The potential for refits

[Deepcrush]

Aren't you in Texas though? I'm not sure but does that even count as air?

[Tsukiyumi]

Aren't you in Texas though? I'm not sure but does that even count as air?

It's more like a vaporized lake.

Current humidity: 92%

[Deepcrush]

Good thing global warming isn't real...

Then you'd really be in trouble.

[Duskofdead]

Good thing global warming isn't real...

Then you'd really be in trouble.

Tell that to the Canadian vineyards producing their unprecedented first-class wines in the last half decade or so...

[m52nickerson]

Even a fraction of a battleship's total armament would be far more destructive than that of a smaller ship. At the River Plate, Graf Spee wrecked HMS Exeter in short order, despite having to split her fire between two groups of attackers, and suffered only minor damage in return. And she was only a big heavy cruiser.

True for naval combat, I talking about starships.

Bigger guns also mean bigger cooling systems.

Maybe.

Bollocks. A ship without the power to hurt her opponent is useless in battle, regardless of her ability to dictate the range.

I'm not talking about throwing a shuttle at a GCS.

Nonetheless, it's doable, as shown by both the E-nil and the Cavour and Doria refits.

Yes.

When those smaller ships were designed they were either the first true warship Starfleet produced (the Defiant) or they already had a battleship, albeit a badly designed one - the GCS.

Then wy not redesign the GCS as a pure warship if big=better?

As I've pointed out several times, the Defiant was Starfleet's first single-role warship, and they had problems with her. Until those design problems had been sorted out, proceding to larger designs would have been foolish.

The problems were mainly do to her size. It would have been easier to make a large ship with the Defients power.

If they reach the limit of what sort of power feed the weapons can take, then they can add more weapons, increasing overall firepower while remaining within limits for individual arrays.

....and then add a bigger core, then more guns, then....... The Federation has the power to build starbased which are huge. If bigger=better why don't we see a absolutly huge ship?

Correct. So what?

Large relatively stationary targets can be easier to take out.

[m52nickerson]

So? Even that would be enough to seriously damage a smaller ship.

I'm not trying to say that a very small shuttle size ship could take out a GCS. An Akira might be able to, so might a Defiant.

And with those small amount of its total weapons it can still obliterate a smaller ship.

Yes in some cases. I have never ment smaller to mean fishing boat vs. air craft carrier.

Yeah, too bad we couldn't just shove in some extra cooling units.
Oh, wait....we could.

So? The battleship will likely have better range with its guns than a smaller ship. Therefore a smaller ship would have to take numerous hits on its prow while closing before it could turn hard and protect itself. And then it would take more hits to its aft as it retreats out of the battleship's greater range. Whereas with its greater shield strenght a battleship could take entire barrages from the smaller ship and not even flinch.
Greater maneouverability is nice, but if your enemy is superior in every other respect then you're screwed.

Again if the difference in weapons and power if that great then yes.

No? No one said it'd be quick or easy. The fact remains that it is a possibility.

Of course, it'd be far smarter to just design a battleship from the ground-up instead of trying to convert the bloated whale that is the GCS into a battleship, but that's irrelevant for now.

....and even if you did it still may be beat by a Sov.

Those smaller ships were designed as pure warships, the GCS wasn't. Therefore the spaceframe of the GCS would be far larger than a dedicated warship, even if all the civilian equipment was stripped out.

Then way did they not just design a pure warship the size of a GCS?

That's probably what the Sovereign was intended to be.

Which is not as big as a GCS.

In comparison? Yup.
'Course, you could say the same thing about a speedboat with a .50 cal machine gun welded to the front and an aircraft carrier. Take a guess at which one would win in a fight.

See above.

Maneouverability is largely irrelevant when you have 360^o weapons and shield coverage.

Not really, not every individual weapons has a 306^oarc of fire. An individual shield does not have an overall coverage.

You're seriously overstating the advantages of superior maneouverability and speed. A faster and more maneouverable ships is always going to get destroyed by a battleship.

[/quote]How many larger ships do we see the Defiant taking out?

[m52nickerson]

Fucktard... I'm saying that the total output of all the battleships weapons would be greater then that of the fast attack ship.

Yes, I understand that. You don't seem to get that if all of those weapons can't be brought to bear they are useless.

