Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Defiant Class: Doom Ship or Overrated?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Defiant Class: Doom Ship or Overrated?

    Ok, so I think most people who even have a vague awareness of Star Trek at this point are at least aware of the USS Defiant. Deep Space Nine's epic solution to their initial problem of being a show set in one place and Starfleet's one and only true warship. There's no doubt in my mind that the Defiant is a really cool and awesome ship, but is it really as awesome in universe as people remember it?

    See, I am here to argue what seems to largely be an unpopular opinion: The Defiant is not that great. Oh sure, give it the right Captain and the right crew it can do great things. Any ship can. But I am firmly of the opinion that the Defiant as a class is mediocre at best, short of one exception in its overall manoeuvrability. When we see it fight we mainly see it fight off fighter craft. It eats Jem-Hadar fighters for breakfast, but then again so do Klingon Birds of Prey... A class of vessel which is about a Century old in Star Trek terms. It has an ablative hull armour... But then again it sort of needs it since it is so small all it's vital components are incredibly vulnerable. It can take on ships more five times its size... Which IS true but we rarely see it beat ships that big either...

    I love the Defiant, but I feel it has been put on a pedestal by the fandom. DS9 tells us almost as soon as it appears in the show that it is a flawed and imperfect design. Probably held together by duct-tape and twine by the administrations of the awesome Chief O'Brien and operated to near breaking point by Sisko and Commander Worf.

    So please tell me there's someone else out there who sees it? Because sometimes I think I'm all alone in this. And if anyone disagrees and thinks the Defiant can honestly take on a Galaxy class Starship or something ludicrous then by all means tell me why... I mean I will fight you but it'll be fun.
    Please do me a huge favour and help me be with the love of my life.

    #2
    I'll go one better. The Defiant could take out a Soverign clads. The only reason the Enterprise defeated the Borg cube in the Battle of Sector 001 was because the Defiant softened it up
    Originally posted by aretood2
    Jelgate is right

    Comment


      #3
      It may not stack up against the new generation of Federation ships (ie Sovereign, Akira, etc), but for the period it was most active, I do believe it's a kickass little thing.

      Those Jem'Hadar attack ships aren't weak. The first time we saw them, they toyed with a Galaxy-class ship before destroying it...and then over the course of the series, we watched them destroy countless Federation and Klingon ships without much trouble. The Defiant takes a licking from them and just keeps on ticking...while blowing tons of them out of the water.

      We watched the Defiant fight a modern Excelsior-class, taking a beating only because they were hesitating on shooting back. And when they finally did start shooting back, they had to hold back on how much so they didn't just completely blow the Lakota away.

      We watched a Terran rebel version of the Defiant take on and defeat the Mirror Negh'var with a minimal of effort and a crew that seems to have been entirely comprised of a handful of non-Starfleet-trained amateurs on the bridge.

      Even with a completely incompetent cadet crew, a Defiant-class was able to engage in hit-and-fate attacks on Dominion targets for nearly a year taking minimal damage.


      The Defiant-class is badass, and you can take your heresy elsewhere Mr P90
      "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by DigiFluid View Post
        It may not stack up against the new generation of Federation ships (ie Sovereign, Akira, etc), but for the period it was most active, I do believe it's a kickass little thing.

        Those Jem'Hadar attack ships aren't weak. The first time we saw them, they toyed with a Galaxy-class ship before destroying it...and then over the course of the series, we watched them destroy countless Federation and Klingon ships without much trouble. The Defiant takes a licking from them and just keeps on ticking...while blowing tons of them out of the water.

        We watched the Defiant fight a modern Excelsior-class, taking a beating only because they were hesitating on shooting back. And when they finally did start shooting back, they had to hold back on how much so they didn't just completely blow the Lakota away.

        We watched a Terran rebel version of the Defiant take on and defeat the Mirror Negh'var with a minimal of effort and a crew that seems to have been entirely comprised of a handful of non-Starfleet-trained amateurs on the bridge.

        Even with a completely incompetent cadet crew, a Defiant-class was able to engage in hit-and-fate attacks on Dominion targets for nearly a year taking minimal damage.


