Galaxy class waste or not?

[Equinox1701e]

posted on July 27th, 2011, 2:55 pm

Last edited by Equinox1701e on July 27th, 2011, 2:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Problem there is Starfleet and its ships aren't considered military by Starfleet or much of the Federation, it's a joint military/civilian deal.

If the families want to live on the ship, they will and won't be much safer on a planet; something with a completely fixed position, incapable of escape and often poorly defended.

The funny thing here is the contridiction between whats consdered military an not, in TOS Starfleet was obviously considered military, TNG well sure they may not want to consider themselves military but if a war breaks out who does the fighting? And either way, I cant imagine life being safer on a Galaxy class starship exploring the unknowns then living on a planet, MAYBE a new founded colony on some fringe world, but on a core planet? I find that hard top believe.

well... Picard said many times to other aliens "This is not a battleship. this is a ship of peace and exploration.". they were never off fighting warbirds or Vorchas every day. anyway it says in memory alpha that a lot of the civs do research and stuff like that on a galaxy. If it helps, think of a Galaxy class a bit like a smaller and more cramped up DS9; people come & go, Ambassadors board, terraformers leave, scientists research etc...

True, they may not have been fighting enemy ships all the time, but the point is when your out exploring the unknown in deep space you dont know what your going to run into, and yes MA says that the civs do research and all that is fine, and I can see having some qualified civs on the ship for some such tasks, but having permanent civs that just live on the ship just seems totalll silly. I mean think about the poor Yamato, how many families were just decimatd, and that ship didnt even fight anywhing!

[Tyler]

posted on July 27th, 2011, 3:10 pm

Last edited by Tyler on July 27th, 2011, 3:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The funny thing here is the contridiction between whats consdered military an not, in TOS Starfleet was obviously considered military, TNG well sure they may not want to consider themselves military but if a war breaks out who does the fighting? And either way, I cant imagine life being safer on a Galaxy class starship exploring the unknowns then living on a planet, MAYBE a new founded colony on some fringe world, but on a core planet? I find that hard top believe.

Starfleet performs military duties and functions as a normal military (despite some trying to deny it), however that only comes into effect during war. During peacetime, they're much closer to a powerful police force.

Think about a planet; it's in a single fixed area with no sign of shields or defences of any type and it's incapable of escaping trouble. Starships are mobile and capable of self-defence. Core worlds were never shown to be much safer than others, also lacking a defence.

True, they may not have been fighting enemy ships all the time, but the point is when your out exploring the unknown in deep space you dont know what your going to run into, and yes MA says that the civs do research and all that is fine, and I can see having some qualified civs on the ship for some such tasks, but having permanent civs that just live on the ship just seems totalll silly. I mean think about the poor Yamato, how many families were just decimatd, and that ship didnt even fight anywhing!

The 'families on ship' thing is a pointless discussion now, no-one says anything new and just repeats themselves. It's an idea that has good points (crews and their families don;t fall apart) and bad points (the obvious risk). If they want to take the risk, Starfleet will respect their wishes and provide what they need. If they choose not to take them along, Starfleet is quite unlikely to force them.

It's a personal choice on the crews part and is probably best left like that.

posted on July 27th, 2011, 4:00 pm

Starfleet performs military duties and functions as a normal military (despite some trying to deny it), however that only comes into effect during war. During peacetime, they're much closer to a powerful police force.

Think about a planet; it's in a single fixed area with no sign of shields or defences of any type and it's incapable of escaping trouble. Starships are mobile and capable of self-defence. Core worlds were never shown to be much safer than others, also lacking a defence.
The 'families on ship' thing is a pointless discussion now, no-one says anything new and just repeats themselves. It's an idea that has good points (crews and their families don;t fall apart) and bad points (the obvious risk). If they want to take the risk, Starfleet will respect their wishes and provide what they need. If they choose not to take them along, Starfleet is quite unlikely to force them.

It's a personal choice on the crews part and is probably best left like that.

