Is The USS Defiant Overrated?? Analysis of Starfleet’s Warship!!
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
- In-depth CG animated analysis of the ship assigned to Deep Space Nine under Captain Benjamin Sisko. People LOVE the Defiant, but is she everything we had hoped for?
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Basically the Federation's version of a Bird of Prey. More survivability but meant for mass production and combat in numbers.
I dunno there were alot of B'rels in the dominion war.
@@sheilaolfieway1885 B'rels have been mass produced by the KDF for nearly a century already.
@@ErokCherokee Oh i must have misread that i thought you were sayin B'rel's weren' mass produced, though they seem to have alot of vor'cha's as well... I'd like to see their production numbers by ship class. Vo'quv carrier anyone?
I always figured the Defiant was like the Excelsior: built too early, and without the proper technology of the age. While the prototype was not exactly perfect, it was okay, but then it got the new technology of the next era, and it was suddenly excellent. Hence why the Defiant was able to run circles around other ships once O’Brian and Worf got to tinker with it, and why the Excelsior is still a mainline ship during early TNG.
Schneeflocke Monsoon
Good observation.🤔
Wow my canon now. 💯
As Sisko said, the Defiant was supposed to be the prototype for a new Federation battlefleet. Its primary purpose was to fight the Borg. The Federation's biggest failing was its inability to think long-term. Oh, they take out one Borg Cube moments before it reached Earth and mostly by pure luck - let's cancel our entire defensive strategy.
They're like those morons I deal with as an IT consultant. What's the chance of us suffering a total systems failure? We don't need a backup. Systems failure occurs. Client goes into meltdown. You manage to save their ass against the odds. Panic over. Now, let's get that backup sorted, so we don't suffer this shit again. Oh, what are the odds if it happening a second time? Let's just not bother wasting the time and money, I'm sure we'll be fine.
AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!! FUCKING MORONS!
Starfleet should have gone on to build an attack group of 50+ of these things post-wolf 359. Then, when the Dominion went and capture Sisko on his camping trip, they'd have had a fuckton of dedicated warships to send in and give the Dominion a phaser enema for their troubles. Would have ended the Dominion War before it began.
Starfleet's biggest problem is that they think military is a dirty word. But that's just as bad as going full-on military dictatorship. You need a realistic balance. A strong military helps to save lives, even if you need to keep a strong check on warmongering leaders. That's the price you pay.
The Defiant-class would be a fantastic deterrent to military aggressors, not only due to its capability, but what it demonstrates about the capability of Federation engineering. It says, "fuck with us and this is what we'll build in order to stop you." That's its job. Its down to the diplomatic branch to say "we'd rather you didn't fuck with us, we'd much rather we found a way to get on peacefully."
Defiant-class ships don't need to be constantly manned, as DS9 proved. They just need to be docked at a base with a crew ready to jump onto them and blast off to a conflict quickly. No-one expect them to be crewed like a traditional Federation ship with people living on them for months, let alone years. That's not their job. They're fast enough to deploy rapidly to a danger zone, so you only need to have groups of them docked at ports in potentially dangerous regions and plans to deploy them at a moment's notice.
Don't think of them like regular starships and more like fast shuttles with big fucking guns.
The bloodied but not bowed attitude prevails, particularly in the fictitious Federation.
Helbore
The Federation is a democracy, that means Starfleet must justify the resources it consumes to the citizens. With regular ships, this is easy, because most Starfleet ships have several civilian uses. This makes those ships less combat efficient, but enables a bigger fleet. Since a Defiant can not do anything else but blow stuff up, it is hard to justify.
PHASER ENEMA
Helbore You should look a little deeper into the lower buddy, they didn’t abandon anything other than the defiant itself which was untenable. They did in fact continue to develop a whole week worth of data ready starships mostly designed around fighting the Borg.
Isn't the Federation a post-scarcity society, though? But even if they did have to justify it, surely they must have done so in order to greenlight the project in the first place? Sisko didn't say the Defiant was built to demonstrate the potential of the design, he said it was built to be the first in a new Federation battle fleet. Which suggests authorisation was already given.
Then there's the general stupidity of how it all plays out. So the Enterprise encounters the Borg way outside of Federation space and manages to escape. They then postulate that the Borg might decide to follow them, but don't actually know that for a fact. Based on this information alone, Starfleet goes batshit crazy designing new weapons and preparing to not only introduce a dedicated warship, but build a fleet of them. Somehow they got approval for all of that based on a single incident and a vague threat that they might possibly have to deal with it in the future and don't actually know that the current fleet couldn't stop the Borg.
Then the Borg actually show up in a single ship. They arrive far earlier than expected, catching Starfleet off guard. They have no new ships or weapons to assist. The Borg proceed to destroy a colony, smack the Enterprise about a bit, capture Picard, show off what they plan to do to every last one of us, destroy 40 starships, blast through Earth's defences and make it to near-orbit before getting stopped by a last-minute freak opportunity that would never likely be open to them again in the future.
What do they do now, with all this overwhelming evidence of Borg aggression and blanket superiority? Why, they cancel all their new weapon programs and fleet plans, of course!
They make and authorise these plans on generally flaky evidence of a potential threat and cancel them on overwhelming evidence of a very real threat - a threat so immense that if it was successful, you couldn't undo the effects like in any regular invasion.
Seriously, who was making these decisions?
I always saw the Defiant class as a short range type ship. Months at best instead of years.
You will have several at key instellants like DS9, that will patrol the immendant area. This is not a ship you send to partol the Neutral zone, no this is the guard dog of the Federation with a hit of raiding.
The writers rarely gave the ship limitations, when they did, they came up with ways to overcome them if the story suited it.
Submarine crews regularly spend 6 months with less space afforded on the Defiant most crew have a private cabin where as only the captain on a sub get a private cabin.
The only thing preventing Sub from staying under longer is they can only carry six months of food.
@@miles2378 that maybe true but even those deployments as studies show are getting physically taxing on crews even in the surface fleets that is why SECDEF created shorter deployment rotations for ships because crews are getting worn out from long drawn out deployment cycles.
You could argue that the monitoring posts along the neutral zone could be outfitted with the amenities lacking on the Defiant class. With enough of these ship you could schedule monthly rotations of patrol giving the crew ample time to unwind from there last deployment whilst keeping them on hand for emergencies.
I always kind of viewed the Defiant class as an overgrown shuttle on steroids. It's guns, armor, engines, and not much else.
During "Sounds of Her Voice," the weapons power was routed to structural integrity, not warp drive. Miles speculates the Defiant could go even faster, but it would tear itself up in the process.
Actually, I think we see what the future of this ship ends up being in Voyager. In Message in A Bottle and Endgame there are Defiant class ships running patrol duties. This is the perfect ship to use for planetary and starbase defense, and I can see these ships being posted at key locations specifically for this reason. Then there is also that escort roll. No one would say the crew would love it, but for short term tactical missions close to a main base it would be perfect.