        The Defiant-class is badass, and you can take your heresy elsewhere Mr P90
        Ah but. B'Rel Birds of Prey can make mince meat of Jem-Hadar fighters too. When the Odyssey first encountered them the whole point was that they swarmed it. It was three against one (Ok sure DS9's runabouts were there too but the Jem Hadar all but ignored them really.) And while Odyssey sustained heavy damage just from the attack alone, it was the suicide run that actually destroyed the Galaxy class. Indeed, the Jem Hadar fighters themselves aren't all that tough, they just have pretty strong weaponry, and whenever the Defiant has actually been hit by one it has suffered for it. More often we see the Defiant simply dodging the blows. In cases like "The Search", "Starship Down" and "One Little Ship", we've seen them cripple the Defiant almost just as easily as any other Fed ship.

        In the case of the Lakota, both ships were actually holding back. Captain Benteen was pulling her punches just as much as the Defiant was as her initial mission was to disable and not destroy her. Hell it did serious damage to the Defiant despite the smaller ship having the aforementioned edge in speed and evasiveness that usually kept it out of trouble.

        The Mirror Universe I take with a pinch of salt. Mainly because it's a completely separate universe and while that is Negh-Var in design, for all we know it may be 50 years less advanced in say shield design or such. Since the Klingons were in the Alliance with the Cardassians, there was no Federation to speak of, and I've had a long held suspicion that the Romulan Empire doesn't even exist in the mirror universe, so there's no reason for shield and weapon technology to advance at the same pace as the prime universe after the Empire was destroyed.

        Hit and run attacks with the Valiant are just that. Once again it's the class relying on it's speed and hopefully a good helmsman. The fact that they're manned with cadets doesn't necessarily mean much since a signature of starfleet ships is that they're very user friendly.
        Please do me a huge favour and help me be with the love of my life.

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by jelgate View Post
          I'll go one better. The Defiant could take out a Soverign clads. The only reason the Enterprise defeated the Borg cube in the Battle of Sector 001 was because the Defiant softened it up
          Well the fleet softened it up. The Defiant on its own seemed fairly inconsequential.
          Please do me a huge favour and help me be with the love of my life.

          Comment


            #6


            [ATTACH=CONFIG]42981[/ATTACH]
            "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by DigiFluid View Post


              [ATTACH=CONFIG]42981[/ATTACH]

              We still agree on most things Digi... But I shall remember this betrayal.

              On the other hand it does make Sisko even more awesome. Like he's leading and taking on whole fleets in a glass cannon of a ship which wants to tear itself apart and Worf is just there on the side going "Man, when am I gonna be that good?" And Sisko's just like "Dude how about you stop getting my ship assimilatedwhen you aren't blowing civvie ships out of the sky then we'll talk."
              Please do me a huge favour and help me be with the love of my life.

              Comment


                #8
                I too think that the Defiant-class was very good at what it was built for. It was one of the Federation's few purpose-built warships and as such you would expect it to hold its own in a fight. The Defiant-class also underscored the importance of strong armor in addition to shields during that fight with the upgraded Excelsior-class since it was able to pop the Defiant's shields in just a couple of hits. That ship was tanking the rest of those hits on its ablative armor. In a 1-on-1 encounter I would expect that speed and maneuverability vs. size and power would likely end up as a draw unless the Defiant-class can get inside the range of the larger ship's weapons and let loose with its own at such close range, as it did with the mirror-universe Negh'Var. But it was a very effective support ship in fleet-wide engagements.

                That said, I do also have a high degree of fondness for the Galaxy-class and was sad to see them go up. The Odyssey was taken by surprise as they didn't expect the weaponry of the enemy at the time to be able to penetrate their shields with such ease. If they had then the Odyssey probably would've been at least outfitted with some ablative armor as backup and probably would've at least put in a good showing, if not blew every single enemy ship out of the water instead of just becoming largely a sitting duck. Once the Federation had the capacity to upgrade the shields to block phased polaron weaponry though, those Galaxies went back to being absolute tanks in the battlefield.

                Comment


                  #9
                  See I think the ablative armour itself is more of a necessity on the Defiant than it is with other ships because most ships already have an ablative armour of sorts. Most ships have crew quarters and other rooms with a lot of empty space all around the outside of the ship. Now that isn't just there for the pretty windows out into space. That all helps protect the inner most components of the ship. And in a Red Alert situation all those external areas will be vacated. That in itself serves as a kind of ablative armour. Meanwhile the Defiant has very little in unused space, and it's vital components, including the warp core are all relatively very close to the outer hull. The benefit of the ablative armour is that it helps the Defiant gain the defence of a ship probably at least twice its size. But without it, it's very vulnerable once its shields are down, and we have seen quite often that the Defiant's shields are pretty weak.
                  Please do me a huge favour and help me be with the love of my life.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Other Starfleet ships are weakly built, meant for an age of peace and exploration. Other Starfleet ships are coffee mugs, the Defiant is a metal stein. One will break if you throw it across the room, the other will just dent.

