I read a schematic on the Warbird. It stated that the gap between the warp nacelles and the hull is to allow Romulan fighter craft to enter and travel with the war bird. When it is in the gap the warp field from the Warbird will care them. The clocking device will also hide them. In effect a Warbird can act as a fighter carrier.
Voyager doesn't have a great track record for realistically balancing battles in conjunction with established norms in tng. I mean voyager could take on a Borg tactical cube on its own, crazy.
Agreed. Also how do we know those ships chasing the Prometheus were planning to engage the Romulans? Maybe their orders were to destroy the Prometheus rather than let it fall into Romulan hands, and were forced to engage the Warbirds when they showed up.
Was that due to the incorporation of reverse engineered Borg tech and the inclusion of seven of nine? Just saying little insider knowledge goes a long way... perfect example is Picard in first contact
In my opinion you are absolutely right, I think it was ... just bad writing, or like you said incongruent representations.... Or to just put it another way... it was outrageous and seemed to take little effort into making it make any sense. You would also think... that if the D'Deridex essentially a battleship, would have cost a lot more resources than a smaller ship like cruisers and escorts such as akura and defiant, which are awesome ships, but still, each over powering a Romulan Battleship....? With that logic, economics galactic political, what have you, the Romulans would had fell to even less advanced or weaker empires or factions then the Federation easy. If there ships were so inferior... which I think mostly all of us would agree, they were not... Well I liked the show Voyager, however I could easily agree with one of my long time friends, who said... I just hate that show, they took everything awesome or ominous about Next Generation or DS9 and turn them into a joke. Speaking inreguard to the Borg for example.
I think what we are all overlooking is that the D'deridex is a much older ship and its going against two Defiants and a Akira, ships designed to stand against Borg Cubes. Them being a match for 3 D'deridex isn't far fetched.
I am glad you finally did this ship class. The D'deridex is my favorite ship design of the entire NG era. I was also amused when you held up your model of the ship.I remember painting that exact model kit myself. I always felt that the class was built so large by the Romulans for a multirole, extended mission mindset. The Romulans could not match the Federation or Klingon ships for decades one on one, but their period of silence gave them a chance to retool their fleet and stellar economy. I think they took a look at their interstellar rivals and felt the Federation Constitution design philosophy was the better approach. That gives an effective warship, exploration ship, diplomacy ship, and crisis responder. With such a large size it can store huge amounts of stores and supplies. Its size is impressive enough for diplomacy, whether by impressing with style or intimidating with fear.
On the photon torpedo question, in the TNG episode "Contagion", the Haakona (under the effects of the Iconian computer virus) arms photon torpedoes and is about to open fire on the hapless E-D (also under the Iconian virus effects) when it suddenly disarms. At the time this is going on, there is a bright light that appears on the lower forward "wing" hull near the port side "shuttle bay door". It's a very small, bright flash, that suddenly winks on and off, so watch the scene carefully! The big bright "spotlight" on the underside of the upper "wing" hull is also established in "Contagion" to be a phaser (a beam disruptor) since it is shown firing to destroy the Iconian probe.
Gotta agree with you, 'By Pale Moonlight' is the best episode in all of Trek. It really answered the question of how a real government at war would respond.
The Defiant class can out-maneuver any starship class and are a tactical match for most, the pulse phasers and quantums hit extremely hard and they're all turtled up with ablative armor. Remember it was developed as a Borg-fighter. I think it's fair to say an Akira, Prometheus and two Defiants could easily hold their own. The Akira is an absolute powerhouse too. It's capabilities were never really shown but the weapons module itself is loaded with a handful of torpedo launchers, not to mention the fore, port and starboard launchers on the saucer.
That shot of the Romulan and Cardassian Fleets, from around the 5:30 mark to the 6 minute mark, looks like its from "The Die is Cast", not the later Dominion War. I could be mistaken, as I didn't watch the episode to verify. However, they are clearly allies in that photo, and that is the only occasion that i recall where they conducted a joint operation.
The DD is easily my favorite ship in all of sci-fi. It looks so menacing. I remember watching "The Neutral Zone" and when it first appeared my first and only thought was "oh shit." As for its capabilities, everyone has to fill in the blanks a bit using their own ideas because of both the limited information from the shows and the inconsistencies. My thought is that these are akin to the old ships of the line; it is a battleship. I think in a frontal assault nothing in the Alpha/Beta quadrant matches this. However it is not maneuverable and if a ship can attack from the DD's aft the Warbird is at a disadvantage. That was the error of "Message in a Bottle." Common sense should tell us that those 3 fed ships attacking the Warbirds head on would be a suicide run. It is a ship that is meant to decloak and destroy or cripple the target in a singular "alpha strike" I do recall an episode of TNG where they fired a warning shot at the E-D> Picard remarked that it had to of been a warning shot, otherwise they "would not be here." Definitely implies massive firepower. As for the yellow warbird, that was a Romulan Big Bird class ship.
I think the main reason why the D'deridex is generally not a match for a federation ship is because the Romulan war doctrine isn't really centered on the idea of fighting enemy ships one on one. Their technology is much more focused on stealth, sensors and subterfuge than on powerful weapons and shields. The idea would be to send a force of cloaked ships that force the enemy to spread their forces thin, trying to defend all the possible places where a cloaked ship could wreak havoc, then when the enemy is spread out you pull your cloaked forces together to wipe out their isolated ships one by one. As long as your opponent can only guess where you'll strike next they don't stand a chance, even if they can outshoot your ships in a standup fight. The huge size of the ship combined with a very advanced cloak that even works at high warp makes it capable of carrying a large number of troops or supplies in complete secrecy. It may not be the strongest ship in a fight, but from a tactical and logistics standpoint it's an absolute powerhouse. Ultimately the D'deridex is simply not designed to shoot at warships, it's designed to shoot at the supply convoys of those warships, or raid the outposts, communication infrastructure, threaten homeworlds and colonies and so on.
So something like a Admiral Hipper or Scharnhorst, like a battlecruiser or fast battleship. Something that can dish out enough punishment locally, but in a ship of matching class or size, it will need support. I dig it. Still to be respected, but not invincible.
I am SO glad you mentioned all the open space. I'd have said something if you guys hadn't. But the thing about looking intimidating, even if they go in for stealth, if you show up out of the blue, lookingscaryon top of that (larger than you really are, like a preditory animal etc.) amplifies it that much more. And in Balance of Terror, they would frequently pop out of nowhere, fire, and then re-cloak. It must have scary as all get-out.
I'm totally spamming your video, sorry, but it totally bummed me out that the D'dereidex was never seen on the Big Screen - I would have loved to have seen even one in Nemesis, either instead of the Scimitar or as part of the Romulan strike force sent to take it out :/
I saw the D'deridex studio model when it was on display at the Christie's Auction booth at San Diego ComicCon. The colors, especially the subtle weathering effects is rather interesting. The color is a mix of a primary subdued (matte) green, mixed with a slight amount of gray. The weathering seemed to be the result of use of the grey and was made to come off the "feather" hull plating lines in dark streaks. This was actually one of two studio models, the other was blue-gray (some sources describe it as metallic blue), and the fact that both were used leads to the confusion on the colors. There were no bright yellow or dark brown as is painted on the one model kit being displayed.
In TNG, there was an episode in which a federation officer who had defected to the Romulans and then defected back. He brought with him technical information on the D'deridex. They discovered that the D'deridex was similar to the Galaxy class in that it was built as a do-it-all type of ship. The shields were no stronger than the Galaxy class, their disrupters had similar output but shorter range and a slower rate of fire. Despite having more torpedo tubes than the Galaxy class, they had a much lower rate of fire to the point that the Galaxy could actually fire more torpedoes. They were also slower than the Galaxy and not as maneuverable. They were built so big as a show of intimidation. The Defiant was designed to fight the Borge and had a power output several times greater than any other ship in the galaxy of that size. The engines were so powerful it nearly tore the ship apart in testing. Their shields were designed to take on the Borge weapons and had a greater output than the Galaxy and D'deridex class ships. It also has ablative armor that helps to dissipate the impact of energy weapons. With it being so small, it could literally fly around and within the D'deridex avoiding much of it's fire to be able to shower the D'deridex with rapid fire quantum torpedoes and heavy pulse cannons. You also have to remember that the Romulans were heavily isolated for over 100 years and were extremely xenophobic. The Federation on the other hand had multiple races with a large amount of contact with other races outside of the Federation. This allowed them to have multiple advancements from all the various influences which created a flourish of technological advancement. Officially from the makers of Star Trek, the shuttlebays were those protrusions on the forward edge of the lower section. So yes, you were right in that those were shuttlebay doors.
Hi, so I have to add something that seems to be missed. I just picked up one of my older TNG era Ship Encyclopedias, and granted, yes the Copyright date is 1993 so it could be out of date a bit, for information purposes, but in the Romulan section, under the Warbird section it does state that the size of the warbird wasn't really for show/intimidation. By the time the D'deridex was built and actually made known to the Federation the Romulan spy network already had the BASIC plans and specs for the Galaxy Class, as well as for what it would be used for in war time, being a command ship role. The D'deridex was built as a "one-on-one" role for the Galaxy in that it would also be the Romulan version of a command ship. The spacing between the upper and lower hulls (empty space between the nacelles) was built specifically to be able to dock multiple smaller ships for supply/repair purposes, but over all, the D'deridex was supposed to be the Romulan counterpart to the Galaxy in almost every way.
It is my understanding from interviews done with designers of star trek ships that originally there had to be a clear line of sight between nacelles for warp drive to work, that's why almost all star trek ships from the original series are designed that way. If the Romulan's wanted to build a big ship, they'd have to leave an empty gap due to "warp technology" needs. As for the reason for the size, I agree that in terms of internal space it is probably one and a half times the size of the the galaxy class, if not twice. Considering the Romulans continued to expand into other territories during their isolation from the Federation, and the ship is reported to be able to carry 1,500 troops, it is likely it was designed for overwhelming and conquering weaker adversaries and less as a key weapon against rival powers such as the Klingons or Federation. Factor that in with the Romulan's self confidence and its understandable why they chose to stick with the D'deridex for the bulk of their fleet. I do think that it made sense to send the 2 Defiant and 1 Akira class ship against the Romulans for 2 main reasons. 1, the aim was to prevent the high tech design information of the Prometheus from falling into Romulan hands. Those 3 ships would probably have had orders to destroy the ship rather than loose it, and they could certainly have achieved that before being defeated by 3 Warbirds, so sending those ships made sense. 2, the Defiant class clearly proved it had a manoeuvrability edge on large ships when it fought the Negh'Var in the alternate timeline, so its reasonable to assume it could have at least held out against a Warbird long enough to destroy or disable the Prometheus.
And since the Prometheus was supposed to be on a secret shakedown cruise/test, it could be argued that the Starfleet did not have enough ships close enough to prevent her fall into the Romulans' hands, so destruction or disability was the goal of any ships they could sent to stop the hijacked Prometheus.
