Ship of the Week: D'Deridex

[Sionnach Glic]

Well, that pretty much sums up the D'Deridex class. Most likely, the huge length and breadth of the ship is used for intimidation purposes. People tend to panic when they see a fleet of massive warships coming straight at them.

Welcome to the site.

[Tholian_Avenger]

Thank you.

So is Cliath a Gaelic or Lovecraftian word?

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J. vom Land der Ostern Blumen
Thol'yuns, hear your 'ssembly call you! ~ Up, lest worse than frost befall you! ~ To Webs! To Webs! To Webs, in Thol'ya! ~ Lo! All the tach'yun guards are lighted, let all hearts be now united! ~ To Webs ! To Webs! To Webs, in Thol'ya!

Advance the silk of Thol'ya Hurrah! Hurrah! ~ For Thol-i-a we take our stand, and live or die for Thol'ya! ~ To Webs! To Webs! and conquer peace for Thol'ya. ~ To Webs! To Webs and conquer peace for Thol'ya.

[Sionnach Glic]

Gaelic. I'm from Ireland, and my location is in Irish. 'Bhaile Áthat Cliath' is the Irish name for Dublin.
Oddly enough, the word 'cliath' just means 'damn' or 'darn'. Was whoever named this place trying to tell us something?

[Captain Picard's Hair]

It occurs to me the Romulans could get diminished returns on the intimidation factor against a well-trained and well-informed enemy, once the class is seen in action. Also, if the Nebula's compact design can be thought to improve shield efficiency due to the smaller shield surface area (as has been proposed on this site), then the D'Deridex would suffer the converse to the greatest degree of any Trek ship. The Romulans may have had to counter with larger emitters/more power devoted to shielding (and possibly, cloaking). This may have been mentioned in this thread, but I'm not free to read through it right now and haven't commented in it yet.

[Aaron]

We already know that the cloak requires a fair amount of power (from various episodes) as well as stringent monitoring for emissions leaking through.

[Duskofdead]

It occurs to me the Romulans could get diminished returns on the intimidation factor against a well-trained and well-informed enemy, once the class is seen in action. Also, if the Nebula's compact design can be thought to improve shield efficiency due to the smaller shield surface area (as has been proposed on this site), then the D'Deridex would suffer the converse to the greatest degree of any Trek ship. The Romulans may have had to counter with larger emitters/more power devoted to shielding (and possibly, cloaking). This may have been mentioned in this thread, but I'm not free to read through it right now and haven't commented in it yet.

\

I get the gist of what you are saying, but it remains contradicted (even within show canon) how exactly the mechanics of shield and shield energy works out. We know that for a given ship, if it decreases its shield radius, it increases the strength. But we don't know that all shield generators are created the same or operate on the same principles necessarily. On Borg cubes, for instance, we'd expect to see any given point of the shield very weak to cover such a huge area, if we simply assume surface area strength decreases as the area increases for all shield types. (Either that or the Borg cubes are just so massively powered that blasting ships open with 1 hit should be fairly easy for them.)

[Captain Seafort]

I get the gist of what you are saying, but it remains contradicted (even within show canon) how exactly the mechanics of shield and shield energy works out. We know that for a given ship, if it decreases its shield radius, it increases the strength. But we don't know that all shield generators are created the same or operate on the same principles necessarily. On Borg cubes, for instance, we'd expect to see any given point of the shield very weak to cover such a huge area, if we simply assume surface area strength decreases as the area increases for all shield types. (Either that or the Borg cubes are just so massively powered that blasting ships open with 1 hit should be fairly easy for them.)

Borg shields seem to require optimisation for specific weapons before they're effective. Note the fact that while it seems to be taken for granted by the Feds that adaptation = invulnerability, it also seems to be assumed that until they've adapted to can blast holes in them willy-nilly.

[Duskofdead]

I get the gist of what you are saying, but it remains contradicted (even within show canon) how exactly the mechanics of shield and shield energy works out. We know that for a given ship, if it decreases its shield radius, it increases the strength. But we don't know that all shield generators are created the same or operate on the same principles necessarily. On Borg cubes, for instance, we'd expect to see any given point of the shield very weak to cover such a huge area, if we simply assume surface area strength decreases as the area increases for all shield types. (Either that or the Borg cubes are just so massively powered that blasting ships open with 1 hit should be fairly easy for them.)

Borg shields seem to require optimisation for specific weapons before they're effective. Note the fact that while it seems to be taken for granted by the Feds that adaptation = invulnerability, it also seems to be assumed that until they've adapted to can blast holes in them willy-nilly.

Yup. The Ent-E in "Q Who" blasted devastating damage into it with just a few phaser hits. It looked like 1/3rd of the damn cube got vaporized.