I had the same thoughts, except if they are guarding/ patrolling such large facilities they might consider just keeping the main officers and rotating out the majority of the crew every month to give them some relief
In Message in A Bottle the Defiant class ships were escorting a Akira clas starship. I can imagen that the crews of the Defiant`s live on the Akira for most of the time and when it's time for action the crews are beamed to the ships.
I could see long range explorer ships getting a defiant escort, the crew could rotate out to the larger vessel which has more amenities
I strongly agree with your opinion.
"What are the weaknesses of the Defiant?"
Killing everyone before the rest of the fleet has a chance to get a shot.
well the only known weekness was fixed by obrien and ben sisco but basicly the warp eingin was too big for the ship its size and if they tried to go to maximum warp it would try to tear its self apart before it got there...thats the only known weekness i know
Defiant is a superb fighter and a maintainence nightmare. Much like the F22 Raptor and F-14. Absolutely deadly beasts but notorious hangar queens.
Tukamarue Tensi Apparently they got around it by reconfiguring they structural integrity field to specifically suit the Defiant. Unless I misremember Sisko talking to Smiley when they were building the/another Defiant in the mirror universe.
First of all size is it's main weakness. It can't go toe to toe with a ship like a Galor, Galaxy class or a War Bird as much as it's fan base thinks it can. Any one of them ships would make a hood ornament out of a Defiant. It's a VW powered with a V8 with a big gun but it is not in a class with a battleship by no means. It was made to work in a swam like a bug ship or a bird of pray but the Sisko that has a magic way of starting a war Starfleet can't win and getting tons of his own side killed thinks it can. If they want a Defiant to play guard dog for deep space 9 than they need five of them and no less. Another weakness it has is Sisko him self I call star treks Burnside and if you know the history of the American civil war you will understand why. Thank God for that Cardassion dress maker that pulled Starfleet and the Klingon's fat out of the fire and got the Romulons on their side. If I had anything to say about it Sisko would be in charge of cleaning toilets so if he gets in deep shit again nobody get hurt.
It really seems like most people don't understand this ship.
The whole point of the class was to create a ship that used as little physical resources as possible and could be made in other federation systems,in case earth/mars etc...fell,that didn't have huge dedicated ship yards all while being as heavy armed as possible.
That's it.
Think of it as the federations version of a klingon bird of prey.
Still a good video.
I don't think they would use little physical resources, as they seam to be armed and armored with quite the latest SF tech has to offer. Those torpedoes alone must be worth a fortune. However i do agree it's probably made to be light on crew, space dock spa....well....room volume, and general production resources (duranium/tritanium). They are also probably made to operate in groups, just like the birds of prey.
?
The ships are NOWHERE NEAR as big as a starship with comparable weapons loadout.
For example it would seem to have heavier weapons then a intrepid class yet is clearly much smaller and therefore needs much less material and smaller crews to man them.
True, but it seams to carry a lot of weapons that would require "strategic" resources. I.E. i don't think quantum torpedoes, pulse phasers and abaltive armor can be made boarly available, or else we would have seen then around more often. Each of those 4 pulse canons and whatever the total complement of torpedoes they have on board, must be worth a squadron of simpler ships alone (in relative supply/demand value of course). Think of rubber, oil and aluminum for some counties in WW2.
It's a purposely built warship unlike the other ships up to that time.
In other words the reason you don't see any of those things up to that point was due purely for political reasons because the federation isn't "war like".
We in the real world can and do make ablative armor and that's century's behind their tech base which no doubt is far more efficient then ours.
One of the reasons the other races use armor is because it is easier and less time consuming to make then developing more and more advanced generators to protect their ships HOWEVER they then suffer an energy penalty later on,via anti-matter/warp expenditures,to move more massive ships through space increasing their need to refuel.
Pulse weapons,based on lower tech enemies use of them,would actually seem to be the simpler energy weapons to make since they don't have to deal with an overheating issue like with the longer ranged continuous beam weapons so that also suggests they aren't difficult to produce.
While the quantum torpedoes were new they AREN'T exclusive to the defiant class rather they appear to be a mass produced weapon for most newer ships which would drop the price of production precipitously,though I ASSUME they are three to four times a photons cost simply due to the effect it has.
Just because the federation CHOSE,up to the defiant's build point,not to make warships DOESN'T mean they CAN'T and to do so as efficiently as anyone else.
This is all beta canon at best. Name the total number of quantum torpedoes fired on screen in late Dominion war by non Defiant ships, or in the Star Trek movies. Nothing indicates wide use or availability. I would expect that (yeah, probably not in peace time) at the end of the war we would see everything that could carry them, carry them. Yet we only see them in games (can't say about books or comics, as honestly i don't care about those). Same goes for other "inventions" we see first integrated in the Defiant. I don't care if we are warlike or not. When out Sherman started facing heavy German tanks in the WW2, we up armored them. We welded plates on them. We put reserve tracks on them. When out guns weren't enough to penetrate enemy armor, we built new and bigger ones. And started mounting those. The Brits put a 17 pounder on 1/4 of their Shermans. I have no idea ho many U.S. were equipped with the 76mm, but by the end of the war, it was the main variant produced (though still not the primary variant used due to sheer availability). And by 1945 we were soundly winning. The Alpha quadrant alliance wasn't that lucky. And yet they only armed and armored a handful of their ships with the latest tech? Why? Only few explanations that make sense:
1. This tech was rare because it was relatively expensive (either resource wise, on manufacturing process wise)
2. Implementation required some special adaptation by the intended user (we know Lakota was specifically refitted to use quantums)
3. The tech was rare because it was slow to manufacture and fit onto new platforms
4. The Feds are idiots and willing to lose a war that would likely lead to genocide level loss of life, because they want to "save face".
For its size, I'd want no other ship for war.
The U.S.S. Reliant in Wrath of Khan had phaser cannons and they were also pulse firing weapons, but they were much larger than the weapons on the Defiant.
Fun fact, the Reliant was the Defiant of its day.
Jake Baker It really was, those pulse phasers were called MEGAPHASERS! and the thing also had a full array of standard phasers like the Enterprise plus double the torpedo launchers.
Despite being a class below the Enterprise it was a newer design and way out classed the old girl in nearly every way. No wonder the Connie’s got mothballed relatively early! If the Miranda class and its variants are considered fodder a few decades later how poorly would the constitution class ships have held up?
Well, there was a wreck of a Constitution class at the Battle of Wolf 359. Then again, that was against the Borg.....
"Tough little ship!"
The Stage of JAG THE GEMINI Little???
😂👍
So tough two hits the warp core would blow its junk
"Little?"