A small number of 16/18'' guns will still wreck a ship that only carries 5'' guns. This is how war works...

If that size difference is that great then yes.

I take it you've seen the lost eps where a battleship design comes without a cooling system. Expose whatever part of your little ship you want. A single hit from a battleship will still burn that little prick of yours into stardust.

Everyone is visioning a shuttle vs a Galaxy, not what I'm talking about.

That just means it would involve "WORK" to get them in there. Big surprise that someone would put work into building a ship.

Most likley less work to start from scratch.

Wrong again. The Lakota went under refit but everything was fitted without any external change. The E-nil was fully rebuilt. O'Brian, Starfleet's best couldn't tell the difference between the Lakota and any other Excelsior. Even when they first came under fire O'Brian couldn't explain it. All this means that the Lakota under went the full refit without having to change the base design.

Yes the outer hull was the same, how about internally?

But speaking of which the Defiant (fast destroyer) was far more 'speedy' then the Lakota (cruiser) and yet they still finished even at the end of the battle. A one hundred year old cruiser matched the top of the line combat ship of the UFP in battle. Now you want to pretend that a brand new Battleship couldn't beat a destroyer? Whatever drugs you take for that little world of yours... Up the dose.

As you stated, the Defiant was surprised at the start. That and it was even, that does not mean that each battle between the two ships would give the same result.

What does that matter, again? The Akira isn't a small ship. The Sov isn't a small ship. The GCS isn't a small ship. The Neb isn't a small ship. The Ambassador isn't a small ship. Starfleet turns out just as many large ships as they small ships. You build what you need. Not what you make up for bullshitting in a debate.

No the Sov is not a small ship, if is smaller then a GCS. I have been talking about smaller ships (then the ship it is facing), not small ships.

As I said, it was designed before the Dominion were on the radar. If bigger is better why not design a super ship that could

take on a Borg Cube? It is not like they were known to send multiply ships.

First the UFP may not have anything able to build a ship the size of a Borg Cube. Second you never build an uber prototype. Why you may ask? Because when you are testing something you need to keep it as cheap as possible. That's why test planes are so small. Only half the size and a forth the tonage of the fighter plane they intend. THey have to test every system out. One piece at a time.

They can build starbases.

Nope, still meaningless because... What uber weapons? We're talking about going from type Xs to type XIIs. They aren't uber, there just better then standard. That and I doubt my leaving the tv on in my quarters would some how cause the phasers to be short on power. That is seeing that I've never seen the crew of a UFP ship turn everything off so that they would have enough power to shoot back.

.....but we have seen them draw power from other systems to boost power.

And that means........? Again NOTHING! Yea!!!! Battleships aren't meant to dip and dodge around. They're built to stand in place and rip apart enemy warships. That little ship of yours wouldn't be trying to close. He'd be running like hell to get away. OH, but wait! That larger warship will most likely have better warp drive so your little ship couldnt' even do that much!

Hell yes I'm running from a GCS if I'm in a shuttle. Maybe not so if in a Akira.

Warp engines to facilitate? Evidence please... Even though that is again meaningless. The ship can spin faster then the other ship can fly around it.

Every time we see the E-D make a turn like that it goes to warp right after.

How long can they keep that up? In TOS is was a standard practice to use warp in battle. In DS9 we saw SoA where ships fought for several hours without any real trouble. I'd guess they can keep going for a fairly long time unless you have evidence to say otherwise.

I was specifily taking about the fast turns.

Does that help with attacks from below or above? f***ing duh! I doubt that they built the ships to turn in only one direction.

It would be fun to see a GCS spinning in all directions while in one place, but I guess it might be possible.

[Granitehewer]

whoa, some mediterranean volcanic passions in this thread....! Daddy likes lol
I'm doing a post-ds9 wargame and didn't want to have negh'vars and valdores to beast my flotilla of galaxy class, i won't be able to sculpt enough sovereigns in time, and so thought that maybe like the excelsior subtype eg lakota, that the galaxy class might have the volume and compatibility to have its combat prowess significantly boosted without the need for a radical exterior change

[Reliant121]

Besides the fact that the guns arent useless anyway. Battleships rarely have a single opponent in proper combat situations, they would have multiple hostiles to kill at all different angles. More powerful guns equals better in that situation.