                    The crew quarters areas on other Starfleet ships isn't meant to be padding
                    "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Originally posted by DigiFluid View Post
                      Other Starfleet ships are weakly built, meant for an age of peace and exploration. Other Starfleet ships are coffee mugs, the Defiant is a metal stein. One will break if you throw it across the room, the other will just dent.

                      The crew quarters areas on other Starfleet ships isn't meant to be padding
                      Are they? I mean seriously, think about it. We know for a fact that the Federation was involved in at least three distinct conflicts in the decade or so prior to TNG. At least one of them war, that being the one with the Cardasians and we know that lasted a good long while, or at least intermittently for a good long while as it is not only implied in "The Wounded" that the war ended only very recently, but we know that the conflict was still hot back when Picard was still Captain of the Stargazer. I think other mentions in TNG and DS9 put the conflict with the cardies extending almost two decades. I mean we can assume that by the time the Enterprise was launched that Starfleet was entering that mindset. The Federation's own version of 'The Winds of Change' era as it were. But even then the Enterprise and other Galaxy classes are armed to the teeth. They are effectively Battleships. So much so that one is said to be the equal of a Romulan Warbird, a ship which is not only twice its size but built by a people who are time and time again implied to be every bit the Federation's equal in power and technology. Sure Fedships get battered to one side by the Borg or Dominion but they're threats beyond anything they had ever faced. But when it comes to the local threats of Romulans, Klingons, Cardasians and so on, The Federation built ships that could take on any of them.
                      Please do me a huge favour and help me be with the love of my life.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Originally posted by P-90_177 View Post
                        Are they? I mean seriously, think about it. We know for a fact that the Federation was involved in at least three distinct conflicts in the decade or so prior to TNG. At least one of them war, that being the one with the Cardasians and we know that lasted a good long while, or at least intermittently for a good long while as it is not only implied in "The Wounded" that the war ended only very recently, but we know that the conflict was still hot back when Picard was still Captain of the Stargazer. I think other mentions in TNG and DS9 put the conflict with the cardies extending almost two decades. I mean we can assume that by the time the Enterprise was launched that Starfleet was entering that mindset. The Federation's own version of 'The Winds of Change' era as it were. But even then the Enterprise and other Galaxy classes are armed to the teeth. They are effectively Battleships. So much so that one is said to be the equal of a Romulan Warbird, a ship which is not only twice its size but built by a people who are time and time again implied to be every bit the Federation's equal in power and technology. Sure Fedships get battered to one side by the Borg or Dominion but they're threats beyond anything they had ever faced. But when it comes to the local threats of Romulans, Klingons, Cardasians and so on, The Federation built ships that could take on any of them.
                        meh....battleships don't tend to have things like arboretums and cozy-looking lounge areas and stellar cartography labs

                        but yeah even when it did the Galaxy-class (and the Nebula-class, its minimalist cousin) were capable of going up against the Cardassian Galor-class destroyers with ease

                        the only problem in the Dominion War for the Federation was the fact that the vast majority of its starships were 23rd-century relics which were easily destroyed by just the Cardassian warships, nevermind the Dominion ones (though an upgraded relic like the Lakota might be able to last longer)

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Originally posted by mad_gater View Post
                          meh....battleships don't tend to have things like arboretums and cozy-looking lounge areas and stellar cartography labs

                          but yeah even when it did the Galaxy-class (and the Nebula-class, its minimalist cousin) were capable of going up against the Cardassian Galor-class destroyers with ease

                          the only problem in the Dominion War for the Federation was the fact that the vast majority of its starships were 23rd-century relics which were easily destroyed by just the Cardassian warships, nevermind the Dominion ones (though an upgraded relic like the Lakota might be able to last longer)
                          Starfleet Battleships do. I mean the constitution still had lounges and arboretums. At the end of the day Starfleet ships weren't usually designed to be out in space for weeks or months so much as years so sure they are going to have all of the comforts of home. Particularly pre-holodecks. So if you live in a post scarcity society where you can create spaces that both follow function and can be cosy than you definitely are, since a relaxed and well rested crew might be essential for anything from research to combat. As early as the 23rd Century the ships were clearly designed to be places where crews could live as well as work. And that could very well be an advantage that Starfleet had in its expansion that other empires lack. While Klingons or Cardies needed to rotate their ships around frequently for patrols and alike, a Starfleet ship could operate for much longer without a crew needing a long period of downtime to rest.