The reason as to why the Defiant struggles with high warp factors is that, in requiring the warp coils to hug the ship's superstructure so tightly, the coil assemblies are not actually parallel to the center line of the ship. Imagine a boat having two sets of propellers with both turned inwards. Since the nacelles are so tightly integrated into the main hull structure, it's not normally an issue, but at extreme warp velocities, the engine geometry means that the warp coils would literally be trying to tear the ship in half.
Fun fact the designer of the defiant class (the person who drew it etc) originally planed for the warp necells to move outward slightly and raise when jumping to warp, but was scrapped but the idea was used when designing the intrepid class (the same person drew that)
In lore..... the “intercepter class” star ship..... was hailed as the successor to the defiant class, incorporating all the plus’s of the defiant, and taking lessons learned from the hugely successful intrepid class, more powerful pulse cannons, quantum torpedos, ablative armour, auto regenerative shields, enhanced sensors etc being only slightly larger than the defiant and a crew of 80 , addressed a lot of the problems too,
Slightly better sleeping arrangements, faster engines, bigger spaces, one holodeck, and able to take on light exploration and survey duties, but still being first and foremost a ship with teeth.
Christ i really am rambling
You mean Beta. This is not canon at all.
Jake Baker the way jj abrams and his bulshit have fucked Star Trek the beta is more dam stable lol
Naw man, you're not rambling. I enjoyed the description you gave.
And yep, screw the JJ verse and Star Trek: STD TOO!
Ah the Defiant or it's better name Sisko's Pimp Hand
@@weldonwin my apologies your right
*Worf's apartment
Let me quess, you watch lore reloaded.
@@commanderknight9314
Are you talking to me?
Robin Gilliver, I was talking to weldon and somberdoc.
Aaaand then Picard didn't really go with a new Defiant type ship at the end. shame
Picard tossed everything out from DS9 and Voyager except for 7 of 9. Which is one of the reason it sucked.
Defiant-class ships are perfect for space station and starbase defense, not to mention Martok's "cavalry charge" raiding missions. They're the perfect attack corvette.
As for the nonexistent use of pulse phasers in ST, STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN has a question for you.....
seekertwo1 Exactly. Mothballing these ships would be stupid. You could make them in limited numbers in every 6-8 months but they make excellent bodyguards and perimeter ships in any starbase or outpost. This frees up bigger ships to do more important tasks while finally decommission older ships which can not keep up with the advances of modern technology or are simply too expensive to retrofit. This means a complete retirement of all Miranda class ships and steady retirement of Excelsior, older Ambassador, and Cheyenne classes.
These classes can also work as interceptor ships alongside Streamrunner, Akira, and Intrepid classes for patrol and interdiction duties near Federation. All these ships operating as a battlegroup need is a starbase to operate from. Remember, this is a more militarized Starfleet. If the Federation and Starfleet wants to survive, they have to be more vigilant and be ready to fight anytime and any place.
Oh yeah...and Starfleet Intelligence would be giddy about owning a handful of Defiants. They're the perfect ship to have once they apply specific modifications so it can be a stealthier spyship.
In mine mind I always saw those type of phasers as the Federation trying to do what we do with lasers.
Short, smaller then a microsecond, pulses that allow the debris from the previous hit to move away for the next one.. In doing so increases the efficiency of the weapon, in real life at least.
In TMP the equipment wasn't fast enough to ensure the next pulse hit the same spot, see the slash on the Enterprise neck in Khan. But in TNG they got it fast enough that it only looks like a beam.
Sisko was on ship that still had those older pulse phasers for a time. After Wolf 359 he thought of using the slower pulsing mode to enable each pulse be a different frequency then the last to combat the Borg.
To get more power and simplified the wiring he used batteries to store power coming off the Warp Core to feed straight into the weapon in one big dump. Said batteries will have been many and set up in sets, so as one dischargs another charges or on ready to discharge.
Also kept the weapons and warpcore disconnect so damage on one will not effect the other like what happens with the so called Megaphasers.
there is a big difference between pulsing a standard phaser emitter and a pulse phaser cannon. The emitter is utterly different, and instead of a short beam, it's more of a teardrop shape that is emitted. The intent is that the pulse rapidly loses cohesion on impact, instead of a beam that, compared to a detonating pulse, imparts it's energy over a longer period of time, making it easier to dissipate.
@@jaymikevillanueva1212 Oh dear god, a fleet of Section 31 Defiant Customs......
2097Pyros Imagine that, too. Even the Tal Shiar would be wetting their collective pants knowing Sect. 31 has a fleet of it's own custom-made Defiant-class recon escorts with CLOAKING DEVICES.
If Starfleet were any wiser, escorts and special purpose ships like the Defiant-class can mean the difference between between life and death. The Borg incursions and the Dominion War were a set of brutal reality checks for Starfleet given they have relatively no experience in open warfare since the Earth-Romulan War. It had two options: victory or defeat. To achieve victory means they must be militarized and develop tools of war. Defeat means annihilation.
I always thought the Jem'Hedar fighters were created with the Defiant in mind. The writers wanted a ship that was clearly out matched by the Defiant and could be destroyed in large numbers without making the Defiant look unstoppable.
how come they didn't mass produce this ship? it would be a nightmare for any race to see 50 of these screaming towards them.
They did actually. There were two at the Prometheus incident on Voyager's Ship in a Bottle, plenty seen for Operation Return. I think seven unnamed ones were seen through DS9 and Voyager. They're out there.
you see 3(2 unnamed and the Defiant herself) in the fleet following the "2nd battle of DS9" , and you see 2 unnamed ones when the Borg sphere shows up at the end of Voyager
you also see the named Defiant(ofc), Valiant(destroyed), and Sao Paulo(renamed Defiant)
@@3Rayfire I think he means why are there only seemingly a hand full if Starfleet can fields thousands of ships
@@brooklyn560 my personal head cannon is that they had such a low rate of production is that the class was still teething out its problems from the prototype..that and it used a lot of new technologies and whatnot
@Amber Hoke it wouldn't take much to composite a shot using a bunch of shots of the same model
It would be fun for you to look at the Variable Fighters from SDF Macross. For example the VF-1.
I also enjoyed Robotech as a kid, but as an adult the gaps in it become obvious that Harmony Gold just americanized several nouns while editing together Super Dimensional Fortresses Macross, Super Dimensional Calvary Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada... watching the original subtitled versions and their sequels helped me get into anime! Super Dimensional Century Orguss was similar but excluded from Robotech while Megazone 23 was attempted as a movie before commissioning actual sequels to HG's mashup storyline. Despite the more child's cartoon intent, I was excited when I spotted Robotech The Shadow Chronicles movie on Sony Crackle recently. (Still not sure how these were brought up in the comments of a ST:DS9 video, so I'll stop rambling and post.)
