Romulan Fleet

[Teaos]

Ok so we all know that up until Nemesis the Romulans only seemed to have one front line ship, the D'Deridex.

Of coarse the reason for this is budget constraints and the producers need to give us yet another Fed ship.

But can we come up with a reason why the Romulans only field one capital vessel?

We could argue that there are other ships out there that we have just not seen. Up until the Dominion war this would make sense. Why show your enemy anything but your strongest ships? But then the war happens and that argument falls apart since we would expect to see all available ships. Sure they could have only sent the D'Deridex and kept the rest to protect their own boarders but that strains credibility.

But assuming the D'Deridex is the only capital ship the Romulan empire fields what could be the only reason for this?

[Tsukiyumi]

Battleship mentality? Maybe they think that having a smaller number of powerful ships, with a lot of those small scout-type vessels as light frigates is the best approach.

[Teaos]

But they dont even seem to have frigate sized ships from what we've seen.

I think it may be simplicity. The Romulans don't seem to be the most stable empire out there and thus only having one ship to build and crew it would provide more stability.

In the Federation everytime you change ships you would have to re learn how it works. With only one ship you can shuffle crew easily.

[Tsukiyumi]

Yeah, I guess those "scouts" would be more like heavy corvettes.

[Nutso]

But assuming the D'Deridex is the only capital ship the Romulan empire fields what could be the only reason for this?

Maybe the Romulan politicians didn't see a need for more than one type of capital ship. Or since the Romulan Senate keeps being overturned continually, any new plans for a different type of capital ship never gets to Senate approval. They did abandon the Shinzon plan because of changing Senators.

[Teaos]

I agree that the stability of the empire would be one of the main reasons for the lack of diversity in the fleet. Not only can they not be planned but change may be seen as a sign of weakness and a lack of tradition.

[Tsukiyumi]

And then the Dominion War came along, and forced them to re-examine those values. Makes sense to me; the D'Deridex didn't seem to do all that well in most battles.

[Teaos]

It seemed to hit hard from what we saw but it didnt really have much staying power. It went down far easier than a ship that size should.

[Talos]

The Rommies have their reasons for big ships. They want their ships to "frighten" the enemy to intimidate him and to avoid battle since their ship looks sooo big and powerful. The D'deridex looks a lot bigger than it really is... there must be a reason for that. The rom strategy is based on deseption. They try to accomplish their goals through espionage and other honourless (for a Klingon) strategies. These strategies worked well (and probably for hundreds of years) till the dom war when they found out that having only very big ships is not so great a tactic. The last battle of the dom wars was almost lost when the Rom line started to collapse.

[Teaos]

The deception theory is very flimsy. Sure it might scare the shit out of you at first glance but after scans and a battle everyone knows what it can do. Thus the Federation and Klingons will find out pretty quickly that it is a glass canon.

It would only intimidate weak powers who dont really need to be intimidated.

[Talos]

Looking more powerful than you really are doesn't mean you are not powerful at all . The rom Warbird has twice the size of a GCS and is nearly as strong meaning that it is almost as strong as Starfleets strongest ship with twice the size... that's intimidating for everyone and as long as it avoids battle you can't be sure about its true power. (Avoiding Battle = A common Fed and probably Rom strategy)

[Tsukiyumi]

Of course, when you get into battle, a ship twice the size with only the same firepower would have a heavy deficiency in manuverability. Their firepower did seem rather impressive, though.

[Teaos]

Its twice the size but probably more in volume.

And as Tsu said being twice the size but only just as poweful is pretty pathetic.

[Talos]

Rom tecnology is pathetic in comparison to the Fed one and thats another reason to built a very very big ship

[Tsukiyumi]

That's reasonable: they may have had to build a bigger ship to make up for their less advanced tech.