Actually in historic Naval Battle gives us examples for very small ships being an effective counter against very large and powerfull ones. Just think about torpedo boats that were moveing to fast for the large turrets of dreadnoughts (or battleships) but had a devestating weapon against them. Ultimatly this lead to the importance of destroyers (that were originally torpedo boat destroyers). So this could be the reason why Starfleet is confidend that a Defiant is a very good counter for something as big as the D'deridex. We can also observe this in the fight in the mirror universe where the Defiant rebuild is higly effective against the Regent's flagship (which is very large). Big does not equals that it has no counter. It really depends on what role they actually have.
Some things you guys don't realize here.. The size of the ship was deliberate. For both intimidation and because this is the first ship to use a singularity drive. The output was a set amount that had no way of being reduced. So if the ship didn't have enough systems to properly drain/draw that power it could overload and boom. The size of the ship also allowed it to outfit with larger and more powerful weapons, engines and stuff like that. While it has more power than a Galaxy (the galaxy has the warpcore and 5 fusion reactors and the D'D has only the sing core. Still the D'D has higher power generation by far), that power has further to travel which means more transmission loss, something the ship is actually designed to encourage. So ultimately it's output is lower, but can be stepped up by blocking that bleed off if needed, even if it may damage the ship.(see episode tin man) The purpose of the hollow center is 2 fold. It is to encourage that transmission loss as power as the power has to travel so far to reach its point of use. (Keep in mind the speed of light is a definitive finite number and so is the level of resistance that distance adds to transmission lines) the other purpose of the hollow center is to reduce the ships mass. The ship is massive in volume but it's mass is actually surprisingly light for it's size. This make maneuverability much better. You guys are also forgetting that the shields encompass the entire ship. No other ship could fly into the hollow.
just to let you guys now the second one the one that is 1200 meters in length is an upgrade to the original D'Deridex Class and was known as the D'Kazanak Class. Which was a weapons SHields Upgrade t the Orginal D'Deridex Class according to the TNG novel: "The Romulan Prize". Some where built but the class was later cnacelled in favor for the Mogai or Norexan Class due to design flaws according to ambimorph disguised as Lord Kazanak which the class was named after. When information was found out about it was found to be 5 times as powerful as the D'Deridex Class and was equipped with a new Photoic Torpedo Launcher, later D'Deridexs where also refitted to carry said Torpedos.
I kinda think that the reason the D'deridex is so much bigger than the Valdore (or whatever those Nemesis ships were called) is that it was sort of an all-rounder - long-distance heavy transport, science and exploration (in service of Imperial expansion, of course) as well as defense/border patrols/intimidating colony worlds to keep them in line, while the later ships were exclusively warships, and warships designed for swift response at that.
I always suspected that the D'deridex was more of a carrier than a battle ship. I think the Romulans know that it is impossible to perfectly cloak a ship at warp or a ship containing an anti-matter reactor, being a paranoid species they assume that their enemies will discover these weaknesses and have proactively designed their ships and tactics to compensate for them. I always assumed that every D'deridex was accompanied by dozens of runabout sized attack ships. With no anti-matter reactors or warp drives they have limited endurance but can be outfitted with perfect cloaks (which is why we have never seen any of them). The large space inside the D'deridex houses and protects the attack craft when the ship is at warp, the space is open so that when the ship drops out of warp the attack craft can quickly take up an attack position. I also suspect that the D'deridex is capable of mining and manufacturing attack craft allowing it to function as an independent mobile shipyard (kind of like the mothership in Homeworld)
Its been a while but I'm pretty sure in "The Die is Cast" the Warbirds can be seen launching torpedoes at the planets surface, whether they are Tal Shiar upgrades for the mission, well that's another thing. Good episode as always, thanks for taking the time to put it together.
I had heard that the D'deridex was developed to be the Romulan answer to the Galaxy-class and was made ~3x bigger than the Enterprise-D on purpose. Though, I'm not sure if this was supposed to be in universe or behind the scenes or where I had heard it either. Also, I remember the intro to Star Trek: Armada had a Defiant fly between the sections and drop mines onto the warbird, destroying the ship. It was awesome.
The nav deflector is the triangular section at the front and I guess it has a disruptor cannon set into the middle of it. If you have him on to discuss this ship you can ask Andy Probert himself and I'm sure he will verify that.
I heard about the open space is that their warp technology, which uses a singularity as it's power source, is such that you have to keep the nacelles farther away from the habitat areas. So most of that design is to basically allow for the over-sized habitat section and the large nacelles that have to have a a massive support structure.
I was gonna mention this too, I remember a TNG episode described their 'black hole' singularity power source , I then assumed you'd want that as far away as everything else ie the very tail end of the ship
The D'deridex could also be considered a multi-mission ship. That would give a lot of its volume and systems for long range duration, exploration, and noncombat missions. That would put it sort of the same design philosophy that is allegedly behind many of the Federation core ships from the Constitution class till the Galaxy class.
I am certainly no expert for star trek lore, especially not romulan designs, but I have always kind of my own imagination how these things come to be within this universe. Maybe somebody can tell me, how far off I am or if it could be something that actually fits the canon. So, from my understanding, this is THE romulan ship and they designed it not only as a military unit but more as a monument of their power. It was meant to be the backbone of their fleets, like we see in all episodes, and it was meant to be the ship that makes contact with other factions. Important for me is, that it was also meant to be a ship for a looooong time. I think they build these ships to be in their fleet not only for a few decades but for hundrets of years, having so much space enables them to fit any technological advances and modifications in there they could come up with. Also, i feel like these ships were build to leave the core of their empire and just stay out there at the border for months, even years, patroling. They need the space to maintain the ship for such a long time just on it's own. As we see in the show, the romulans claimed a much more bigger territory than they actually used. Earlier, they used mine fields and stuff to protect seemingly empty systems just to make sure nobody crosses their space even if no romulan is actually living there, not even a mining station. This giant D'deridex would be perfect to patrol those borders and mostly just be prepared for everything, being an alrounder that does science tasks as well as simple military actions. But I'd always think that it wasn't so much the primary combat ship for specialized actions. I'd think the tal shiar and the romulan fleet itself just have lots of highly specialized ship classes that are much smaller and stealthier to do whatever they want, even deep behind enemy lines. The D'deridex would mostly be some kind of distraction from that. whenever the federation looks for romulan ships, they always search for those giant monstrosities of ships, maybe long enough for several way smaller vessels to slip through. when it comes to canon battles: the action around the prometheus... I would explain it to myself that either the prometheus was incredible powerful or the romulans just weren't too interested in this matter to actually send a specialized task force (for we all know that this is mostly a budget decision to not make a whole bunch of new models just for one episode), or maybe they just blew one of their own ships up to make sure the feds never see the full potential of their ships. sounds like a romulan thing to do :D In later battles, especially in deep Space 9, the romulans always take big punches, but they remain in the battle for the longest time and some of those romulan warbirds we see there...they keep going after hits that destroyed several federation ships like nothing before. In a way...as much as I love star trek..regarding battles I always felt like I can't take the canon absolutly serious there. They are talking about so ginormous numbers sometimes, battle tactics that make no actual sense and in scenes we see ships getting blown up so quickly...that it all just doesn't make any sense. In most of these cases, I tend to just accept the visual effects, but don't see them as an actual representation of the battle that happened there. For me, this is comparable to ground combat in Star Trek: We know canon, that this is a thing in the DS9 era. They're not just bombing or phasering from orbit, they use ground troops. But the only ground forces we see in battle seem to be starfleet officers in casual star trek uniforms. Okay, this is canon and strictly seen, we can't question that. But that still doesn't changes, that I am convinced that starfleet does indeed have complete combat armour, soldiers and maybe even vehicles for the battle on the surface. That's never confirmed in canon as far as I know, but for all we see in the movies and shows, it just is the only logical thing for starfleet to do. Unless you're telling me that really nobody in the whole alpha quadrant had the idea that an armour could actually protect from a klingon sword better than a uniform. So instead of just strictly using what is seen on screen to determine everything going on in this universe, I'd like to just construct a universe that makes as much sense is possible, without being in too much conflict with what we see on screen.
Well with the spacing between the warp nacelles and the hull it would also allow vessels such as scout ships to be cared inside the warp and cloaking field, the scout ship could then be used to assess potential locations and targets before the warbird moves in
and also remember that the Defiants, or at least the actual USS Defiant, had ablative armor which as we saw in the episode where they were battling the upgraded USS Lakota, was basically taking all the punishment from the Lakota's Galaxy-class phaser banks (said phasers having wiped out the shields of the Defiant in 2 shots)
Another thought on why they have the large open space. As they utilize the artificial quantum singularity, it may be a feature to provide needed structural 'balance' to offset the gravitational effects.
8:00 The size has several nice features: a) it's a very round shape, like a flatten sphere would fit perfect on the outer shape, thus shield bubbles and cloaking field would fit perfect around it b) the open space would allow several smaller vessel to be parked there and cloaked along with the D'Deridex. c) the bridge part could serve as some kind of lifeboat when separated from the main body (like the Event Horizon front) The only problem i see is, where would be the artificial quantum singularity and the main engine room.
Oh, also, in your Probert interview, his original painting showed what seemed a very large diameter but shallow parabolic dish embedded in the "ceiling" of that hollow space, taking up most of the undercariage of the top "wing". I wondered if that dish had something to do with generating the cloak or tuning or damping any radiative interference that might seep out of the cloak to make the cloak more effective. It occurred to me also that a ship that is so big and dense might be hard to cloak, in the same way that a microwave oven heats the outside of food much faster, but does not penetrate to the center well. The hollow space might be a feature that reduces (to zero) the density of the ship around its center of mass, which might help otpimize the cloak somehow.
Two suggestions about the hull. 1) Since they are using an artificial singularity as a power source, perhaps the shape is required to use it? 2) Perhaps the bottom half separates just below the nacelle and the extra bottom hull is for all of those troops? Take of that bottom hull and you really have a mean looking ship
it also could be that what the designer had in mind was something similar to the structural aesthetic of the circular warp nacelle modules seen on early vulcan ships. these trademark "warp rings" were a prominent feature of the vulcan naval vessels displayed in Enterprise series like the suurok class or the D'Kyre even though the D'deridex structural component or design feature in question was actually elliptical in shape.
Defiant was the federation's first knock down drag out 'warship' that the federation made. Also, I dunno about those ships but the original defiant used ablative armour. Ablative plating is currently used to disperse heat during re-entry, so I could see defiant captains believing they can take a few plasma torpedos, even from a D'Deridex. Granted some of the battles seem to go fast and loose with what the ships and their weapons and capabilities, so I guess that's just a few more grains of salt to go with something from Voyager. Also, idea for the D'Deridex; Imagine seeing something that massive coming out of cloak. Right in front of you is something twice the size of something like the Enterprise. From a cinematic standpoint the ship can be shown as being on par with the Enterprise while still being able to put chills in your audience with its reveal from cloak. Similarly, imagine if a lot of that expanded space was a ruse; A lot of extra space that can take hits without compromising core systems or even store redundant systems and backups?
