Construction of ships in both verses
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The interior of the Sovereign is clearly more spartan in design and space than the Galaxy class was. Besides, you're mistaken about warships and their facilities.
While it was indeed a plot point that the Defiant was extremely spartan, this was in no small part due to it being really, really small as well. So yes, it was dedicated to combat but no, that was not the only reason there was no proper medical facility or a lack of science equipment (which they still both did have, just less advanced)
Just like in real navies, smaller ships have less 'extras'. Big warships in current navies also have (compared to smaller ships) more space for recreation, better medical facilities, more crew space, etc.
The Defiant is built more like a sub, the Sovereign is built more like a big carrier or battleship.
Think of it this way: the Galaxy class cruiser had an awful lot of living space and facilities that where generally there to make things nicer. It was a roomy, bright and friendly ship. The Sovereign clearly is a lot less so. While it still has most of those facilities, they're visibly less nice and more built for a purpose. This starts at the bridge (which is a lot smaller), the corridors (also smaller and less bright), the crew quarters (again, smaller) and the general facilities (the 10 forward equivalent is also smaller than the Galaxies and the medical area looks a lot more cramped as well).
So I'm not claiming that the Sovereign is a 100% pure warship, I'm claiming it is a lot more of one than the Galaxy was and as such (especially since it has the same tricks available as the Defiant - both the armor and quantum torpedoes are available), coupled with a likely much bigger and better shield generator and power system (meaning also better weapons) suggests to me the Sovereign would have little to no trouble defeating the Defiant in a fight.
While it was indeed a plot point that the Defiant was extremely spartan, this was in no small part due to it being really, really small as well. So yes, it was dedicated to combat but no, that was not the only reason there was no proper medical facility or a lack of science equipment (which they still both did have, just less advanced)
Just like in real navies, smaller ships have less 'extras'. Big warships in current navies also have (compared to smaller ships) more space for recreation, better medical facilities, more crew space, etc.
The Defiant is built more like a sub, the Sovereign is built more like a big carrier or battleship.
Think of it this way: the Galaxy class cruiser had an awful lot of living space and facilities that where generally there to make things nicer. It was a roomy, bright and friendly ship. The Sovereign clearly is a lot less so. While it still has most of those facilities, they're visibly less nice and more built for a purpose. This starts at the bridge (which is a lot smaller), the corridors (also smaller and less bright), the crew quarters (again, smaller) and the general facilities (the 10 forward equivalent is also smaller than the Galaxies and the medical area looks a lot more cramped as well).
So I'm not claiming that the Sovereign is a 100% pure warship, I'm claiming it is a lot more of one than the Galaxy was and as such (especially since it has the same tricks available as the Defiant - both the armor and quantum torpedoes are available), coupled with a likely much bigger and better shield generator and power system (meaning also better weapons) suggests to me the Sovereign would have little to no trouble defeating the Defiant in a fight.
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It is designed to move on the strategic scale (between systems) but has next to no tactical mobility or maneuverability. It's a little bit of an ambiguous case, frankly - in some senses it's a starship, in that it can move from system to system, in some senses it's a station that happens to be able to change systems, in that it can't maneuver in combat.Roondar wrote:The difference is, naturally, that Starbases are not designed to move about much, if at all (witness DS9 to see what I mean). They could have easily been towed into place (like a drilling platform is) or built on site.SailorSaturn13 wrote:If Death Star is a ship Starbases are too. Or have them just magically appeared where they are?
The DS is obviously designed to move. It's not likely to be as agile as smaller ships, but it's definitely capable of independent motion.
Hence, the DS is a starship (which also acts as a fortress/base and quite big) and a Starbase is more of a stationary fortress/base.
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I think you're recollection of some of the events is a little bit off. It was specified that the weapons on the Lakota were upgraded (meaning phasers). The only thing that was uncertain was things like the ship's warp drive, which is why the Defiant's crew did not opt out to run. If the writers had wanted to show the Defiant as being super-tough, they would have made the opponent an upgraded Galaxy class starship or Nebula class.TheRedFear wrote: I think we both took that very different ways. Leyton's quote to start using the Quantum Torpedoes simply indicated(To me at least) that he wanted the Lakota to take a "No Holds Barred" approach to the fight. Not that he somehow expected Quantum Topedoes to instantly win the fight for the Lakota. I also think you're under-estimating the "We suped up the ship in an unspecified manner" aspect of the story. Trek writers are notorious for using that as an excuse to re-use the same old ship models, while having it perform wildly beyond normal limitations. They did it during that story where Thomas Riker tried to capture the Defiant and they encountered Galor class warships that were signifigantly stronger than usual.