2:30 I wouldnt say the Phaser Cannons are fixed but rather on a ball mount, or limited traverse mount.
A good analogy is the A-10, whose GAU-30 is mounted similarly with a slight movement independent of the aircraft, or casemate tank destroyers in WWII, that had their guns mounted directly in the hull with limited traverse instead of a turret, one of the advantages of which was that given a fixed chassis you can fit a larger gun into the hull than a turret. A Panzer III/StuG III is a good example, or a T-34 (or T-34/85) and a SU-85 (or SU-100).
An entirely fixed gun just usually isnt very practical because it requires the entire vehicle to be laid onto target very precisely which is often slower and less precise than relegating the fine tuning to a traversable gun mount.
Unless you are Sweden. Then you invent the strv 103 Main Battle Tank which has a completely fixed gun that is aimed by rotating the whole tank and using the hydraulic suspensions of the tank and only needs one crew member to function.
Military information
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I like you
Yeah, I know of that tank, but its fairly atypical in many respects. Its definitely a tank design I love to bits.
Pretty sure the GAU-8 is fixed to the aircraft (and can actually slow it down slightly when firing) due to it's tremendous recoil. Tank destroyers or the Swedish S tank seem pretty apt.
Either way, unlike the more ocmmon phaser emitters, it still limits the fireing are of the weapons meaning the nose of the ship has to point toward the target. Not really an issue on a high menuverable platform like the defiant.
Riker: "tough little ship!"
Worf: "little?"
I always wondered why the Defiant had phaser cannons. Maybe to offset Borg adapting by having ever pulse be a different frequency?
I assume turret or bank mounted phasers are designed for continuous fire while phaser cannons use all the stored up energy in a few bursts and then need to recharge.
Compare it to the three-nacelle version of the Galaxy class with its huge phaser cannon, which can take out other ships with just a few shots. It probably takes a while to recharge after that.
All right, time to give this channel another shot.
The bit about the pylons annoys me since those are rarely an issue, it's more likely that the nacelles were brought in so that the shield bubble could be smaller and thus more power could be packed into each square meter of surface area. Especially since a) the hull is the same thickness around the entire ship so making the pylon larger won't improve protection and b) the actual hull is the least important part of defense. Structural integrity fields (which the _Defiant_ had issues with and that's part of the reason why she almost flew herself apart) and shields are far more important by a few orders of magnitude.
The phaser cannons appear to at least be gimbaled and not completely fixed forward. But that still means that the they are limited to a comparatively narrow forward arc.
Romulan ships under cloak also have to travel at slower warp speeds. Usually around Warp 6 to stay hidden otherwise the cloak can't hide everything.
Pulse phasers have existed for quite some time, TOS had them. They were just a setting for standard phasers instead of cannons. Plus if you want to go with creator intentions, the _Miranda_ class from Wrath of Khan was going to have "MegaPhasers" which are those protrusions on the roller that you see firing. It was just never explicitly stated in the movie
Heat signature? That's not a factor in a Trek fight given the cast array of targeting sensors.
>DS9 technical manual.
That thing is noncanon and horribly inaccurate. But you dido recognized that fact and cited DS9 *Sound of Her Voice*'s speed of Warp 9.5
Weaknesses make sense (I've cited them myself in debate too), sans expense. But if by expense you mean crew and construction time I can see that.
Also the Sabre isn't a warship.
Also the ablative armor only worked well when the SIF was operational. Without it like during *For the Uniform* a Maquis raider could do serious damage.
Video better than I expected. Might have to check the other stuff on this channel.
The Defiant is probably the best covert operations ship I have ever seen in a series. Not to mention the Romulans had a similar sister ship.
What is the Romulan sistership?
I remember the Romulans having a same ship , but see that is why the federation let the Romulans have it the Defiant wasn't supposed to be a good ship so Romulans gave a mothballed cloaking device and the Federation gave the defiant class . It had weird internal differences like being able to see through the inner parts of the ship. The walls where hard but reminded me of a chain link fence. Imagine looking through the deck plates holes seeing the second floor. The Romulans version was totally different internally. I'll respond with something later I'm trying to find the source.
@@antwan1357 In DS9 the only thing that was mentioned about the deal for the cloaking device was that a Romulan had to be onboard the ship and the ship was not to use it's cloaking device in the Alpha and Beta quandrants. My opinion is that the Romulans would have jumped at this deal alone because it would let them place an operative onboard a top secret Federation starship prototype with easy access to Starfleet information. Remember at the time the Romulans and Federation were still in a Cold War stance. The Romulans also didn't yet know that the Dominion would be a serious threat.
You know what I bet? I bet that during the entire series a Romulan Tal Shiar operative was aboard the Defiant during its entire series except during any time it was stolen , because then he would have made an appearance. It is the only way that written contract can make any sense. This is not unheard of in Romulan vessels either , this is the actual norm. The Tal Shiar literally stays put the operative would still get shore leave like everyone else , and Sisco would know who he or she was. Most likely an engineer made to look human.
There's a couple points I might dispute here.
Even though the amenities are spartan, we do see the Defiant class carry out a wide range of missions, including some of extended duration.
I'm also not not convinced these ships would be more resource intensive to build and maintain than the huge capital ships we often see Starfleet using. TBH this is probably one of the more practical in universe designs.
Incorrect. The first use of cannon fireball style phaser fire was U.S.S. Enterprise. See episode "Balance of Terror".
"In the TNG era" is what I said. ;)
...Pretty sure that was a straight-up plasma launcher. It also dissipated heavily over long distances. Given the Romulan cloaking device allowing it to get to those knife-fighting ranges (for interstellar starships, anyway), it was a weakness worth making do with.
If anything, the Defiant is not just the ironing out of Federation military tactics, but the ironing out of Romulan tech. Mix in phaser improvements to make them work more like Romulan plasma launchers, add in the cloak, and boom, you have yourself a nice forward armor buster.
Resurrected Starships 2:35 Not exactly...but I guess that is what you meant. lol :-D
Those were more like depth-charges. (For tolerably obvious reasons, given the source material.)
@@epiendless1128
We also see the Enterprise firing phaser bolts in _The Wrath of Khan._
Regarding the Defiant weaknesses that's why in a non-Canon game the Federation built a mobile shipyard capable of carrying, repairing and even building Defiants, while also providing all the comforts of a normal Federation starship.
Any one ever thought of making the Defiant a support ship for the bigger more self sufficient ships? Perhaps have two of three accompany a larger vessel who could maintain them on long missions?
You forgot that in star trek 2 the wrath of khan, the ships fired phader bolts too.
