Cocytus wrote:I see a couple of problems here.
One. The Defiant goes around popping Jem'Hadar fighters yes, even as far back as "The Die is Cast." Problem is, so does the Rotarran. Now, given that it was Martok's personal flagship, we might assume something was special about the Rotarran, though I can't recall anything being mentioned. Also, the canonically weak Galor-class destroyers can pop them as well, as we see them doing in "What You Leave Behind."
They're attacking them from behind, which we know to be a weak vector for them (as per "Treachery, Faith and the Great River," where even a Runabout can destroy one if it hits the right spot). So, we can chalk up the Galor and Runabout examples to them attacking weak spots.
One would expect that, as an attack ship, the Jem'Hadar fighters are more heavily armored in their front regions, making the Defiant's swatting them aside in "The Die is Cast" all the more impressive (which would also go well with "The Ship," since the Jem'Hadar vessel crashed in face-first). However, the Rotarran also destroys one with only six (three per side) disruptor hits in "Call to Arms," and it was facing the Rotarran. And Martok appeared quite confident he could handle the others as well, and apparently he does since the Defiant is not attacked again. Both the Rotarran and the Defiant have an easy time of it in "Favor the Bold," both attacking the Jem'Hadar fighters from behind.
The Rotarran required at least 10 volleys to destroy a jem attack ship in "sons and daughters" and it was already damaged. Martok also transfers all auxiluary power to the disruptors removes the overload suppressors on the rotarans disruptors. They also focused their attacks on the damaged nacelle on the second ship to destroy it and that also took 7 volleys or more, the rotarran was also attacking from behind these ships.
It was certainly a close fight with the Rotaran taking some damage from the three attack fighters but it was more due to manouverability and tactics than firepower that they won.
Now, how does all this figure against the example from "The Jem'Hadar." We can conclude that a) the Federation was simply not prepared for what they would encounter and b) the Jem'Hadar, who at this point still had the decisive advantage of being able to shoot through Federation shields, dealt critical damage to the Odyssey with the opening salvo. We in fact know this to be the case, as the first thing they hit is the port nacelle. Not long after, Captain Keogh states that they've lost power to phasers. If anything, the Odyssey never performed to anywhere near her full abilities, thanks to the Jem'Hadar's phased polaron beams tearing right through the shields, something that wasn't remedied until two years later in "Call to Arms."
What this tells us is that the Jem'Hadar fighter is not a tremendously strong ship, it simply had a tremendously strong advantage in being able to effortlessly penetrate Federation shields. When that advantage was lost, the Jem'Hadar fighter posed less of a threat to most ship classes in Season Six, where in one case they even eschew fighting in favor of suicide runs ("Tears of the Prophets").
Actually while you are right about the nacelle the captain does not mention losing power to the weapons, in fact as the shields are useless one of the first things he actually does is to transfer shield power to the weapons, a boost in weapons power that we have yet to see any other captain give as far as im aware.
The oddesy loses phaser power right after sisko is rescued so right at the end of the fight actually.
The rammed bops and vor'cha class in tears of the prophets so for a few attack ships they inflicted heavy losses on the klingons.
Two. The Breen. In my view, the Dominion turned to them more for the advantage the energy-dampener would bestow. Having more ships would be a help, of course, but the energy-dampener was the key reason for the alliance with the Breen, an advantage the Dominion desperately wanted, which is why they were willing to antagonize the Cardassians with the concessions they made to the Breen. The Breen ships seem only marginally more resilient than Jem'Hadar fighters. Remember "Valiant" and "The Siege of AR-558," where the Valiant and the Defiant, respectively, destroy a Jem'Hadar fighter with six(!) quantum torpedoes? Those same ships then get blown up with ease in every other instance. The same is true for the Breen, whose ships get destroyed with ease once the Cardassian fleet turns on the Dominion in "What You Leave Behind."
The AR-558/valiant scenes were oddities although they could be a example of a jem fighter with every last drop of available power transfered to shields ect and staying alive.
Even "what you leave behind" is not a good example as the cardassians change sides late in the battle so the breen ships they are firing on could have low or no shields to speak of and even may have taken structural damage for all we know.
And consider, in their attack on Starfleet Command in "The Changing Face of Evil" Sisko states that Starfleet was able to destroy most of the attacking force. Given that Starfleet hadn't expected the attack, we must question whether or not all of the attacking force would have been destroyed if Starfleet had known. Certainly Starfleet's Earth defense fleet would not have been comprised exclusively of Defiant class ships (hell, for all we know, the Lakota itself could still be stationed at Earth).
The breen ships must have died quickly or they would havev done considerably more damage than seen on screen, although we have no numbers on how many were involved and it is mentioned that a few survived.
I am not sure "The Changing Face of Evil" is a good example to show anything really in regards to firepower or toughness.
The point of all this is that while the Defiant can indeed destroy certain vessels with ease, we've seen other, weaker classes of ships do the same. The fact that the Defiant can easily destroy Jem'Hadar fighters cannot, in and of itself, be considered conclusive evidence that the Defiant would easily destroy the Lakota, a vessel we don't know the full abilities of. Indeed, if the Lakota's arrays are Type 10, she has at least 11 of those, as per both the model and the episode. We see five on top of the saucer and five below, and there's one on the pod between the nacelle pylons, in addition to her torpedo launchers. That's a lot of firepower.
Having that many phasers and being capable of firing them all at the same time is another thing all together, they have so many to cover the firing arcs around the ship.
There's also no reason to think she couldn't mount Type 12s with a little help from some industrious engineers, since phasers can be used even in the absence of a warpcore. ("Cathexis," Star Trek: Insurrection).
The E-E fires 2 low powered shots against a unshielded ship to disable engines and life support in insurection after it has no warp core.
