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by the way re: Shinzons' support, if you watch the deleted scenes from Nemesis, it further reinforces Shinzons' frail position and need for high ranking romulan support, he quivers and appears vulnerable to the challenges of a romulan, presumably an admiral

I believe the scimitar has several sheild grids so that may just be for each one.

I belive the Scimitar is the Romulan answer to the other large ships like the Dominion battleships, the Klingon Negh'Var, and the Federation's Soverign. When Shinzon took control he took the Scimitar as his personal flagship and crewed it with Remans loyal to him. As there were no Romulans aboard it could be called a Reman warbird. If the Federation captured a Dominion vessel and was controlling it openly it would be called a Federations ship, not a dominion ship.

i think calling it 'the Reman Warbird Scimitar' is a persuasive linguistic device on his behalf, symbolic of his 'new empire order'

Indeed. And it was construceted with no technology the Romulans were unlikely to have already been studying.

The fact that it has seneral of the most advanced systems ever seen would imply it had help from some serious R&D.

True, but its likely that most of this R&D was done at Romulan stations.

Totally agreed, Rochey. Perhaps the technology had already been developed by the Romulans, and Shinzon's collaborators gave him access to it when he promised to cripple the Federation. Then it was built 'in secret' by Remans (Remus had heavy weapons production capacity) so that if the attack failed, the Romulans could blame it on Reman rebels.

I believe the Remans performed the actual construction because they would do it for Shinzon, and the Romulans would not. In all likelihood, though, it seems impossible that there was no Romulan involvement in the design or the tech.

They may of stolen the tech somehow. But they would still probably need help even with that.

The only way the Remans built it was if the Romulans used them as labourers. Think about it a little. To build something like the Scimitar would be like building an aircraft carrier without your government knowing. There's no way to pull it off. And the Remans are slaves at the time it was built, which would make it a lot more difficult to hide it. There was also no talk of it being built in secret in the movie.

Besides, an enslaved or indentured sub-population just doesn't have access to the kinds of tech or raw materials necessary for a project like that, UNLESS they are working on a sanctioned project.