In the episode with the Keldon class Cardassian ships that you refer to, that was to make the point of just how tough the Defiant really was by taking on and disabling one of those ships, though taking on a whole fleet was out of the question.
You have "By Inferno's Light" a bit mixed up there; the runabout was moded to withstand getting close to the Bajoran sun so that the changeling on board it could dedonate a trilithium-protomatter bomb similar to what Dr Soran had made in "Generations", and wipe out the combined Federation, Klingon, Romulan fleet as well as DS9 in one blow (or at least try to).TheRedFear wrote: They did it again when the Dominion somehow made a simple runabout's shields powerful enough to withstand an attack from the defiant. And they did it again when they needed the Lakota to be able to go toe to toe with the Defiant. A Defiant which, again, was holding back in the beginning of the fight. Which apparently the Lakota was doing too by not bringing out their Quantums, but if memory serves wasn't the Defiant even restricting their fire to non-essential systems in the beginning?
Both the Lakota and the Defiant were holding back:
KIRA
They're trying to disable our
engines.
Even doing that the Defiant took some good damage in the opening volley:
DAX
Port shields are at sixty percent.
What saved the Defiant here was her ablative armor.
-Mike
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Obviously Death Star cannot hope to engage in tactical maneuvers when confronted by starships which are 10 million times smaller than it is or starfighters over 10 trillion times smaller. What does that have to do with whether Death Star is a starship?Jedi Master Spock wrote:It is designed to move on the strategic scale (between systems) but has next to no tactical mobility or maneuverability. It's a little bit of an ambiguous case, frankly - in some senses it's a starship, in that it can move from system to system, in some senses it's a station that happens to be able to change systems, in that it can't maneuver in combat.
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I have to agree on this one, a massive oil tanker is not in any way or shape maneuverable, yet it is obviously just a ship. The correct analogy for ship/base would be this one:Kane Starkiller wrote:Obviously Death Star cannot hope to engage in tactical maneuvers when confronted by starships which are 10 million times smaller than it is or starfighters over 10 trillion times smaller. What does that have to do with whether Death Star is a starship?Jedi Master Spock wrote:It is designed to move on the strategic scale (between systems) but has next to no tactical mobility or maneuverability. It's a little bit of an ambiguous case, frankly - in some senses it's a starship, in that it can move from system to system, in some senses it's a station that happens to be able to change systems, in that it can't maneuver in combat.
A Starfleet starbase is like an oil rig: it doesn't move on it's own, besides perhaps having the ability to correct it's position a tad.
The Deathstar is like a really, really big ship: it is sluggish and clumsy, but it moves under its own power.
After all, the same can be said for fighters vs capital ships yet everyone seems clear that the capital ships are ships. I don't see any difference here.
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Not merely can't maneuver, but can barely do more than control its orbital position. The question is whether it's really a ship or not, which is on a more basic level than starship.Kane Starkiller wrote:Obviously Death Star cannot hope to engage in tactical maneuvers when confronted by starships which are 10 million times smaller than it is or starfighters over 10 trillion times smaller. What does that have to do with whether Death Star is a starship?Jedi Master Spock wrote:It is designed to move on the strategic scale (between systems) but has next to no tactical mobility or maneuverability. It's a little bit of an ambiguous case, frankly - in some senses it's a starship, in that it can move from system to system, in some senses it's a station that happens to be able to change systems, in that it can't maneuver in combat.
To someone with the perspective of looking in a system, being a spaceship usually entails being able to do more than rotate and correct orbits. So if we look at it that way, within a system the Death Star is no more mobile than a space station.
To someone looking at the engineering problem of building a starship, it could involve size and construction techniques. The Death Star is built as a fortified small moon rather than a ship.
To someone concerned with logistics, the question might become whether it is a base of operations, repair center, et cetera. In this sense, it's like asking whether an aircraft carrier is a proper warship or a really a mobile military airport and supply depot. It's a fair question to ask, even though an aircraft carrier has a lot of tactical mobility relative to proper warships.