I think most of the core planets and large industrial planets are much better protected then whats generally shown, and other then wartime conditions planets seem rarely bothered by anything. Hell even a single starbase is as good as a small fleet, either way the people vacationing on Risa dont seem to be too worried about random people screwing with them, and they sure arnt likely to run into any unknown anomalies that could kill them unlike a starship whose job by nature is to find such things.

posted on July 27th, 2011, 4:18 pm

The only times we've seen a starbase providing defense was in Armada 1/2 and DS9's DS9 (which wasn't even a starbase). Any other time a planet with a starbase has been attacked, we've seen zero evidence of any military capabilities whatsoever. In fact, even in direct fire fights, we've not seen the nearby starbase provide any help at all 

[Tyler]

posted on July 27th, 2011, 4:26 pm

Last edited by Tyler on July 27th, 2011, 4:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Risa is a pleasure planet...no-one would bother it unless they got some advantage. I don't think it has any to make Risa worth it. However, anomolies have effected worlds before and the vast emptiness of space makes them no less likely to be hit than a ship (aside from plot convinience based around a minority of unlucky ships).

We've seen full shots of core worlds before, there's been no sign of even a single defence platform and no standard Starbase has shown weapons of any kind before. The only defences seen are the antique (and rather useless) Betazed defences, the 'drone ships' from BoBW and Starfleet itself.

Unlike the FO Federation, the canon one needs serious work on defences. Even they had them, Starships can still flee from trouble unlike planets.

Ninja'd

posted on July 27th, 2011, 5:20 pm

Yes we have never seen a starbase fire any weapons, but do you really think they would be so stupid as to build this monstrosity of a station and NOT arm the thing? Yes we cant say for sure cannon wise anyway that they have weapons, but you can reason that starfleet would be smart enough to do so and considering starfleet IS responsible for keeping the Federation secure it just wouldnt make sense whatsoever. And Tyler your right, wierd stuff can happen to planets, however the given nature of a starship is to boldly go and explore the "unknows" of the galaxy, that in itself means your much more unlikely to end up dead by some random wierd plot device then on a planet, after all its a starships job to go find these things, and plantary systems are pretty well mapped out so your prolly not gonna find too many unusual thing compared to a starship LOOKING for unusual things. Just look at Voyager, that woman couldnt help but to fly her ship into every damn hole she could find.

And Dom, to my knowlege we have never seen a federation starbase attacked directly or seen one involved in any kind of combat, granted there are some gaps in my DS9 watching but none that I can recall. And either case unless your at war I dont see how your safer on a starship as who is gonna attack you? Federation doesnt seem to have many pirate troubles, and even in war your STILL more likely to be blown up in a starship since they are fighting on the front against the enemy.

posted on July 27th, 2011, 5:27 pm

Starbases have been attacked a number of times in the course of TNG . Raiders make off with various stuff in those and get not a shot in return. Of course, when Kirk steals his ship, he isn't attacked by the 'big bad starbase' either 

Stupidity or intelligence has nothing to do with canonicity, as is proved in many, many episodes.

posted on July 27th, 2011, 5:28 pm

Janeway and her suicidal obsession with getting her crew killed is not typical of a Starfleet commander, the others mostly tend to keep a safe distance and send in probes.

Pirates have attacked the Federation before, even as late as TNG. DS9 also had the Maquis, who attacked poorly defended Federation transports. Civilians aren't on a ship during war, so that's a moot point.

posted on July 27th, 2011, 5:47 pm

the phrase starbase was used to refer to any of the hundreds of facilities, a lot of which wouldnt be very important. a lot would be surface installations as well, which are probably weaker.

going by the example we've actually seen (ds9), a military frontline base could destroy 50 ships and handle a fleet.

obviously ds9 would be stronger than the typical starbase, so we can assume the typical starbase could handle less than 50, but still some. those weapons fitted to ds9 were installed without huge structural changes to a station built with alien technology. so it cant be difficult to install moderately capable weapons systems.

