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Look at ST II. Look at ST VI. That's a battleship, and one that not only acts as one but feels like one.

Seafort, you keep doing this which only makes me hate you even more. The Connie is a BATTLECRUISER by CANNON! That much isn't even up to your opinion so stop pretending that it is.

Ok, now I'm better...

Um, that particular cannon is quite debateable since it was a Klingon officer who made that assertation. True perhaps from the KLINGON standpoint, but not nessessarily by anyone elses.

How so... first they call it by class and not name then act shocked that the E-A didn't eat them alive. Fair guess says that they knew full well what they were up against. Why wouldn't we trust their word on it?

The battlecruiser/battleship argument is one of semantics - the two types were roughly the same size, carried roughly the same armament, and had similar protection. Indeed, there were a few classes that fell on the border between the two - Hood, the Iowas, the Kongos and the Scharnhorsts, the last two of which were referred to as battleships or battlecruisers depending on the source.

Canonically speaking, if it is anything it is a "Heavy Cruiser". You see it on the computer screen in, I think, Star Trek III when they are activating the self destruct.

Edited to add : No, actually it was when Chekov detect somebody in Spock's quarters as they arrive at Spacedock. Excuse the quality of this, I only have the movie on videotape and I literally photographed the TV screen.

Note that the display shows an original version of the ship, not the refit. Curious indeed...

GrahamKennedy wrote:That doesn't say it was a Federation colony. It says it was an Earth colony, and that it had diplomatic/trading/other relations with the Federation. That's no more reason to suppose it was a Federation member than Bringloid or Mariposa were.

It was an Earth colony mere decades earlier. Earth is a member of the Federation. You're effectively claiming that Gibraltar isn't part of NATO. Literally speaking, that's true, but it's covered by the treaty because it's a British colony, and Britain is part of NATO.

We're just arguing round in circles. The fact that it was often sent to combat doesn't mean that it was primarily designed for combat.

We might as well give up on this argument and agree to disagree. I'm not going to shift on my firm belief that that fact that the GCS was frequently sent into harms way makes it a warship, and you're not going to shift on your belief that the ship's use is irrelevent.

Well, the MSD shows the torpedo launchers don't take up a particularly large volume. You could easily stack another in the neck, and put god knows how many of them in the saucer section. The interior working of the arrays are small enough that they're not even shown on the MSD, so they can't be especially large.

Hmm. Point conceded on the volume percentages - I remembered both the launchers and the M/ARA being considerably larger than the MSD shows them to be.

And since the Iowa has spent many a year sitting in a dock now, she's also no longer a warship. No longer a battleship. Right? And the USS Nautilus. That hasn't been underwater in 28 years. So anybody who calls it a submarine now is an idiot, right?

I'd agree that the Iowas are no longer battleships and the Nautilus is no longer an attack submarine - they're museum ships now. I'd disagree that the Nautilus is no longer a submarine - that's inherent in it's design, regardless of its purpose.

Yes, they suffer casualties because of the way they do things that wouldn't happen if they did things your way. But you are assuming that they can act in isolation, do as you suggest without negative consequence. But they are part of a larger community, and that community reacts to them based on who and what they are. They've built the power base they have on the system they have.

No, they didn't. They built their power base in Kirk's time, with proper warships. Yes, they were explorers, but so were Anson's battleships, and Kirk's Enterprise had the same military philosophy.

If the Federation started to radically change its character by militarising Starfleet, then who is to say that it wouldn't rip the organisation apart completely?

They've already changed their philosophy once - away from a military stance, after the Khitomer peace dividend. Guess when they started suffering these defeats.

If they do what you suggest, maybe it would work, and maybe it wouldn't. But what they have been doing DOES work. Which is better, their proven system or your speculation?

Their system cost them Tomed, Wolf, the Cardassian border colonies and a lot of lives both in those incidents and in the Dominion War. "My" system has worked fine for centuries. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

GrahamKennedy wrote:Canonically speaking, if it is anything it is a "Heavy Cruiser". You see it on the computer screen in, I think, Star Trek III when they are activating the self destruct.