From an in-universe perspective, it's called a station pretty consistently, and almost never a starship. That suggests they have one or more of the above reasons in mind - whether we classify it more like a ship or a station, the in-universe nomenclature is clear.
Is a gas giant with a fusion candle stuck in it really a starship? In one sense, yes - it may be able to travel to another system - in another sense, it's not. You didn't really build the planet in the first place, and a starship is an artificial construction.
There is justification for and against calling it a starship. The issue of nomenclature is ultimately not very important in and of itself. Where the danger lies, of course, is when we try to draw conclusions about starships in general from the Death Star - the Death Star being such a special case, we can't.
In general, for anything that has a remote amount of tactical mobility and has an undisputed status as a starship that we see in Star Wars, there is something similarly sized that is definitely a starship in Star Trek.
They are, of course, quite a bit rarer for Federation-level entities. Vessels larger than an ISD are mainly the province of the Borg (though the D'deridex is not that much smaller).
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Yes it can. It can move it any direction it chooses both at sublight and supralight speeds.Jedi Master Spock wrote:Not merely can't maneuver, but can barely do more than control its orbital position.
Again it boils down to the very definition of a starship. Your lengthy post concerning logistics and colloquial terms for the Death Star are completely beside the point.
There is nothing special about Death Star. It was built by Empire the same as any probe droid.Jedi Master Spock wrote:Where the danger lies, of course, is when we try to draw conclusions about starships in general from the Death Star - the Death Star being such a special case, we can't.
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What do you mean by "in theory"? And no we don't know what it cost the Empire so it's pretty much useless to bring it up.Mike DiCenso wrote:The Empire built one mobile battlestation and partially built a second, larger one. Though unlike the first battlestation, the second was never completed and able to demonstrate any interstellar or even signifcant sublight capability. Thus, it remains "in theory" that the Death Stars are the largest. We still don't even know what it really cost the Empire to do this.
How does any of this change the fact that Death Star is 90 million times bigger than Galaxy? It's largest ship vs largest ship.Mike DiCenso wrote:Yes, yes. We know all of this. But with the destruction of the first Death Star, how quickly and easily did the Empire replace it with the second? How many more Death Stars did the Empire have in it's "fleet" of Death Stars?
How many more? We saw what 5 Galaxies on screen at one time? That doesn't really shift the balance.Mike DiCenso wrote:The Federation has shown that dispite losing three Galaxy class starships, it could readily build or have on hand many more. That is the difference.
I never used linear dimensions for comparison. Either way SSD is not the largest Imperial ship. Not to mention that not all Borg cubes are 3km long. Voyager type were more like 500m wide:Mike DiCenso wrote:The Borg operate on a signficantly different philosophy all together, and making comparisons is problematic. A Borg cube is a highly efficent shape. It is 3 km long in comparison to a 17-19 km super star destroyer, but yet the 3 km Borg cube has more volume: 27,000,000,000 meters^3 versus 12,645,900,000 m^3. Linear dimensions are not everything.

My point was always that we don't know whether either Empire or Federation could build something bigger than Death Star or Galaxy respectively. We have to go with what we know.Mike DiCenso wrote:To turn your own words against you: it does not disprove the Federation can do it either. It does illustrate a signficant difference in shipbuilding philosphy, though as the Federation went from 600-800 meter sized ships in the 22nd century down to 300 meter ones in the middle 23rd, then over the next 80 some odd years went back up to 600-700 meter range starships. Could the Federation build bigger? Probably, if they were so inclined as both the Dominion and the Romulan Star Empire, two technologically equivalent starfaring contemporary rival powers did so, and not just once or twice, but many times (D'Deridex warbirds, Dominion Battleships, ect).
Secondly while we can say with relative certainty that Dominion, Federation and Romulans are roughly equivalent that still doesn't mean they are identical in engineering progress. Which means that D'Deridex or Dominion battleship do not prove that Federation can build ships larger than Galaxy any more than the existence of a Nimitz class carrier means USSR could've built such ships.
We merely see the Prometheus off in the distance. There is no way to determine whether it is actually beneath the saucer.Mike DiCenso wrote:We never saw the E-J in her entirety except for a few glimpses on a MSD-like readout display that Archer and Daniels are standing next to.
