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 Overread wrote:
You could even argue that the Federation is highly reckless in sending their best and brightest off to the farthest edges of known space and risking their lives every day in exploration on a science vessel with some guns.

Meanwhile other factions send military ships, ensure that the region is protected and safe and then bring in their scientists.


Do science in the Federation and who knows what might happen to you!
Do science for the Romulans and you are kept safe! You don't see Romulans having to battle wits with a god-child every other month

you could argue that but you'd be wrong, yet againw e see D'deridex's specificly used in research missions. Having dedicated science ships seperate from military ships is a modern LUXERY.

 Overread wrote:
You could even argue that the Federation is highly reckless in sending their best and brightest off to the farthest edges of known space and risking their lives every day in exploration on a science vessel with some guns.

Honestly, who dreams of exploring space from behind a drone's camera?

People have mentioned this before when criticizing a setting fundamentally defined in the 70s and 80s before drones were a serious thing, but I don't see it as meaningful.

If people are going to explore, they want to actually go there. No one brags about seeing Singapore during a layover where they didn't even step off the plane, and the weirdos who do are weirdos. It's completely unsurprising Starfleet isn't filled with heavily automated drone ships. Who the hell wants that except some armchair theorist who sits around all day and never lives a single day of actual life and just comments on the Internet 24/7? It's a sort of internet hot take fresh from the Internet. If I had the chance to hop on a Starfleet ship and go explore some fething quasars, that's what I'm gonna do.

Except I suck at math so you know, they'd probably fire me XD

What about the Fereng? They are basically using armed cargo ships, mostly privately owned, and yet their most common large ship is stated to be the tactical equivalent of a Galaxy class.

Weapons are good business.

Also, what's the point of having all that material wealth if you can't spend on things to keep that material wealth safe.

If anything they'd be insanely scary if they ever turned their focus onto actual war. Considering that many wars are won and lost based on the ability to afford; they could just financially outlast most opponents.

Also lets not forget that their first encounter showed that they do have capable warriors (though they were more using whips back then than lots of advanced weapons).

With their trade systems as well they likely do have the capacity to land their hands on a lot of private and hidden tech that other races have.


If they were to pool resources over many years they could build some very fearsome warships. The main barrier is the fact that they culturally are not setup for going into largescale warfare. So they could have all the toys and no idea. Or the other risk is that they'd rely heavily on mercenaries and whilst that could allow them to make a very powerful opening gambit in war; they'd burn out quickly as even their coffers would dwindle and the various mercenary forces might not work together in the long term.

Great for fast raids but not a prolonged war.


They also seem to have escaped the Dominion War possibly the best of most races as they didn't really engage with it and likely skimmed profits off everyone. Plus the potential social changes that they were going through at the end could potentially mean a doubling of their profit-earning potential! All those women suddenly able to earn profit would likely seek it off-world where there would be less established stigma against them initially.

Just gonna think of the Star Trek Ascendancy board game when I played as Ferenghi and won. Ended up neighbors with the Klingon player and established early trade relations with him. Kept feeding him money he used to wage war on the other players while I hid in his territory and spent my way to victory. Only got into one real fight to repel a large enemy fleet that had blown thru the Klingon’s main defensive system and free the planets for the Klingon’s to retake.

I do love how DS9 took what was basically an "alien of the week" faction*; started them off as the comic relief and along the way built a deeper understanding to the point where you could still have them doing comical stuff now and then; but realise that behind it all they were a very serious race and very capable. Not to mention then presenting them going through huge social changes.


*a little mean as I think they appeared at least three or four times in TNG

They were the species Homer designed (oh god the awful acting in their debut), clawed back a bit of credibility (the remote torture of Picard), and finally made good, becoming one of the most interesting species.

I just miss the laser whips.

 Gert wrote:


The Romulans on the other hand were very much on par with the Federation in terms of power. Their Warbirds were strong and had the benefit of cloaking technology which the Romulans pioneered before any other race. Even with their losses in the Dominion War, it took the destruction of Romulus itself to take them down from their position as a major power.

IMHO, the Romulans tend to seem to always shoot their own foot. . . They are usually depicted as highly suspicious, especially of themselves, and so by "necessity" they need to keep a tight reign on basically everything. One could probably argue that, as the usual joke of everyone stealing their cloaking tech, they are so focused on their own paranoia and internal back stabbing, that they let slip too much tactical advantage, and that could include even up to ship design with the massive D'deridex and how it's generally depicted as far less maneuverable than even the "slow" Galaxy class.

Manuverability isn't super nessscary with cloak, if I was going to design a romulan warship my main focus would be excessive firepower in a single arc, with the idea of being to decloak and win the battle in one Volly

Which is the opposite theory compared to the Bird of Prey by the Klingons; which is well armed and very manoeuvrable and able to threaten ships of a far larger class than itself.

