dominion war galaxy class ships
- Thread starter tgifriday
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They were always that strong. The story just usually didn't call for them to be kicking butt. If they were anything but strong, the Klingons or Romulans would have conquered them previously.
The loss of the Enterprise would not have sped up the usual R&D upgrades. The discovery of the Borg and the Dominion might. But it;s not unusual for older ships to be upgraded with newer weapons as they come along, i.e. the Lakota.
The loss of the Enterprise would not have sped up the usual R&D upgrades. The discovery of the Borg and the Dominion might. But it;s not unusual for older ships to be upgraded with newer weapons as they come along, i.e. the Lakota.
There were quite a few Galaxy-Class ships seen in battles, though none were ever named.
As for their tactical strength, that kinda goes without question, it would be one of the strongest ships out there given every refit and upgrade to shields and weapons Starfleet had going--after all the class itself was barely 10 years old by the time the war started and given how much R&D went into the design in the first place, as well as the prominent role they played in interstellar events since first being launched I don't see Starfleet letting them go to waste.
As for their tactical strength, that kinda goes without question, it would be one of the strongest ships out there given every refit and upgrade to shields and weapons Starfleet had going--after all the class itself was barely 10 years old by the time the war started and given how much R&D went into the design in the first place, as well as the prominent role they played in interstellar events since first being launched I don't see Starfleet letting them go to waste.
The Venture and probably the Magellan in SOA are Galaxy class, presumably part of Galaxy Wings 9-1 and 9-3. In TOTP the Galaxy we see getting chunks blown off it is apparently the USS Galaxy herself.
Starfleet probably didn't need to do much with the class itself as it WAS considered ahead of its time when it launched (which was the backstory behind the concerns about "design flaws" in TNG stories where the ship started suffering technical problems). Since Wolf 359 Starfleet rushed out new, more "tactical" designs like the Steamrunner, Sabre and Norway classes, plus the Sovereign, but the Galaxy would still be a powerful ship. Maybe refit with a quantum torpedo loadout and uprate the shields a little, but she can take a punch and hit back hard even without that.
What did surprise me was that we commonly saw Galaxy's in the fleet battles with the saucers attached, instead of just stardrive sections. In real terms, this would be because model work would be easier using the regular combined ship look (plus it's more recognisable for the audience), but some sources have claimed that the in-universe explanation was the same as Riker's in BOBW - that the extra power from the saucer impulse engines was a tactical advantage the captains' didn't wish to pass up - we can assume their civilian/support crews had already been evacuated to Starbases prior to joining the fight. Plus, to go a bit Batman, the saucer presents a big, inviting target whilst the enemy would be better off targeting the warp nacelles or other areas of the stardrive section.
What did surprise me was that we commonly saw Galaxy's in the fleet battles with the saucers attached, instead of just stardrive sections. In real terms, this would be because model work would be easier using the regular combined ship look (plus it's more recognisable for the audience), but some sources have claimed that the in-universe explanation was the same as Riker's in BOBW - that the extra power from the saucer impulse engines was a tactical advantage the captains' didn't wish to pass up - we can assume their civilian/support crews had already been evacuated to Starbases prior to joining the fight. Plus, to go a bit Batman, the saucer presents a big, inviting target whilst the enemy would be better off targeting the warp nacelles or other areas of the stardrive section.
Depends, if you aren't carrying them around, you can shut down big sections of life support and route the power to shields and weapons.
And I doubt the Federation got THAT fatalistic anyway.
I doubt they had families on in the middle of the Dominion War, Starfleet seemed to have dropped that dubious practice by that point. Starfleet might be non-military in intention and belief, but the military and combat aspect of it's operations, not to mention the inherent danger of space exploration, makes it a pretty poor idea.
In-universe, I suspect the Yamato disaster was the tipping-point, and Wolf 359 the final nail for most of the fleet (though the Ent-D obviously kept families for the rest of it's life). It seems to have been a new idea at the time of the TNG pilot, and one Picard disliked.
Being given the choice of assimilation for your young children or phasering one's entire family isn't one they would show on-screen in a show like Trek, but it is one they are making their people face by letting them bring families aboard post Wolf 359.
A little off topic but as much as the Venture was mentioned, it would have been nice to acutally meet the captain & crew in an episode.