I see the Defiant as part of a battle group. Assuming 3 shift rotations you can have one shift on duty, one shift asleep aboard, and one shift enjoying downtime on a larger accompanying vessel. Just beam the third shift directly to their quarters on their allocated Defiant on yellow alert. And if you’re surprised or lose your capital ships, two shifts can manage briefly in getting a surviving Defiant back to base.
Nobody ever says it; but, I get the impression that the Defiant was designed to be able to get in between a Borg ship and its own electromagnetic field (like Data and Worf did with a shuttlecraft when they rescued Picard from the Borg in 'The Best of Both Worlds', part 2), so that the Borg's "adapting" to weapons would no longer be a factor.
You know I really loved the defiant when it first appeared on DS9, mostly I guess because it was so different compared to anything we'd seen before it and it was just awesome at fighting, but my fascination with it has wore off these days I look at it now and I just noticed its flaws not it's strengths, it's actually pretty low on my list of federation ships that I really like I guess you could say I outgrew it cuz I really liked it as a kid but as an adult it doesn't seem practical at all well only practical in a few scenarios at best...
Had it's weaknesses, sure, but when you consider that most of it's shortcomings were actually from being OVER powered for it's frame, and when you also consider that it was starfleet's first ever attempt at a purpose-built dedicated warship they did pretty good all things considered.
I dont understand this unconventional warp nacelle.. If you look at all of the federation shuttles and or Klingon and or ferengi ship design, there warp nacelles are close to the primary hull. Also the Delta flyer. Just saying there are lots of star trek universe ships that have nacelles very close to the primary hull.
The explanation is the pylons create a more efficient warp bubble. If memory serves, Starfleet ships have generally been faster than their rivals. The Defiant is fast, but it requires more power to achieve those speeds than Voyager does.
@@rocketguardian2001 I dont know where you get that. Take the Borg ships for example, there are no nacelles visible and there faster than Starfleet. In fact Starfleet ships were slower than Vulcan ships until the Federation when they have access to there allies tech. Anyways pylons have nothing to do with speed, I think it had more to do with radiation. The NX 01 did not have energy shields in the beginning. So instead you put the radiation producers father from the crew. Also I have heard that the creator Gene or someone had a rule about nacelles having to be line of sight from each other. Which also makes no sense, due to so many ships not following that guideline. Just saying that your explanation doesn't work, except maybe the pylons are for warp field strength and stability. But those pylons are a very big weakness and it would probably only take one photon torpedo hit.
@@Xarimus The borg are a very strange example given the massive technological disparity and intentional incomprehensibility of their designs. (until voyager took some of the mystery out, borg ships had NO identifiable systems or components whatsoever.)
Vulcan ships have warp rings that are also removed from the main body, so that isn't really relevant.
Pretty much every major race builds ships with nacelles far removed from the main body of the ship on either pylons, or at the end of wings.
The exceptions are the klingon bird of prey, and cardassian ships.
Also the various 'ship of the week' alien designs, which more often than not obeyed no real design rules whatsoever.
Dominion ships also obey the 'nacelle at the end of wing' type design, even though these ships are largely staffed by jem'hadar who are considered disposable, thus any safety concerns would not be a high priority.
The warp pylon stuff being both safety and efficiency related is mentioned in the TNG technical manual.
And while that's not canon in any sense, it was written by the show's technical advisor and is in essence a cleaned up version of the guidelines given to writers in trying to keep technical details consistent.
Placement of nacelles in relation to the ship (As well as the shape of the ship's hull) affects warp engine efficiency.
However, safety is also a reason. Like being able to jettison a nacelle easily if needed...
Notice Voyager's folding nacelle design, which is redundant if nacelle position had no effect on performance.
Wow, this was really cool. I love the Defiant Development patch in the upper left corner. I can actually envision construction crews wearing 'patches' on their vacc suits and duty uniforms if they were assigned to the project. This was a good analysis with a couple of points I wasn't aware of or had forgotten over the years. There were also a few points I interpreted differently. I think the problems with it being overpowered were not simply because of exaggerated thrust to weight ratios, but also the formation of the warp bubble. That's why so many starfleet ships had dispersed frame structures. Defiants's hull type was more difficult to maintain a stable warp bubble with. The engines were modular and actually had 2 layers of dedicated armor between the engines themselves and the crew compartment. They were also more easily pulled and replaced for both maintenance and major repairs. The 'pulse' type phasers weren't really spinal mounted. Those are single, large scale weapons where a considerable portion of a ships mass are devoted to 1 strategic weapons of oversized proportions. I consider those, and the main torpedoes, to be bay mounts, very different from the emitter arrays we see on the larger cruisers. That would more readily explain the more restricted firing arcs. I had forgotten that she had emitter hardpoints on the dorsal, ventral and aft quarters. The torpedoes in the aft I also think were the micro style used on runabouts and smaller craft...I think lol. Any way, without sounding too crazed, those are the points where I might differ on the concepts and executions. I really enjoy your posts so I subbed. Thanks again!
The Defiant always felt like the federation trying to ape Klingon design, but still with some Federation quirks and methodologies. I do like the thing. Thanks very much for the amazing video!
bit of non-canon lore from the books - Klingon engineer was a lead designer for the pulse phaser cannons
I'm pretty sure that they were designed to be deployed in squadrons. Fast, maneuverable, and provide overlapping firepower. They were also designed to stick close to a home port and protect that port.
Few things...
Even romulan warbird must travel slower when cloaked. The high powered warp field can be dectected through the cloak.
The pulse cannons are also gimballed and arent restricted to center line firing.
Also while not designed to do so, the defiant was sent on recon, science, and even personel rescue missions...
Do you even Sisko?
you neglected to mention that not only can nobody agree on how many decks the defiant has, most people think you enter and exit the ship through the shield emitter housing. when the defiant first docks at ds9 the shield emitter housing is shown inverting before it mates with the airlock.
Just discovered this channel and it’s pretty cool to learn about a ship when paired with a CG model. Looking forward to watching more of your content!
the defiant is the first true warship from starfleet.for its size its extreme overpowered.but bigger warships like akira class can be much powerfull.for a ship like prometheus class.they need a akira class an 2 defiant class ships to take the prometheus back from romulans.
Keep in mind though that the Prometheus is two generations newer than the Defiant and incorporates all of its lessons.
I've read in other sources that the a Defiant had a much smaller heat signature than other ships it's size and class as the radiation and heat generated between the nacelles could actually be held in the ships superstructure for a time to hide it. Also, when vented, it could be done in such a way as to be able to be aimed away from an enemy, in a one-on-one situation.
Perhaps the warp systems on the Defiant class simply produce much less radiation due to a radical paradigm shift in technology. It kind of seemed like most of its weaknesses were introduced in order to inject some tension into the storyline . Crom a practical perspective, it should actually be the sturdiest ship in Starfleet as it's the closest thing to one solid piece. I think most of its flaws can just be chalked up to isolated instances of bad writing.