starbase 257 appeared in ds9: valiant. and the dominion originally decided that the correct attack force needed 6 warships. they have obvious reasons not to use too many ships as ships are expensive, so we can assume that 6 isnt far above what the station can defeat. thats about 6 warships needed for 1 base without ships defending it. starbase 257 was never said to be a weird base in any way, so its a prod that the typical base can handle about 5 bugs, which are dedicated warships crewed by genetically engineered soldiers, built by a technologically advanced war mongering race. which is pretty good for the typical base. the maquis fleet consisted of ships equal to runabouts, unlikely to bother a station of 257's power.

presumably the places we see raided are the smallest starbases, places unlikely to be in tactically important places, doing archaeological digs and stuff. planets like vulcan/earth/andoria would be all but immune to any attack by pirates it would take dedicated warships to penentrate the major civilian worlds. the maquis mainly operated in the border regions between fed/cardy space, not exactly paradise. anyone who lives there has got to know trouble could happen.

about them not shooting kirk, they didnt use tractor beams either, big enough plot holes to fly the enterprise through while making your escape. not a terribly good example. and if tractors didnt work im not sure they'd want to shoot kirk very much, seeing as he was rather popular.

posted on July 27th, 2011, 5:51 pm

Only 6 Bugs needed to take down a standard Starbase isn't a good sign for Starfleet, with them being cannon fodder ships weaker than a B'rel Class. Even a Danube can take one down in a single shot if hit right.

posted on July 27th, 2011, 6:05 pm

We've seen full shots of core worlds before, there's been no sign of even a single defence platform and no standard Starbase has shown weapons of any kind before.

In DS9's "Homefront/Paradise Lost" two-parter, the federation council was very irritated when Sisko and Odo tried to convince them of a Dominion threat to earth and they only granted military presence (SF-security personell) on earth after some staged cases of emergency.

This shows how much Starfleet AND the federation are not interested in having a standard division of armed officers running around even on their homeworld (and by the way the federation HQ).

[Anonymous]

posted on July 27th, 2011, 6:18 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on July 27th, 2011, 6:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Only 6 Bugs needed to take down a standard Starbase isn't a good sign for Starfleet, with them being cannon fodder ships weaker than a B'rel Class. Even a Danube can take one down in a single shot if hit right.

these are 6 dedicated warhips built by a technologically advanced race, crewed by engineered soldiers. the only reason they seem shitty is because the godship defiant blows so many up. the galaxy class odyssey could even destroy 1 with all its weapons (ignoring how quickly the odyssey was destroyed because of no effective shielding). yet 1 episode later the defiant comes along and destroys them in 1 shot. this was long before they captured a bug and studied it. so the odyssey would have just as much chance destroying one with 1 shot as the defiant did.

comparing ships to the defiant is pointless, the defiant was stupidly op.

the danube killing a bug was stupid as well, it had a main character on board, so got some extra power from that. but also weyoun gave odo his knowledge on how to fight these ships. weyoun was very important (he seemed to be the second in command after the female changeling) so would know stuff like this. like when tom paris exploited voyager's weak spots in a shuttle. if you know a ship's weaknesses well enough you can exploit them to huge effect. ie disabling the weapons of an intrep with a shuttle or destroying a warship with a sustained phaser shot on a weak spot.

remember that ds9 destroying loads of ships is evidence of its front line status and they resources they pumped into it to defend the wormhole (a massive strategic point, so massive that the romulans tried to collapse it, and it made bajor important)

257 was probably not a very strategic place. all nog was doing there was collecting a message to send (what they dont have email?) there were no ships there (like we often saw at the frontline ds9/starbase 375). the fact that a typical starbase can fight off 5 warships is quite significant. as i said, the most powerful raiders we saw were the maquis, and they operated in ships equal to runabouts/shuttles. there's no way the maquis could pose a threat to any base that can handle 5 warships.

also brels arent weak, they are dedicated warships built by a warrior race, crewed by people who are trained from birth how to kill stuff. remember that 2 of them captured the enterprise d, and a similar bop destroyed the enterprise d when they knew its weakness

In DS9's "Homefront/Paradise Lost" two-parter, the federation council was very irritated when Sisko and Odo tried to convince them of a Dominion threat to earth and they only granted military presence (SF-security personell) on earth after some staged cases of emergency.

