Why uber ships fail

[Deepcrush]

As a fair ratio, I'd agree with the 4 v 1 where the Defiant Class (note that is the class not the hero ship). Of course this is where your pilot comes in handy as you have to get those pulse phasers facing a target.

[Sionnach Glic]

Aye, if you've got a shit pilot then you're screwed.

[Mikey]

Aye, if you've got a s**t pilot then you're screwed.

That really sort of applies to any ship you might be in.

[Deepcrush]

Not really. If you're flying around in our battleship (The Paladin) then you really don't have to worry to much about zipping around. If you can avoid crashing into a planet then you should be ok.

[Mikey]

I didn't say that any ship would be as nimble as a Spitfire, just that having a sucky pilot is bad no matter what ship you're in. Even in a slug like the Paladin, turning into a broadside instead of away from it would be bad.

[Reliant121]

Not that trek has broadsides

[Mikey]

Not that trek has broadsides

Fine, call it a full salvo from the main guns, if that makes you feel better about it. The point still stands.

[Deepcrush]

[Mark]

Not that trek has broadsides

Fine, call it a full salvo from the main guns, if that makes you feel better about it. The point still stands.

Well, technically Trek doesn't have guns either

[Mikey]

I didn't say "chemically-propelled projectile" guns. If they can call phasers "rifles," then I'm justified in calling a phaser array a "gun."

[stitch626]

About ther strength of bugs, wasn't it becase of a weakness in the aft shields that the Runabouts could match the bugs?

[Duskofdead]

About ther strength of bugs, wasn't it becase of a weakness in the aft shields that the Runabouts could match the bugs?

Yes it was. No matter how much people like to "overlook" those kinds of little weaknesses or design flaws (which inevitably will come up especially with the big diversity of technologies employed in Trek), they have come up for dedicated warship designs of multiple threat powers (plasma coil defects in Klingon birds of prey, shield weaknesses on dorsal vector of Dominion attackships, explosive weakly armored fuel containers on the ventral of the larger Dominion "supercruiser", exposed nacelles (almost every ship except the Defiant) which can be targetted, disabled, punctured or rammed, bias towards frontal firing arcs for the big majority of weapon systems in most non-Federation ships (many times exclusively so, at least from what can be observed).

Point being, discussions of what would happen with a "properly designed battleship" (which, at least from what I can suss in many of these discussions, pretty much means "unrealistically invulnerable and perfect in design") are pointless given that there isn't a single one in all of Trek. And that some of the most imposing or threatening designs actually aren't dedicated warships (the most extreme example being Borg ships, which are de-specialized almost to an extreme degree, and which as Rochey pointed out, are of poor shape to make proper battleship designs anyhow, despite otherwise starting to fill the bill in terms of not being particularly more vulnerable or less heavily armed from any particular angle or perspective.)

[Mikey]

The lack of anything without a fatal flaw in 'Trek doesn't preclude "what-if" discussions about a vessel with time taken to cover such a flaw. And a ship with such consideration =/=fanboy ubership.

However, to play devil's advocate back on Dusk's side, as long as ships are designed, there will be trade-offs. No matter how a ship is designed, some characteristic will have to be sacrificed to some degree for another.

Now, back to other side - that said, our "what-ifs" have generally centered around merely asking for a little though to be put into making those trade-offs, not turning everything into the USS Wank-fest.