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Here's a thought for the week!

They share ships, enemies, allies, weapons and a hatred that surpasses time.

The Romulan Star Empire vs The Klingon Empire.

The Romulan are far shrewder than the Klingons and i Suspect actually have higher numbers. Plus I would think the Romulans have a higher resource count than the Klingons.

From speculation on the DITL site itself, various remarks during the show, and the fact that the Romulans are generaly considered a lesser threat than the Klingons, I'm lead to believe that it is actualy the opposite, and that the Klingons are the ones with the numerical, industrial, and teritoral advantage.

The Romulans also have a horrible fleet, all based around one single ship (the D'Derix) with a newer type of ship that is still quite large (Valdore). Also, their ships don't appear to be any more powerful than ships almost half their size. Note that the Enterprise was generaly able to deal out a fair beating D'Derix class ships.
Contrast that to the Klingon fleet, which contains ships of all sizes and specialities. This is a major advantage for the Klingons, as their fleet will be less resource intensive and more flexible when it comes to dealing with threats.

Combined with the advantages mentioned earlier, score another win for the Klingons.

Ah....considering this was the TOS section i was thinking of TOS period when we had the Dismal D7's in operation. Although i will concede that the TOS Bird of prey wasn't a good example of Romulan superior technology.

Taticts will give Romulans the advantage.

And i am Biased so...yeah.

Actualy, what time period this is in has a major factor. Well, Deep, what period is this set in?

Taticts will give Romulans the advantage.

It depends. If it's the TOS era, then the Rommies might have an edge due to their tactics and due to the fact that the Klingons are in a cold war with Earth, meaning more ships will be on the Federation/Klingon border than the Romulan/Klingon border.
If it's the TNG era, the Klingons size and industrial strength will simply overpower the Rommies. There's only so much that superior tactics can do for you.

It also depends on if the Scimitar-class was put into production. Even without that superweapon it destroyed one Valdore-type ship and disabled another, and the E-E and only lost because they were only trying to disable the E-E to capture Picard and didn't finish them off when they could have.

Rochey wrote:Actualy, what time period this is in has a major factor. Well, Deep, what period is this set in?

It is in the TOS section.

I voted Romulans.

It also depends on if the Scimitar-class was put into production.

True, that would be a major advantage for the Romulans providing they actualy rebuilt it.

It is in the TOS section.

Good point. Change my vote to Romulans, then.

TOS-era Rommies win. TNG, the opposite. Klingon ship-to-ship tactics by this time were nowhere near as bad as their ground-pounding tactics; in fact, they were some of the more capable ship-to-ship tacticians of the TNG era.

I wasn't blown away with the Scimitar to be honest.

It's big plus is the cloaking device. Scimitar has a huge advantage in that it can both fire and have shields up whilst cloaked. Give her that and she is a fleet-killing supership, to be sure.

And yeah, Gerodi couldn't find a way through the cloak... but how long is that going to last really? If there is one thing the Federation should be expected to absolutely excel at it's sensor technology. You can bet the E-E's sensor records of the encounter will be poured over back at base and I would not be the least surprised if they come up with some way to penetrate that cloak inside the year. Hell, probably before any new Scimitar could be built.

If that advantage goes what's left? In terms of raw firepower, 52 disrupters and 27 torpedo tubes. It's a lot, but a Sovereign has 16 phasers and 9 torpedo tubes, so that's a ratio of between 3.25 to 1 and 3 to 1, assuming the weapons are of equal power.

In terms of brute firepower, it's no fleet-killing monster like a Borg cube. I'd expect 3 Sovereigns to leave the Scimitar badly battered, and 4 to win comfortably. Give me a Sovereign with the latest newfangled sensors from the Daystrom Institute, and four Defiants and I'd happily take on a Scimitar.

And I bet a Sovereign and four Defiants would be quicker, easier and cheaper to build, too.

For the Klingons, give me a couple of Negh'Vars and a half dozen Vor'Chas and I would do the same. And we know the Klingons have numbers to easily have a hundred fleets like that roaming around.

As for TOS, I'd go with Klingons. Romulans traded cloaks for ships so they say... so Klingon ships must have been superior. Certainly I'd take a D7 over the Warbird we saw in TOS anyday, that ship looked to me like a bit of a gimmick, not a genuine realistic warship. And the cloak proved to be much the same, it had its uses but was ultimately flawed.

GrahamKennedy wrote:I wasn't blown away with the Scimitar to be honest.

It's big plus is the cloaking device. Scimitar has a huge advantage in that it can both fire and have shields up whilst cloaked. Give her that and she is a fleet-killing supership, to be sure.

And yeah, Gerodi couldn't find a way through the cloak... but how long is that going to last really? If there is one thing the Federation should be expected to absolutely excel at it's sensor technology. You can bet the E-E's sensor records of the encounter will be poured over back at base and I would not be the least surprised if they come up with some way to penetrate that cloak inside the year. Hell, probably before any new Scimitar could be built.

If that advantage goes what's left? In terms of raw firepower, 52 disrupters and 27 torpedo tubes. It's a lot, but a Sovereign has 16 phasers and 9 torpedo tubes, so that's a ratio of between 3.25 to 1 and 3 to 1, assuming the weapons are of equal power.

In terms of brute firepower, it's no fleet-killing monster like a Borg cube. I'd expect 3 Sovereigns to leave the Scimitar badly battered, and 4 to win comfortably. Give me a Sovereign with the latest newfangled sensors from the Daystrom Institute, and four Defiants and I'd happily take on a Scimitar.

And I bet a Sovereign and four Defiants would be quicker, easier and cheaper to build, too.

I completely agree, without the cloak, the Scimitar isn't so good. Just a natural upgrade - like the Sovereign from the Galaxy. I reckon that with a very good tactical minded commander, a Sovereign could beat the Scimitar - assuming it's cloak is subdued. We must assume that only about 10% of the E-E's torpedos hit the Scimitar, and probably around that for phaser fire. If the Scimitar didn't have its cloak, its just a bigger and slower target to shoot at. Its torpedos, I doubt, are up to specs on quantum torpedos or the seemingly upgraded photon torpedoes. I also think the Sovereign would be faster, and the only way the Scimitar could keep up with the Sovereign is because it was going its maximum cruise (intending to go further than the 'emergency maximum velocity' would allow), while the Scimitar was able to use this faster velocity just to keep up with the E-E, intending to go a much shorter distance.

Well thought, GK. In regards to this, however:

GrahamKennedy wrote:Romulans traded cloaks for ships so they say... so Klingon ships must have been superior.

I had always imagined that this agreement was to bolster Romulan production capacity, not because of any inherent inferiority of the Romulan designs.

If ENT is to be believed(!), the Rommies had quite advanced starship tech early on - the drone ship, e.g.

Mikey wrote:I had always imagined that this agreement was to bolster Romulan production capacity, not because of any inherent inferiority of the Romulan designs.

If ENT is to be believed(!), the Rommies had quite advanced starship tech early on - the drone ship, e.g.

That's true, but being ahead in 2154 doesn't mean they were ahead in 2265.

I can't really see the Rommies giving up a big tech item like the cloak just to get a jump on production. Using other people's ships is not something you do lightly; it means you are beholden to them for spares, maybe weapons and such as well. I doubt they would do it unless it gave them a significant advantage.