Yesterday's Enterprise by the roots

[Granitehewer]

I love Yesterday's Enterprise (even Picard's Buddy Holly moment), and the universe in which the Federation are losing in a costly war to the Klingons was intriguing and piqued my interest.
I was wondering if anyone had any ideas as to why the Federation would be losing the war...I'm not looking for quasi-canonical hints or backstage whispers but just imaginative ideas for a bit of lowbrow fun so we can come up with interesting (but not silly) scenarios and vignettes. I've already heard ideas about a Klingon Alexander the Great, or maybe the alternate universe Klingons being allied with Romulans (Ala Duras) and gaining a military and intel advantage over the UFP, that the UFP may have suffered in wars with other empires or that the UFP was weakened by secessionist movements.
It'd be great if anyone fancies coming up with anything else. This isn't some academic debate merely an exercise in reasonable imagination.

[Granitehewer]

(I've got a really important meeting tomorrow and I need distracting as to be honest it doesn't look good at all)

[Tsukiyumi]

Well, in an alternate universe, Worf, son of Mogh could possibly have been on the Klingon side; that right there would swing things in the Klingons favor.

Also, without the Narendra III incident, the Klingons might have continued to amp up ship production, while the Federation may have not until it was far too late.

[Deepcrush]

The Klingons have shown and insane ability with ship and troop production. The war came prior to the UFP gaining QTs which is really the number one advantage the SF could field. Without those, the UFP was just on a losing game of numbers. The GCS being the UFPs big ship while the KE used the Vorcha. But considering the numbers of Vorcha's seen, the KDF clearly produces them at a far greater rate.

Also remember that for about six months the KE was in a war against both the CU and UFP... and they were enjoying it!

[Granitehewer]

Although at Ty'Gokor Sisko did say to Gowron that the Dominion intended for the Federation and Klingons to destroy each other (or something similar) so in my opinion that at least shows parity.

[Deepcrush]

The weaker they make each other, the easier the coming war would be for the dominion.

[Atekimogus]

Well Klingons - when the villains - were pretty much Space Soviets so I would imagine they just would do what historically they did best, namely just overwhelming their enemies with cheap, mass produced and purpose designed ships.

So my guess is that they have a huge initiall advantage having set up production lines for pure war ships, ships which are not supposed to last longer than a few months and are therefore far cheaper and easier to build while the UFP still has only peace-designs with life-spans of 100years etc. which are - altough far superior on a 1on1 basis - far to expensive and sophistiaced for fighting a protracted war.

Just look at the Dominion War and the problems they had, they didn't have a SINGLE purpose designed ship available apart from the Defiant class and even that was not built for that conflict but happend to be lying around for another reason and if we are to believe the production sources they had to make do with ship-designs which were 2/3 empty and be completed at a later date because there wasn't anything better available at short notice. And that was the UFP that had already it's nose blunted by the borg and was certainly more prepared for a conflict as the UFP was in the time of Yesterdays Enterprise.

[Mikey]

As a corollary to that, remember that the KE didn't have an economy burdened by such extraneous things like social welfare programs, education, arts endowments, or anything besides materiel and manpower.

[McAvoy]

Some key victory or series of victories could have done it. We really do not know.

Though in that episode photon torpedoes created that temporal rift which is odd.

[Deepcrush]

Well the PT was just the IU reason, and was dropped pretty quick just to get the show moving. However we can't discount the klingon ships as cheap... because in the time they were produced they were in fact not cheap at all. They were pretty powerful by the standards of the time. In the era of TNG-YE, the Klingons were not really that much behind the UFP in ship combat ability. Its just that the klingons as Mikey pointed out have a far smaller social burden.

[Atekimogus]

As a corollary to that, remember that the KE didn't have an economy burdened by such extraneous things like social welfare programs, education, arts endowments, or anything besides materiel and manpower.

Well maybe that is true to a degree but I wouldn't say they only do material and manpower.

They obviously have a thing going for culture, revel in Klingon Shakespear, Opera and their homeworld seems to be full of art glorifieng the empire.
Obviously, if they have ships which are on par or only slightly inferior to the UFP, they must have an adequate education and sciene programme and as for social welfare....well, it's true that the state probably doesn't provide anyhting however first, at the time of TNG, they also have replicators, meaning that material need is more of an non-issue and secondly they have the great houses taking care of their own, so I would imagine they are not "that" different than the UFP regarding the standards of living.

My point is that altough maybe artist, scientiest, doctors etc. are held in lower esteem than warriors they are still the majority of the people simply because the cultural and science achievments wouldn't simply be possible in a society consisting primarily of soldiers.

They just are more agressive and have in infinitely more practical approach to warfare than Starfleet, which isn't surprising considering that Starfleet of the TNG era was exploration first, defense second.

[Mikey]

I never said that the Klingons didn't have a rich culture, or anything like that. What I said is that I defy anyone to find the Klingon Empire's version of their National Endowment for the Arts, or Klingon educational grants, etc. I'd imagine the vast majority of the KE's budget would be defense spending.

[Granitehewer]

We had that Klingon in one of the Ent episodes lamenting the loss of their artistry and such and the resultant domination of the warrior caste, the one were Archer was on trial.

[Granitehewer]

''Judgement'' I think...

[Granitehewer]

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Judgment_(episode) Act two