The Federation's war preparations with the Dominion

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The Federation's war preparations with the Dominion

Post by Meste17 »

So I look at Starbase 74's specifications on the DITL website and with the fact that the Federation was trying to shift its economy to a more warlike footing (such as retrofitting DS9 with all the weaponry gadgets and doodads it had, thereby making it able to kick the asses of the Klingons in The Way of the Warrior), would it be possible that Starfleet would have been smart enough to actually do the same for it's other starbases, say Starbase 74, and refit it to carry Quantum Torpedo launchers instead of the basic photons? For that matter, would the phasers and shields have also been retrofitted as well?
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Re: The Federation's war preparations with the Dominion

Post by Graham Kennedy »

I would think they would be refitting photon launchers with quantum ones just as fast as they could manufacture the launchers and torpedoes.

And there's a lot you could do to reconfigure phasers and shields and whatnot, even without new hardware. Look at the changes Jellico made to the E-D whilst he was there, re-routing power from laboratories and such to the weapons systems. It seemed to give a significant combat upgrade, and only took a few days of work by the crew. Every ship in the fleet probably tweaked themselves like that.

And sure, I'd think they would also be refitting both ships and stations with new weapons just as fast as they could. Why not?

We certainly know that they instituted some sort of shield modification fleetwide before the war, because their shields began to work against Dominion polaron weapons.
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Re: The Federation's war preparations with the Dominion

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Sure. Assuming a Starbase 74 would be near the front lines. Makes sense. I doubt Starbases on the other side of the Federation would though. In fact they might strip them depending on where they are at so they can send those spare parts to the front lines. Likewise, the Oberth for example would refit their sensor array to instead of being able to pick up a hair from light years away to being able to detect ship movement up to ten light-years away. The making an Oberth useful.

Starbase 74 is already formidable and probably will have ships defending it. That sort of Starbase would be a hard base to defeat.

Edit: 450 shield strength? Talk about a glass jaw.
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Re: The Federation's war preparations with the Dominion

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McAvoy wrote:Sure. Assuming a Starbase 74 would be near the front lines. Makes sense. I doubt Starbases on the other side of the Federation would though. In fact they might strip them depending on where they are at so they can send those spare parts to the front lines. Likewise, the Oberth for example would refit their sensor array to instead of being able to pick up a hair from light years away to being able to detect ship movement up to ten light-years away. The making an Oberth useful.

Starbase 74 is already formidable and probably will have ships defending it. That sort of Starbase would be a hard base to defeat.

Edit: 450 shield strength? Talk about a glass jaw.
True, but that was one of the reasons I asked this specific question. Surely they would at least TRY to make the shields a LITTLE bit stronger, much like they did DS9. I would assume before the Federation refitted it that it had shields no more powerful than SB74, maybe in the 451,000 TeraJoule range, considering she started out as a Cardassian space station. So to me it would stand to reason that they modified the shields on SB74 as well, that way she would NOT have a "glass jaw," as you put it McAvoy.

So it would be likely that SB74 had quantums at the onset of the War then?
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Re: The Federation's war preparations with the Dominion

Post by Mikey »

Not at the onset, but probably soon after. Front-line ships had upgrade priority, no doubt.
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Re: The Federation's war preparations with the Dominion

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Meste jus to let you know the strengths on this website are all made up. Graham could change it today or not at will if he wanted to and it would be just as accurate as before to cannon.

Sure the people who live and work on the Starbases would take the time to do what they can do it make the whole base ready for war. Whether it's tweaks to the equipment, stockpiling or replacing components.
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Re: The Federation's war preparations with the Dominion

Post by Teaos »

Starbases are in general, shitty defence,

You can shoot at them from a huge distance and hit since they can't dodge, or just wait for them to be on the opposite orbit and attack the planet.

Unless I could upgrade them with no cost, I wouldnt bother.
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Re: The Federation's war preparations with the Dominion

Post by Mikey »

Also, believe it or not, common sense applies. Just like, as I said, ships intended for the fronts would get upgrade priority over starbases, so starbases near the front would get priority over those in the interior.
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Re: The Federation's war preparations with the Dominion

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Teaos wrote:Starbases are in general, shitty defence,

You can shoot at them from a huge distance and hit since they can't dodge, or just wait for them to be on the opposite orbit and attack the planet.

Unless I could upgrade them with no cost, I wouldnt bother.
Which is why they should have better shields. If the they can't dodge (though Trek weapon accuracy is pretty damn good) then they need to take the hits.

Those types of Starbases however are basically massive and expensive weapons platforms that combined with a fleet would make an excellent defense for am important world. Also excellent defense for damaged ships as well since the Spacedock type of bases store the ships inside of them as opposed to outside.