Edited to add : No, actually it was when Chekov detect somebody in Spock's quarters as they arrive at Spacedock. Excuse the quality of this, I only have the movie on videotape and I literally photographed the TV screen.

Note that the display shows an original version of the ship, not the refit. Curious indeed...

Here's a (slightly) clearer pic.



Guess thats about as canon as it gets Don't suppose theres an equivalent scene with a GCS display screen.

Captain Seafort wrote:It was an Earth colony mere decades earlier. Earth is a member of the Federation. You're effectively claiming that Gibraltar isn't part of NATO. Literally speaking, that's true, but it's covered by the treaty because it's a British colony, and Britain is part of NATO.

An "Earth colony" doesn't necessarily mean part of Earth's government. It could just as easily be a colony of people who left Earth - again, just like Mariposa. We've seen several such colonies in Trek.

We might as well give up on this argument and agree to disagree.

Fair enough.

No, they didn't. They built their power base in Kirk's time, with proper warships.

Same argument over again, since I don't regard those as warships either.

If the Federation started to radically change its character by militarising Starfleet, then who is to say that it wouldn't rip the organisation apart completely?

They've already changed their philosophy once - away from a military stance, after the Khitomer peace dividend. Guess when they started suffering these defeats.

If they do what you suggest, maybe it would work, and maybe it wouldn't. But what they have been doing DOES work. Which is better, their proven system or your speculation?

Their system cost them Tomed, Wolf, the Cardassian border colonies and a lot of lives both in those incidents and in the Dominion War. "My" system has worked fine for centuries. If it ain't broke don't fix it.[/quote]

Tomed didn't stop them. Wolf didn't stop them, The Cardassians didn't stop them. These "defeats" you claim are imaginary. And "your" system works (to the extent that it does) here, and now. That doesn't mean it would work there and then.

I've stayed out of the thread mostly, but I just thought I'd jump in here on this point:

Tomed didn't stop them. Wolf didn't stop them, The Cardassians didn't stop them. These "defeats" you claim are imaginary. And "your" system works (to the extent that it does) here, and now. That doesn't mean it would work there and then.

Tomed forced the Federation into a strategic disadvantage where they had to give up all research on cloaking technology.
The Cadassians forced the Federation into creating the DMZ, forcing the Feds to sacrafice numerous planets.
Wolf saw the loss of 40 Federation ships. By sheer luck they managed to defeat the Borg in that instance.

Why do you consider these to not be defeats? One forced the Feds into a major strategic disadvantage, another forced them to give up numerous planets and the third saw the loss of numerous ships and their crews.
You say these aren't defeats because the Federation continued on after them. By that logic, Pearl Harbour wasn't a defeat for the US, as they continued to exist after that. By that logic WWI and WWII weren't defeats for Germany since the country maintained its sovereignty after both wars.

Rochey wrote:Tomed forced the Federation into a strategic disadvantage where they had to give up all research on cloaking technology.

It's rather a reach to paint Tomed as a defeat for anybody. All we know of it is that it cost a lot of lives and led the a treaty that forebade cloaking tech to the Federation. For all we know it was a Federation victory and they were only too happy to surrender cloaking tech. That wouldn't actually surprise me, given how often cloaks lead directly to defeat for the forces using them. Or they may have ceded it in return for who knows what advantages in other areas.

The Cadassians forced the Federation into creating the DMZ, forcing the Feds to sacrafice numerous planets.
Wolf saw the loss of 40 Federation ships. By sheer luck they managed to defeat the Borg in that instance.

They've defeated the Borg again and again - and have almost always done it, incidentally, not through luck as you claim but through some scientific quirk or weakness they have found, rather than brute strength. Given the track record, a fleet of battleships is the very last thing you'd attack the Borg with.