[Sionnach Glic]

True for naval combat, I talking about starships.

Space battleships would also have more destructive armament than smaller vessels.
Bigger ship = bigger reactors = bigger emitters = more power = more boom.

Maybe

Unless you can provide a reason as to why we couldn't just shove a larger cooling unit in, it's not "maybe", it's "yes".

I'm not talking about throwing a shuttle at a GCS.

So? Unless it's only smaller by a relatively minor amount, it's going to be far less powerful. Just what size ship are you talking about?

The problems were mainly do to her size. It would have been easier to make a large ship with the Defients power.

Correct, it would have been much easier. But then you'd have all the disadvantages of a big ship, with only the power of a small warship. It's a waste of resources.

....and then add a bigger core, then more guns, then....... The Federation has the power to build starbased which are huge. If bigger=better why don't we see a absolutly huge ship?

For the same reason the US doesn't build a supercarrier twice as long as the Nimitz, even though they could if they wanted to.

Large relatively stationary targets can be easier to take out.

Not if said target is far more powerful than your's.

I'm not trying to say that a very small shuttle size ship could take out a GCS. An Akira might be able to, so might a Defiant.

Of course. Because the GCS wasn't built with combat in mind.
If it were, or if it were given a major refit to turn it into a battleship, it would be quite capable of swatting down those ships with only minor damage.

Yes in some cases. I have never ment smaller to mean fishing boat vs. air craft carrier.

Then think of a WW2 era cruiser against a WW2 era battleship. Take a guess at which would win.

Again, unless you can give me some sort of reason why we can't do that, then we can.

Again if the difference in weapons and power if that great then yes.

Even if it's not that great, the battleship is still far more likely to triumph against a faster enemy.

....and even if you did it still may be beat by a Sov.

Of course. Because the basic design of the thing is utterly horrendous from a military point of view.

Then way did they not just design a pure warship the size of a GCS?

For the same reason they don't bother giving their ground troops proper weapons: they're morons. The Sov is a step in the right direction, though.

Which is not as big as a GCS.

Aye, it's shorter by a few dozen metres, and far less massive. Your point?

Not really, not every individual weapons has a 306oarc of fire. An individual shield does not have an overall coverage.

Irrelevant. The ship itself has 360^o weapons coverage. The ship itself has 360^o shield coverage. That each individual emmitter or projector doesn't is irrelevant. It can unleash a mountain of pain in any direction, and can take just as much damage from any direction. That's all that matters.

How many larger ships do we see the Defiant taking out?

All to do with the UFP's tech advantage over other races, or because it was fighting aged vessels.

Yes, I understand that. You don't seem to get that if all of those weapons can't be brought to bear they are useless.

And a propper battleship will be specificaly designed so that its heaviest guns can bear on a target closing from any direction.

Everyone is visioning a shuttle vs a Galaxy, not what I'm talking about.

I'm not. I'm envisioning something the size of an Intrepid against the GCS.

As you stated, the Defiant was surprised at the start. That and it was even, that does not mean that each battle between the two ships would give the same result.

But it does show that speed only counts for so much in combat. Your enemy isn't politely going to inform you whenever he attacks, there're going to be plenty of ambushes in a war.

As I said, it was designed before the Dominion were on the radar. If bigger is better why not design a super ship that could take on a Borg cube?

For the same reason the USN doesn't build a supercarrier twice as long as a Nimitz, even though it could dominate entire fleets.

Hell yes I'm running from a GCS if I'm in a shuttle. Maybe not so if in a Akira.

Even an Akira would fall to a modded GCS battleship. Why? Because it doesn't have the raw power it needs to blast the ship apart. The GCS would probably take moderate damage, but it'd still be the victor.

[m52nickerson]

Space battleships would also have more destructive armament than smaller vessels.
Bigger ship = bigger reactors = bigger emitters = more power = more boom.

The Defiant's pulse phasers are less powerful then a GCS's type Xs?

Unless you can provide a reason as to why we couldn't just shove a larger cooling unit in, it's not "maybe", it's "yes".

Good you can shove larger cooling units in.

So? Unless it's only smaller by a relatively minor amount, it's going to be far less powerful. Just what size ship are you talking about?