It should be noted that Defiants and Akiras were designed to fight the Borg. Also that D'deidex may have displaced a lot of volume, there is a lot of empty space in between the dorsal and ventral hulls.
I don't know if this has been discussed yet or not but the captain did pick up on this fact. If you take the fact that the Tal Shiar had a huge impact on ship design then deceit is a big player. Although the ship is large in size the actual surface area of the sip is not being that it is hollow in the center. You might even have 1/2 of the deck levels if you put 2 separate windows on top of one another, so 2 per deck and the deceit continues. the 2 separate levels also curve into one another there by visually fooling the mind by saying "Holy crap that thing is HUGE". Beautiful design highly thought out and well armed one of my favorite ships
RE: weird gap in the middle of the D'deridex One of Rodenberry's original "rules" for warp drive tech, was that the two warp nacelles need to "see" each other. This was demonstrated in the concept art for the Enterprise refit that actually shows visible energy flow between the two engines. While many acknowledge these "rules" and they have even been discussed on this channel (as well as them being "thrown out" for ships like the defiant, etc) in regards to starfleet ships ... these were rules for WARP drive, and in theory, should apply to any race's warp drive. Considering that Rodenberry was still involved with the creation and design efforts in TNG it has always been my theory that the gap in the middle of the d'deridex was simply there so the two warp nacelles could "see" each other THROUGH the ship.
Hi guys, great installment. I love the idea that the size is part posturing. The Romulans are very much about wielding power and awe over their territory and a large vessel very much says that you own the space. I know it often comes off underpowered for its size, but in TNG, the D'Deridex is very much a 1:1 match in combat for Enterprise, but the Galaxy class is shown to be underpowered in combat compared to many later vessels; it's not what she was designed for after all (I reference USS Odyssey and two Danube class versus three Jem'Hadar Fighters). Another thought about the size is that I would expect her to carry a very large number of landing craft rather than traditional shuttles. These could easily be protected within the massive space inside if necessary; remember, that with shields up, an enemy vessel would not be able to enter that space itself, but lighter Romulan vessels with the correct shield modulation could and it also allows the D'Deridex to support light vessels with no cloaking devices. The D7:Norexan comparison is actually very similar to the Enterprise:Enterprise-D/E scale comparisons. Lastly, yes, in STO, the yellow hatches along her belly/spine actually are Escape Pods.
my understanding of the D'Deridex was that the impulse engines were to be housed behind the 'head' section, and the reason it was so open spaced was to collect the impulse engine emissions so they didn't 'leak' through the cloak
As far as a design aesthetic it is beautiful. Looking at the front and side views it would appear that they may have combined design elements from the Warbird and D7. They were the two capital ships of the era prior to D'Deridex so it would seem to me that if the Romulan Empire knew it needed to play "catch up" technology wise, it may combine the most advanced of both in the next class of ship. If you look at it the lower and upper halves it looks as if they combined Warbird and D7 with obvious improvements on each to for D'Deridex.
I found DS9 was pretty inconsistent in placing disruptor emitters--sometimes the 'eye' turrets, sometimes the forward 'dip' in the 'beak' where disruptor fire is shown coming from in the stills you use, sometimes identified as the navigational deflector. Here's my breakdown: 1. disruptors are located as identified in the LCARS where it showed 10 turrets 2. plasma/photon torpedo launcher located in that forward 'beak-dip' thingy(translation from the Romulan Tech Manual lol) 3. deflectors located forward on the lower 'wing' which you speculate are shuttlebay doors (I admit this is not at all clearly detailed, but this ship doesn't really have any type of visible impulse drive vents either.
All the federation ships that took part in this battle were the most recent advanced vessels. So the latest and greatest against three older model Romulan vessels. It really wasn't an evenly matched fight.
Okay, now that you point out a shuttle bay in the bottom half, then the opening makes since. It allows the shuttles or fighters to launch within the shields and has some hull protection, plus allows for the launching to be more covert.
The ship might be longer than the Galaxy Class, but there is a big hole in the middle. I'd be curious to see a comparison of "effective volume" of the two classes and metric tonnage to see if there is that big of a difference.
Well they were meeting the Romulans to discuss their intentions, and the odds of going to war with the Federation again was pretty good at that time, so that's probably why they had the ship as huge as it was. To be imposing, and a force to be reckoned with if it did come to all out war again with them.
I'm just speculating, but perhaps it's designed to be a Brigade ship. While the ship can hammer it out with one or more ships from other groups, it's mostly designed to be a stealthy way to transport large military units from point A to point B and every place between. I would also think it would be able to change rolls rather quickly, so, one ship would just be as described above, but another perhaps would have way more firepower, or science capabilities, or whatever is needed. It's a BFS..
There's something to be said of tactics too. In "Bridge Commander" the warbird has a lot of blind spots. Besides, doesn't the Akira Class have quantum torpedoes?
Defiant is 2x the power of the Galaxy Class phaser and fires 3x in the second according to canon. The Warbird is very formidable. According to Canon it took down Enterprise's shields in 7 shots where the Ferengi Maurader did the same in 14 shots taking the shields down to 30%.. In Defector the two Warbirds were outnumbered by by the 3 K'vort's and the Enterprise but it was understood by all that the Romulans would still win even at the loss of one ship. This implies the weapons are extremely strong. -Alexander Richardson did create a MSD of the Romulan Warbird -The Fleet in Die is Cast number 20-24. -Stuart is pointing out almost all the disrupters. There is another within the wing on the top seen destroying the Iconian Probe. (the spot light you refered to) -NOTE: The D'deridix was most likely created after the capture of the USS Enterprise C leap frogging Romulan Technology.
+saquist I thought the battle in "The Defector" would have resulted in mutually assured destruction. Tomolak said that the combined Enterprise/Klingon force would not survive the Romulan assault. Picard replied "And you will not survive ours...shall we die together?" Still, this shows that the D'deridex is impressively strong. Able to take out a top of the line Federation ship and Klingon Birds of Prey at the same time. I was sad to see it replaced by the Valdore class in Nemesis, but to be fair I dislike EVERYTHING that happened to the Romulans in Nemesis.
zentfan That really doesn't happen or...that's not really possible to predict in naval combat. There is no way for Picard to know that he will definitely destroy both Warbirds while the War Birds would definitely destroy the Enterprise and the 3 Bop's. This isn't a gun fight at the Okay Koral where one bullet kills people. These ships can survive sustain hits. It makes more sense to me that the Picard was directly threatening Tomalaks Warbird and challenging his sense of survival.
+saquist My take on that scene is that IF the warbirds focused their firepower on the Enterprise, she would be destroyed. Picard response implied "OK, you've got me, but BTW, what are you going to do about the Klingons?"
I think the size of the ship might have to do with its purpose. The D'deridix has never seemed like a battle cruiser or battle ship. Its probably the closest thing to a massive nuclear sub. It never seemed to be designed to go head to head with another ship. Rather it seemed designed to bombard planets and support cover ops. They always seemed a little clumsy when fighting other ships, but they really showed their stuff when they bombarded the founders planet (even if they picked the wrong planet lol). I suspect they were so big to support the espionage and cover ops the Romulan's seem to favor. They could pack a lot of intelligence gathering equipment and stealth infiltration teams into all of those extra decks.
Thinking about this ship, it could be partially a technological limitation which explains the size. Their engine core is a black hole, and they may need the size for safety, and they could still be using technology used by the Vulcans for warp drives, which were rings.
Maybe the warp system on the ship requires the warp pods to be widely seperated. Also there could be an unresolved warp field anomoly that makes the space directly between the nacels unusable.
it could also relate to cloaking efficiency. all that empty space and curviness. maybe they let ship's pass through the gap while they are cloaked; further enforcing the illusion of not being there
You think that if the ship can separate then perhaps the ship might have some huge pods that would fill the voids then come back together? Would be cool to see an armada take over a planet so you would have huge battle ships, ships just for fighters, troop carriers and probably some as medical ships for the wounded. Might be stretching things a bit but I think it would a grand idea.
The front hull has a single impulse engine seen in the deckplan. So i guess the beak section has the same purpose as the saucer section on galaxy class
Another idea I had for why the big open section in the middle would be to have it as a launch point for either landing ships to get 200-300 troops to the surface of a planet without using transporters, or to launch a sub-warp escort like T'liss class bird-of-prey, something that was part of the design, but was abandoned so late into the development process that it couldn't be undone. Just look at the massive hanger bay they put into the Scimitar's nose.
Captain nailed it at 3:21. There's no reason to assume those three Federation ships expected tactical superiority. Indeed, the only real damage we see inflicted on the Romulans is when the Prometheus herself joins the fight.
I think of it as the first ship that used the singularity reactor. The mass and structure was required to fit around the singularity that the vessel was built around. You cannot see it because it bends light around it. The singularity is part and parcel of the Romulan cloaking abilities as the gravimetric fields are manipulated as needed... If they do use standard antimatter reactors, then that is serious space within the warp envelope to carry a lot of smallcraft along with the ship. How many fighters could they carry? For that matter how many cargo pods could you fit in the warp field, or ship debris? I think the Romulans were the best privateers in the galaxy, using cloaked high volume freighters to move loot, before their star exploded. I am surprised there has not been a serious resurgence of the Orin Syndicate in the years since....
The Defiant project was made to fight the Borg. Nothing in the Romulan fleet back then had the shields of firepower to simply withstand a Defiant and or a wing of similar ships.
In regards to your discussion about 'Message in a bottle', weren't the Akira and Defiant class ships built in response to the Borg? Would not ships designed to fight the Borg have a leg up against the D'deridex?
+lrdofstrms There were other reasons why the "Message in a Bottle" fight has to be looked at critically. The D'deridex is a multi-role vessel, designed to carry out exploration, science, and other missions in addition to combat. In contrast the Defiant class vessels are designed almost exclusively for combat. If you have a Jack of All Trades facing off against a combat specialist, the specialist will most likely win. The tactics used weren't to the benefit of the Romulans either. They remained uncloaked and in a straight up brawl with the Federation vessels. I would expect a Romulan battle plan to make liberal use of the cloaking device, like in "Balance of Terror".
I am pretty sure the Davore warship from Voyager was based on the arse end of this class of ship. Can't remember the episode, but it's a season five one that it appears in.
That yellow Warbird, facing head on like that, looks like Pac-Man, or a Smiley Face (or, God help us, a Minion) ;) Yellow is just too friendly a colour... it sorta suits the Cardassians because they're always smiling insincerely, but the 'venomous' green suits the Romulans so much more :)
I always felt Romulan ships were more like Submarines. Designed to go unseen, hit hard when you arent ready, and then fade out. But if they get into a fist fight they aren't as strong. Federation and Kilgon ships are more ships of the line. Designed to take a lot of hits and stand strong while securing the scene.