This shows how much Starfleet AND the federation are not interested in having a standard division of armed officers running around even on their homeworld (and by the way the federation HQ).

in this the controversy wasnt about having military guys on earth, it was about putting them on the streets as a normal thing. usually the starfleet dudes on earth would be in starfleet bases, not on the streets. only when a specific threat appeared (such as enemy landing ships anywhere because all the defences were down) did they spread out.

[Tyler]

posted on July 27th, 2011, 6:39 pm

Last edited by Tyler on July 27th, 2011, 6:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Being a dedicated warship doesn't mean inherently superior, neither does the 'dedicated warrior' part. Cardassian warships are dedicated warships and still can't stand up to ships not even built for war, their tech isn't the best but is still close to Starfleets own. Being dedicated warriors helps for reduced morale loss and in hand-to-hand, but they're still limited by their ships.

Besides, we don't even know if it can fight off 5 bugs as we never actually learned what happened to it; it could have won easily, with a fight or even died in a few minutes for all we know. I don't think that base ever came up again, being nothing more than an excuse to have the Dominion in the area.

Also, I'll ask you to not mention the capture of the Enterprise by two B'rel (or K'Vort by the footage). It sounds like you meant that damn Ferengi episode.

posted on July 27th, 2011, 6:51 pm

Being a dedicated warship doesn't mean inherently superior, neither does the 'dedicated warrior' part.

who said it was superior to anything? you said it was laughably weak, which it isnt, its a warship. and the dedicated warrior thing does matter, because these jemhadar need no sickbays, no holodecks, no quarters, no mess hall. even the defiant (the most war focused fed ship) had quarters/sickbay/mess hall. thats more space for guns and redundant systems. one of these bugs was damaged badly from an explosion and crashed onto a planet, and didnt burn up in the atmosphere, all people aboard survived entry into the atmosphere. pretty tough bugs.

comparing jemhadar ships to cardy ships is a bad comparison, as the cardies were technologically inferior to the feds. the dominion werent. if the cardies had equal tech to the feds then their warships would be more of a threat. but the cardies never really posed a severe threat to the feds, they were just not advanced enough.

Besides, we don't even know if it can fight off 5 bugs as we never actually learned what happened to it; it could have won easily, with a fight or even died in a few minutes for all we know. I don't think that base ever came up again, being nothing more than an excuse to have the Dominion in the area.

we can figure it out by a little logic. the jemhadar knew the base was there, and were coming to attack it. they presumably knew the size and rough strength of the base. otherwise it would be foolish to send so many ships and risk them all get fried by weapons like ds9s. the dominion wouldnt be crazy and send ships that couldnt win, nor would they send more ships than they needed. the dominion were really good at the intelligence stuff, and finding out info about the enemy. the force that attacked 257 was probably just about what was needed to not get their arses kicked.

[Tyler]

posted on July 27th, 2011, 7:02 pm

Last edited by Tyler on July 27th, 2011, 7:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I called it cannon-fodder because that's exactly what it is. What type of ship it is is irrelevent to what it is; a mass-produced faceless drone the Dominion care nothing for.

I wasn't comparing the Cardassians and Dominion ships themselves, just an example that 'dedicated warship doesn't aways make it better'. Their tech was similar enough to give them a war, even one Starfleet wasn'ttoo bothered about.

We cannot figure out 'by a little logic' because there is nothing to go on; we don't know what guns the base may have, how strong its shields are, how experience the crew are or how any of them compare to a Bugs. We don't even know why they were attacking; to kill or a hit-and-run distraction. We'd have to make up our own stats for it.