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The main thing with the Defiant is that it wasn't multi-role. Most Starfleet ships are multi-role capital ships. Designed for long duration exploration (years), discovery, scientific research, diplomacy, combat etc...

Most of them are "Jack of all Trades" type vessels which can operate for long periods of time without support. Heck look at how well Voyager did on its own without any Starfleet support (accepting that some of this was the whole alien-of-the-week symptom)

This makes them very adaptable to very varied situations.

The Defiant wasn't made for any purpose other than battle. It was designed to be a small warship that hits way above its size, but its still not an ultimate warship. Eg Galaxy and Sovereign Class ships have massive phaser arrays and huge sonic screwdri....deflector arrays.

Defiant was more of a change in policy for Starfleet to develop; a focus on them leaning on alliances for military technology (cloak); and on building a ship build purely for war. After decades of being explorers and diplomats used to very short combat situations; the Defiant was a change reflecting what Starfleet could start producing when faced with a sustained period of war (ignoring the Borg as whilst they had a long war, it was very spaced out encounters)

 Overread wrote:
The main thing with the Defiant is that it wasn't multi-role. Most Starfleet ships are multi-role capital ships. Designed for long duration exploration (years), discovery, scientific research, diplomacy, combat etc...

Most of them are "Jack of all Trades" type vessels which can operate for long periods of time without support. Heck look at how well Voyager did on its own without any Starfleet support (accepting that some of this was the whole alien-of-the-week symptom)

This makes them very adaptable to very varied situations.

The Defiant wasn't made for any purpose other than battle. It was designed to be a small warship that hits way above its size, but its still not an ultimate warship. Eg Galaxy and Sovereign Class ships have massive phaser arrays and huge sonic screwdri....deflector arrays.

Defiant was more of a change in policy for Starfleet to develop; a focus on them leaning on alliances for military technology (cloak); and on building a ship build purely for war. After decades of being explorers and diplomats used to very short combat situations; the Defiant was a change reflecting what Starfleet could start producing when faced with a sustained period of war (ignoring the Borg as whilst they had a long war, it was very spaced out encounters)

You also have e to remember is that the Defiant was a Failed program according to Sisko.

The ship didn't work as advertised.

 Overread wrote:
The main thing with the Defiant is that it wasn't multi-role. Most Starfleet ships are multi-role capital ships. Designed for long duration exploration (years), discovery, scientific research, diplomacy, combat etc...

Most of them are "Jack of all Trades" type vessels which can operate for long periods of time without support. Heck look at how well Voyager did on its own without any Starfleet support (accepting that some of this was the whole alien-of-the-week symptom)

This makes them very adaptable to very varied situations.

The Defiant wasn't made for any purpose other than battle. It was designed to be a small warship that hits way above its size, but its still not an ultimate warship. Eg Galaxy and Sovereign Class ships have massive phaser arrays and huge sonic screwdri....deflector arrays.

Defiant was more of a change in policy for Starfleet to develop; a focus on them leaning on alliances for military technology (cloak); and on building a ship build purely for war. After decades of being explorers and diplomats used to very short combat situations; the Defiant was a change reflecting what Starfleet could start producing when faced with a sustained period of war (ignoring the Borg as whilst they had a long war, it was very spaced out encounters)

The cloaking device was installed to enable stealthy missions into Dominion Space. It wasn’t an original feature.

If it wasn’t for O’Brien’s genius in rooting out and addressing all the design flaws, it would’ve remained a failed design,

I believe the original intent was for it to form part of a specific strike force. A small sub-fleet of powerful warships, held in reserve to go after any Borg interlopers. But because it ultimately failed? That never came to pass.

But a wing of them (say, three to four), all with O’Brien’s tweaks and design alterations may have proven very potent indeed.

Anyways!

SNW latest episode.

Honestly? It had its moments, but it was a bit too tongue in cheek for me. Possibly a Marmite Episode.

I think the fact that it needed loads of tweaks also just shows how alien this design concept was for Starfleet. They know how to build ships, but not warships.

It's a little surprising considering how many allied factions the have who do build warships; but at the same stroke we've also seen that the upper ranks of Starfleet are often heavily human dominated and where its not human its a Vulcan. You just don't see high ranking Klingon Engineers to be able to go "hah yeah that idea is stupid we do XYZ instead and that's way better for your warship"


So yeah in many ways the Defiant being a learning tool works great. And yes many of us do recall it at the hight of its development after all its revisions and upgrades and with the cloaking device and all. But yes even then its really obvious that it needs friends. If you see it in combat during the final days of the Dominion War its often flanked by other ships (which don't have the plot armour and thus often get blown up).

