D'deridex Aft Weapons

posted on June 18th, 2012, 8:23 pm

Has the D'deridex ever been shown to have any aft weapons in canon?

posted on June 18th, 2012, 8:39 pm

I could be way wrong about this but I "think" in the TNG episode "Tin Man" the 2 warbirds that bypass the Enterprise take pot shots at her while passing. And I believe they "may" have fired some pulses from the aft, I definitley recall some shooting though. But my memory on that is really foggy.

posted on June 20th, 2012, 12:15 pm

I could be way wrong about this but I "think" in the TNG episode "Tin Man" the 2 warbirds that bypass the Enterprise take pot shots at her while passing. And I believe they "may" have fired some pulses from the aft, I definitley recall some shooting though. But my memory on that is really foggy.

I just watched that episode and the Romulans do take pot shots, but no shots are shown to come from the aft section. As far as I remember the D'Deridex has never been show to have aft weapons. If I ever see that, I will let you know.

posted on June 20th, 2012, 5:56 pm

The Romulans are pretty much always shown to decloak facing their target, so I suppose the only shots we might see them firing aft in would be during the Jem'Hadar counter-attack following the Tal Shiar / Obsidian Order's attack on the Founder's homeworld, or possibly when the cavalry arrived to save the Prometheus? But I don't recall seeing them fire aftwards then either.

posted on June 20th, 2012, 6:48 pm

The tech manuals in combination with the construction design indicates, that the warbirds have most of their firepower to the fron, a decent amount to the aft and weak coverage (secondary emitters) to the rest.

They engage the enemy by decloaking, firing the whole front battery, strife through, firing the rest of the aft batteries and then they cloak again. The studio model shows many disruptor pods spread on the hull, which indicates, that the warbird got a full 360° coverage, but the real firepower is in the front.

In the series, we never really saw the enterprise firing its secondary phaser banks, but they are there - so I would assume, they just did not show the full coverage of the warbird.

The only episode where I saw a good coverage and blastings from primary and secondary emitters was in DS9, where the defiant and a bajoran fighter took on a Negh'var. The neggie had a large amount of weapons and that was the only episode, where many weapons from the design were actually used. We could assume a similar thing from the warbird, but with a stronger forward and aft weighting.

posted on June 20th, 2012, 6:50 pm

I don't think we ever see aft-firing Romulan weapons because there wasn't really any need to show them. However, on warbirds like the D'deridex and the Valdore-type I would expect there to be some aft-firing weaponry as defence against small, manoeuvrable vessels like the Defiant class and birds-of-prey.

posted on June 22nd, 2012, 4:08 pm

Indeed they are there for both warbirds. Take a look at the physical D'deridex model and you'll see the six disruptor points. Two on the top wing, two on the bottom wing and the two on the fantail section.