I always considered this ship as a sort of carrier/dock type ship, fighters etc landing within its 'wings'. - interesting possible warp/cloak bubble intricacies
I think if you close off the empty middle bit and you could turn it into a massive carrier, with fighters and auxiliary craft, like assault ships or science vessels
To my mind the D'deridex was one of the most powerful ships in the Alpha/Beta Quadrants. Remember the Romulans waged their own separate war with the Dominion for months before allying officially with the Federation, and managed to hold the Dominion off with what was portrayed on screen as relative ease. DS9 mentioned the Romulans 'annihilating' Dominion fleets. The destruction of a D'deridex at the hands of the Prometheus proves nothing. First of all the three warbirds had already been engaged with a Federation task force prior to the Prometheus getting involved in the fight. Second the Prometheus was a state of the art dedicated warship using its unique MVAM abilities, focusing its considerable firepower on a single warbird. The D'deridex is strong, but it can be overwhelmed. Once its shields go down, it's done.
+Orion Slaver The Romulans signed a non aggression pact with the Dominion. They weren't fighting at all, that was the reason for the episode "In the Pale Moonlight".
+SideSwipeGTA The events of 'In the Pale Moonlight' led to the Romulan Empire declaring war on the Dominion, however they didn't officially ally with the Federation and Klingons for months and fought on their own in the meantime. In that time the Dominion attacked them several times, and each time the Romulans obliterated the invading fleets. I'm not saying the Romulans could have defeated the Dominion on their own, but they certainly held their borders with what is implied to be relative ease. It was only recognition of the Dominion's superior ship construction rates and troop breeding that convinced the Romulans to join the Federation Alliance. They knew they'd lose if it came down to a war of attrition. Romulan representative: "Let the Dominion continue to send their fleets against us and we will annihilate them one by one!" Admiral Ross: "And they'll continue to rebuild their fleets and send more." Worf: "The Dominion breed Jem'Hadar faster than we can destroy them!"
The episode never says anything about how long they were fighting on their own. It seems to imply just the opposite. It doesn't seem like much time had gone by since the assassination events and Sisko recording his log. They were so successful because they attacked suddenly and the Dominion had no reason to think they would since they had the non aggression pact.
+SideSwipeGTA A general timeline can be approximated by how each season of Star Trek takes place over the course of an in-universe year. The three (I think) episodes between 'In the Pale Moonlight' and the build-up to the invasion of Cardassian space, when the Romulans formally allied with the Federation and Klingons, can be estimated to have taken place over roughly a month at least. The events transpired as follows: - Sisko and Garak forge Dominion plans to invade Romulan space. - Sisko and Garak arrange to meet Senator Vreenak. - Vreenak discovers the forgery but is assassinated by a bomb planted by Garak. - Romulan intelligence operatives arrive to investigate the death of one of their most important senators on a diplomatic mission. They uncover a Cardassian data rod in the wreckage. - The Romulans analyse the data rod, discovering information about a planned Dominion assault on Romulus. Flaws in the records are assumed to be a result of the explosion. - The Romulans come to the conclusion that Vreenak discovered these plans and was murdered by the Dominion. - One can assume this was followed by uproarious debate in the Romulan Senate. - The Romulan fleet is mobilised. Romulan forces under cloak are positioned for a massive strike on Dominion forces along the Cardassian border.- The Romulan Star Empire declares war on the Dominion. - Pre-positioned Romulan forces immediately launch a blitz on the Cardassian border, damaging or destroying 15 Dominion bases.- Sisko records his personal log, describing the conspiracy to bring the Romulans into the war.- Dominion forces are diverted to launch a retaliatory strike on Romulan space. - Dominion forces are out-maneuvered, surrounded and annihilated by the Romulan fleet.- The Dominion again divert forces to engage the Romulans, which meet a similar fate.- With the pressure relieved by the Romulans' entrance into the war, the Federation and Klingons begin preparations to invade Cardassian space.- The Romulans are invited by the Federation Alliance to join forces and take part in the invasion. The Romulans agree to send a representative to hear out the Federation's proposals. - Romulan representatives, while initially confident in their ability to hold the Dominion at bay (citing their ability to 'annihilate' Dominion fleets), are convinced that the Dominion could only be truly defeated by a unified alliance with the other Alpha/Beta Quadrant powers.- Romulan forces are diverted to take part in the invasion of Cardassian space.- As the war enters its second year, Romulan forces start to join Federation and Klingon forces in combined operations. These events could only take place over a lengthy period of time.
like the show guys. came across it couple weeks ago and been catching up on older episodes. I always thought the ship was so big and the space between the warp nacelles was so vast had to something to do with their technology in producing warp fields. quantum singularities. same for the new ships from nemesis. the ship wasnt nearly as big, but the nacelles are very far apart
I'm no mathematician, but I'm pretty sure that if the D'deridex was compacted down it would be at least one and a half times the volume of the Enterprise D. That huge beaky fore-section looks to be the the volume of the Enterprise's entire secondary hull all by itself, and the upper and lower aft sections each look bigger than the Enterprise's saucer in area, if not depth.
D'Deridex always struck me as a massive battering ram... a surprise attack and planetary assault/siege oriented weapon that had absolutely astounding forward firepower, but at a terrible cost in speed, turning performance, and protective weaponry on its stern and flanks. If it caught you by surprise, you were doomed in almost any vessel then-in the Alpha Quadrant. But, if it either failed to catch you by surprise or its commander failed to execute that surprise to good effect, almost any other vessel then-in the Alpha Quadrant could either out run it or maneuver behind it, and stay in the blind spot to the vast majority of the less maneuverable D'Deridex's weapons. Klingon vessels similarly tended to be designed with a massive emphasis on forward firepower (vs. the more widely arrayed weapon systems seen on Federation ships), but they 'at least' were designed to be highly agile - a Vor'Cha class in DS9 easily staying on the tail of the much smaller Defiant.
You got to realize the D'deridex was designed and commissioned during a 'stalemate' when the Romulan's most powerful foes were the Klingon Empire and the Federation, while the Defiant class was a full on warship designed and built years later to go toe to toe with the Borg. It was equipped with the top of the line defensive and offensive capabilities. The main reason it was small was because it had no other role whatsoever and therefore all extraneous systems and infrastructure was not needed. Also, the Defiant and Prometheus classes were the first class of ships at the time to be using ablative armor. So the idea that a few of them could take out a D'deridex is really not that surprising, especially when backed up by another cruiser.
defiant is similar to Stargate battle cruisers .. put together out of need. Got everything on it... borrowed tek, stolen tek, gifted tek, homegrown. SG ships had 30 or so fighters, very half assed but capable of travelling via hyperspace.
How about showing a Borg Cube. I don't think I've seen you guys cover in detail any Borg vessels. I know they're basically just giant space boxes, but still...There's a lot to talk about in terms of internal design, functionality, weaponry, and defenses. Anyway, keep up the great work. Qapla'
FYI, a singularity powerful enough to fuel a starship per Wikipedia "Black Hole Starship" entry weighs 606,000 metric tons (6.06 × 108 kg), or about the weight of 7 Nimitiz Aircraft Carriers. but has a sub-miscrocopic Schwarzschild radius of 0.9 attometers, with a power output of 160 petawatts and a 3.5-year lifespan (it continuously evaporates, radiating hawking radiation, which is the form of the power it generates). I imagine the weight of 7 aircraft carriers contained in the space of a microscopic point would need to be housed near or at the center of mass for the ship in order to maximize stability and maneuverability. Per the wikipedia article cited, that seems to be the "sweet spot" for a black hole powersource. Interestingly, a more massive black hole would be more STABLE and evaporate more slowly, and would thus have less powerful output, but a longer lifespan. While a less massive black hole would evaporate faster and radiate energy at a much greater rate, but would have a shorter and shorter lifespan the less and less mass it contains. If the mass gets too light, the black hole evaporates and releases radiation too fast and would essentially explode. So it needs to contain a sizeable amount of mass to be stable enough to use. But there should be no problem actually "recharging" the black hole, because you could always dump more mass into it to compensate for what gets radiated out.
This ship was always on e of my favorites. It may have taken many beatings in the past (This including the Dominion war) but I think that the initial plan of the Romulan was not to make it as much powerfull as imposing in size to intimidate the enemy. But as we've seen, David always takes out Goliath in the end.As for why there are no more plasma waepons in the later versions the Romulan is self evident. This weapon was limited in range and was also easy to detonate before impact. This made it necessary evaluate this weapon and come with options that where more efficent and reliable.
So I noticed that the ship is powered by a "forced quantum singuilarity" aka a "black hole" (instead of using anti-matter). Such a singularity would have an event horizon, though only a teeny-tiny one, the Wikipedia article on "black hole starship" suggests a suitable such black hole would have a Schwarzschild radius of 0.9 attometers (that's sub-microscopic). but it occurred to me the big empty space in the middle of the ship might be necessary to accomodate the singularity and any gravitic effects it might have.
I remember playing star trek invasion for the playsation. I used to maneuver myself in the Hollow area of the Romulan warbird after I drained the shields and just fire away. I do remember still getting hit by the main weapons but i feel like that was a game funcion rather that an actual star trek canon thing. any thoughts?
In 'Message in a Bottle' I think that the 1 Akira and 2 Defiant's were assigned to track down the Prometheus and ascertain why it changed course and dropped out communication. I really think those 3 ships would have had a really hard time against the 3 D'deridex, and only the intervention of the Prometheus caused the destruction of one of them. Seeing as the Prometheus was not under their control and they were on the wrong side of the border, they fled. I do agree that the D'deridex should have more punch, considering it's size though.
I read a schematic on the Warbird. It stated that the gap between the warp nacelles and the hull is to allow Romulan fighter craft to enter and travel with the war bird. When it is in the gap the warp field from the Warbird will care them. The clocking device will also hide them. In effect a Warbird can act as a fighter carrier.
That makes sense. Also they could have the ability to act as a dry-dock, to make temporary repairs or restock torpedoes on ships.
Voyager doesn't have a great track record for realistically balancing battles in conjunction with established norms in tng. I mean voyager could take on a Borg tactical cube on its own, crazy.
Agreed. Also how do we know those ships chasing the Prometheus were planning to engage the Romulans? Maybe their orders were to destroy the Prometheus rather than let it fall into Romulan hands, and were forced to engage the Warbirds when they showed up.
Voyager is a much later design
Was that due to the incorporation of reverse engineered Borg tech and the inclusion of seven of nine? Just saying little insider knowledge goes a long way... perfect example is Picard in first contact
In my opinion you are absolutely right, I think it was ... just bad writing, or like you said incongruent representations.... Or to just put it another way... it was outrageous and seemed to take little effort into making it make any sense. You would also think... that if the D'Deridex essentially a battleship, would have cost a lot more resources than a smaller ship like cruisers and escorts such as akura and defiant, which are awesome ships, but still, each over powering a Romulan Battleship....? With that logic, economics galactic political, what have you, the Romulans would had fell to even less advanced or weaker empires or factions then the Federation easy. If there ships were so inferior... which I think mostly all of us would agree, they were not... Well I liked the show Voyager, however I could easily agree with one of my long time friends, who said... I just hate that show, they took everything awesome or ominous about Next Generation or DS9 and turn them into a joke. Speaking inreguard to the Borg for example.