Why do you consider these to not be defeats? One forced the Feds into a major strategic disadvantage, another forced them to give up numerous planets and the third saw the loss of numerous ships and their crews.
You say these aren't defeats because the Federation continued on after them. By that logic, Pearl Harbour wasn't a defeat for the US, as they continued to exist after that. By that logic WWI and WWII weren't defeats for Germany since the country maintained its sovereignty after both wars.

I'm not talking about individual actions as such, though I quibble with some that have been labelled as defeats. But you can't judge a system on the outcome of any one action. If you did, then to use your example we would say that maintaining a military fleet was a stupid idea since one was defeated at Pearl.

What matters, in my view, is long term success. The Federation system works, over the long term. That's really the only criteria that matters, and in my view it's shortsighted in the extreme to simply dismiss it as stupid.

It's funny... earlier Chamberlain was dismissed as stupid, as he often is, and I commented that he was actually a smart man whose worldview was just out of kilter with the reality of the time. In a way those who are all for building a Federation war fleet are Chamberlains; utterly convinced that the system in place now must, MUST unquestionably be the best one, regardless of how the situation may change. To look at the Federation's incredible track record of success and dismiss it as simple stupidity is no different than if Chamberlain had dismissed the World War II victory as an irrelevant fluke and continued to insist that negotiating with Hitler was the best thing to do.

It's rather a reach to paint Tomed as a defeat for anybody. All we know of it is that it cost a lot of lives and led the a treaty that forebade cloaking tech to the Federation. For all we know it was a Federation victory and they were only too happy to surrender cloaking tech. That wouldn't actually surprise me, given how often cloaks lead directly to defeat for the forces using them. Or they may have ceded it in return for who knows what advantages in other areas

I don't see how it's a "reach" to call Tomed a defeat. We know precisely nothing of the incident except for this: the Federation gave up a strategic technology.

While it's possible that the Federation forced the Romulans to make concessions for them, there was never any mention of them.
And while it's also possible the Federation gave up cloaking tech of their own free will, it's hard to see them signing a treaty that would forbid them from making any research at all into that area of technology.

They've defeated the Borg again and again

They've defeated the Borg a grand total of twice, destroying two ships (I don't count VOY's losses in this, since the situation there was all over the place).

and have almost always done it, incidentally, not through luck as you claim but through some scientific quirk or weakness they have found, rather than brute strength. Given the track record, a fleet of battleships is the very last thing you'd attack the Borg with

The Cube in FC was heavily damaged by the Federation fleet, and later destroyed when someone had the brains to concentrate the entire fleet's fire on one area. This shows quite clearly that brute force isn't a non-issue when dealing with the Borg. The Borg can only adapt to so much firepower at once.

I'm not talking about individual actions as such, though I quibble with some that have been labelled as defeats. But you can't judge a system on the outcome of any one action.

Except we're not judging it one any one action, we're judging it on pretty much all actions.

If you did, then to use your example we would say that maintaining a military fleet was a stupid idea since one was defeated at Pearl.

What? I never said a defeat invalidated the use of a military force. I said that if a force continously suffers defeats that could have been avoided, or gains victory only through the needless sacrafice of many more troops than would otherwise have been needed, then there might be a point to looking into modifying the military force in question to make it more effective.

What matters, in my view, is long term success. The Federation system works, over the long term. That's really the only criteria that matters, and in my view it's shortsighted in the extreme to simply dismiss it as stupid

During WW2, the Soviet Union suffered more than ten million casualties among its armed forces when fighting against the Nazis. The Nazis lost less than half that amount, despite fighting against Britain and the USA on numerous fronts and eventualy getting invaded and carved up by the victors.
Now, the Soviet Union eventualy won, but suffered needlessly heavy losses in doing so. Now, looking at those numers, would you honestly say that there was no need to look into upgrading the army, merely because they won?

While it may be foolish to dismiss an organisation as useless for suffering a few defeats, it is equaly foolish to dismiss massive avoidable casualties merely because the organisation in question was ultimately succesful.