The Dominion Vs The Galactic Empire

[sonofccn]

I'm not sure the Rebels would join up. They're freedom loving guys fighting oppression as opposed to borderline Nazi reptiles with delusions of grandure and outside of a few key areas, such as using imposters to great effect, changlings seemed rather naive about hiding their intentions from the solids. Plus the whole slave races modified to serve them might be a little unsettling.

The Cardassians also liked their freedom, and were promised much more if they joined the Dominion, so who says the Dominion don't just tell them: "We just want our territory, and then be part of the Republic, and to do that, we need to get rid of the Empire. As soon as it is done, we let you keep the Republic, gain a member, and we live in peace for the rest of eternity!", only to double-cross them at the end, like they did the Cardassians... :)

The Cardassians however were first and formost a military dictatorship before they joined the Dominion, utterly ruthless and desperate for anything to restore them to thier "proper place in the universe". There are parrelles between the Klingon-Cardassion war and the Empire-Rebellion civil war I freely admit but I think the Rebellion would be wary of trading one Empire for another. Perhaps not of course and I could easily see a hair raising adventure between the more gung ho rebels who want to help the Dominion kick the Empire out of the cosmos and deal with the ramifications later and those, possibly humans not liking the possibility of living under a Changling dominated galaxy, who might wish to stay netural for the time being if not actually aid the Empire. The devil you know sort of stuff.

As to the changling's playing the long con game I don't think they're really up to it. Thier smug sense of superority over the solids, even when things were going badly, largely compelled them to treat the Cardassions, sort of a vital ally with the bulk of Dominion assets stuck in the Gamma quadrent, like dirt compelling the resiestance campaing which cultivated into the burn Cardassia Prime to a cinder plan which was an adhoch plan of retribution rather than a final master stroke of a brutally cunning plan. Just my thoughts of course, and I welcome your take on the Dominion.

[Praeothmin]

What you say does have merit...

It truly does not matter though, IMO, I simply added the Rebels in as an additional asset, but even without the Rebels, the Dominion, with 30 years of prep-time, will crush the Empire...

[Mike DiCenso]

As to the changling's playing the long con game I don't think they're really up to it. Thier smug sense of superority over the solids, even when things were going badly, largely compelled them to treat the Cardassions, sort of a vital ally with the bulk of Dominion assets stuck in the Gamma quadrent, like dirt compelling the resiestance campaing which cultivated into the burn Cardassia Prime to a cinder plan which was an adhoch plan of retribution rather than a final master stroke of a brutally cunning plan. Just my thoughts of course, and I welcome your take on the Dominion.

Here I have to disagree with you since most of the decsions made that you are refering to were the result of one lone changeling, largely cut off from the Great Link when the Prophets shut down the wormhole to the Gamma quadrant. So it's not as though she could consult or otherwise confer with her fellow Founders. So there were no others to override her, and suggest new ones for the Vorta and Jem'Hadar to implement in their place. Had that been the case, the war would have gone very differently than it did. For an idea of what was possible, look at the Founder's earlier efforts to destroy the Obsidian Order and Tal'Shiar agencies as well as disrupt the Klingon-Federation alliance, and their eventually alliance with the Cardassians. In addition to that, look at how they made non-aggression pacts with various other Alpha quadrant powers, including the Romulans.
-Mike

[Admiral Breetai]

to be fair the dominion likely treated the Cardassians very well i mean they handed out industrial replicators like candy to the Bajorans..who weren't interested in joining just being neutral

The Cardassians problem is that they are a race of thuggish jack asses who pretty much instigated every one..and entirely deserved their ultimate fate

they'd likely approach the rebells allot more gently..if they can restore a senate and gradually subvert it..while segmenting their holdings in the Galaxy and establishing themselves as a major economic super power..or just smashing everything Imperial and presenting the galaxy at large with a choice "the rebells...or the guys who's post scarcity tech guarantee's a high quality of light for virtually every one"

[sonofccn]

Here I have to disagree with you since most of the decsions made that you are refering to were the result of one lone changeling, largely cut off from the Great Link when the Prophets shut down the wormhole to the Gamma quadrant.

True but she was the expedition/task force/whatever leader so she presumbly was considered qualified to run operations in the volitale Alpha/Beta quadrent. I'm not sure any of the others would have behaved remarkably differnt.