Again I lean back to "its the Federations Klingon Bird of Prey". Able to hit above it size, but ideally really needs to be part of a formation of similar ships to really shine.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Anyways!

SNW latest episode.

Honestly? It had its moments, but it was a bit too tongue in cheek for me. Possibly a Marmite Episode.

Loved it to bits. Outrageous and goofy. An entire episode of raised eyebrows and "logical".

They showed cetacean ops!

So I use my STRONG OPINIONS about the USS Defiant to test AI chat bots. (Also my STRONG OPINIONS about the Adeptus Arbites).

One of them told me the Defiant was up blown by the Borg.

AI, useless tools.

Defiant also seems a ship best suited to combating Known Quantities.

As in, if you can properly identify the foe’s weak points/vital systems? It’s raw, brute firepower can be put to best use, just battering away at one section of shields, and hopefully down to whatever passes for a squishy bit.

Remember that in pretty much every scrap we see, ships are taking some kind of damage even when shields are at full capacity. So by just focussing all resulting structural stress, maybe no ship in Star Trek need collapse the shields to cause serious damage. If so, the Defiant is well equipped to achieve just that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, if you want a Mary Sue ship?

Voyager’s right there man, right there. Not only the self repair miracle. But just happens to be more advanced than pretty much anything found in a quadrant.

And it’s systems somehow resisted just beaming Neelix out into space.

Forget structural - the greatest risk to ships in ST esp Starfleet is - explosive capacitors stored behind every control console.

Every time they take a hit at least one control panel will burst its capacitor and kill the crewmember nearest (or maim if its a key character).
When you consider how many get thrown across the room its surprising neck braces and hardhats are not mandated parts of the uniform.

Also it always amused me a bit that there were two bits of impossible to destroy tech. The assembly for the window-shield generators and the anti-gravity. Forget shields over the whole ship; just make the ship "out of window" and use those shields - the ships would be nigh unbeatable

Are the windows shields/forcefields? If so, never realised that!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Are the windows shields/forcefields? If so, never realised that!

Off the top of my head, I think the only time it's ever mentioned is in First Contact, when Picard is showing Lily around the ship. "There's no glass!"

 Overread wrote:

Also it always amused me a bit that there were two bits of impossible to destroy tech. The assembly for the window-shield generators and the anti-gravity. Forget shields over the whole ship; just make the ship "out of window" and use those shields - the ships would be nigh unbeatable

This is a common problem with coming up with cool tech ideas and not thinking through their implications. By far the worst offender is the JJ movies' interstellar transporter, which completely eliminates the point of even having starships at all.

Voyager suggests that Starfleet would be better off just crewing their ships with holograms instead of actual people. Although not having life support power to reroute to other systems in an emergency might cause issues...

Ahhh! You’re right, I remember that line now you mention it.

On Holo-emitters?

Install them, enmasse, in your ship’s corridors. Been boarded? Use them to create and remove cover for the defenders. Instant bulkhead when needed, unimpeded corridors when at peace.

Heck, depending on power supply? Have all the internal walls hard light holograms. Good luck boarding that ship, where the crew can freely remove and add walls and doors to best stymie and flummox you.

Taken to a serious logical extreme, and taking extreme liberties with the power requirements? Just build a skeletal ship structure, use hardlight holograms for internal and external walls.

Been boarded? Whoopsadoodle! What git totally accidentally shut off that section! Hope you can breather in a vacuum! Bon Voya-Gee!

Need to expand lab space? Blink of an eye, mate, and no heavy lifting.

Yup, the ship being a single chamber containing a holodeck seems like a no-brainer, really.

I mean, it's going to go horribly wrong and kill everybody at some point, but also be nigh-on indestructible and never lose power, so there's that.


Heck, don't even worry about the ship structure... just use portable emitters.

You could even have real fun with it.

Programme the walls to simulate damage - but not actually be damaged.

Imagine the look on their face when having spent time with a cutting torch, the projection just….restores itself.

Have floor sections removed, dropping them into a pre-prepared kill zone. Or into newly projected spikes.