The Trekcore site does not have good shots of the Prometheus class starship flying underneath the E-J's saucer, but the Star Trek Sickbay site has at least a couple decent ones. It's fith row down. The 130 meter wide unidentfied Prometheus is shown just having destroyed a Sphere Builder ship and is flying under a section of the E-J's saucer section that is visible outside the window Archer and Daniels are standing next to. Just that section alone that is visible would span up to 1,300 meters. Since the E-J saucer is symetrical, just doubling that would give you some 2,600 meters. This fits in line with the nearly 1,400 meter "backstage" number that has been bandied about on various sci fi tech forums.
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Mike DiCenso wrote:The Empire built one mobile battlestation and partially built a second, larger one. Though unlike the first battlestation, the second was never completed and able to demonstrate any interstellar or even signifcant sublight capability. Thus, it remains "in theory" that the Death Stars are the largest. We still don't even know what it really cost the Empire to do this.
Precisely that. The was only one truely complete (smaller) Death Star, Kane, and one partially built (larger) one. It's "in theory" that the second Death Star would have been a complete one. As it was, we saw no others.Kane Starkiller wrote: What do you mean by "in theory"? And no we don't know what it cost the Empire so it's pretty much useless to bring it up.
Mike DiCenso wrote:Yes, yes. We know all of this. But with the destruction of the first Death Star, how quickly and easily did the Empire replace it with the second? How many more Death Stars did the Empire have in it's "fleet" of Death Stars?
Oh come on, Kane. It should be obvious. The Death Stars were not common vessels in the Imperial fleet the way, say ISDs or Venators are. They were terribly unique in size and number.How does any of this change the fact that Death Star is 90 million times bigger than Galaxy? It's largest ship vs largest ship.
What did it cost the Empire? The EU doesn't really give us a clue to that, though it does mention toward the end of the novel Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader that it represented a signficant expenditure of the Imperial Navy budget. It is that large expenditure that tips off Mon Motha to it's existance, and she makes plans to find out what this secret project is.
The Galaxy class started out with a handful of ships in TNG, and became a nearly common sight during the Dominion War campaigns of DS9. The loss of 3 ships, while terrible, did not affect the Federation building numerous GCS simultaeously (as per the Utopia Planita shipyard scenes in VOY's "Relativity" showing at least 4 GCS). The Death Stars are not common ships, and it remains to be seen what it really cost the Empire to build them. I remind you that canonically it took over 23 years to plan and build the first Death Star, and the Empire did not get around to constructing a second one for about 5 years post-ANH and the destruction of the first (The RoTJ novelization on page one states that "many years" had gone by since the loss of the DS1).
Mike DiCenso wrote:The Federation has shown that dispite losing three Galaxy class starships, it could readily build or have on hand many more. That is the difference.
Are you really saying that the four or so GCS seen at Utopia Planitia are the same 5 GCS in all of the known seperate fleet combats of the Dominion War where GCS are visually confirmed, or in VOY's "Endgame" with at least 5 GCS? There are quite a decent number of these ships out there.Kane Starkiller wrote: How many more? We saw what 5 Galaxies on screen at one time? That doesn't really shift the balance.
Mike DiCenso wrote:The Borg operate on a signficantly different philosophy all together, and making comparisons is problematic. A Borg cube is a highly efficent shape. It is 3 km long in comparison to a 17-19 km super star destroyer, but yet the 3 km Borg cube has more volume: 27,000,000,000 meters^3 versus 12,645,900,000 m^3. Linear dimensions are not everything.
Some were. The one in "Dark Frontier" that the Raven chases is 3 km. But that is neither here nor there as a Borg cube ship is a far more efficent design volume-wise regardless or whether it is 500, 3,000, or 5,000 meters wide. A wedge-shaped star destroyer of longer linear dimensions will just simply not be able to compete. It's that simple.I never used linear dimensions for comparison. Either way SSD is not the largest Imperial ship. Not to mention that not all Borg cubes are 3km long. Voyager type were more like 500m wide:
Again, the point of it is to illustrate a signficant design philosphy difference.