You don't answer your own question, but the CGI was nicely done. I also liked your analysis at the end of its weakness being lack of versatility.
These videos are like engineering crack
I wish they were longer and went into more detail about the specific capabilities, damage potential and use cases for different weapons systems and other components of the ships
Thanks for the content
The Defiant destroyed numerous Jem'Hadar fighters and Birds of Prey, went toe to toe favorably with an enhanced Excelsior-type ship, held off a Vorcha-class cruiser, reduced a Negh-Var battlecruiser to shambles (Mirror Universe), faced off against a Borg cube, and led a number of offensives in the Dominion War before finally being destroyed. Nah. I don't think it's overrated. It's only other defeat was software-based sabotage.
Plus a reckless attack from the Red Squad USS Valiant, they thought they were invincible and commited to an attack on a Jem'Hadar battleship thinking they'd win.
@@quoniam426 to be fair they were elite cadets and elite combat veterans the defiant had
As a trekkie, I'd agree that the Defiant is over rated... but for completely different reasons! The real life production crew responsible for bringing it to television was rushed by both budget and schedule, not doing as good of a job on it as they could have. The script writers and visual effects artists then contradicted each other on which draft of the design became final, eventually being somewhat resolved by the original being destroyed and it's sister ship renamed to take its place. Although, from a lore perspective, the tough little ship served its role as a rare Federation warship that only needs to be crewed while more versatile starships are preoccupied elsewhere or would face excessive risk.
The stress issue at high warp is likely because of the nacelles location. Lacking the clear Los between the nacelles, is the issue, when making a powerful warp field, quite possibly warping the hull itself in trials. Thus needing to diverte all power to the structural integrity fields to go as fast as they did in that one episode.
I think as long as I had a bunk and three square meals, I wouldn't complain.
Then you'd enjoy prison.
@@john091077 I meant that I wouldn't be complaining about the accommodations. Sailors on nuclear subs serve in similar circumstances. Warships are not cruise ships.
Yeah I know. I was joking.
Even out if war the Federation still needs small escorts to maintain it's boarders, as well as back up bigger ships when needed.
While The Defiant class may be focused towards being a warship it still has the ability to run science and exploration missions.
There are also dangerous occasions that require a ship type like this.
I'm finally reading Thrawn Alliances and just wanted to say your Thrawn is who I hear. Excellent voice acting
Can a Galaxy class ship be built with shuttle bays to house two Defiant class ships? In place of the shuttle ships they uasally carry? Can you imagine attacking a Star Fleet ship and have two of these puppies coming out ready to break you off something?
The defiant is too large.
The Akira-class was an aircraft carrier-like ship that had, like, 40 fighters in it.
I don't know how canon it is, but if I remember one of my old technical manuals from years ago, the Galaxy class's saucer section had a lot of "empty" space in it for future expansion or mission specific modifications. While a Defiant class was way to large, I could see something like a couple of Maquis Raiders from the Voyager pilot, or a couple dozen fighters. Honestly though, with as much butt-kicking as we see Galaxy class doing in the late Dominion War I wouldn't be surprised if that extra space was filler with more shield emitters and phaser arrays.
In 'The Sound of Her Voice' they say that 9.5 is achievable with power from the phaser reserves to bolster structural integrity, not that it is to be diverted to the warp drive. As far as I understand, you can't divert power to the warp core, as it generates its own matter/anti-matter reaction.
You must remember, that the UFP didn't consider monetary cost, just material and equipment Allocation. The Defiant also wasn't meant for long range missions, it was an Escort so it's duty was mostly defense and fast strikes, much like a Klingon Bird of Prey.
There is one point when defiant is fighting the excelsior class ship when the defiant fires its pulse phasers almost straight down so it has a wider firing arc than it normally shows.
I always thought the defiant was designed with O'Brian not Sisko... Cheers :) always good to learn something new!
If the ship had the same layout but was a bit bigger, it would not be so lothsome on escort missions. I wonder what modern starfleets take on the perimeter action ship would look like? It would probably have some similar systems like Defiant.
The reason the "Defiant" has warp issues is that the warp core that was built is that fo a much larger ship; that's why it nearly tore itself apart when it was tested at full power. The ship's structure helps determine how big the warp core can be because it has to absorb the power of the core. The advantage being that by running a primary plasma conduit through the phasers, they were able to double phaser capacity, which is why when the "Defiant," fires, the smaller ships blow apart with the first shot.
I imagine the pulse phasers were designed to put down a lot of damage down on a target quickly in packs, I could see the phasers being modulated so that each bolt has a varying frequency to combat the borg.
Not to mention having a more basic targeting system. Beam phasers are good for hitting specific subsystems and disabling ships, a tactic Borg ships seem to be immune to. These pulse phasers seem to be used to wither down shields and the hull till penetration where torpedoes can finish the job if the phasers didn't.
@@HeadlessChickenTO Pretty much. These things are designed to bore holes in opponents, so you can them ram quantum torpedoes down the hole. You know, like Picard did in First Contact.
We had pulse phasers in the original series before the refitting of the Enterprise that saw the upgrade to what we are used to
False. Pulse phasers were introduced (exclusively) with the Defiant class ship.
If you're referring to the non-continuous phaser blasts from the original Enterprise (Kirk era not Archer) they are standard phasers of the time.
The Defiant Class was designed as a Borg killer. It was supposed to be deployed en masse as an overpowering wave of firepower to hit hard and warp out fast, with the next wave warping in....wave after wave. That's why the Defiant was lethal against many "regular" enemies in the alpha quadrant. The Jem'Hadar had small, advanced vessels that really tested, and eventually broke the capabilities. It was meant for a large, slow target, not multiple, fast, and numerous attacks solo.
“Mr. Worf, prepare a high yield quantum torpedo and write on it ‘Don’t f*** with The Sisko’ “
TOS phasers could fire bolts. See "Balance of Terror."
Corbomite Maneuver
Balance of Terror
Errand of Mercy
The Wrath of Khan
That's been maintained throughout Star Trek. Phasers are capable of firing in various modes, one imagines that the pulse bolts have one purpose, and the continuous beam has a different purpose
Defiant class like ships should be connected captains yacht like craft to larger explorer ships, one top, possibly one bottom. One ship turns into a dedicated war ship, one secondary ship, and a support craft of the saucer section comes off. 3 ships is harder to direct fire at than 1. Kinda like multi vector mode, but 3 different purpose built craft
Honestly, the fact that USS Lakota can be refitted to be a match for Defiant-class despite being several decades-old design is the final piece of evident that made me believe Defiant is more trouble than its worth.
Let's see...it was a pain just to get them running. It's not suited for prolonged operation due to limited facilities. It's probably a pain to build, since they're way more other "First Contact" ship than Defiant, despite being build AFTER Defiant. And, to top it all, she can be matched by upgunned Excelsior.
