Well, they did want to take Picard alive, so it makes sense they'd be holding back a little.
At one point in the battle Shinzon orders maximum firepower to be brought to bear on one of the Noraxeans helping the E-E. It's not that impressive.
I forget which thread it happened in but recently we had a rather heated debate where two members, Thorin and Rochey rather soundly ripped apart the Scimitar as a ship.
Actualy, what happened was that Thorin and Blackstar were arguing over the
Scimitar's capabilities for close to ten pages, and then I got fed up with the arguing, found a video of the battle, and proceeded to bitchslap the
Scimitar's reputation.
Since the original thread is now burried within the DS9 section, and it's somewhat relevant to the thread, I'll post my analysis again here. The time before each point is from the start of the battle to the end.
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Time: 02:00 to 02:03
The
Scimitar begins its attack. It appears to be firing a whopping two guns at the E-E.
This makes absolutely no sense to be doing unless you assume that all other guns can't hit the E-E while it's in that position. Initialy, this may indicate that Shinzon was worried that firing the rest of his guns would destroy the E-E, but this also makes no sense. We see the E-E take dozens of hits from these guns, so we know that there was no danger of the shields falling so quickly by accident.
Time: 02:06 to 02:12
Shinzon: "Target weapons systems and shields, I don't want them destroyed."
Time: 02:35 to 03:11
The E-E takes 13 hits to its dorsal shields without them failing during this period.
Time: 03:15 to 03:23
Data reports that the dorsal shields are failing ("We are losing dorsal shields"). Picard orders the ship to move out of the way. The E-E's dorsal surface takes another 4 hits during this period and still don't fail. This gives us a lower limit of 18 shots to take down the E-E's dorsal shield, but it's a bit more than that.
Time: 03:25 to 03:28
The E-E's ventral shields takes 2 hits. It should be noted that as soon as the E-E is out of the
Scimitar's forward fire arc, no more disruptor shots are fired at it. This would indicate that most of the guns are located in a forward or aft positions. However, we are still left with the
Scimitar firing the same two disruptors again and again at the E-E. I'm starting to wonder whether the other 50 guns are just fakes at this point, or if Geordi just decided to make it all up.
Time: 03:30 to 03:40
The
Scimitar has sustained minimal damage. Riker orders Geordi to get the dorsal shields back up to its normal strength again. This would suggest that for all the beating it's taken, it won't be too hard to recharge them again.
Time: 04:55
The Valdore that the Romulan commander is on takes one hit.
Time: 05:03 to 05:15
The E-E and the Valdores attack. The E-E takes a further three hits. Oddly enough, despite the
Scimitar being in a position where it can only hit the ventral surface of the E-E, the shield effects are on the dorsal hull. Some special effects guy goofed up there, I guess. I'll place those three hits as having hit the ventral hull.
Time: 05:15 to 05:22
You can hear at least another 5 impacts during this period. No idea where they hit.
Time: 05:28
Another hit to the ventral hull. Again, the shield effect is on the dorsal hull. The hell is going on here?
Time: 05:32 to 05:35
Aft shields are down to forty percent, despite being seen to have taken no hits. It's possible that the five shots we heard earlier hit here.
If we assume this to be true, this means that 5 shots can deal out 60% damage to the shields. But then how the hell was the dorsal hull able to take 13 without failing, and how come the ventral shields have taken 6 hits without even being commented on?
Time: 05:40 to 05:47
One Valdore takes two hits, shields remain up. Also, we see the
Scimitar's aft armament firing. Again, it's a grand total of two guns.
Time: 05:50 to 05:58
Shinzon orders one Valdore to be targetted with all available firepower. It takes four hits. Assuming this is the ship we saw take 2 hits earlier, that's a grand total of 6 hits without shields failing.
Also, Shinzon orders all banks to fire. We see two guns firing. Go f***ing figure. Someone tell Geordi to go back to the Visor, because those eye implants weren't working when he read out the info on the
Scimitar.
Time: 06:00 to 06:10
The shields on one Valdore fail after three hits. Assuming this is the same ship as before, that gives us nine shots before shield failure.
A further four shots take off one of the wings, leaving the rest of the ship intact.
Oh, and still no sign of any of those 50 other disruptor banks. We even see a POV shot from the
Scimitar's bridge as "all" guns fire on the Valdore in question. We
know it's all guns, because Shinzon ordered all guns to fire. We see, again, bolts coming from the same two spots on the ship's hull.
Time: 06:10 to 06:18
Forward shields down to 10%. As we've seen no shots hit the E-E's forward section, this damage was probably done by colliding with the severed Valdore wing.
