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Teaos wrote:

which is a HUGE expasionist power

I wouldnt say that, appartent its thousands of years old, if it was that expasionist it would coover the Galaxy by now.

I wouldn't agree with that. Logisticly, without the wormhole, they could only extend their reach so far.....

WTF kind of logic is that? You can expand the normal way, look how big the Federation is after just 200 years, give them a few thousand and they will rule the Galaxy.

It's the most basic logic of all. At maximum warp, how long does it take to get from one end of the Federation to the other? Several years according to the calculator. It wouldn't be long before you expanded to the point where it would take DECADES to get supplies and personel in place. I could even except that, given that they could construct an industral base that far out as well, but if you go out so far that the leadership becomes nearly non existant, and your resources become so thin it becomes unmanageable. Vorta who hear of Founders but don't see one in there own lifetimes would become rebellious and ambitious, and no Founder will want to be away from the Great Link for decades or centuries (if they live that long)

It wouldn't be long before you expanded to the point where it would take DECADES to get supplies and personel in place.

...uhh... you do realise that the dont expand from Earth outwards? They dont just ship resourses from the middle to the boarder. You get new territory that territory starts producing resources and ships and everything else. You could expand forever so long as you kept the lines of command and ommunicatiions open.

But we're not talking about Earth or the Federation, we're talking about the Dominion, where all power comes soley from the Founders and their power base is the Great Link, which they WILL leave, but they don't want to go for very long, and I've only seen them leave during times of war, I can't see them willingly relocate to an outer rim world. And who would crew the ships? People, such as Vorta and Jem'Hadar right? Ok, look at it this way. You expand your lines to the point it takes you twenty years from the Great Link. The Vorta and Jem'Hadar coming out of the cloning chambers would likely never even seen a Founder, and the ones that have will be getting old already. At that planet you set up an industrial base and a new cloning facility. Now a new batch goes out in new ships, conquring in the name of the Dominion. A century later, they've expanded their lines 20 more years out from where they last were. They set up another industrial base and new cloning facility. The Founders are only myths and legends to them. So what you have is a military force, bred for cunning (Vorta) and aggression (Jem'Hadar). The Vorta decide to claim power. How quickly could the Founders get a military force into position to put down the rebellion? What kind of shape to fight would said force be in, if and when it arrives? That's what I'm talking about.

I think you guys are just over reaching. The Dominion never said its goal was to rule the galaxy. It just wanted to be safe from solids. Most of the GQ was already afraid of them and the Dominion must have controled a fair bit of it to boot. The AQ was a target because of how strong the AQ powers were. If the AQ ever joined together they could easily over run the Dominion.

I tend to think that the Dominion didn't really want to conquer the galaxy. They weren't interested in controlling solids as such, they were just out to make sure that their home was safe and their way of doing that was to create a major power shell around themselves that they had complete control over and which nobody could penetrate. Their big problem with the alpha quadrant seems to me not so much that it was territory they could conquer for its own sake, rather that the wormhole was close enough to their homeworld that the Alpha Quad was a potential threat to be neutralised.

Remember that they ended the war as soon as Odo convinced the female Founder that the allies had no plan to come through and attack. Once they knew there was no threat to them, they just walked away.

... and they were all threatened with genocide, as a secondary motivation...

genocide is a pretty big motivater, regardless of what phase of matter one exists in.

It would certainly get my attention.

ya, though, after the threat, for a successful surrender i'd make them carry it out on select members.

don't worry mark, it's not you, i'm thinking the guy who starts varsity ahead of me.

Where is the 20,000-30,000 figure coming from? Last I checked, the last fleet that was being sent out of the Wormhole was just 2,800 strong, which would have been more than enough to tip the balance in the Dominion's favor.