The big risk with cloaking as ST does it is that you have to have your shields down whilst cloaked. So there's always a moment of vulnerability as you decloak.

One massive assault as you decloak is a valid approach, but it also means it might only work against a single target. Even then if you miss critical systems; underestimate the power of your opponent or such - you've just blown your cover and your gamble.


In contrast less weaponry, but the ability to dive, swoop and make multiple attacks and switch your cloak on and off fairly quickly. That leaves your opponent far more vulnerable.

Almost like having different factions with different cultural inflections, tactics, and design choices makes for an interesting story.

The Romulans make their big powerful ships because they believe they're truly the superior race. This proves true when the D'deridex is a match for the top ships Starfleet can build and the Romulans outproduce those top Starfleet ships ten-to-one. The preferred tactic of Romulan captains won't always work but that's true for any captain of any starship. The fact remains that in terms of threat, a D'deridex is a bigger problem than a Galaxy because you know there's only one Starfleet ship in front of you, but you can't be sure with the D'deridex.

Got to say one thing that confused me with the Picard series was why the Romulan's had no Warbirds! I've always considered them one of the best looking ships in ST

Because Picard is not a good show. It has some good moments but it was poorly written and played itself off for maximum nostalgia points at every opportunity without any substance. Shock value for no payoff.

It really Was a massive letdown.

Lower Decks was good again this week though.

Now that was an episode.

Finally some stuff on Tendi's background that's kind of just been out there with no explanation.

Also T'lyn the past two episodes has been great.fething love T'lyn XD

 Overread wrote:
Got to say one thing that confused me with the Picard series was why the Romulan's had no Warbirds! I've always considered them one of the best looking ships in ST

at that point the Warbird is at LEAST 40 years old and there's been a major war (that would have revealed design flaws) since, Romulus also was destroyed, these factors together make it easy eneugh to see why by this time the Romulan remnaints may have adopted a differant class of ship. partiuclarly as they seem to have gone with a handful of large command ships supplemented by smaller ships, it's possiable the massive d'deridrex and Valdore's are too hard to maintain

BrianDavion wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Got to say one thing that confused me with the Picard series was why the Romulan's had no Warbirds! I've always considered them one of the best looking ships in ST

at that point the Warbird is at LEAST 40 years old and there's been a major war (that would have revealed design flaws) since, Romulus also was destroyed, these factors together make it easy eneugh to see why by this time the Romulan remnaints may have adopted a differant class of ship. partiuclarly as they seem to have gone with a handful of large command ships supplemented by smaller ships, it's possiable the massive d'deridrex and Valdore's are too hard to maintain

I can see them being hard to maintain, esp if we assume that they lost most of their primary shipyards when their homeworld was destroyed. At the same time if your faction is bad off enough that you've refugee problems over a decade later then I'd almost assume that they wouldn't have the resources to build an entirely new fleet and would be stuck with older ships pressed into service beyond their normal lifespan. Also don't forget the only reason the Enterprise D was decommissioned was because it was crash landed on a planet. Ships of that size would likely be kept in service and re-fitted over being simply replaced.

Ya, I think Star Fleet's most successful ship class is the Excelsior. It was being made for over a century. So even Starfleet has old designs that stick around. Sometimes the engineers just nail it with a design and it sticks around forever.

Also look how long the Bird of Prey has been in service.

Depends on the variant because "Bird of Prey" is a catch-all for about 8 different Klingon and Romulan ships each.

 Gert wrote:
Depends on the variant because "Bird of Prey" is a catch-all for about 8 different Klingon and Romulan ships each.

K't'inga-class, one would expect? They were in service for about 140 years.

 Albertorius wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Depends on the variant because "Bird of Prey" is a catch-all for about 8 different Klingon and Romulan ships each.

K't'inga-class, one would expect? They were in service for about 140 years.

The K''t'inga-class was seen in TMP and was an upgrade of the D7 seen in TOS and is not usually listed as a 'Bird-of-Prey'. Those are usually the K'vort and B'rel-classes that used the model seen in The Search for Spock. The Memory Beta Wiki has a list of what they believe qualifies as a 'Bird-of-Prey'.

There are still D7s seeing combat in the Dominion War.

While there are a few good jokes overall the new episode of Lower Decks was not very good, and probably the worst of the series so far.

I dunno, I like a good T’Lyn focused plot. I thought it had some good moments and overall enjoyed it. Early guess that the mystery enemy is Peanut Hamper’s return, or possibly Badgey. One of the two.

P.S. There’s a pretty good Shax focused one shot comic out this week.

I like T'lyn as well but the overall just didn't gel for me, especially having Vulkans suddenly being so psychically powerful that there sub-conscience can override almost an entire ship and practiced telepaths.

To be clear I still enjoyed it but it was one of their weaker episodes.