I might be playing too many video games, but I imagine the Galaxy class playing a tank and support role in major fleet battles. Being able to run interference and taking enemy fire (like in Sacrifice of Angels), shoving enemies to the side, or hanging back and spraying powerful support fire (What You Leave Behind), the Galaxy seems ideal for those roles, compared to the agile Saber and Defiants that can take the fight to the bugships, or the cannon fodder that are the Mirandas. After the war started, we never a Galaxy outright destroyed, either (I mean, it's definitely possible offscreen, but my head canon says that the class had a near-perfect record in the war), and all of that, to me, is evidence of its power.
Well, don't forget that the saucer section of the Galaxy Class has 2 powerful phasers (phased array phaser? I forget the name) . One attached to the upper section, the other to the bottom section of the saucer. It is brand new phaser that the old Miranda and Excelsior didn't have. And I believe that the power that the phaser deliver is much-much bigger than even the upgraded Excelisor class can get. So it is a waste if you just detach that element just because the original design board said that the saucer was suppose to be the "Civilian Section" of the ship.
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Well, there is no tank role in ship battle. There is only "Battleship role".
Don't think the Dominion war ever got quite that desperate, SF may have struggled and been on the back foot, but they were never out of the game so to speak
Well assuming they had a production line for both (which is likely) why not keep both running? They might dial back one or other, but as skilled labour is likely to be the only scarce resource, they would not waste time repurposing any facility?
Not all ships are created equal, as we've seen. But even in the US Navy, there's a variety of ship classes in operation because they all serve different functions. I imagine one of the big differences between Starfleet and the Navy in functionality is that Starfleet ships can take more relative hits without becoming incapacitated (as well as, obviously, moving in 3 dimensions, but that's for the more agile but weaker Starfleet vessels, really).
I don't think they were actively building Galaxys, since the E-D herself took years to complete. The TNG Tech Manual mentions a plan of twelve such ships initially, which was later reworked to a plan of having six active ships and the spaceframes (which had aleady been laid down) of the remaining six ships put in storage. I assumed Starfleet later pulled those and completed construction - giving us, minus the Odyssey, E-D and Yamato, nine active Galaxys for the duration of the war.
This one has been done to death, but I'd imagine personally the number of Galaxy class ships as an order of magnitude higher than that.
The TNG era pictured Starfleet as smaller than DS9, but they didnt get 20,000 ships out of thin air, so they must build dozens or hundreds and sometimes thousands of certain designs. The ubiquity of the Excelsior and Miranda designs suggests hundreds and maybe thousands respectively of those in the fleet.
So why only 12 Galaxies? Start with batches of 6 a year, then maybe 12? With the resources the Feds have your main bottleneck is going to be the legendary Starfleet officers, the equipment would be as good as disposable.
Additionally, I would wager that they simply got better at building certain classes over time. The tech manual says it took 13 years to build the Enterprise. But that ship was a fully loaded explorer with all the amenities. And it was part of the first build group.
I would suggest you could probably shave off 25% of that construction time with the second batch just by virtue of having gotten all the kinks worked out of the construction and assembly process. Then maybe another 25% as you scramble in preparation for war, ramping up mass production of components, reallocating and adding new resources (human and otherwise) to the construction effort, and so on.
And then there will be time saved by choosing not to install every last piece of equipment or furniture. It's war after all; science labs (with all their intricate technologies) and holodecks can wait, the crew and any troops the ship is carrying can roll out sleeping bags.
I would guess that Starfleet could probably bang out some barebones war-ready Galaxies in 2-3 years if they were so inclined.
Memory Alpha says that there are 15 dedicated shipyards, but notes that most larger Starbases and outposts are also capable of repairing or building ships. Of the roughly 120 Starbases listed there, if we assume that only a third are "large" and half of them are capable of actually building ships (as opposed to just effecting repairs), then we'll add an additional 20 building facilities to Starfleet's roster.
Assuming that Starfleet didn't get to working in earnest until the Odyssey was destroyed in 2270 -- and since the war didn't begin until 2273 -- it's easily possible that there could be at least 35 new Galaxies primed and ready to fight... That's on top of those remaining from the original batch, and whatever Starfleet had built between then and 2270.
So in total, I can easily imagine there being 50 or more in service during the war...
But the real question is this: would the Galaxy Class be worth the time and effort to build at all?
If we go by tonnage, a Defiant Class ship is approximately 12X smaller, and presumably could be produced that much more quickly. Are 12 Defiants worth as much as one Galaxy?
That seems like a long time for such a technologically advanced society. Even the biggest ships today don't take that long to construct. Is it possible that the 13 years referred to is the total time from development to launch?
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