Say the difference between a GCS and an Akira. Better, to go back to what started this all the difference between a GCS and a Sov.

Correct, it would have been much easier. But then you'd have all the disadvantages of a big ship, with only the power of a small warship. It's a waste of resources.

What? I did not mean that you would put in the same number of weapons.

For the same reason the US doesn't build a supercarrier twice as long as the Nimitz, even though they could if they wanted to.

No reason two? Right for the US wrong for the Federation.

Not if said target is far more powerful than your's.

It would depand on how much more and if it could use that advantage.

Of course. Because the GCS wasn't built with combat in mind.
If it were, or if it were given a major refit to turn it into a battleship, it would be quite capable of swatting down those ships with only minor damage.

So bigger is not always better? It then would depend on how much of a increase in power that was.

Then think of a WW2 era cruiser against a WW2 era battleship. Take a guess at which would win.

True for naval vessels.

Even if it's not that great, the battleship is still far more likely to triumph against a faster enemy.

.....unless it can't bring its weapons to bear.

Of course. Because the basic design of the thing is utterly horrendous from a military point of view.

....and even totaly refitted may still lose.

For the same reason they don't bother giving their ground troops proper weapons: they're morons. The Sov is a step in the right direction, though.

.......or you are wrong in your assumptions and ships that are just large floating weapons platforms don't fair as well in combat as smaller well rounded ships. One of the thing about the Sov that make it good is that fact that while being large and powerful it is also pretty manuverable. Balance is the key, not just bigger is better.

Aye, it's shorter by a few dozen metres, and far less massive. Your point?

That was my point.

Irrelevant. The ship itself has 360^o weapons coverage. The ship itself has 360^o shield coverage. That each individual emmitter or projector doesn't is irrelevant. It can unleash a mountain of pain in any direction, and can take just as much damage from any direction. That's all that matters.

How is it irrelevent. If you take two ships, each with the same weapons outload for foreward firing weapons, but ship A has weapons aft, while ship B does not, and you face them at each other, ship A's aft weapons don't mean a thing.

All to do with the UFP's tech advantage over other races, or because it was fighting aged vessels.

So bigger is not always better.

And a propper battleship will be specificaly designed so that its heaviest guns can bear on a target closing from any direction.

Really, what ship can do that? It might be able to bring some of it's heaviest weapons to bear, but not all of them.

I'm not. I'm envisioning something the size of an Intrepid against the GCS.

....and you think a GCS would crush a Intrepid outright?

But it does show that speed only counts for so much in combat. Your enemy isn't politely going to inform you whenever he attacks, there're going to be plenty of ambushes in a war.

Very true. Ambushed and other factors do change the odds. I thought we were discrussing more of an up and up fight.

For the same reason the USN doesn't build a supercarrier twice as long as a Nimitz, even though it could dominate entire fleets.

Carriers are one thing, battleships may be an other.

Even an Akira would fall to a modded GCS battleship. Why? Because it doesn't have the raw power it needs to blast the ship apart. The GCS would probably take moderate damage, but it'd still be the victor.

Yes if the Akira just stood there and traded blows. The Akira might be able to manuver to the side of the GCS and stay out of torpedo arcs and limiting the fire from the GCS to 1 or 2 phaser banks and Spread that damage across all of it's shields and armor. At the same time the Akira would be able to use almost all of it's weapons and concentrate damage on one side of the GCS. All of this depends on how powerful the two ships are as well as how manuverable.

My whole point is just stating that because a ship is BIGGER, does not mean is will be better in combat.

[Granitehewer]

bigger does not always equate with better in combat, to use an IU 'trek example, an akira could possibly beat a d'deridex, but the d'deridex being larger may have more capacity for more powerful and numerous refits/modifications.
As for the intrepid vs galaxy...i at least think that a DW galaxy refit would beast an intrepid (i'm assuming you don't mean the borg-modified uss voyager).

[Duskofdead]

I've said since first arriving.. (don't want to step into a quote-for-quote in between granite and rochey/seafort/deepcrush but wanted to comment on the exchange) that the direct equivalency between modern naval conventions and Star Trek doesn't work, never has, never will. It may be what makes most sense to someone totally immersed in contemporary military hardware and studying modern world navies. Which is, ultimately, irrelevant when we're discussing how the shows were written and what conclusions we could draw from watching combat in the Trek universe.