For an idea of what was possible, look at the Founder's earlier efforts to destroy the Obsidian Order and Tal'Shiar agencies as well as disrupt the Klingon-Federation alliance.

I agree they are very good at "black ops" style affairs, very, very good. Very much in contrast to the female Founder's rather plodding treatment of her allies,or at least the Cardassians. The Breen seemed to get some respect but they did join the conflict late.

their eventually alliance with the Cardassians. In addition to that, look at how they made non-aggression pacts with various other Alpha quadrant powers, including the Romulans.

Again true. I did not mean to suggest they were stupid or incapable of taking advantage of a windfall when it presented itself just that, the female changling at least, once the "wooing" was over, if even that, the Dominion did everything but put up neon lights saying your an ally of convience and never forget this!

PS. Almost forgot who do you think will win? If you don't mind me asking.

[Mith]

*sigh*

The dominion were devastated by a war that had about 800 million casualties. The Yuuzhang Vong war caused about 200 trillion casualties and Star Wars (albeit not the Empire, since it was reduced to the Remnant) recovered fine.

Which is funny when you look at the war between the Seperatists and the Republic and you see that they were freaking out at the expense of purchasing five million more troops. Not five hundred million, but five million. That would have given them a total force of eight million throughout the war.

And they were in such bad shape that they couldn't even provide basic power to their capital worlds in some regions. Compare that to the UFP, who despite being in a major war was able to have much more than eight million troops. And in Yesterday's Enterprise, an alternate UFP was stated to have lost 40 billion lives to the war between the Klingons and the UFP:

GUINAN: Forty billion people have already died. This war's not supposed to be happening. You've got to send those people back to correct this.
PICARD: And what is to guarantee that if they go back they will succeed? Every instinct tells me this is wrong, it is dangerous, it is futile.
GUINAN: We've known each other a long time. You have never known me to impose myself on anyone or take a stance based on trivial or whimsical perceptions. This time line must not be allowed to continue. Now, I've told you what you must do. You have only your trust in me to help you decide to do it.

And we're also told that in the Dominion War, had it turned against the UFP, would have cost them 900 billion lives.

Now compare that to your numbers. The Empire fought a war with three million clones, proposed (but thus far has lost) the idea of five million more clones which would have bankrupt the Republic. The CIS itself had 300 million clones, the closest thing you have to the numbers that you quoted. And I remind you, their numbers is less than half of how many people died in the Dominion War.

Even going with the Empire's era of soldiers from the ISB, they have only 800 or so storm troopers and just over one billion personel. It's alot, but it's not going to give them the war. Nor would they even be able to commit a quarter of their forces without suffering massive destabalization of their own government.

The Empire quite literally has more people than the dominion have ammo to shoot at.

And that shows your lack of insight. What about orbital bombardment? Starfleet doesn't need to take a gun and shoot every man, woman, and child. They could (although they probably wouldn't) easily destroy entire worlds with populations in the billions without even landing on said planet.

Oh, and dominion ships were missing the Enterprise at quite literally point blank range

Um, the Enterprise D nor the Enterprise E never saw any screen time with any Dominion ship. Would you like to modify your statement?

and an entire breen fleet was able to cause about 8 million casualties to the San Fransisco bay area.

Um...when? I just checked the script for said episode and my search revealed that the only number coming close to that claim is the seven million the Cardassians lost in a two year war and it had nothing to do with Earth.

Even 6000 year old KOTOR cruisers caused billions of casualties in the bombardment of Taris.

The bombardment that wasn't even in the kiloton range? Odd you should mention that.

BTW, even if you think that Trek technology is somehow superior, the Empire is simply too massive for the Dominion to possibly conquer, with a massive enough industrial base to beat the dominion by sheer weight of numbers.

Hardly. The Empire was having problems with the Mon Calamari system because they couldn't gather enough ships to crush it. They'd have needed a superority fleet to properly take the system. That's just over a thousand or so ships, varying upon the composition of said fleet.

And yet, you're here suggesting that they could wage a war with an enemy that in the time frame would have built countless tens of thousands of ships, cloned billions of Jem'Hadar soldiers, and upgraded their drives to be on par, if not faster than the Empire's?

Are you mad? Between the fleet losses and espionage via Founders, the Empire is in a hand basket to hell.