Reason for D'Deridex size

[Jim]

Are you including the empty area in the center in that volume?

[Captain Seafort]

No, I'm talking about the ship itself - if it were solid it would be well over ten times the GCS' volume.

[Tiberius]

It has less mass than a GCS.

It's over four times the volume. Much less than a GCS-shaped ship of the same length would be, but still a lot bigger.

The displacement, maybe, but a great deal of the mass could be storage space, cargo bays, fuel storage etc. Like others have said, I think it's quite plausible that the only habitable areas are the beak and the tail. So while the total displacement of the ship may be much greater than a GCS, the total habitable volume could be about the same.

[Jim]

No, I'm talking about the ship itself - if it were solid it would be well over ten times the GCS' volume.

But it is not solid.

[Mikey]

No, I'm talking about the ship itself - if it were solid it would be well over ten times the GCS' volume.

But it is not solid.

Yes, that's why he said "four times."

Anyway, we know very little about the usability (or uses) of all the interior volume. Even Fed ships have shown windows, etc., in areas that aren't generally used for habitation, there's no reason to assume that all the "windowed" portions of a D'Deridex are dissimilar. The idea of Romulans using a design aesthetic similar to that of a puffed-up frilled dragon or frigate bird is a sensible one. In addition, Romulans use a lot of technology which is, well, alien to the UFP. Even the much more primitive cloak in TOS: "The Enterprise Incident" required a whole chamber to itself, and nobody knows anything about the power management/distribution systems necessary for a "quantum singularity" method of generation. The idea of troop berths or lots of multipurpose space makes sense too, considering the enormous paucity of different ship types we've seen for each generation of Romulans.

[Tiberius]

The idea of troop berths or lots of multipurpose space makes sense too, considering the enormous paucity of different ship types we've seen for each generation of Romulans.

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Actually, I'm going to argue against the idea that the D'deridax warbird has room for lots of troops. In Unification, we see that the Romulans needed to smuggle their troops to Vulcan in some old Vulcan ships. Why do that if they could fit many more onto a single warbird? And we saw that a warbird was able to accompany the Vulcan ships without being detected until it decloaked. If the D's could hold lots of troops, then they wouldn't have bothered using the Vulcan ships at all.

[Griffin]

I'm tired and can't remember the episode that well, but didn't they use Vulcan ships so that they could sneak past defences or something?

[Teaos]

Cloak?

[Mikey]

No, Griffin is right. IIRC, the old Vulcan ships were part of some sort of subterfuge. Nothing to do with the D'Deridex being incapable of such transport.

[Coalition]

I'm tired and can't remember the episode that well, but didn't they use Vulcan ships so that they could sneak past defences or something?

Cloak?

I'd expect similar sensors as on the Neutral zone to be around capital planets (and near the larger colonies near the Neutral Zone). So a cloaked warbird would be picked up near the planet, but the transports would be known and ignored (until it was too late).

The troops would transport in, disable the cloak sensors (along with other strategic targets such as space defenses), signal the cloaked ships, who then drop off the main ground forces.

We saw one D'Deridex, I'd expect that there were several others hiding under cloak with the main invasion force. If there are too many D'Deridex, their warp and impulse trails could be detected much easier than a few. However, a few will no be enough to get past Vulcan defenses. So they sneak in troops to disable the space sensors and defenses. The Warbirds then land the main troops to reinforce the special forces, and take control of the planet. Any Vulcan passive resisters (aka the whole planet) won't be able to do much once they can't control local space, and the Vulcan government is in Romulan hands.

The Romulans will simply get a record of the government chain of command, and go down the list, shooting who they have to, until they get a government that is willing to join Romulus. When the Vulcans see that they can either join Romulus or die, and the Romulans tell the truth (plus mind melds to verify) the Vulcans will logically surrender and join.

[Deepcrush]

Two points. First being the expected response pointed by Picard and Data which shows the UFP would return and advance to the planet. This means that the RSE doesn't expect to be able to control the local space. Second being the vulcan surrender. Submission under occupation to avoid casualties isnt the same as joining. So your logic is badly flawed in that.

[Captain Seafort]

Second being the vulcan surrender. Submission under occupation to avoid casualties isnt the same as joining. So your logic is badly flawed in that.

Nonetheless, there is a segment of the Vulcan population favourably disposed towards the Romulans, just as there was a pro-Vulcan movement on Romulus - as demonstrated by Tallera. I'd therefore expect the Romulans to be able to establish effective control of the planet through a combination of entrenching themselves in densely populated locations, the establishment of a puppet government from the pro-Romulan segment of the population, and passivity from the majority.

[Mikey]

Second being the vulcan surrender. Submission under occupation to avoid casualties isnt the same as joining. So your logic is badly flawed in that.

Nonetheless, there is a segment of the Vulcan population favourably disposed towards the Romulans, just as there was a pro-Vulcan movement on Romulus - as demonstrated by Tallera. I'd therefore expect the Romulans to be able to establish effective control of the planet through a combination of entrenching themselves in densely populated locations, the establishment of a puppet government from the pro-Romulan segment of the population, and passivity from the majority.

It's a precarious situation, though... the Polish-Lithuanian Empire was often treated as a bunch of pushovers, but for every hetmanate there's a Kosciuszko.

[Reliant121]

I always liked the idea of the space being used for the quantum singularity generator; somehow the large gap is where the singularity was situated.

[Captain Seafort]

I always liked the idea of the space being used for the quantum singularity generator; somehow the large gap is where the singularity was situated.

Trouble with that is that we saw the singularity chamber in Timescape - it's much smaller than a GCS warp chamber.