I think what we are all overlooking is that the D'deridex is a much older ship and its going against two Defiants and a Akira, ships designed to stand against Borg Cubes. Them being a match for 3 D'deridex isn't far fetched.
I am glad you finally did this ship class. The D'deridex is my favorite ship design of the entire NG era. I was also amused when you held up your model of the ship.I remember painting that exact model kit myself. I always felt that the class was built so large by the Romulans for a multirole, extended mission mindset. The Romulans could not match the Federation or Klingon ships for decades one on one, but their period of silence gave them a chance to retool their fleet and stellar economy. I think they took a look at their interstellar rivals and felt the Federation Constitution design philosophy was the better approach. That gives an effective warship, exploration ship, diplomacy ship, and crisis responder. With such a large size it can store huge amounts of stores and supplies. Its size is impressive enough for diplomacy, whether by impressing with style or intimidating with fear.
On the photon torpedo question, in the TNG episode "Contagion", the Haakona (under the effects of the Iconian computer virus) arms photon torpedoes and is about to open fire on the hapless E-D (also under the Iconian virus effects) when it suddenly disarms. At the time this is going on, there is a bright light that appears on the lower forward "wing" hull near the port side "shuttle bay door". It's a very small, bright flash, that suddenly winks on and off, so watch the scene carefully!
The big bright "spotlight" on the underside of the upper "wing" hull is also established in "Contagion" to be a phaser (a beam disruptor) since it is shown firing to destroy the Iconian probe.
Gotta agree with you, 'By Pale Moonlight' is the best episode in all of Trek. It really answered the question of how a real government at war would respond.
The Defiant class can out-maneuver any starship class and are a tactical match for most, the pulse phasers and quantums hit extremely hard and they're all turtled up with ablative armor. Remember it was developed as a Borg-fighter. I think it's fair to say an Akira, Prometheus and two Defiants could easily hold their own. The Akira is an absolute powerhouse too. It's capabilities were never really shown but the weapons module itself is loaded with a handful of torpedo launchers, not to mention the fore, port and starboard launchers on the saucer.
That shot of the Romulan and Cardassian Fleets, from around the 5:30 mark to the 6 minute mark, looks like its from "The Die is Cast", not the later Dominion War. I could be mistaken, as I didn't watch the episode to verify. However, they are clearly allies in that photo, and that is the only occasion that i recall where they conducted a joint operation.
The DD is easily my favorite ship in all of sci-fi. It looks so menacing. I remember watching "The Neutral Zone" and when it first appeared my first and only thought was "oh shit."
As for its capabilities, everyone has to fill in the blanks a bit using their own ideas because of both the limited information from the shows and the inconsistencies. My thought is that these are akin to the old ships of the line; it is a battleship. I think in a frontal assault nothing in the Alpha/Beta quadrant matches this. However it is not maneuverable and if a ship can attack from the DD's aft the Warbird is at a disadvantage. That was the error of "Message in a Bottle." Common sense should tell us that those 3 fed ships attacking the Warbirds head on would be a suicide run. It is a ship that is meant to decloak and destroy or cripple the target in a singular "alpha strike"
I do recall an episode of TNG where they fired a warning shot at the E-D> Picard remarked that it had to of been a warning shot, otherwise they "would not be here." Definitely implies massive firepower.
As for the yellow warbird, that was a Romulan Big Bird class ship.
I think the main reason why the D'deridex is generally not a match for a federation ship is because the Romulan war doctrine isn't really centered on the idea of fighting enemy ships one on one. Their technology is much more focused on stealth, sensors and subterfuge than on powerful weapons and shields. The idea would be to send a force of cloaked ships that force the enemy to spread their forces thin, trying to defend all the possible places where a cloaked ship could wreak havoc, then when the enemy is spread out you pull your cloaked forces together to wipe out their isolated ships one by one. As long as your opponent can only guess where you'll strike next they don't stand a chance, even if they can outshoot your ships in a standup fight.
The huge size of the ship combined with a very advanced cloak that even works at high warp makes it capable of carrying a large number of troops or supplies in complete secrecy. It may not be the strongest ship in a fight, but from a tactical and logistics standpoint it's an absolute powerhouse.
Ultimately the D'deridex is simply not designed to shoot at warships, it's designed to shoot at the supply convoys of those warships, or raid the outposts, communication infrastructure, threaten homeworlds and colonies and so on.
So something like a Admiral Hipper or Scharnhorst, like a battlecruiser or fast battleship. Something that can dish out enough punishment locally, but in a ship of matching class or size, it will need support. I dig it. Still to be respected, but not invincible.
I am SO glad you mentioned all the open space. I'd have said something if you guys hadn't.
But the thing about looking intimidating, even if they go in for stealth, if you show up out of the blue, lookingscaryon top of that (larger than you really are, like a preditory animal etc.) amplifies it that much more. And in Balance of Terror, they would frequently pop out of nowhere, fire, and then re-cloak. It must have scary as all get-out.
I'm totally spamming your video, sorry, but it totally bummed me out that the D'dereidex was never seen on the Big Screen - I would have loved to have seen even one in Nemesis, either instead of the Scimitar or as part of the Romulan strike force sent to take it out :/
"It's a fake" got my thumbs up. Elim Garak is one of my favorite chars, along with the spider, Tyrion and little finger
Brandon Lisik Trek of Thrones?
I saw the D'deridex studio model when it was on display at the Christie's Auction booth at San Diego ComicCon. The colors, especially the subtle weathering effects is rather interesting. The color is a mix of a primary subdued (matte) green, mixed with a slight amount of gray. The weathering seemed to be the result of use of the grey and was made to come off the "feather" hull plating lines in dark streaks.
This was actually one of two studio models, the other was blue-gray (some sources describe it as metallic blue), and the fact that both were used leads to the confusion on the colors.
There were no bright yellow or dark brown as is painted on the one model kit being displayed.
i wanted too see more battles like that the federation came out swinging i was proud
This would be the one ship I would pick if I randomly wanted a ride
In TNG, there was an episode in which a federation officer who had defected to the Romulans and then defected back. He brought with him technical information on the D'deridex. They discovered that the D'deridex was similar to the Galaxy class in that it was built as a do-it-all type of ship. The shields were no stronger than the Galaxy class, their disrupters had similar output but shorter range and a slower rate of fire. Despite having more torpedo tubes than the Galaxy class, they had a much lower rate of fire to the point that the Galaxy could actually fire more torpedoes. They were also slower than the Galaxy and not as maneuverable. They were built so big as a show of intimidation.
The Defiant was designed to fight the Borge and had a power output several times greater than any other ship in the galaxy of that size. The engines were so powerful it nearly tore the ship apart in testing. Their shields were designed to take on the Borge weapons and had a greater output than the Galaxy and D'deridex class ships. It also has ablative armor that helps to dissipate the impact of energy weapons. With it being so small, it could literally fly around and within the D'deridex avoiding much of it's fire to be able to shower the D'deridex with rapid fire quantum torpedoes and heavy pulse cannons.
You also have to remember that the Romulans were heavily isolated for over 100 years and were extremely xenophobic. The Federation on the other hand had multiple races with a large amount of contact with other races outside of the Federation. This allowed them to have multiple advancements from all the various influences which created a flourish of technological advancement.
Officially from the makers of Star Trek, the shuttlebays were those protrusions on the forward edge of the lower section. So yes, you were right in that those were shuttlebay doors.
Hi, so I have to add something that seems to be missed. I just picked up one of my older TNG era Ship Encyclopedias, and granted, yes the Copyright date is 1993 so it could be out of date a bit, for information purposes, but in the Romulan section, under the Warbird section it does state that the size of the warbird wasn't really for show/intimidation. By the time the D'deridex was built and actually made known to the Federation the Romulan spy network already had the BASIC plans and specs for the Galaxy Class, as well as for what it would be used for in war time, being a command ship role. The D'deridex was built as a "one-on-one" role for the Galaxy in that it would also be the Romulan version of a command ship. The spacing between the upper and lower hulls (empty space between the nacelles) was built specifically to be able to dock multiple smaller ships for supply/repair purposes, but over all, the D'deridex was supposed to be the Romulan counterpart to the Galaxy in almost every way.
It is my understanding from interviews done with designers of star trek ships that originally there had to be a clear line of sight between nacelles for warp drive to work, that's why almost all star trek ships from the original series are designed that way. If the Romulan's wanted to build a big ship, they'd have to leave an empty gap due to "warp technology" needs.
As for the reason for the size, I agree that in terms of internal space it is probably one and a half times the size of the the galaxy class, if not twice. Considering the Romulans continued to expand into other territories during their isolation from the Federation, and the ship is reported to be able to carry 1,500 troops, it is likely it was designed for overwhelming and conquering weaker adversaries and less as a key weapon against rival powers such as the Klingons or Federation. Factor that in with the Romulan's self confidence and its understandable why they chose to stick with the D'deridex for the bulk of their fleet.
I do think that it made sense to send the 2 Defiant and 1 Akira class ship against the Romulans for 2 main reasons. 1, the aim was to prevent the high tech design information of the Prometheus from falling into Romulan hands. Those 3 ships would probably have had orders to destroy the ship rather than loose it, and they could certainly have achieved that before being defeated by 3 Warbirds, so sending those ships made sense. 2, the Defiant class clearly proved it had a manoeuvrability edge on large ships when it fought the Negh'Var in the alternate timeline, so its reasonable to assume it could have at least held out against a Warbird long enough to destroy or disable the Prometheus.
And since the Prometheus was supposed to be on a secret shakedown cruise/test, it could be argued that the Starfleet did not have enough ships close enough to prevent her fall into the Romulans' hands, so destruction or disability was the goal of any ships they could sent to stop the hijacked Prometheus.
Actually in historic Naval Battle gives us examples for very small ships being an effective counter against very large and powerfull ones. Just think about torpedo boats that were moveing to fast for the large turrets of dreadnoughts (or battleships) but had a devestating weapon against them. Ultimatly this lead to the importance of destroyers (that were originally torpedo boat destroyers).
So this could be the reason why Starfleet is confidend that a Defiant is a very good counter for something as big as the D'deridex. We can also observe this in the fight in the mirror universe where the Defiant rebuild is higly effective against the Regent's flagship (which is very large).
Big does not equals that it has no counter. It really depends on what role they actually have.
Some things you guys don't realize here..
The size of the ship was deliberate. For both intimidation and because this is the first ship to use a singularity drive. The output was a set amount that had no way of being reduced. So if the ship didn't have enough systems to properly drain/draw that power it could overload and boom.
