

Unknown and irrelevant - it has less than the Defiant.

We've seen the Sovie take beatings comparable to those the Defiant took, and it performed really well

It had holes punched in it from single shots.

Or that Starfleet felt that they would be better served in other duties, such as when they did't want the E-E to go against the Borg because of Picard.
It had nothing to do with the ship itself.

All of them? We know there's more than one of them (hence the class name) and Starfleet should have been able to produce several of them by the time the Dominion war came along, and yet we never saw a single Sov in any of the fleet actions.

I hardly think any ship being flanked by two Sovies would do badly in any combat situation...

The question wasn't "would it do badly" - the question was "would it do as well".

I can easily seen Starfleet using them as deterrent in areas where, due to lack of available ships, one Sovie could be a decisive asset.

At the possible expensive of losing critical battles due to holding their most powerful ship back. Not even Starfleet is that stupid - they repeatedly sent the E-D into trouble because it was their most powerful ship.

We have no clear indication that the Sovie is equal to a Defiant in power-mass ratio.

No, but we do have strong circumstantial evidence that the Defiant is, if anything, stronger.

We have no clear indication that Starfleet is able to build a ship equal to the Defiant in power-mass ratio the size of a Sovie.

We know they have the technology for that sort of ratio, and we know they have the industrial capability to build a ship that size. Certainly the design would be a challenge, but it's simply a matter of mating different demonstrated technologies.

In fact, as stated, when at first the Defiant came out, even a ship its size had many design issues.
Yes, they were solved over-time, but they were there at the beginning.

Yes, there will be design issues, and yes the early ships may also have issues. The Defiant was developed into a reliable and powerful design, and in doing so Starfleet undoubtedly gained a great deal of experience in operating warships.

Which then led to the Sovie.
Perhaps the Sovie is their vision of a Battleship...

Then they need their eyesight checking - the design could do with some serious improvements.

Didn't they burn out after one use?

They burnt out the deflector, because it was never intended to be used as a weapon, but it maintained the beam for something like ten seconds - much longer than the typical phaser burst. It's simply a matter of extra shielding and a more rugged emitter.

Wasn't the fact that the power used through the Deflector couldn't be used in the Phaser arrays indicative of the limits of the weapons power distribution network?

Indeed - on the GCS. Plus the limitations of the emitters. The fact that they were able to channel the power to the deflector, and that the deflector was able to sustain the burst shows that they have the technology to do so.

By increasing the number of smaller weapons, you may obtain an equal power in weapon's output, but in the cases where big guns are needed, you lack the ability to punch hard, no?

Relative to fewer bigger guns, yes, but the fact that bigger guns are better doesn't detract from the superiority of a ship with more guns (for comparison, the fact that HMS Agincourt was weaker than a QE doesn't change the fact that she was stronger than Dreadnaught).

[Deepcrush]

How do you know the reverse isn't true?

Indeed, we don't, which is why concluding that the Defiant has better or more armor then the Sovie because of the hits it took cannot be validated, just as the opposite, saying the Sovie has better armor because it took greater hits cannot be validated.
That's my point, we're faced with unknowns which prevents us from making definitive claims (unless, that is, someone has that information ).

Rochey wrote:

Although I disagree with him on most points in this debate, Praethorim has a point here, Deep.

The Sov's hull was breached by weapon A.
The Defiant's hull was breached by weapon B.
From this, there's no way to tell whether the same result would have happened had weapon B been fired on the Sov, and weapon A on the Defiant.

I'm not saying he's right or wrong. I'm saying that he's trying to speak against something using the same manner in which he's speaking against. The whole statement is meaningless to the debate.

How about the fact that we don't see super large ships but only a few times.

Because the bigger the ship the more costly it is. That's why the USN doesn't use JUST SUPER CARRIERS.

Or that fact that the Federation does not have a larger battleship.

The Excelsior was the largest ship of her age (TOS timeline). The UFP in the TNG timeline doesn't like the idea of having real warships. This has changed with the Borg and Dominion. It takes time to design, build, test, rebuild and then deploy a new design.

[m52nickerson]

Lets think... who else has a battleship... maybe the Dominion, the RSE, the Borg, the Voth, the Klingons, the Tamarians.

The dominion battleship is only seen taking out a Defiant class, and never seen doing anything spectacular in the war. The Romulans? Again, at best they may have Scimitars, which only compete because of the cloak. The Voth have a city ship, not a battleship. The Klingons, a Negh'var might put up a good fight, but I don't see it besting a Sov. The Tamarians?