There’s all sorts you could achieve with rapid processing and projection being allowed for.

But on a less silly note? Now I’ve thought about it, I’m not entirely sure the windows are invincible. We hear damage reports coming in from different decks, which don’t necessarily correlate to exterior shots.

Now, obvious answer is budgetary constraints on just how many damaged versions of the ship you can keep in stock.

But perhaps the in-universe answer is “the damage is as much loss of power to those force field projectors as physical holes knocked in your hull? Either one is likely to be lethal to the crew. Think what happened to poor old Auric Goldfinger aboard his private jet.

Oh the windows are definitely not invincible, but as we've also seen from time to time, when the windows are blown out they're replaced with a force field.

Those forcefields? I wonder if the emitters might be mounted on the hull, and able to slide about to wherever they’re needed.

I don’t know if we’ve anything concrete to support that, but it doesn’t seem entirely implausible.

 insaniak wrote:

This is a common problem with coming up with cool tech ideas and not thinking through their implications. By far the worst offender is the JJ movies' interstellar transporter, which completely eliminates the point of even having starships at all.

Voyager suggests that Starfleet would be better off just crewing their ships with holograms instead of actual people. Although not having life support power to reroute to other systems in an emergency might cause issues...

Voyager at least feels like its a steady march of technology. Very much in the same way as we saw the idea of the Federation creating more Data type androids in Picard. Ergo that the idea of a fully artificial life ran ship is something that is just on the cusp of being a reality in the Federation and that if they followed the timeline after Picard and such by 100 years or so we could even see that as one possible future for the Federation and find out how they deal with it. Which would be a reflection of how we in the real world are fast having to face the possibility of AI - even though its vastly more primitive.

 insaniak wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Are the windows shields/forcefields? If so, never realised that!

Off the top of my head, I think the only time it's ever mentioned is in First Contact, when Picard is showing Lily around the ship. "There's no glass!"

Of course there's no glass, it's all transparent aluminium.

A couple of things to comment on.

The USS Prometheus had holoemitters everywhere, so the EMH could render assistance to all sections of the ship.


The Holographic Ship from Insurrection was essentially a giant flying Holodeck... perfect for duping a local population into believing they'd never left home.

I forgotten about the episode preview we’d seen forever ago, so the start of this episode Really confused me. Was just like, I Swear I’ve seen this one. These exact jokes and set up. I’ve selected the correct episode, right? Googling the episode number gives a brief dated for one day ago. Why is this Deja vu so strong?!

I’m just gonna blame Q.

Feels like a Q thing.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Those forcefields? I wonder if the emitters might be mounted on the hull, and able to slide about to wherever they’re needed.

I don’t know if we’ve anything concrete to support that, but it doesn’t seem entirely implausible.

During the episode where the two ensigns are caught playing Enterprise Bingo, La'an and Number One walk on the hull to sign The Scorch wearing no protective gear and utilizing the hull's force field as the only protective measure, and La'an is quite uncomfortable about it.

The Vulcan episode was cute, thumbs up.

It hit a bit home for me since this is TOTALLY how I think folks in Latin America and the Caribbean see (North) America, and totally how Yanks see the Japanese.

A good classic sci fi trope this week. Probably extends outside sci fi as well but the first examples I think of are sci fi.

Minor quibble with the landing party at the end, but overall pretty good.

I’ve not finished watching it yet, but it’s Trek does Enemy Mine. And in just one episode? Ortegas gets more character development than Literally Everyone That Wasn’t Burnham got across all of Discovery.

That Is the exact example of the trope that first comes to mind.

Really enjoyable episode overall. And goes to show, just because someone else told that story before you, if you do it well? That’s all that matters.

Happy Star Trek Day everyone!

Yep after 5 minutes I was wondering if they were doing Enemy Mine or Lost in Space (90s movie where Will Robinson learns the villain is his older self thanks to timey wimey stuff).

It was Enemy Mine.

And it was good.

Next week is final episode right? 10 per season.

Despite once again having the odd comedy episode where I felt the joke was over stretched? This still remains the best of the Trek return series.

And as I’ve said before? I do wish it was the old 22 episodes to a season format. Sure you’d risk guff (even DS9 had guff. No. Not the aptly named Magnificent Ferengi. That episode is superb) creeping in. But it would allow for a greater variety.

Though, props to the cast and crew for giving us interesting characters all the same.