Time: 07:00 to 07:10
Another display of Shinzon's tacitcal genius, as he orders his ship to turn off the cloak, stop moving, and stop returning fire until the Valdore is about a hundred metres away.
Then he orders his gunners to fire.
And how does the crew deal with this threat? By firing
one freaking gun at it. I'm assuming it's a torp launcher, as the shots are a different colour, and it's not coming from one of the two disruptor banks.
The Valdore goes down after taking somewhere between 12 - 15 shots. It's a bit difficult to make out due to the camera work. In any case, the shot simply blows a hole through the ventral hull. Not exactly that impressive.
Time: 07:20 to 07:28
Now we see Picard's tactical genius, as he seems to forget there's actualy a battle going on, and takes time out from worrying about getting blown up to chat with the commander of the Valdore. I'm not exagerating here, we see an external shot a moment later and the ship is either stationary or flying in a straight line. How nice of Shinzon just to sit there and wait while Picard finished talking to resume trying to kick the crap out of him again.
Time: 07:28 to 07:42
Well, the
Scimitar's gunners come back from whatever lunch break they were on, as they actualy start shooting at the E-E again.
The E-E takes 4 hits to its dorsal shields before they fail.
We see the unshielded hull also take 6 hits. The results are highly unimpressive. They don't even blow sizeable chunks out of the ship. Hell, it's hard to see any damage at all beyond some scorching of the hull. Data reports that they are losing structural integrity on some decks, indicating that the shots probably breached the hull.
Time: 08:21 to 08:23
E-E takes a further 3 hits. This time to its ventral hull, which is also unshielded.
Time: 08:25 to 08:30
And that's why you don't put your bridge out in plain sight of the enemy.
Scimitar fires a further five shots at the E-E, but the gunner must be having a siezure, as the shots are going all over the goddamn place. Seriously, I think the only one that
did hit the ship was the one that hit the bridge. The effects as it hits the bridge are also highly unimpressive. It blasts a hole through the wall that's about ten metres wide, max. And I know some of you are going to claim that that was just because it was heavily armoured, but we can see that the hull is no more than 1 - 2 metres thick.
Oh, and I love your tactics there, Shinzon. "I have to capture Picard to live. What'll I do now? Oh, I know! I'll shoot the very part of the ship he's standing on!"
Moron.
Oh, and we now have proof that the
Scimitar now has at least 5 disruptor guns. Three forward, two aft.
Time: 09:27 to 09:40
Yeah, don't try actualy reacting to the big ship coming towards you, Shinzon.
Seriously, he's there staring at the E-E charging at him for thirteen seconds
and does nothing until another crew member prompts him. And what does he order when he
does react?
Time: 09:40
Hard to port. Right. You don't want to try....you know,
reversing?
Time: 09:40 to 10:35
Huh, guess the whole "wallow around like a beached whale" tactic isn't that great at avoiding stuff. Who'd've ever guessed?
Seriously, the crew has a whole twenty or so seconds to move the ship out of the way after Shinzon gives the order. They move, at best, about ten degrees to port before getting hit. And keep in mind, they only
rotate about ten degrees, they don't actualy seem to
move anywhere!
Oh, and I can only conclude that the
Scimitar's hull must be made out of reinforced cardboard given the way it crumpled like that. Actualy, when you consider its armaments that wouldn't be too surprising.....
Right, now my conclusion:
The
Scimitar is nowhere near as powerful as people here are making out. Hell, it doesn't even appear to be as powerful as people in the universe itself are claiming. Even when Shinzon orders all guns to fire, we see two disruptors. Seriously, that's just freaking pathetic.
I have no doubt that Shinzon could have destroyed the E-E if he wanted to, but in moments? No, not at all. Even when he began targetting the Valdores with all the firepower at his disposal, they took numerous hits and weren't even destroyed, just knocked out of the fight. It took numerous hits just to blow the wing off one, and numerous hits to blast a chunk out of the ventral hull of the other. The E-E took numerous hits to its unshielded hull with nothing but some minor hull breaches on those areas to show for it. Even when the unshielded bridge itself was hit, the crew were more in danger from the decompression than the actual blast.
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Well, now that that's done, I guess I'll actualy adress the point of this thread.
Assuming the
Scimitar's cloak was disabled, I'd still give it victory. Despite its far from stellar record, its shields managed to hold out for quite a while and its guns seem quite good at downing shields quickly.
I say
Scimitar wins, but probably with heavy damage.