The Sov is fast, meaning that there was the ability to put more weight, ie more armor, onto the hull.

So just because you can put more on it can't be a battleship?

You can't have armor ont he hull between the windows?

Nothing to do with that. It has to do with windows being soft points on the hull.
"Our metal armor covers everything.... minus those big glass viewing ports...

Yes the windows are so big.

He's saying that Armor+Shields is better then No Armor+Shields.

Who says the Sov is completely unarmored?

The upper limit is how much power you can generate.

Prove that.

[m52nickerson]

That can be attributed to the UFP's consistant anti-military stance.

I would believe that up until they started to produce pure warships.

[Captain Seafort]

The Sov's hull was breached by weapon A.
The Defiant's hull was breached by weapon B.
From this, there's no way to tell whether the same result would have happened had weapon B been fired on the Sov, and weapon A on the Defiant.

Nonetheless, the fact that the Defiant's hull withstood multiple hits from Jem'Hadar weapons in "The Search" speaks volumes about the strength of it's armour. While we are unable to directly compare those weapons with those of the Scimitar, it stands to reason that they are, proportionally, roughly equal to those of the Scimitar (if not stronger given the Dominion's technological superiority over the AQ powers). Therefore, we would expect the Sov to fare as well or better against the Scimitar (given that the larger a ship is, the thicker the armour it can carry as a given proportion of it's mass), not worse as was the case.

[m52nickerson]

No idea. Probably due to some form of stupidity. Point is, there's nothing suggesting it can't be done. If you have evidence to refute that, put it up.

So you want me to prove a negative? The federation was doing everything it could to prepare for the borg, if they could have produced a ship that was bigger and better then the Sov they would have.

That windows are there at all is a problem.

Ok, so the armor is not as strong as it could be, that does not mean it is not there at all or weak.

If spots on your hull are weaker than the rest, the overall strength of the hull will go down quite a bit, and create numerous weak points an enemy can exploit

It have not been seen on screen as a problem as the Sov has taken some pretty good punishment.

[m52nickerson]

The Sov's hull was breached by weapon A.
The Defiant's hull was breached by weapon B.
From this, there's no way to tell whether the same result would have happened had weapon B been fired on the Sov, and weapon A on the Defiant.

Nonetheless, the fact that the Defiant's hull withstood multiple hits from Jem'Hadar weapons in "The Search" speaks volumes about the strength of it's armour. While we are unable to directly compare those weapons with those of the Scimitar, it stands to reason that they are, proportionally, roughly equal to those of the Scimitar (if not stronger given the Dominion's technological superiority over the AQ powers). Therefore, we would expect the Sov to fare as well or better against the Scimitar (given that the larger a ship is, the thicker the armour it can carry as a given proportion of it's mass), not worse as was the case.

Again you are discounting the fact that in the Defiant's situation the Jem'Hadar most likley would not have gotten past the Sov shields.

[Captain Seafort]

Again you are discounting the fact that in the Defiant's situation the Jem'Hadar most likley would not have gotten past the Sov shields.

Yes they would have - that encounter occurred before the Feds figured out how to block JH weapons.

[Deepcrush]

The dominion battleship is only seen taking out a Defiant class, and never seen doing anything spectacular in the war.

Its still a battleship, and one that can eat apart Starfleet's first dedicated warship.

The Romulans? Again, at best they may have Scimitars, which only compete because of the cloak.

Again, you're trying to twist the facts at hand. The ship was still more then a match for SFs best...

The Voth have a city ship, not a battleship.

Oh, right, a ship more powerful then any known ship of any class or race. Right, I guess we shouldn't have to worry about that one...

The Klingons, a Negh'var might put up a good fight, but I don't see it besting a Sov.

Thats your opinion. But, if you want your opinion to matter on this, you have to prove that a Negh'var is inferior to the Sov.

The Tamarians?

Yes, from the Ep Darmok. They had a ship able to bitchslap the E-D.

So just because you can put more on it can't be a battleship?

In a layman's terms... YES! The idea of a battleship is that it is packed FULL 9as in no space left over full) of weapons and covered in as much armor as they could fit. ie... Defiant but supersized.

Yes the windows are so big.

A hole is your hull is a bad thing. A hole 10m long as in the one behind the bridge in the conference room counts as a BIG hole.

Who says the Sov is completely unarmored?

No one, its what we know as an example.

Prove that.

Ok, I'd ask you to think about the statement but I don't want you to hurt yourself. But, just to be on the safe side. You want me to prove to you that the maximum power generated is the maximum amount of power avalible for use?