Lt. Staplic wrote:how, the fed has a standing fleet of 8,000, i believe, plus the klingon, and romulan fleet.
ther's no way 2,600 Dominion ships could take them on and do as well as they did.
Huh? The 2800 in SoA were reinforcements - the Dominion fleet was 30,000 strong, even late in the war.
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I'd suggest that the Cardassians fleet was larger then the Federations, and possibly equal to the Dominions.
It would explain how the Cardassians fought a war 10 years prior with a technically superior race, and why 2800 superior Dominion ships would have made such a difference.
I always thought that the immediate threat of the initial Dominion fleet was that the station would be impossible to retake, and the wormhole open. The first wave of ships coming through was just to reinforce DS9 and the immediate area. I never game much thought as to what prevented more ships coming through the wormhole after the station was taken - was another minefield erected?
"You ain't gonna get off down the trail a mile or two, and go missing your wife or something, like our last cook done, are you?"
"My wife is in hell, where I sent her. She could make good biscuits, but her behavior was terrible."
Possibly, its also possible that the Wormhole Aliens shut down that entry into the Wormhole or maybe the Dominion thought it too risky to send more ships through...
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I wouldnt mind the Cardassians having a large fleet, we know there ships are weaker so they can have lots of them, we also know a large part of their GDP goes to the military. To be considered a threat to the Federation they must have quite a few ships.
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Also, if they have existing shipyards, and if the Dominion was using Cardassia to fight and die for them, its possible the Dominion increased the Cardassians ship outputs, and propped up their economy.
"You ain't gonna get off down the trail a mile or two, and go missing your wife or something, like our last cook done, are you?"
"My wife is in hell, where I sent her. She could make good biscuits, but her behavior was terrible."
To a certain degree I agree the Dominion would help them but at the same time they are likely wanting to produce as many of their own ships as possible. IIRC almost all encounters with 'Axis' (for lack of a better term) forces were with Dominion Bugs, we only really see the Cardies playing a role in the large scale actions, and even then this just seems to be in filling out the Fleet & Cannon fodder than any really meaningful contribution. To me this could signal that they don't have the ability to project force on their own and rely on Dominion help in combat. It could also point to more resources being put towards Dominion rather than Cardassian ships since we see them so rarely on their own.
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
-Elie Wiesel
Dreaming in Color Living in Black and White, Sitting in a Grey Day Leaning on a Bright New Tomorrow.
-Billy Ray Cyrus
Given the Founders distrust of solids, they probably would try to only produce Dominion ships, so they could be certain to contain a Cardassian uprising if there was one. They use the Cardies when they need cannon fodder, but they make sure that there are always more of their ships to maintain the upper hand. Might have worked out, seeing how they took out Damar's resistance, if Weyoun didn't transmit to every Cardie that they destroyed a city in the middle of the most decisive battle of the war.
I could see the Cardie fleet being larger than the Fed fleet. Their mentality seemed to favour quantity over quality.
"You've all been selected for this mission because you each have a special skill. Professor Hawking, John Leslie, Phil Neville, the Wu-Tang Clan, Usher, the Sugar Puffs Monster and Daniel Day-Lewis! Welcome to Operation MindFuck!"
But their ships were also a lot smaller then many of the newer SF designs out there. The CU also didn't spend reasources on massive Starbases like the UFP did. There are a large number of unknowns in this.
The 2800 in SoA were reinforcements - the Dominion fleet was 30,000 strong, even late in the war.