Mike DiCenso wrote:To turn your own words against you: it does not disprove the Federation can do it either. It does illustrate a signficant difference in shipbuilding philosphy, though as the Federation went from 600-800 meter sized ships in the 22nd century down to 300 meter ones in the middle 23rd, then over the next 80 some odd years went back up to 600-700 meter range starships. Could the Federation build bigger? Probably, if they were so inclined as both the Dominion and the Romulan Star Empire, two technologically equivalent starfaring contemporary rival powers did so, and not just once or twice, but many times (D'Deridex warbirds, Dominion Battleships, ect).
Kane Starkiller wrote: My point was always that we don't know whether either Empire or Federation could build something bigger than Death Star or Galaxy respectively. We have to go with what we know.
Secondly while we can say with relative certainty that Dominion, Federation and Romulans are roughly equivalent that still doesn't mean they are identical in engineering progress. Which means that D'Deridex or Dominion battleship do not prove that Federation can build ships larger than Galaxy any more than the existence of a Nimitz class carrier means USSR could've built such ships.
Actually, the USSR before it's collapse was in the process of building a supercarrier of equivenent size and capability to the U.S. Navy's Nimitz class, the Ul'yanovsk class with the prior Kuznetsov classbeing laid down and one vessel completed that was comparable in size (300 meters) to the U.S. Navy's USS Midway.
That being said, the three powers (Federation, Romulan and Dominion) are close enough that it is concievable that the Federation, should it so choose, could build a D'Deridex or Battleship sized vessel. These are a point of comparison to three powers in the same univers and galaxy that are rough par with one another. The Galactic Empire, on the other hand, has no other signficant equivalent power to compare with in it's universe and galaxy.
The Promethus class is under the saucer, as is one of the Sphere Builder ships when it is destroyed. There is also a fleeting view of a Prometheus flying past the window which clearly puts it under the E-J's saucer. All-in-all, the E-J is a really freaking huge ship.Kane Starkiller wrote:We merely see the Prometheus off in the distance. There is no way to determine whether it is actually beneath the saucer.
-Mike
Last edited by Mike DiCenso on Mon Mar 24, 2008 4:51 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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I think not. It has only traversed hyperspace and "maneuvered" (orbited at speeds marginally differentiable from a natural orbit) only close to a planet, something that can be done with antigravity drive. There is no indication that it has substantially fueled thrusters, necessary for maneuvering in deep space.Kane Starkiller wrote:Yes it can. It can move it any direction it chooses both at sublight and supralight speeds.Jedi Master Spock wrote:Not merely can't maneuver, but can barely do more than control its orbital position.
Not at all. They point out the many and varied standards by which we might choose to use one nomenclature or the other. It is not a question of colloquial vs technical; it is a question of choice of definition.Again it boils down to the very definition of a starship. Your lengthy post concerning logistics and colloquial terms for the Death Star are completely beside the point.
The Empire spent over twenty years building a single probe droid, and some five more years passed before it could get halfway done with the next improved model? Probe droids are a feared superweapon that pose the question if conventional fleets have become obsolete?There is nothing special about Death Star. It was built by Empire the same as any probe droid.Jedi Master Spock wrote:Where the danger lies, of course, is when we try to draw conclusions about starships in general from the Death Star - the Death Star being such a special case, we can't.
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It is the largest in the G canon, and the largest actually deployed by Palpatine's original Empire (Battle of Coruscant to Battle of Endor) unless we choose to count the Death Star as a ship. Which is a debatable point.Kane Starkiller wrote:I never used linear dimensions for comparison. Either way SSD is not the largest Imperial ship.
Not all Voyager type cubes. Cubes have varied wildly in size, from only about twice the size of a ISD (500m is 2.5 times the volume of an ISD) on up. A 1600m ISD [arguable but mostly accepted size] is equivalent in volume to a 375m cube or 450m sphere.Not to mention that not all Borg cubes are 3km long. Voyager type were more like 500m wide
It is in Voyager, in fact, that we have one that the volume is explicit (28 cubic kilometers). Even the largest [disputed] scaling of the SSD only puts it at a bit under 16 cubic km, or equivalent to a 2.5 km cube. The smallest [disputed] scaling of the SSD puts it roughly on par with a 1050m cube, while the largest ship deployed in numbers by anybody in the movies (TF battleship) is volumetrically equivalent to a 1250m cube.
Just FYI for everybody who doesn't feel like whipping out a calculator to check their intuition.