Neither did the Lakota, as indicated during communication between Benteen and Layton. The aftermath of the battle indicated that both vessel were one step away from tearing the other side apart.
It should be noted though that the Lakota had undergone and extremely intensive and resource heavy full retrofit to be upgraded with Defiant Technology. That wasn't something that Starfleet necessarily wanted to do with their whole fleet of Excelsiors.
To start with the Excelsior was the SR-71 of late 23rd century Starfleet, but the space frame is old and limited. There's only so much upgrading you can do with her.
O'Brien and Sisko solved all of the design flaw problems and Starfleet started mass producing them, so it stopped being a pain to get them running. You can get two or three Defiants out of what you would use for one Excelsior.
Lastly the presence of the Soverign, Norway, Steamrunner, and Akira classes isn't any knock on the Defiant. Starfleet builds many ship classes for specific and multipurpose roles. The Defiant is a pocket battleship, the Akira is a combination torpedo boat/light carrier, and the Sovereign is a next generation bleeding edge advanced battlecruiser.
And the Lakota which seventy years ago was a top tier Federation Battleship, after a heavy rebuild to let her use the Defiant's tech was still beaten to the breaking point by a bird of prey sized ship that was holding back.
I would say the Lakota was trying to kill the Defiant and the Defiant was trying to disable to Lakota and it ended up fairly even with the Defiant holding the advantage. If the Defiant came in looking for the kill right from the start the Defiant would have been damaged but the Lakota would be destroyed.
Personally i love this ship mainly because it dosnt conform to Starfleet norms, the Galaxy and intrepid class ships are good at their jobs but there not great at anything thats the problem with jack of all trade ships, ied love to see more specialised ships come out of starfleet (and no i dont mean the Yeager class ship that thing has a special place in hell waiting for it and its maker) im thinking a dedacated science ship or mass cargo transport ship, to the best of my knowledge i have never seen a starfleet cargo ship.
The ablative hull armor wasn't on the Defiant till it arrived at DS9, during the Paradise Lost 2 part episodes Captain Benteen of the USS Lakota during its battle with the Defiant comments that "Someone has equipped the Defiant with Ablative armor and not informed Starfleet Operations".
While I agree that the class throws pretty much every lick of Starflight standards and design plans into the bin, the Defiant and her sister ships (which we didn't see many off, I'll concede) was a damn good answer/response to both the Borg and later, Dominion threats. Designed and built for one role, her class was superb (after the bugs were worked out, granted). A Starfleet equivalent to the A-10 Warthog or, in a cruder comparison, a baseball bat. A bit slower the many main line capital ships, she packed the armor, firepower, and maneuverability of several far heavier ships and required many factors less in crew. As a long time fan of Star Trek, it has always itched at me that Starfleet would allow itself to swill down so much kool aid, that it truly believed in it's own hype, and in research and exploration vessels half-assed equipped to Defend the Federation in times of war. In doing so, many of us will note, is that a lot of highly specialized and trained 'non-combatant' crews die over and over again while doing the defending. Had Starfleet maintained even a modest 'core' of dedicated warships, many situations would have turned out differently, or at the least, less deadly and costly in ships, material, and beingpower. Imagine something like the Defiant Class on the scale of the Galaxy class - a pure beast of a warship. That 'big stick' kept quietly out of sight until a situation occurs where it's time to come out swinging. Imagine the shock and awe felt by the Federations misguided foes when a core fleet of battleships and supporting warships dropped out of warp, unloading the heaviest, most advance offense that the Federation can muster. A core fleet that can shield Starfleet and the Federation long enough to muster up the main fleet formations and to ramp up starship production. Then, of course, it wouldn't be Gene's Dream...no, of course not. But it sure would be a realest mindset which reminds me of a quote from Captain Archer. "We're trying to stop an alien race from destroying earth, we face attacks from all sides, enemies everywhere we go. " He'd understand.
Are these your own models?
If so, very nicely done!
This one felt rushed but thanks!
Well there's not much in the way of detail on the defiant.
I don't think the Defiant was ever intended to be a functional class of warship, it was a prototype test bed for new technologies to be included in the next generation of Federation ships like the Akira, Steamrunner, Sabre and Sovereign and beyond. The funny thing despite what some people think it did actually perform pretty well against the Borg in First Contact (considering it was in combat with the cube from the beginning while many other ships were knocked out or destroyed) but if you'll notice the use of the ablative armour against the Borg tractor beam as the cube even at the late stage of the battle was unable to lock on to the Defiant even with it's shields down. All they could do is peck at it and wear it down.
And didn't nx01 have phase cannons
Having 4-6 Defiant class chips in an attack wing would have been really cool to see.
The defiant's cloaking device was on loan from the Romulans with the condition it'd only be used in the gamma quadrant on the other side of the wormhole, however Sisko violated this many times, after the Romulan officer who was in charge of overseeing the cloaking device was killed. This is also why the second Defiant formerly the SAo Paulo, did not have the cloaking device.
5 years late to comment I know
The defiant is a warship not a luxary cruiser meant for long range long term space exploration like the galaxy class, even the Enterprise E was more spartan than the Enterprise D.
Would love to see more ship analyses like this!
The Defiant's phaser cannons were neat, it just hurt my head when I saw them shoot from the view-screen view. Where the bolts would follow the camera and ignore the fact the ship was turning. Either an oversight or limitation of time/CG cost.
The Sovereign also seemed like a dedicated warship and the culmination of the test bed that was the Defiant class
Ideally the Defiant-class would operate in squadrons/wings/packs, like oversized starfighters, or drawing fire and performing strafing runs alongside larger, slower ships packing absurd amounts of heavy firepower, like Akira-class ships with torpedo pods, as seen in Message I a Bottle.
Defiant was the Gary Stu of the AQ. Although stated to have vulnerabilities and weaknesses, they weren't explored. One vessel was stated as having reached every corner of the Federation within a year. This is absurd and ridiculous. It is seen acting as a tug, a spy ship, a recon vehicle, a diplomatic cruiser, an evacuation vessel, a mine layer, a science vessel, time traveler, a blockade runner, a patrol ship, an imp-like gunship, an interceptor, and a test bed vehicle.
From what we've actually seen, it isn't even all that expensive. The mirror Rebels built one from stolen schematics and limited resources, later building and losing a significant number of them, again with limited resources. The most maintenance we see being done is when the computer core was completely erased, and the crew frantically tried to restore systems and operate it like an ocean going sloop of war. O'Brian and his engineering shifts seem to regularly replace small, intricate components from deployments that run systems at or beyond tolerances. With the Federation resources, there was never any call to restrain her usage nor operational costs. Even the "expensive" quantum torpedoes were never in short supply within the defense perimeter.
