Ship of the Week: D'Deridex

[Teaos]

The Flag ship of the Romulan empire and their most commonly seen ship. A rather controversial ship as well.

DITL Stats:

Beam Firepower : 1,300
Torpedo Firepower : 750
Weapon Range and Accuracy : 880
Shield Strength : 850
Hull Armour : 1,200
Speed : 955
Combat Maneuverability : 680

A large ship which I would personally count as a Battleship. Big guns and decent armor for a trek ship. A decent speed as well.

Personally I think this ship is a perfect ship for the Romulans. I just looks like a Romulan ship, which I know is silly because all Romulan ships look like Romulan ships

It is a large ship but it doesn't seem to be overly powerful. I think this is a combination of lower technology an older design than most capital ships and a lot of empty space.

Although we haven't seen and other races in the Empire we know they must be there. The D'Deridex makes perfect sense for the Romulans to use against them.

"Whats that? You wish to rebel do you? You want more freedoms you say? Well certainly we'll just send over this massive starship with weapons that can level cities and enough room to hold a couple of thousand crack Reman troops"

"Oh whats that? You decided not to rebel ? Wise choice"

It screams intimidation. The space for troops also makes sense to deal with local uprisings.

It is also in pretty good numbers for a ship that size. The Federations largest run of Capital ships is 390 Excelsiors while the D'Deridex has 447.

You could argue that it is not wise to build such a large number of big ships as you fleet can be severely damaged as the Romulans were in the Dominion war. But remember the Romulans try to avoid tradition warfare at all costs. They much prefer to use other means such as starting the Klingon civil war.

Thoughts?

[Captain Seafort]

Cool ship, although I don't think we ever really saw what it could do. The big open space in the middle has always bugged me though - that's just screams weakness, and it also makes the shield area far larger rthan it had to be. A pity we didn't see a version show up in Nemesis, as something to demonstrate that, despite all appearences, it was a film abour Romulans.

[Teaos]

I think it would have taken away from the new ship design they wanted to show off. Also we did get 2 new classes of ships so they may just be trying to show that the Romulans are moving on from the old design. It is several decades old and rather out dated.

But I think the design can be put down to the Romulans avoiding combat like the Dominion war at all costs and using the ships for local intimidation.

[Granitehewer]

Actually the big empty space, is a reman dyson/hoover, which is bagless too, those rommies are so fastidious,its anal

[Sionnach Glic]

I like this ship, it seems to fit well with the Rommies'.

[Teaos]

Oh I agree it is a good fit for them. The thing I wonder about is, is it there only capital ship class. Do they have no smaller designs? Given we saw them in combat during the Dominion war and didnt see any seems to indicate they dont which leeds to the questions of why?

What handles all the small jobs?

[Sionnach Glic]

Well, they have a new ship by the time of Nemisis. But I have no idea if they had it before tehn.

[Teaos]

But even that ship is rather large. 600 by 400 meters if memory serves. Thats still a large ship and for it to only of been recently put in production it still doesnt sole the problem of what they did for the last few decades.

[Captain Seafort]

What handles all the small jobs?

A D'Deridex. The Romulan's idea of overkill appears to be "don't wipe out your enemy ten times over when five times will do". They're used for fleet actions, routine patrols along theNeutral Zone, even for kidnapping people from shuttlepods (Geordi in "The Mind's Eye"). When the Cardies pulled a similar stunt with O'Brien they at least used an Hideki. A pity the BoP from ENT:Minefield wasn't introduced for DS9, it would have fitted in well as an Excelsior-equivalent.

[Captain Seafort]

But even that ship is rather large. 600 by 400 meters if memory serves. Thats still a large ship and for it to only of been recently put in production it still doesnt sole the problem of what they did for the last few decades.

About 600m by 900. The Valdore-type has always struck me as a bit odd, since it's completely out of whack with the Romulans' design philosphy of big, intimidating, ships like the D'Deridex. It also looked very fragile, which the D'Deridex never did, despite the big open space, because of the solid build and no extraneous fins or struts. The Valdore looked like bits would start breaking off in a strong breeze!

[Teaos]

The neck on the D'Deridex always struck me as rather weak if you got a shot in there.

About 600m by 900. The Valdore-type has always struck me as a bit odd, since it's completely out of whack with the Romulans' design philosphy of big, intimidating, ships like the D'Deridex.

But thats just it. The Romulans suffered heavy losses during the war due to that policy so they decided to supliment thier fleet with these smaller but still rather large ships.

You can still build a few big ones for the intimidation but then you still need the small ones to do the house work.

[Granitehewer]

well watching ds9, i didn't notice a particular loss regarding warbirds, nothing that exceeded the number of vor'chas or excelsiors destroyed

[Mikey]

That may be due to the fact that not as many Rom ships were included in the actions which we saw.

I agree with some of the others here that the design of the D'deridexis a little counterproductive; all that empty space leads to stretching the shields, etc. However, that empty space does add to the overall perceived size of the ship - and Romulans certainly appreciate gaining a psychological edge.

As far as using the D'dereidex for tasks requiring a ship with 1/4 of its size or abilities: it's been said before (mostly by G.K.) - and I agree 100% - it has constantly been ridiculous how many new and one-off Fed designs we see, and how relatively few ship design we see for other races.

[Teaos]

Well the Federation is made up of lots of races with different tech. You'd expect them to have lots of designs. The problem is the lack of designs for other powers which I totally agree is stupid. We know it is due to budget but in universe I can't really think of any good reason for it.

[Sionnach Glic]

It's possible that the Romulans do have other designs, but due to their nature little is known about them.
It's possible that the D'Derix is the most common ship they have, hence why they always send those ships on missions.