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Yeah, there apears to have been an upgrade between the two films, in which the ship was more heavily armed.

mlsnoopy wrote:

Deepcrush wrote:3 to 1!

One to take the opening volley!

One to ram!

One to finish the sov off!

Seems workable to me.

Damm yoa are good, f... the people, win at any cost.

Hey, it works and thats what counts.

Deepcrush wrote:

mlsnoopy wrote:

Deepcrush wrote:3 to 1!

One to take the opening volley!

One to ram!

One to finish the sov off!

Seems workable to me.

Damm yoa are good, f... the people, win at any cost.

Hey, it works and thats what counts.

But with such tactics how long it would take you to be courmashald.

Two defiants for one Sovereign is definitely a fairly favorable rate of exchange.

It's just that the Sov would be able to warp away after being rammed, get its shields back online, and come back. Or it might be able to beat that last Defiant into the ground by itself. It's got a lot more volume to absorb damage in, and it IS armored.

I think four Defiants fighting conventionally might be a more reliable method to defeat a Sovvie.

A defiant is large enough that its ramming would do some nice damage. Don't forget these tough little ships have armour too, a lot of it! The Defiant took repeated hits from several Klingon warships without shields and survived without much harm. A 2 to 1 or even 3 to 1 lose rate of defiants to Sovs in battle would be acceptable as far as I would care.

I agree that 3:1 is probably still a favorable rate of exchange, but you'd destroy your fleet morale doing it that way, is the main problem.

True, but I would destroy the enemy fleet long before moral became a problem. Besides, how many sovs are there vs how many defiants. Morale would only be a problem if it was a repeated problem. With only 2 or 3 sovs out there, it wouldn't be a huge hit to morale to lose 4 defiants taking them down. It would just be casualties of war. At most the loss of 300 men for the kill of around 1400 men. Its a very good trade off. A 4 to 1 death toll in your favor is also a good morale boost in the end.

No, even doing it once would be a blow against morale, if you sent Defiants into teeth like that. (It's different if they were defending).

The fleetwide rumor mill would be churning. The news would be that the top brass is willing to toss their lives away unnecessarily because they're stingy with ship assignments on attacks. Everyone would 'know' that being sent on an attack is likely to bring a mutual annihilation that's favorable to their side.

And so, even though it was a victory, because they 'know' they have no chance of coming back if they're sent on an attack, morale plummets.

Even if you only do it once.

Well that all depends on who you send. In truth I would never send just 3 defiants anyhow, its just that it would take at least 3 to win. I would most likely send 6 for good measure. Losing 2 out or 3 is a bad method of war. losing 2 out of 6 for defeating a massive target is just fair game. Remember "The victory isn't always what it is." Sometimes there is more to the fight then what is seen.

I don't think any of us are seriously saying that throwing three Defiants at a Sovereign is the best way to take it down. You're very right on the morale point, Jordanis. I think we're just talking about the minimum amount necessary to take it down.
Ideally, you'd want a Galaxy, a few Defiants, some mid-size ships to back them up, etc.

I would actually pay quite a bit if the next Star Trek film, at a random interval, just had a cut scene of a fight between a Sovereign and a Galaxy Class.

The sad part is that such a scene probably wouldn't mess up continuity any more than the rest of the film.

You could do it like the 'intermission' bits in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Except instead of electric organ, you have a furball fleet fight.

(gravelly voiceover) "And now... the gratuitous intra-fleet violence..."

Actually, now that I think of it, it would be even better to keep the organ music and overlay it on the battle footage.