The size of the ship also allowed it to outfit with larger and more powerful weapons, engines and stuff like that. While it has more power than a Galaxy (the galaxy has the warpcore and 5 fusion reactors and the D'D has only the sing core. Still the D'D has higher power generation by far), that power has further to travel which means more transmission loss, something the ship is actually designed to encourage. So ultimately it's output is lower, but can be stepped up by blocking that bleed off if needed, even if it may damage the ship.(see episode tin man)
The purpose of the hollow center is 2 fold. It is to encourage that transmission loss as power as the power has to travel so far to reach its point of use. (Keep in mind the speed of light is a definitive finite number and so is the level of resistance that distance adds to transmission lines) the other purpose of the hollow center is to reduce the ships mass. The ship is massive in volume but it's mass is actually surprisingly light for it's size. This make maneuverability much better.
You guys are also forgetting that the shields encompass the entire ship. No other ship could fly into the hollow.
just to let you guys now the second one the one that is 1200 meters in length is an upgrade to the original D'Deridex Class and was known as the D'Kazanak Class. Which was a weapons SHields Upgrade t the Orginal D'Deridex Class according to the TNG novel: "The Romulan Prize". Some where built but the class was later cnacelled in favor for the Mogai or Norexan Class due to design flaws according to ambimorph disguised as Lord Kazanak which the class was named after. When information was found out about it was found to be 5 times as powerful as the D'Deridex Class and was equipped with a new Photoic Torpedo Launcher, later D'Deridexs where also refitted to carry said Torpedos.
I kinda think that the reason the D'deridex is so much bigger than the Valdore (or whatever those Nemesis ships were called) is that it was sort of an all-rounder - long-distance heavy transport, science and exploration (in service of Imperial expansion, of course) as well as defense/border patrols/intimidating colony worlds to keep them in line, while the later ships were exclusively warships, and warships designed for swift response at that.
I always suspected that the D'deridex was more of a carrier than a battle ship.
I think the Romulans know that it is impossible to perfectly cloak a ship at warp or a ship containing an anti-matter reactor, being a paranoid species they assume that their enemies will discover these weaknesses and have proactively designed their ships and tactics to compensate for them.
I always assumed that every D'deridex was accompanied by dozens of runabout sized attack ships. With no anti-matter reactors or warp drives they have limited endurance but can be outfitted with perfect cloaks (which is why we have never seen any of them).
The large space inside the D'deridex houses and protects the attack craft when the ship is at warp, the space is open so that when the ship drops out of warp the attack craft can quickly take up an attack position.
I also suspect that the D'deridex is capable of mining and manufacturing attack craft allowing it to function as an independent mobile shipyard (kind of like the mothership in Homeworld)
Its been a while but I'm pretty sure in "The Die is Cast" the Warbirds can be seen launching torpedoes at the planets surface, whether they are Tal Shiar upgrades for the mission, well that's another thing.
Good episode as always, thanks for taking the time to put it together.
That's a nice ship, great episode guys!
I had heard that the D'deridex was developed to be the Romulan answer to the Galaxy-class and was made ~3x bigger than the Enterprise-D on purpose. Though, I'm not sure if this was supposed to be in universe or behind the scenes or where I had heard it either.
Also, I remember the intro to Star Trek: Armada had a Defiant fly between the sections and drop mines onto the warbird, destroying the ship. It was awesome.
The nav deflector is the triangular section at the front and I guess it has a disruptor cannon set into the middle of it. If you have him on to discuss this ship you can ask Andy Probert himself and I'm sure he will verify that.
I heard about the open space is that their warp technology, which uses a singularity as it's power source, is such that you have to keep the nacelles farther away from the habitat areas. So most of that design is to basically allow for the over-sized habitat section and the large nacelles that have to have a a massive support structure.
I was gonna mention this too, I remember a TNG episode described their 'black hole' singularity power source , I then assumed you'd want that as far away as everything else ie the very tail end of the ship
Except the engine room, which house the said power source, is at back of the head section.
The head of the 1000m version has probably more volume than the entire galaxy class. The head is a big solid piece.
The D'deridex could also be considered a multi-mission ship. That would give a lot of its volume and systems for long range duration, exploration, and noncombat missions. That would put it sort of the same design philosophy that is allegedly behind many of the Federation core ships from the Constitution class till the Galaxy class.
I am certainly no expert for star trek lore, especially not romulan designs, but I have always kind of my own imagination how these things come to be within this universe. Maybe somebody can tell me, how far off I am or if it could be something that actually fits the canon.
So, from my understanding, this is THE romulan ship and they designed it not only as a military unit but more as a monument of their power. It was meant to be the backbone of their fleets, like we see in all episodes, and it was meant to be the ship that makes contact with other factions.
Important for me is, that it was also meant to be a ship for a looooong time. I think they build these ships to be in their fleet not only for a few decades but for hundrets of years, having so much space enables them to fit any technological advances and modifications in there they could come up with.
Also, i feel like these ships were build to leave the core of their empire and just stay out there at the border for months, even years, patroling. They need the space to maintain the ship for such a long time just on it's own.
As we see in the show, the romulans claimed a much more bigger territory than they actually used. Earlier, they used mine fields and stuff to protect seemingly empty systems just to make sure nobody crosses their space even if no romulan is actually living there, not even a mining station.
This giant D'deridex would be perfect to patrol those borders and mostly just be prepared for everything, being an alrounder that does science tasks as well as simple military actions.
But I'd always think that it wasn't so much the primary combat ship for specialized actions. I'd think the tal shiar and the romulan fleet itself just have lots of highly specialized ship classes that are much smaller and stealthier to do whatever they want, even deep behind enemy lines. The D'deridex would mostly be some kind of distraction from that. whenever the federation looks for romulan ships, they always search for those giant monstrosities of ships, maybe long enough for several way smaller vessels to slip through.
when it comes to canon battles: the action around the prometheus... I would explain it to myself that either the prometheus was incredible powerful or the romulans just weren't too interested in this matter to actually send a specialized task force (for we all know that this is mostly a budget decision to not make a whole bunch of new models just for one episode), or maybe they just blew one of their own ships up to make sure the feds never see the full potential of their ships. sounds like a romulan thing to do :D
In later battles, especially in deep Space 9, the romulans always take big punches, but they remain in the battle for the longest time and some of those romulan warbirds we see there...they keep going after hits that destroyed several federation ships like nothing before.
In a way...as much as I love star trek..regarding battles I always felt like I can't take the canon absolutly serious there. They are talking about so ginormous numbers sometimes, battle tactics that make no actual sense and in scenes we see ships getting blown up so quickly...that it all just doesn't make any sense. In most of these cases, I tend to just accept the visual effects, but don't see them as an actual representation of the battle that happened there.
For me, this is comparable to ground combat in Star Trek: We know canon, that this is a thing in the DS9 era. They're not just bombing or phasering from orbit, they use ground troops. But the only ground forces we see in battle seem to be starfleet officers in casual star trek uniforms. Okay, this is canon and strictly seen, we can't question that. But that still doesn't changes, that I am convinced that starfleet does indeed have complete combat armour, soldiers and maybe even vehicles for the battle on the surface. That's never confirmed in canon as far as I know, but for all we see in the movies and shows, it just is the only logical thing for starfleet to do. Unless you're telling me that really nobody in the whole alpha quadrant had the idea that an armour could actually protect from a klingon sword better than a uniform. So instead of just strictly using what is seen on screen to determine everything going on in this universe, I'd like to just construct a universe that makes as much sense is possible, without being in too much conflict with what we see on screen.
Well with the spacing between the warp nacelles and the hull it would also allow vessels such as scout ships to be cared inside the warp and cloaking field, the scout ship could then be used to assess potential locations and targets before the warbird moves in
and also remember that the Defiants, or at least the actual USS Defiant, had ablative armor which as we saw in the episode where they were battling the upgraded USS Lakota, was basically taking all the punishment from the Lakota's Galaxy-class phaser banks (said phasers having wiped out the shields of the Defiant in 2 shots)
Another thought on why they have the large open space. As they utilize the artificial quantum singularity, it may be a feature to provide needed structural 'balance' to offset the gravitational effects.
8:00 The size has several nice features:
a) it's a very round shape, like a flatten sphere would fit perfect on the outer shape, thus shield bubbles and cloaking field would fit perfect around it
b) the open space would allow several smaller vessel to be parked there and cloaked along with the D'Deridex.
c) the bridge part could serve as some kind of lifeboat when separated from the main body (like the Event Horizon front)
The only problem i see is, where would be the artificial quantum singularity and the main engine room.
Oh, also, in your Probert interview, his original painting showed what seemed a very large diameter but shallow parabolic dish embedded in the "ceiling" of that hollow space, taking up most of the undercariage of the top "wing". I wondered if that dish had something to do with generating the cloak or tuning or damping any radiative interference that might seep out of the cloak to make the cloak more effective. It occurred to me also that a ship that is so big and dense might be hard to cloak, in the same way that a microwave oven heats the outside of food much faster, but does not penetrate to the center well. The hollow space might be a feature that reduces (to zero) the density of the ship around its center of mass, which might help otpimize the cloak somehow.
Look at the chart of the different Romulan classes again. There is actually an evolution in style from the D7.
This design, and the Klingons bird of prey, always fascinated me since I was 4 years old
Two suggestions about the hull. 1) Since they are using an artificial singularity as a power source, perhaps the shape is required to use it? 2) Perhaps the bottom half separates just below the nacelle and the extra bottom hull is for all of those troops? Take of that bottom hull and you really have a mean looking ship
it also could be that what the designer had in mind was something similar to the structural aesthetic of the circular warp nacelle modules seen on early vulcan ships. these trademark "warp rings" were a prominent feature of the vulcan naval vessels displayed in Enterprise series like the suurok class or the D'Kyre even though the D'deridex structural component or design feature in question was actually elliptical in shape.
that big spotlight thing is also a disruptor hard-point, in the episode "contagion" from TNG they fire a disruptor beam from it to destroy a probe.
Defiant was the federation's first knock down drag out 'warship' that the federation made. Also, I dunno about those ships but the original defiant used ablative armour. Ablative plating is currently used to disperse heat during re-entry, so I could see defiant captains believing they can take a few plasma torpedos, even from a D'Deridex. Granted some of the battles seem to go fast and loose with what the ships and their weapons and capabilities, so I guess that's just a few more grains of salt to go with something from Voyager.
Also, idea for the D'Deridex; Imagine seeing something that massive coming out of cloak. Right in front of you is something twice the size of something like the Enterprise. From a cinematic standpoint the ship can be shown as being on par with the Enterprise while still being able to put chills in your audience with its reveal from cloak. Similarly, imagine if a lot of that expanded space was a ruse; A lot of extra space that can take hits without compromising core systems or even store redundant systems and backups?
It should be noted that Defiants and Akiras were designed to fight the Borg. Also that D'deidex may have displaced a lot of volume, there is a lot of empty space in between the dorsal and ventral hulls.
