Why Doesn't StarFleet Build Just Defiants for Defense?

posted on December 13th, 2012, 2:08 am

They are small but very powerful ships. I would assume that you could build several Defiant class ships in the time it takes to build a larger ship like a Sovereign or Galaxy class. They use less resources and they KICK ASS. Two or three Defiants could easily take on a Sovereign and would cost far less to manufacture and crew and you can build them much faster.

I am specifically referring to space combat as you would still need different ships for exploration, troop transport, colony and sciency stuff.

posted on December 13th, 2012, 3:41 am

I'm sure star fleet is building them. But since star fleet is sciency they would probably still build many of the other classes over the defiants. Sovereign is a first contact vessel designed to be capable in combat and first in long range exploratory missions. I'd expect heir unit run to be very low.

Even if the regnant have a high unit count. They'd most likely be kept a fleet yards or assigned to major star bases and installations. They simply aren't made for long term missions. Problem is there are probably 10's of thousand of star bases and facilities, and space is vast. An invading enemy has the advantage of time, since a response time for a wing of.defiants would.be slow.

posted on December 13th, 2012, 1:51 pm

They are small but very powerful ships. I would assume that you could build several Defiant class ships in the time it takes to build a larger ship like a Sovereign or Galaxy class. They use less resources and they KICK ASS. Two or three Defiants could easily take on a Sovereign and would cost far less to manufacture and crew and you can build them much faster.

I am specifically referring to space combat as you would still need different ships for exploration, troop transport, colony and sciency stuff.

Well ablative Armour plates are not cheap, nor quick to manufacture.

Defiant is also short ranged so will do reduced damage to a sovvie since it too has ablative Armour lol, plus for planetary defense you would want something with range, you dont want to have to go toe to toe in a dogfight with your enemys, better to destroy them from a distance rather than risk losing lives.

If a borg cube arrives dog fighting with it is really the last resort, the feds would naturally put up a defensive line and pound the f**k out of it with torpedoes, pulses, phasers and the kitchen sink from a distance before being forced to dogfight against it.

posted on December 13th, 2012, 2:05 pm

No Defiant seen has proven nearly as powerful as the original. Tiny crew, very little room for supplies (like fuel and torps) and a dedicated purpose isn't gonna make it very good as the dominant ship design.

Besides, what idiot actually classed something with a crew of 50 a good anti-Borg ship? The things should be so easy to assimilate, they'd be giving the Borg whole fleets if they built a lot of them!

posted on December 13th, 2012, 5:15 pm

First and foremost, we know that Starfleet is cranking out the Defiant design. We've seen at least five different ships of the class (Defiant, Valiant, Defiant-A nee Sao Paulo, and two unnamed ships of the class which were part of the flotilla sent to retrieve or destroy the Prometheus prototype; there may have been more in the fleet shot in Endgame, but I've not studied it).

The class' shortcomings (a number of which are already described in this thread) will relegate it to a secondary defence role though; convoy escort, short-duration patrols, starbase security. Any defence situation where it's own lack of sustainability can be mitigated, it will do well in.

Looking to the future, we know that Starfleet is looking towards following up with additional tactically-oriented starship designs that will add to their strategic capabilities. One such example is the Prometheus class I've already mentioned. The Akira might also be a more conflict-driven design (the ship's designer refers to it as a battlecruiser). Heck, Star Trek Online has shown an interesting possibility for vessels of about the Defiant's size and capability, with the Aquarius escort that's carried by the Odyssey cruiser, as the larger and longer-ranged vessel will provide all the facilities needed to support the escort, while the escort adds firepower and flexibility in battle.

posted on December 13th, 2012, 6:27 pm

Ugh......Star Trek online has some of the worst looking ships I have ever seen.

The range is actually a good point although I was figuring that they would place something like 20 Defiants in every important solar system.

Weapons range shouldn't be an issue since torpedoes are torpedoes no matter what ship they are fired from. I don't know what the range of pulse phasers is but it seems like those would be shorter range.

The point about the Borg being able to assimilate a small crew is actually probably the best counter argument. Although the Borg haven't had any difficulty assimilating other species ships with larger crews and some of those species are more advanced than the Federation. I don't know if it would make that much of a difference overall. Also Defiant was one of the last ships standing in Star Trek 8 when the Enterprise E arrived so it wasn't an issue then.

The Akira is another favorite of mine but I figured that was more of an offensive vessel since it's suppose to have 150 torpedoe launchers or something. When I mean Defiants for defense I literally mean for protecting key assets like starbases, homeworlds etc. 20 of these in each important sector would only be 1000 crew which is what it would take to crew two or three normal cruisers.

Construction wise I don't think they are very difficult to make because the alternate universe made a knock off that took on and won against their Neghvar class and a couple of Cardassian ships albeit with some help from Super Doc.

posted on December 14th, 2012, 5:29 am

from what I've seen of the stats it seems like it's fairly resource-heavy to build, being all high-end and everything. plus there's the fact that the defiant itself is probably a lot more powerful than the rest of it's class, what with the experimental systems it has. Throw in the fact that it's a dedicated warship and starfleet tries extremely hard to stay away from those, and it's a miracle they're in use as much as they are. to cap it off, defiants are also light ships, no matter how you look at it. any fleet is gonna need cruisers and larger strike vessels, which starfleet's line vessels like the sovvy, akira and galaxy fill thanks to their size and flexibility. The Defiant is a little too specialized to fill any other role than a small warship. honestly, it's a little confusing when they take her out for science missions in ds9, since she doesn't really have much capacity for those...

Edited: to recap the main point, starfleet likes to use vessels that can fill many roles, whereas the defiant has very limited use.