Watch the invasion of Chin'toka.... identical ODP's mass produced and all drawing power from the same source light up ships the size of the Akira and Excelsior in a couple of his. Watch the bridge scenes on the Defiant and note it takes a good dozen or more hits... at least.... with no visible damage sustained whatsoever.

The bigger ship = bigger power plants = better shields = stronger weapons formula simply does not work in Trek. It's never been true and forces us to try to rectify way too many writing inconsistencies which sometimes confirm but frequently disprove this theory.

Technology level, obviously, plays a role too. In TNG when the Enterprise-D crew is tricked into the Lysian-Satarran conflict, for instance, they approach a Lysian station which is absolutely massive... yet no threat to the Enterprise-D. Then you have the minosian weapon drones which can range in size from about 18 inches to the size of a runabout, which had no real difficulty in putting the Ent-D into a critical situation.

The Defiant outperforms even an uprated Excelsior which has been uparmored, shielded, upgraded phasers, and WASN'T holding back throughout the battle, whereas the Defiant didn't even return fire at first and afterwards was trying to avoid causing any casualties or destroying the ship. (i.e., fighting with one arm tied behind itself.) And the Defiant is one of the smallest full-service starships (the Oberth is probably smaller but I can't think of too many others.)

The Borg cubes lasted anywhere from one to a couple hits from tiny 8472 ships.

The latter is an extreme example of course. Point is this. 8472 didn't need to create a big cube-sized ship bristling with weapons to do the job of destroying Borg cubes.... a ship smaller than Voyager could do the same job with a single weapon. Bigger = more power = more shields = stronger weapons might be true when you're talking about ships of roughly the same generation using the same technology fielded by the same government. And even that is problematic because Trek has never shown that small always means weaker and big always means stronger (see: Defiant) It becomes more problematic when you introduce other factors like battles with other species or other technologies. (Look at the Dominion War as an example.... does it matter how strong your shields are when your enemy has a weapon that knocks all your power systems offline simultaneously?)

Use conventional military thinking/hardware design conventions as a guide if you like. But Rochey & Seafort, the two of you have always gotten way way way too far off the deep end with "this is absolutely the only possible design philosophy that would make any bit of sense", bucking the fact that canon has never supported that the variables involve in Trek dovetail with present-day military or naval conventions. Keep a little perspective that this is, in fact, fiction. And not meant to be a military hardware design manual.

[Granitehewer]

part of that dovetailing has roots in the greater technological disparity of opponents in 'trek than in most real life situations, but many of the classes of vessel mentioned in this thread; galaxy, sovereign, intrepid,akira, defiant, excelsior etc were different classes and sizes of ship but from the same technological background.

[Duskofdead]

part of that dovetailing has roots in the greater technological disparity of opponents in 'trek than in most real life situations, but many of the classes of vessel mentioned in this thread; galaxy, sovereign, intrepid,akira, defiant, excelsior etc were different classes and sizes of ship but from the same technological background.

I would make this small qualification, not everything in Trek is on a linear scale. Some things step off the scale altogether. The reason I mention that is because, as an example, I do not believe that if the Borg simply quadrupled the sizes of their cubes and added more power sources they would suddenly be able to fight and defeat 8472 ships. Nor would the Defiant have fared better against the Breen dampening weapon if they had only added a bit more ablative armor.

I think sometimes because terms get abstracted into "weapons" and "shields", the temptation can be strong to simply think they all fall along a linear curve from weak to strong. Certain things are better against certain things. The phased poleron weapons of the Dominion for example... what if the Federation had never found a way to make shields effective against them? Would we assume the weapons must be super super powerful? Or just of a technological construction which happened to perfectly get around Starfleet shield technology?

How about the Ent-D slicing huge swaths into the Borg cube the first time they met? Were the Borg's shields really THAT WEAK? Or had they just utterly not fine-tuned them whatsoever to be optimized against Starfleet phaser weaponry at that moment?

So yes granite, technology disparity though I think a better word might be technology diversity. Sometimes battles between powers of similar technologies comes down to a linear curve of what's strong and weak... but frequently rather than a proposition of 9 is higher than 3, it's more like a > b, b > c, c > d, d > a type of thing.