We also saw what DS9 can do against fleets. Starbase 74 is much more massive and designed from the start as a Federation base.
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Re: The Federation's war preparations with the Dominion

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McAvoy wrote:
Teaos wrote:Starbases are in general, shitty defence,

You can shoot at them from a huge distance and hit since they can't dodge, or just wait for them to be on the opposite orbit and attack the planet.

Unless I could upgrade them with no cost, I wouldnt bother.
Which is why they should have better shields. If the they can't dodge (though Trek weapon accuracy is pretty damn good) then they need to take the hits.

Those types of Starbases however are basically massive and expensive weapons platforms that combined with a fleet would make an excellent defense for am important world. Also excellent defense for damaged ships as well since the Spacedock type of bases store the ships inside of them as opposed to outside.

We also saw what DS9 can do against fleets. Starbase 74 is much more massive and designed from the start as a Federation base.
Exactly, so as I have said before, if a tiny starbase such as DS9 can do all THAT against fleets, imagine what SB74 can do, with it actually being much larger AND better equipped to handle stuff such as invasion fleets! :D ^_^
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Re: The Federation's war preparations with the Dominion

Post by Mikey »

The huge problem with investing a lot of resources into a starbase is that it's a starbase - not a ship. A starbase has no strategic offensive or force-projection value. It can't prosecute a strategic plan of attack, and on the tactical level can be a factor only when action is funneled into a particular limited area; even on the flipside the only defense it can assist is a static one a/o a particular assett or stationary potential target. Upgrading all your starbases to the point we've seen is great, but we have to assume that a choice must be made between upgrading ships and upgrading starbases... and upgrading the ships first gives a full metric fuckton more strategic and tactical flexibility (along with the fact that the same metric fuckton of ships can be upgraded for the same amount of resources as one starbase.)
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Re: The Federation's war preparations with the Dominion

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Exactly so. A really powerful Starbase is great... if your enemy happens to attack that Starbase. But what if they don't? Then all those phasers and torpedoes and shields on the Starbase are wasted resources that do absolutely nothing to help you win your war. In fact worse than that, they actively hurt your war effort, because those are resources that you're not devoting to fighting the enemy.

But if you take the resources you spend on a super powerful Starbase and instead build say half a dozen Galaxy class ships, then those ships can defend the same location that the Starbase did. But they can also defend the next system over instead. Or go and attack the enemy fleet. Or bombard an enemy planet. Or, or, or, or... any number of things that your Starbase simply cannot do, no matter how powerful it is.

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Re: The Federation's war preparations with the Dominion

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I think the importance of the Starbase on whether or not to upgrade it what it is supposed to protect. Obviously the place where a massive Starbase like 74 or even it's smaller version places importance of what it why it's positioned there.

Like DS9 was upgraded to protect the mouth of wormhole as its an obvious bottleneck. But a better defense would have been a fleet of ships station there along with a minefield. Making it a costly venture to destroy or capture DS9.

Then again politics got in the way along with plot and series money prevented us from seeing that. But DS9 did destroy 50 ships and provided a distraction for Starfleet. They even considered it important to recapture to prevent the minefield from going down.

So yeah, depends on what that Starbase is meant to protect. Obviously something the size of 74 would tie up alot of resources that might be better used building or upgrading more ships.
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Re: The Federation's war preparations with the Dominion

Post by Teaos »

A Starbase 74 represents a decent sized fleet in terms of resources, not only to build but maintain and crew.
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Re: The Federation's war preparations with the Dominion

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Graham Kennedy wrote:"Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man." - General Patton.
"A ship's a fool to fight a fort." - Horatio Nelson.
Exactly so. A really powerful Starbase is great... if your enemy happens to attack that Starbase. But what if they don't? Then all those phasers and torpedoes and shields on the Starbase are wasted resources that do absolutely nothing to help you win your war. In fact worse than that, they actively hurt your war effort, because those are resources that you're not devoting to fighting the enemy.
As McAvoy said, this depends on why you're fortifying that position to start with. Linear defences are, of course, worse than useless, but if they're protecting a chokepoint, or a key piece of real estate, then either the enemy attacks, and is either driven off or suffers far heavier casualties than they would otherwise, or doesn't, and can't pass through the chokepoint or take that key territory.
But if you take the resources you spend on a super powerful Starbase and instead build say half a dozen Galaxy class ships, then those ships can defend the same location that the Starbase did.
Not as effectively though, because any vehicle's design is a trade-off between firepower, protection and mobility, whereas a fixed position only has to worry about the first two. This is clearly demonstrated by the two battles of Deep Space Nine, when the station held off Klingon and Dominion fleets dozens strong while even the Defiant or a GCS was in trouble against more than low single-digit numbers of ships, and first Chin'toka, when the Dominion fixed defences were successfully repelling the allied attack prior to the Defiant's crew coming up with a technobabble solution.
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