[Captain Seafort]

Yup. The Ent-E in "Q Who" blasted devastating damage into it with just a few phaser hits. It looked like 1/3rd of the damn cube got vaporized.

How exactly was the Ent-E involved, given that this was about 7 years before she was commissioned?

Data mentioned that 20% of the cube was damged, how much of that was actually destroyed is unclear, but while the phaser blasts did a fair bit of damage, the holes made seemed rather shallow to me.

[Duskofdead]

Yup. The Ent-E in "Q Who" blasted devastating damage into it with just a few phaser hits. It looked like 1/3rd of the damn cube got vaporized.

How exactly was the Ent-E involved, given that this was about 7 years before she was commissioned?

Data mentioned that 20% of the cube was damged, how much of that was actually destroyed is unclear, but while the phaser blasts did a fair bit of damage, the holes made seemed rather shallow to me.

Oops on the Ent-E comment. I was referring only to the visuals, it looked like more than 20%, especially when it was showing the volley from the angle. It looked more moderate once we saw the whole cube again.

At ANY rate Mr. Contentious... it looked like a level of damage that would have crippled almost any other ship.

[Mikey]

It occurs to me the Romulans could get diminished returns on the intimidation factor against a well-trained and well-informed enemy, once the class is seen in action. Also, if the Nebula's compact design can be thought to improve shield efficiency due to the smaller shield surface area (as has been proposed on this site), then the D'Deridex would suffer the converse to the greatest degree of any Trek ship. The Romulans may have had to counter with larger emitters/more power devoted to shielding (and possibly, cloaking). This may have been mentioned in this thread, but I'm not free to read through it right now and haven't commented in it yet.

\

I get the gist of what you are saying, but it remains contradicted (even within show canon) how exactly the mechanics of shield and shield energy works out. We know that for a given ship, if it decreases its shield radius, it increases the strength. But we don't know that all shield generators are created the same or operate on the same principles necessarily. On Borg cubes, for instance, we'd expect to see any given point of the shield very weak to cover such a huge area, if we simply assume surface area strength decreases as the area increases for all shield types. (Either that or the Borg cubes are just so massively powered that blasting ships open with 1 hit should be fairly easy for them.)

I think the idea is comparison between similar situations; i.e., given the same emitters, power supply, etc., as a "standard" Borg cube, a smaller shield area would be even stronger - NOT meant to imply that the shields are inherently weak simply because the area is large.

[Duskofdead]

It occurs to me the Romulans could get diminished returns on the intimidation factor against a well-trained and well-informed enemy, once the class is seen in action. Also, if the Nebula's compact design can be thought to improve shield efficiency due to the smaller shield surface area (as has been proposed on this site), then the D'Deridex would suffer the converse to the greatest degree of any Trek ship. The Romulans may have had to counter with larger emitters/more power devoted to shielding (and possibly, cloaking). This may have been mentioned in this thread, but I'm not free to read through it right now and haven't commented in it yet.

\

I get the gist of what you are saying, but it remains contradicted (even within show canon) how exactly the mechanics of shield and shield energy works out. We know that for a given ship, if it decreases its shield radius, it increases the strength. But we don't know that all shield generators are created the same or operate on the same principles necessarily. On Borg cubes, for instance, we'd expect to see any given point of the shield very weak to cover such a huge area, if we simply assume surface area strength decreases as the area increases for all shield types. (Either that or the Borg cubes are just so massively powered that blasting ships open with 1 hit should be fairly easy for them.)

I think the idea is comparison between similar situations; i.e., given the same emitters, power supply, etc., as a "standard" Borg cube, a smaller shield area would be even stronger - NOT meant to imply that the shields are inherently weak simply because the area is large.

I agree. I just think it's possible for them to invent technobabble to explain the shield technology of radically different designs which don't fall within the traditional "creating a force field of x size requires x power." If your shield technology, for instance, created an intense space distortion of a given size (like a flat rate system, so to speak) around the generator, size might not be a factor necessarily in power consumption.

[Mikey]

I always thought of it more as a given power output for whatever area is to be encompassed; in that case, common sense dictates that larger area = weaker shield strength PER unit area.

[Duskofdead]

I always thought of it more as a given power output for whatever area is to be encompassed; in that case, common sense dictates that larger area = weaker shield strength PER unit area.

I agree 100% with regards to the traditional force field (essentially creating an energy barrier of a given size) technology.

In like the Borg's case, though, for instance, the field around the ship in Q Who and Best of Both Worlds was actually an EM field rather than a shield or force field. It simply nullified energy tossed at it. They didn't strictly stick to canon in that regard but I'm not really a bible thumper, I went with the flow that they made the Borg less invincible later.

[Mikey]

It would certainly explain the Borg's pre-adaptation vulnerability to a given weapon.