I don't know if this has been discussed yet or not but the captain did pick up on this fact. If you take the fact that the Tal Shiar had a huge impact on ship design then deceit is a big player. Although the ship is large in size the actual surface area of the sip is not being that it is hollow in the center. You might even have 1/2 of the deck levels if you put 2 separate windows on top of one another, so 2 per deck and the deceit continues. the 2 separate levels also curve into one another there by visually fooling the mind by saying "Holy crap that thing is HUGE". Beautiful design highly thought out and well armed one of my favorite ships
RE: weird gap in the middle of the D'deridex
One of Rodenberry's original "rules" for warp drive tech, was that the two warp nacelles need to "see" each other. This was demonstrated in the concept art for the Enterprise refit that actually shows visible energy flow between the two engines.
While many acknowledge these "rules" and they have even been discussed on this channel (as well as them being "thrown out" for ships like the defiant, etc) in regards to starfleet ships ... these were rules for WARP drive, and in theory, should apply to any race's warp drive. Considering that Rodenberry was still involved with the creation and design efforts in TNG it has always been my theory that the gap in the middle of the d'deridex was simply there so the two warp nacelles could "see" each other THROUGH the ship.
Hi guys, great installment. I love the idea that the size is part posturing. The Romulans are very much about wielding power and awe over their territory and a large vessel very much says that you own the space. I know it often comes off underpowered for its size, but in TNG, the D'Deridex is very much a 1:1 match in combat for Enterprise, but the Galaxy class is shown to be underpowered in combat compared to many later vessels; it's not what she was designed for after all (I reference USS Odyssey and two Danube class versus three Jem'Hadar Fighters).
Another thought about the size is that I would expect her to carry a very large number of landing craft rather than traditional shuttles. These could easily be protected within the massive space inside if necessary; remember, that with shields up, an enemy vessel would not be able to enter that space itself, but lighter Romulan vessels with the correct shield modulation could and it also allows the D'Deridex to support light vessels with no cloaking devices.
The D7:Norexan comparison is actually very similar to the Enterprise:Enterprise-D/E scale comparisons.
Lastly, yes, in STO, the yellow hatches along her belly/spine actually are Escape Pods.
Hi guys new subscriber here, love your channel and love all things Trek. Keep it up always a joy to watch.
my understanding of the D'Deridex was that the impulse engines were to be housed behind the 'head' section, and the reason it was so open spaced was to collect the impulse engine emissions so they didn't 'leak' through the cloak
I love the webcam backgrounds, those look like interesting rooms.
As far as a design aesthetic it is beautiful. Looking at the front and side views it would appear that they may have combined design elements from the Warbird and D7. They were the two capital ships of the era prior to D'Deridex so it would seem to me that if the Romulan Empire knew it needed to play "catch up" technology wise, it may combine the most advanced of both in the next class of ship. If you look at it the lower and upper halves it looks as if they combined Warbird and D7 with obvious improvements on each to for D'Deridex.
I found DS9 was pretty inconsistent in placing disruptor emitters--sometimes the 'eye' turrets, sometimes the forward 'dip' in the 'beak' where disruptor fire is shown coming from in the stills you use, sometimes identified as the navigational deflector. Here's my breakdown:
1. disruptors are located as identified in the LCARS where it showed 10 turrets
2. plasma/photon torpedo launcher located in that forward 'beak-dip' thingy(translation from the Romulan Tech Manual lol)
3. deflectors located forward on the lower 'wing' which you speculate are shuttlebay doors (I admit this is not at all clearly detailed, but this ship doesn't really have any type of visible impulse drive vents either.
I always reasoned it as the 1,200m variant was the Star Navy beast. While the 1,041m was the "smaller" Tal'Shiar variant.
All the federation ships that took part in this battle were the most recent advanced vessels. So the latest and greatest against three older model Romulan vessels. It really wasn't an evenly matched fight.
Okay, now that you point out a shuttle bay in the bottom half, then the opening makes since. It allows the shuttles or fighters to launch within the shields and has some hull protection, plus allows for the launching to be more covert.
The ship might be longer than the Galaxy Class, but there is a big hole in the middle. I'd be curious to see a comparison of "effective volume" of the two classes and metric tonnage to see if there is that big of a difference.
Well they were meeting the Romulans to discuss their intentions, and the odds of going to war with the Federation again was pretty good at that time, so that's probably why they had the ship as huge as it was. To be imposing, and a force to be reckoned with if it did come to all out war again with them.
The top down view kind of looks like a Klingon Bird of prey, like really similar
those sections of the Prometheus you guys mentioned were of course automated in addition to the primary manned section.
I'm just speculating, but perhaps it's designed to be a Brigade ship. While the ship can hammer it out with one or more ships from other groups, it's mostly designed to be a stealthy way to transport large military units from point A to point B and every place between. I would also think it would be able to change rolls rather quickly, so, one ship would just be as described above, but another perhaps would have way more firepower, or science capabilities, or whatever is needed. It's a BFS..
I always saw this vessel as a mobile ship yard for building ships like the Valdore.
There's something to be said of tactics too. In "Bridge Commander" the warbird has a lot of blind spots. Besides, doesn't the Akira Class have quantum torpedoes?
Great taste in eps, Captain! 'In The Pale Moonlight' still shakes me to the core.
Maybe that ship was the 'cock of the walk'? 😉
Defiant is 2x the power of the Galaxy Class phaser and fires 3x in the second according to canon. The Warbird is very formidable. According to Canon it took down Enterprise's shields in 7 shots where the Ferengi Maurader did the same in 14 shots taking the shields down to 30%.. In Defector the two Warbirds were outnumbered by by the 3 K'vort's and the Enterprise but it was understood by all that the Romulans would still win even at the loss of one ship. This implies the weapons are extremely strong.
-Alexander Richardson did create a MSD of the Romulan Warbird
-The Fleet in Die is Cast number 20-24.
-Stuart is pointing out almost all the disrupters. There is another within the wing on the top seen destroying the Iconian Probe. (the spot light you refered to)
-NOTE: The D'deridix was most likely created after the capture of the USS Enterprise C leap frogging Romulan Technology.
+saquist
I thought the battle in "The Defector" would have resulted in mutually assured destruction. Tomolak said that the combined Enterprise/Klingon force would not survive the Romulan assault. Picard replied "And you will not survive ours...shall we die together?"
Still, this shows that the D'deridex is impressively strong. Able to take out a top of the line Federation ship and Klingon Birds of Prey at the same time. I was sad to see it replaced by the Valdore class in Nemesis, but to be fair I dislike EVERYTHING that happened to the Romulans in Nemesis.
zentfan
That really doesn't happen or...that's not really possible to predict in naval combat. There is no way for Picard to know that he will definitely destroy both Warbirds while the War Birds would definitely destroy the Enterprise and the 3 Bop's. This isn't a gun fight at the Okay Koral where one bullet kills people. These ships can survive sustain hits.
It makes more sense to me that the Picard was directly threatening Tomalaks Warbird and challenging his sense of survival.
+saquist My take on that scene is that IF the warbirds focused their firepower on the Enterprise, she would be destroyed. Picard response implied "OK, you've got me, but BTW, what are you going to do about the Klingons?"
The romulans wanted them all dead.
obviously
I think the size of the ship might have to do with its purpose. The D'deridix has never seemed like a battle cruiser or battle ship. Its probably the closest thing to a massive nuclear sub. It never seemed to be designed to go head to head with another ship. Rather it seemed designed to bombard planets and support cover ops. They always seemed a little clumsy when fighting other ships, but they really showed their stuff when they bombarded the founders planet (even if they picked the wrong planet lol). I suspect they were so big to support the espionage and cover ops the Romulan's seem to favor. They could pack a lot of intelligence gathering equipment and stealth infiltration teams into all of those extra decks.
The Romulan fleet helped turn the tide, at least for a while. The ship in TNG was always shown as a match for the Enterprise D.
Thinking about this ship, it could be partially a technological limitation which explains the size. Their engine core is a black hole, and they may need the size for safety, and they could still be using technology used by the Vulcans for warp drives, which were rings.
Maybe the warp system on the ship requires the warp pods to be widely seperated. Also there could be an unresolved warp field anomoly that makes the space directly between the nacels unusable.
it could also relate to cloaking efficiency. all that empty space and curviness. maybe they let ship's pass through the gap while they are cloaked; further enforcing the illusion of not being there
14:15 Ferengi version it's gold plated lol
You think that if the ship can separate then perhaps the ship might have some huge pods that would fill the voids then come back together? Would be cool to see an armada take over a planet so you would have huge battle ships, ships just for fighters, troop carriers and probably some as medical ships for the wounded. Might be stretching things a bit but I think it would a grand idea.
The front hull has a single impulse engine seen in the deckplan. So i guess the beak section has the same purpose as the saucer section on galaxy class
At approximately 8:05 that's coincidence you're describing, not irony. Glad to be of service.
Another idea I had for why the big open section in the middle would be to have it as a launch point for either landing ships to get 200-300 troops to the surface of a planet without using transporters, or to launch a sub-warp escort like T'liss class bird-of-prey, something that was part of the design, but was abandoned so late into the development process that it couldn't be undone. Just look at the massive hanger bay they put into the Scimitar's nose.
Captain nailed it at 3:21. There's no reason to assume those three Federation ships expected tactical superiority. Indeed, the only real damage we see inflicted on the Romulans is when the Prometheus herself joins the fight.
I think that the space inside can be used as a rallying point for shuttle launches and landings.
I think of it as the first ship that used the singularity reactor. The mass and structure was required to fit around the singularity that the vessel was built around. You cannot see it because it bends light around it. The singularity is part and parcel of the Romulan cloaking abilities as the gravimetric fields are manipulated as needed...
If they do use standard antimatter reactors, then that is serious space within the warp envelope to carry a lot of smallcraft along with the ship. How many fighters could they carry? For that matter how many cargo pods could you fit in the warp field, or ship debris? I think the Romulans were the best privateers in the galaxy, using cloaked high volume freighters to move loot, before their star exploded. I am surprised there has not been a serious resurgence of the Orin Syndicate in the years since....
In nearly all the TNG episodes, the D'deridex was slower and less maneuverable but had massive firepower.
The Defiant project was made to fight the Borg. Nothing in the Romulan fleet back then had the shields of firepower to simply withstand a Defiant and or a wing of similar ships.
In regards to your discussion about 'Message in a bottle', weren't the Akira and Defiant class ships built in response to the Borg? Would not ships designed to fight the Borg have a leg up against the D'deridex?
+lrdofstrms
There were other reasons why the "Message in a Bottle" fight has to be looked at critically. The D'deridex is a multi-role vessel, designed to carry out exploration, science, and other missions in addition to combat. In contrast the Defiant class vessels are designed almost exclusively for combat. If you have a Jack of All Trades facing off against a combat specialist, the specialist will most likely win.
The tactics used weren't to the benefit of the Romulans either. They remained uncloaked and in a straight up brawl with the Federation vessels. I would expect a Romulan battle plan to make liberal use of the cloaking device, like in "Balance of Terror".