                          Also to be fair, as much as I put the Cardassians as part of my point in the last post I honestly don't rate their ships that much. Oh I'm sure they're a threat to some ships But certainly by the time the Galaxy and Nebula were out their ships seemed woefully outmatched by Starfleet, which makes me wonder if it was the twenty year long on and off cardassian wars which made starfleet massively upgrade their fleet the last time and you start seeing things like New Orleans and Niagara classes, and possibly the Nebula too depending on whether it came before or after the Galaxy.

                          The Excelsiors meanwhile I think are so adaptable that they could always be upgraded to modern weapons and shield specs. There is a reason they are the backbone of the fleet and that likely is due to them keeping pace with new Starfleet classes as they come out. I mean the Lakota as you point out is probably a match for most ships in the fleet. And I'd bet they probably refit Excelsiors pretty regularly to keep ace and keep them as the key cruiser in Starfleet.
                          The Miranda looks to be a different story as we see in TNG some relegated to transport ships while others still seem to be in full service. So maybe they were more of a reserve ship. Adequate in a fast attack role as we see two keeping pace with the Defiant during the war but entirely reliant (heh) on straight forward speed and their torpedoes maybe. Eitherway I'd definitely argue that Mirandas are on the near bottom rung of Starfleet's arsenal. Above Oberths obviously and maybe keeping pace with say a Nova class (Though I'm sure a Nova could still make mincemeat of them).
                          Please do me a huge favour and help me be with the love of my life.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Originally posted by P-90_177 View Post
                            Starfleet Battleships do. I mean the constitution still had lounges and arboretums. At the end of the day Starfleet ships weren't usually designed to be out in space for weeks or months so much as years so sure they are going to have all of the comforts of home. Particularly pre-holodecks. So if you live in a post scarcity society where you can create spaces that both follow function and can be cosy than you definitely are, since a relaxed and well rested crew might be essential for anything from research to combat. As early as the 23rd Century the ships were clearly designed to be places where crews could live as well as work. And that could very well be an advantage that Starfleet had in its expansion that other empires lack. While Klingons or Cardies needed to rotate their ships around frequently for patrols and alike, a Starfleet ship could operate for much longer without a crew needing a long period of downtime to rest.

                            Also to be fair, as much as I put the Cardassians as part of my point in the last post I honestly don't rate their ships that much. Oh I'm sure they're a threat to some ships But certainly by the time the Galaxy and Nebula were out their ships seemed woefully outmatched by Starfleet, which makes me wonder if it was the twenty year long on and off cardassian wars which made starfleet massively upgrade their fleet the last time and you start seeing things like New Orleans and Niagara classes, and possibly the Nebula too depending on whether it came before or after the Galaxy.

                            The Excelsiors meanwhile I think are so adaptable that they could always be upgraded to modern weapons and shield specs. There is a reason they are the backbone of the fleet and that likely is due to them keeping pace with new Starfleet classes as they come out. I mean the Lakota as you point out is probably a match for most ships in the fleet. And I'd bet they probably refit Excelsiors pretty regularly to keep ace and keep them as the key cruiser in Starfleet.
                            The Miranda looks to be a different story as we see in TNG some relegated to transport ships while others still seem to be in full service. So maybe they were more of a reserve ship. Adequate in a fast attack role as we see two keeping pace with the Defiant during the war but entirely reliant (heh) on straight forward speed and their torpedoes maybe. Eitherway I'd definitely argue that Mirandas are on the near bottom rung of Starfleet's arsenal. Above Oberths obviously and maybe keeping pace with say a Nova class (Though I'm sure a Nova could still make mincemeat of them).
                            I'm not entirely certain just how easy it was to upgrade an Excelsior-class starship's tactical specs. I'm thinking that to put that kinda stuff on the Lakota meant not only installing a better power source but also ripping out every 23rd-century power relay on said Excelsior-class ship and replacing them with new ones capable of handling that kind of firepower and shield power without frying every power relay on the ship.

                            I'm also not certain though as to how many Excelsior-class ships we see on screen fighting the Dominion. But I did see a lot of Miranda-class (and/or their other 23rd-century variants) ships getting blown up left and right just by the Cardassian ships. Which tells me that normal 23rd-century Federation shields and firepower were no match for the Galor-class destroyers and probably had no viable match for them until the Ambassador-class starships came out.

                            Comment

                            Working...
                            X