Construction of ships in both verses

[Mith]

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.

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?

How about the fact that the characters in the movie claimed it was a station? Wouldn't that suggest that it was rather a mobile station, and not a starship? Not to mention that DS9 is capable of being mobile via a warp bubble, and we don't refer to it as a "star ship".

[Mr. Oragahn]

The DS is a livable superlaser platform.
The rest is semantics. Both definitions fit, and it's more how it's used that makes people call it X or Y.

[Mike DiCenso]

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.

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?

How about the fact that the characters in the movie claimed it was a station? Wouldn't that suggest that it was rather a mobile station, and not a starship? Not to mention that DS9 is capable of being mobile via a warp bubble, and we don't refer to it as a "star ship".

DS9 according to "Emissary" was capable of being mobile even without the subspace field. Even with only 6 working thrusters available and having suffered other damages due to the Cardassian ravages, it could still accelerate enough to cross 160 million km in about 2 months, and in theory it could it just keep doing that until it achived an extra-solar system escape at a modest fraction of c.... which by definition would make it a starship, though a sublight one. By contrast, a fully operational and undamaged DS1 can make the same journey in 3-18 days (100 to 500 kps) depending on how generous you wish to be. Either way, neither the DS or DS9 in their normal states are capable of even inter solar system in reasonable timeframes as compared to purpose-built starships like the Galaxy or ISD classes.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Big Fat Whales.