I am pretty sure the Davore warship from Voyager was based on the arse end of this class of ship. Can't remember the episode, but it's a season five one that it appears in.
That yellow Warbird, facing head on like that, looks like Pac-Man, or a Smiley Face (or, God help us, a Minion) ;) Yellow is just too friendly a colour... it sorta suits the Cardassians because they're always smiling insincerely, but the 'venomous' green suits the Romulans so much more :)
I always felt Romulan ships were more like Submarines. Designed to go unseen, hit hard when you arent ready, and then fade out. But if they get into a fist fight they aren't as strong. Federation and Kilgon ships are more ships of the line. Designed to take a lot of hits and stand strong while securing the scene.
Don't forget that non-cannon they had the Kerchan operating alongside the neorexan
I always considered this ship as a sort of carrier/dock type ship, fighters etc landing within its 'wings'.
- interesting possible warp/cloak bubble intricacies
In the original ccg, the DD had a slight advantage in weapons over the Galaxy and VorCha, which had Shield and .. speed advantages respectively.
The D'Deridex "gap" facilitates the black hole generator.
I think if you close off the empty middle bit and you could turn it into a massive carrier, with fighters and auxiliary craft, like assault ships or science vessels
Or park a Galaxy class ship in there 😉
To my mind the D'deridex was one of the most powerful ships in the Alpha/Beta Quadrants. Remember the Romulans waged their own separate war with the Dominion for months before allying officially with the Federation, and managed to hold the Dominion off with what was portrayed on screen as relative ease. DS9 mentioned the Romulans 'annihilating' Dominion fleets.
The destruction of a D'deridex at the hands of the Prometheus proves nothing. First of all the three warbirds had already been engaged with a Federation task force prior to the Prometheus getting involved in the fight. Second the Prometheus was a state of the art dedicated warship using its unique MVAM abilities, focusing its considerable firepower on a single warbird. The D'deridex is strong, but it can be overwhelmed. Once its shields go down, it's done.
+Orion Slaver The Romulans signed a non aggression pact with the Dominion. They weren't fighting at all, that was the reason for the episode "In the Pale Moonlight".
+SideSwipeGTA The events of 'In the Pale Moonlight' led to the Romulan Empire declaring war on the Dominion, however they didn't officially ally with the Federation and Klingons for months and fought on their own in the meantime. In that time the Dominion attacked them several times, and each time the Romulans obliterated the invading fleets.
I'm not saying the Romulans could have defeated the Dominion on their own, but they certainly held their borders with what is implied to be relative ease. It was only recognition of the Dominion's superior ship construction rates and troop breeding that convinced the Romulans to join the Federation Alliance. They knew they'd lose if it came down to a war of attrition.
Romulan representative: "Let the Dominion continue to send their fleets against us and we will annihilate them one by one!"
Admiral Ross: "And they'll continue to rebuild their fleets and send more."
Worf: "The Dominion breed Jem'Hadar faster than we can destroy them!"
The episode never says anything about how long they were fighting on their own. It seems to imply just the opposite. It doesn't seem like much time had gone by since the assassination events and Sisko recording his log. They were so successful because they attacked suddenly and the Dominion had no reason to think they would since they had the non aggression pact.
+SideSwipeGTA A general timeline can be approximated by how each season of Star Trek takes place over the course of an in-universe year. The three (I think) episodes between 'In the Pale Moonlight' and the build-up to the invasion of Cardassian space, when the Romulans formally allied with the Federation and Klingons, can be estimated to have taken place over roughly a month at least. The events transpired as follows:
- Sisko and Garak forge Dominion plans to invade Romulan space.
- Sisko and Garak arrange to meet Senator Vreenak.
- Vreenak discovers the forgery but is assassinated by a bomb planted by Garak.
- Romulan intelligence operatives arrive to investigate the death of one of their most important senators on a diplomatic mission. They uncover a Cardassian data rod in the wreckage.
- The Romulans analyse the data rod, discovering information about a planned Dominion assault on Romulus. Flaws in the records are assumed to be a result of the explosion.
- The Romulans come to the conclusion that Vreenak discovered these plans and was murdered by the Dominion.
- One can assume this was followed by uproarious debate in the Romulan Senate.
- The Romulan fleet is mobilised. Romulan forces under cloak are positioned for a massive strike on Dominion forces along the Cardassian border.- The Romulan Star Empire declares war on the Dominion.
- Pre-positioned Romulan forces immediately launch a blitz on the Cardassian border, damaging or destroying 15 Dominion bases.- Sisko records his personal log, describing the conspiracy to bring the Romulans into the war.- Dominion forces are diverted to launch a retaliatory strike on Romulan space.
- Dominion forces are out-maneuvered, surrounded and annihilated by the Romulan fleet.- The Dominion again divert forces to engage the Romulans, which meet a similar fate.- With the pressure relieved by the Romulans' entrance into the war, the Federation and Klingons begin preparations to invade Cardassian space.- The Romulans are invited by the Federation Alliance to join forces and take part in the invasion. The Romulans agree to send a representative to hear out the Federation's proposals.
- Romulan representatives, while initially confident in their ability to hold the Dominion at bay (citing their ability to 'annihilate' Dominion fleets), are convinced that the Dominion could only be truly defeated by a unified alliance with the other Alpha/Beta Quadrant powers.- Romulan forces are diverted to take part in the invasion of Cardassian space.- As the war enters its second year, Romulan forces start to join Federation and Klingon forces in combined operations.
These events could only take place over a lengthy period of time.
+Orion Slaver Big Show you gotta do more Star Trek. You were a great Orion and it'd be great seeing you in other roles.
like the show guys. came across it couple weeks ago and been catching up on older episodes. I always thought the ship was so big and the space between the warp nacelles was so vast had to something to do with their technology in producing warp fields. quantum singularities. same for the new ships from nemesis. the ship wasnt nearly as big, but the nacelles are very far apart
I'm no mathematician, but I'm pretty sure that if the D'deridex was compacted down it would be at least one and a half times the volume of the Enterprise D. That huge beaky fore-section looks to be the the volume of the Enterprise's entire secondary hull all by itself, and the upper and lower aft sections each look bigger than the Enterprise's saucer in area, if not depth.
D'Deridex always struck me as a massive battering ram... a surprise attack and planetary assault/siege oriented weapon that had absolutely astounding forward firepower, but at a terrible cost in speed, turning performance, and protective weaponry on its stern and flanks. If it caught you by surprise, you were doomed in almost any vessel then-in the Alpha Quadrant. But, if it either failed to catch you by surprise or its commander failed to execute that surprise to good effect, almost any other vessel then-in the Alpha Quadrant could either out run it or maneuver behind it, and stay in the blind spot to the vast majority of the less maneuverable D'Deridex's weapons. Klingon vessels similarly tended to be designed with a massive emphasis on forward firepower (vs. the more widely arrayed weapon systems seen on Federation ships), but they 'at least' were designed to be highly agile - a Vor'Cha class in DS9 easily staying on the tail of the much smaller Defiant.
You got to realize the D'deridex was designed and commissioned during a 'stalemate' when the Romulan's most powerful foes were the Klingon Empire and the Federation, while the Defiant class was a full on warship designed and built years later to go toe to toe with the Borg. It was equipped with the top of the line defensive and offensive capabilities. The main reason it was small was because it had no other role whatsoever and therefore all extraneous systems and infrastructure was not needed. Also, the Defiant and Prometheus classes were the first class of ships at the time to be using ablative armor. So the idea that a few of them could take out a D'deridex is really not that surprising, especially when backed up by another cruiser.
defiant is similar to Stargate battle cruisers .. put together out of need. Got everything on it... borrowed tek, stolen tek, gifted tek, homegrown. SG ships had 30 or so fighters, very half assed but capable of travelling via hyperspace.
How about showing a Borg Cube. I don't think I've seen you guys cover in detail any Borg vessels. I know they're basically just giant space boxes, but still...There's a lot to talk about in terms of internal design, functionality, weaponry, and defenses. Anyway, keep up the great work. Qapla'
FYI, a singularity powerful enough to fuel a starship per Wikipedia "Black Hole Starship" entry weighs 606,000 metric tons (6.06 × 108 kg), or about the weight of 7 Nimitiz Aircraft Carriers. but has a sub-miscrocopic Schwarzschild radius of 0.9 attometers, with a power output of 160 petawatts and a 3.5-year lifespan (it continuously evaporates, radiating hawking radiation, which is the form of the power it generates). I imagine the weight of 7 aircraft carriers contained in the space of a microscopic point would need to be housed near or at the center of mass for the ship in order to maximize stability and maneuverability. Per the wikipedia article cited, that seems to be the "sweet spot" for a black hole powersource. Interestingly, a more massive black hole would be more STABLE and evaporate more slowly, and would thus have less powerful output, but a longer lifespan. While a less massive black hole would evaporate faster and radiate energy at a much greater rate, but would have a shorter and shorter lifespan the less and less mass it contains. If the mass gets too light, the black hole evaporates and releases radiation too fast and would essentially explode. So it needs to contain a sizeable amount of mass to be stable enough to use. But there should be no problem actually "recharging" the black hole, because you could always dump more mass into it to compensate for what gets radiated out.
This ship was always on e of my favorites. It may have taken many beatings in the past (This including the Dominion war) but I think that the initial plan of the Romulan was not to make it as much powerfull as imposing in size to intimidate the enemy. But as we've seen, David always takes out Goliath in the end.As for why there are no more plasma waepons in the later versions the Romulan is self evident. This weapon was limited in range and was also easy to detonate before impact. This made it necessary evaluate this weapon and come with options that where more efficent and reliable.
So I noticed that the ship is powered by a "forced quantum singuilarity" aka a "black hole" (instead of using anti-matter). Such a singularity would have an event horizon, though only a teeny-tiny one, the Wikipedia article on "black hole starship" suggests a suitable such black hole would have a Schwarzschild radius of 0.9 attometers (that's sub-microscopic). but it occurred to me the big empty space in the middle of the ship might be necessary to accomodate the singularity and any gravitic effects it might have.
I remember playing star trek invasion for the playsation. I used to maneuver myself in the Hollow area of the Romulan warbird after I drained the shields and just fire away. I do remember still getting hit by the main weapons but i feel like that was a game funcion rather that an actual star trek canon thing. any thoughts?
i loved this Romulan ship how many deck does it have. Where is the bridge at the front.
One of my favorite ships.
I've always thought that the lower sector could detach from the main hull or at least a variation without it.
In 'Message in a Bottle' I think that the 1 Akira and 2 Defiant's were assigned to track down the Prometheus and ascertain why it changed course and dropped out communication. I really think those 3 ships would have had a really hard time against the 3 D'deridex, and only the intervention of the Prometheus caused the destruction of one of them. Seeing as the Prometheus was not under their control and they were on the wrong side of the border, they fled. I do agree that the D'deridex should have more punch, considering it's size though.
☼ what about teh engine and cloak designs?