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The Nebula also packed a lot more into its little space then the Miranda. There's no chance of the Miranda being equal to the Connie. Where as the Nebula with the weapons pod could equal or even surpass the GCS.

Deepcrush wrote:There's no chance of the Miranda being equal to the Connie.

I'm not so sure of that. The Miranda's volume is about 218,000 m^3 compared to to the Connie's 235,000 m^3. The Connie is less than 8% larger, and by eye appears to have a far greater proportion of it's volume in the nacelles and neck.

The Reliant seemed quite capable of hitting the Enterprise quite hard, as well. I'd say with a competant commander in charge of the Miranda, it could have won.

Perhaps not in a straight up, head to head fight, but after the sneak attack, I'd have to agree.

Oh it's certain that Khan could have destroyed the Enterprise easily. When he fired that photon, all he needed to do was simply fire the other aft tube as well and the battle probably would have been over right there. Certainly two or three more torps would have done the job.

In a straight fight... hard to tell, too many unknowns. How powerful are a Miranda's shields compared to a Connie? How powerful are its phasers? How fast is it on warp? On impulse? How good is its sensor array? And so on.

Well, if we look at it a different way.........

There is NO cannon evidence to support the fact that the Miranda is a supplemental contemporary to the Constitution class. It IS possible, that the Miranda was DESIGNED to replace the aging Constitution class. Remember, at this time, Enterprise is already 20 years old.

The Miranda COULD actually be a superior ship, and Enterprise only survived because Khan wanted Kirk alive, thus snuck up and disabled Enterprise.

Actually, that makes a bit of sense to me.

It could be, but I tend to doubt it. For one, the Connies had only been recently refitted from TOS to TMP standard. They may well be technically 20 years old, but they were essentially brand new ships as of TMP, so in reality they were much younger than their real age.

Secondly, Connies remained front line units for nearly another decade after ST II.

And "looking for a lifeless planet" doesn't really seem to be something the best ships would be assigned to do, somehow.

I like to think there were Mirandas around in TOS, styled like the TOS Enterprise, and they were refitted when the Connies were. Pure speculation, I know.

Yes, it is speculation - but logical speculation, considering that the Miranda's components (nacelles, saucer styling, etc.) were identical to the refit Connie's.

The Constitution is a larger vessel and has a larger warp core, as seen in TMP; Reliant does not have the room for the same size warp drive. The warp core is employed in part to power the phasers to give them a bigger punch. So by that logic a Connie's phaser power is more potent.

Shields as well which would seem to be a bigger issue.

Wouldn't that depend on the output of the Phasers vs the output of the Warp Core?

If theres an upper limit to the amount of Phaser power you can gain by channelling it through the Warp Core, it wouldn't matter how powerful the warp core is. The Constitution Class could have a Warp Core that is twice as powerful as the Miranda's, but be unable to increase Phaserpower twice as much because of some bottleneck in the Phaser system.

And it seems to be accepted on the board that a smaller shield area with equal power to it would be more powerful, therefore a Miranda Class ship could have less power to its shield system, but because it has to cover a smaller area, its shields would be equal to a Constitution class.

katefan wrote:The Constitution is a larger vessel and has a larger warp core, as seen in TMP; Reliant does not have the room for the same size warp drive. The warp core is employed in part to power the phasers to give them a bigger punch. So by that logic a Connie's phaser power is more potent.

Unless the Miranda's warp core is more efficient, or a product of minatureization. After all, OUR power sources today are generally smaller and more efficient that one say, 20 years ago.

Perhaps its the style of combat that each one is dedicated towards? Miranda's weapons face mostly front. Whereas the connie seems to be spread out more. Maybe its like having pike men with sword men mixed in. Neither or better but each serves a purpose.

Could be. It's just that the Miranda always "LOOKED" just a bit more advanced than the Constitution Class to me, for some reason.