I always figured a fleet of Defiants would eiather operate with a battle fleet ( pair a few with a Galaxy class and rotate crews between the luxurious command barge, and the pack of war dogs following it.), or be kept at bases and planets for a really bad day scenerio. Crews keep training all the time like some star ship sea team.
Also try the BSG Vipers
YES! VS TIE FIGHTER!
In ST First Contact, even after getting shot to pieces by the Borg, Picard told Worf the Defiant was salvageable meaning it can be repaired. Thats a tough little ship LOL.
I feel a Defiant class type ship should be assigned to every federation deep space Station. It seems line ships are often needed anytime a Deep Space Starbase needs anything more substantial than a Shuttle/Runabout can provide. And something as large and as versatile as an Excelsior or Ambassador class to ferry admirals back and forth seems a bit silly. The crew requirements alone of the larger ships seems to preclude them from serving as ship. Being Deep Space stations those line ships should be doing exploration not patrol/defense of federation borders and installations. Starfleet's obsession with large Multipurpose science ships never makes much sense to me.
Sisko's on a mission, to go no bloody place. He loiters on a space station above Bajoran space. But the wormhole opened up, and now they come from near and far - we'll keep the booze, but please, send back the fucking Jem'Hadar!
I must study this hip hop artist form. It will prove insightful when next we meet😎
This is not a verse from a hip-hop track, Jean Luc. Rather, an Irish-esque ballad of this other universe known as "Star Trek".
ua-cam.com/video/_DfHPWoc9Vw/v-deo.html Here's the song in question
Grand Admiral Thrawn, what is your assessment of the USS Defiant?
don't fuck with the sisko. end of report.
The Defiant's design seems similar to the needs of the Soviet Union when they designed the famous Soviet Alfa-class submarine - a small ship designed as an interceptor that is overpowered with a very powerful reactor system inside a tough hull that allows for a large barrage of weaponry (6 torpedo tubes) for attack and defense and to be able to evade detection by hiding or run very fast when escape is necessary.
It was never said that it torn itself appart at warp. The exact quote was "In battle simulations it nearly torn itself appart". So that would mean impulse speed as a more likely scenario.
The defiant was indeed not designed for the cloak. But as the romulan who was in charge of the cloaking device stated that under warp 7 the abnormalities were far less noticable, they got the same problem with their own ships, It wassent something they wanted everyone to know.
Warp flight apparently does stress and damage ship hulls - or at least that's a recurring limitation in VOY, lol. It's implied this is why ships tend have streamlined and symmetrical shapes (ignoring stylistic preferences and optional capability of atmospheric flight/landing).
Although, of course, even impulse flight essentially ignores/defies inconvenient physics, so we could speculate or fabricate all sorts of fictional "scientific" explanations.
Great video The Defiant is a great looking Starship it's one of my favourite Starships second after the USS Voyager. Could u do a video about USS Voyager
I have a question, impulse engines which I think are the same as the lightspeed Einstein ones, just used on a low power setting, doesnt need to necessarily be fitted onto such a specific design, it makes no sense why everything has to be capable of near light, for maneuvers in combat, nothing even close to lightspeed is used, why are they capable of that to begin with?
They aren't meant as what's called "fleet defense" in real world military terms (I study Defense and teach), they also aren't point interceptors either they are specific enough though that we could leave lightspeed problems off the table entirely...
If it truly has to reach lightspeed I.E. for literal point interception, then it would be incredible easy to retrofit a larger Starship, doesn't have to be Galaxy class, to hold multiple Defiant class type ships on board, similar to how we do this IRL, going all the way back to WWII with LVT-7A's carrying jeeps and such onto firmer ground
Same concept, but it would be a lot easier to retrofit and would take multiple problems off the table and while were at it, add a fucking cloaking system and stop screwing around with treaties, makes as much sense as the Soviet's being the first to make Nukes and the U.S. saying we promise not to make any, but you can keep on lol
Considering it nearly tore itself apart during testing, this is not a ship with phasers, it is a phaser bank with a warp drive
This was not the first time we've seen phaser cannons. The reliant was armed with phaser cannons in the wrath of Khan movie.
In star trek impulse power can reach speeds of 95% the speed of light, and phasers/torpedoes can only nearly reach the speed of light (99.99%etc), meaning that being small and fast is a legit defense, you can actually dodge a phasor or torpedo at that speed if you are very maneuverable. So even with a huge radiation signature, meaning enemy ships can lock on easier, the Defiant can actually dodge attacks that are perfectly aimed because of light lag.
When you did ur live chat thing? I asked what’s the difference between phasers and disreuptors and you said nadians, but you said you’ll make a vid on the big difference. When is that coming out if you will make that a vud
probably within the next two videos.
YESSSS !!! Finally thank you so much
Great job as always!
The ablative armor was not standard issue the first defiant was upgraded by CPT Sisko to fix it's structural problems as well as making sure the design could combat the Dominion we don't see it on the second defiant or the mirror universe defiant.
Defiant was good for it’s role and expense (not really someone the Federation cares about). The ship having minimal crew requirements (heck cadets ran one for a while) make the ship a keeper. Likely such a ”fleet” would be use in and around planets and important installations as a base of operations. This is both invaluable and something the pimp hand does easily.
I wonder about that cost issue.
The Defiant is a small ship. (exactly how small is hard to pin down since unlike the galaxy class, nobody ever really clearly decided how large it was - visually it could vary from shot to shot, suggesting a size of anything from 50 metres to 170 metres long)
In theory these should be cheap, and fast to produce.
However, what background sources we have for this (the DS9 technical manual mostly), suggest that actually constructing these ships is quite expensive and difficult.
Why? That Ablative armour.
Without it, the ship is obviously a LOT less tough.
But that armour makes the ship vastly more difficult to produce...
Its an escort.Which is a fancy way of saying it can outgun anything it cant outrun, & it can outrun & out manouver anything it can't outgun.Add in the ablative hull armour, & this is one tough lil girl with a very nasty kick.
Remeber the mirror universe episode of DS9 where they attack a NeghVar battleship with one?The frustration of hte NeghVar was real.The Defiant ran circles around it nice & close & the disruptors couldn't track it.Meanwhile the Defiant was just pounding the shit out of the NeghVar & doing serious damage forcing them to retreat.
Cost of maintaining the Defiant class immense? Are you serious? It's a small pocket gunship. Key word on small, They're also mass producible and easy to maintain. That's part of why the class went into mass production as the Dominion Threat was realized.
2:47 I dont honestly recall if it was before or after the Defiants arrival on DS9 but we do see on TNG the D firing its phasers as pulses rather than beams against a Borg cube.
basically the Defiant-class were meant to be used as pack hunters like the German U-boats of WW1 and WW2. Large numbers were meant to engage the borg and destroy them.