Seafort, you keep doing this which only makes me hate you even more. The Connie is a BATTLECRUISER by CANNON! That much isn't even up to your opinion so stop pretending that it is.Look at ST II. Look at ST VI. That's a battleship, and one that not only acts as one but feels like one.
It was an Earth colony mere decades earlier. Earth is a member of the Federation. You're effectively claiming that Gibraltar isn't part of NATO. Literally speaking, that's true, but it's covered by the treaty because it's a British colony, and Britain is part of NATO.GrahamKennedy wrote:That doesn't say it was a Federation colony. It says it was an Earth colony, and that it had diplomatic/trading/other relations with the Federation. That's no more reason to suppose it was a Federation member than Bringloid or Mariposa were.
We might as well give up on this argument and agree to disagree. I'm not going to shift on my firm belief that that fact that the GCS was frequently sent into harms way makes it a warship, and you're not going to shift on your belief that the ship's use is irrelevent.We're just arguing round in circles. The fact that it was often sent to combat doesn't mean that it was primarily designed for combat.
Hmm. Point conceded on the volume percentages - I remembered both the launchers and the M/ARA being considerably larger than the MSD shows them to be.Well, the MSD shows the torpedo launchers don't take up a particularly large volume. You could easily stack another in the neck, and put god knows how many of them in the saucer section. The interior working of the arrays are small enough that they're not even shown on the MSD, so they can't be especially large.
I'd agree that the Iowas are no longer battleships and the Nautilus is no longer an attack submarine - they're museum ships now. I'd disagree that the Nautilus is no longer a submarine - that's inherent in it's design, regardless of its purpose.And since the Iowa has spent many a year sitting in a dock now, she's also no longer a warship. No longer a battleship. Right? And the USS Nautilus. That hasn't been underwater in 28 years. So anybody who calls it a submarine now is an idiot, right?
No, they didn't. They built their power base in Kirk's time, with proper warships. Yes, they were explorers, but so were Anson's battleships, and Kirk's Enterprise had the same military philosophy.Yes, they suffer casualties because of the way they do things that wouldn't happen if they did things your way. But you are assuming that they can act in isolation, do as you suggest without negative consequence. But they are part of a larger community, and that community reacts to them based on who and what they are. They've built the power base they have on the system they have.
They've already changed their philosophy once - away from a military stance, after the Khitomer peace dividend. Guess when they started suffering these defeats.If the Federation started to radically change its character by militarising Starfleet, then who is to say that it wouldn't rip the organisation apart completely?
Their system cost them Tomed, Wolf, the Cardassian border colonies and a lot of lives both in those incidents and in the Dominion War. "My" system has worked fine for centuries. If it ain't broke don't fix it.If they do what you suggest, maybe it would work, and maybe it wouldn't. But what they have been doing DOES work. Which is better, their proven system or your speculation?
Here's a (slightly) clearer pic.GrahamKennedy wrote:Canonically speaking, if it is anything it is a "Heavy Cruiser". You see it on the computer screen in, I think, Star Trek III when they are activating the self destruct.
Edited to add : No, actually it was when Chekov detect somebody in Spock's quarters as they arrive at Spacedock. Excuse the quality of this, I only have the movie on videotape and I literally photographed the TV screen.
Note that the display shows an original version of the ship, not the refit. Curious indeed...
Don't suppose theres an equivalent scene with a GCS display screen. An "Earth colony" doesn't necessarily mean part of Earth's government. It could just as easily be a colony of people who left Earth - again, just like Mariposa. We've seen several such colonies in Trek.Captain Seafort wrote:It was an Earth colony mere decades earlier. Earth is a member of the Federation. You're effectively claiming that Gibraltar isn't part of NATO. Literally speaking, that's true, but it's covered by the treaty because it's a British colony, and Britain is part of NATO.
Fair enough.We might as well give up on this argument and agree to disagree.
Same argument over again, since I don't regard those as warships either.No, they didn't. They built their power base in Kirk's time, with proper warships.
They've already changed their philosophy once - away from a military stance, after the Khitomer peace dividend. Guess when they started suffering these defeats.If the Federation started to radically change its character by militarising Starfleet, then who is to say that it wouldn't rip the organisation apart completely?
Their system cost them Tomed, Wolf, the Cardassian border colonies and a lot of lives both in those incidents and in the Dominion War. "My" system has worked fine for centuries. If it ain't broke don't fix it.[/quote]If they do what you suggest, maybe it would work, and maybe it wouldn't. But what they have been doing DOES work. Which is better, their proven system or your speculation?
Tomed forced the Federation into a strategic disadvantage where they had to give up all research on cloaking technology.Tomed didn't stop them. Wolf didn't stop them, The Cardassians didn't stop them. These "defeats" you claim are imaginary. And "your" system works (to the extent that it does) here, and now. That doesn't mean it would work there and then.
It's rather a reach to paint Tomed as a defeat for anybody. All we know of it is that it cost a lot of lives and led the a treaty that forebade cloaking tech to the Federation. For all we know it was a Federation victory and they were only too happy to surrender cloaking tech. That wouldn't actually surprise me, given how often cloaks lead directly to defeat for the forces using them. Or they may have ceded it in return for who knows what advantages in other areas.Rochey wrote:Tomed forced the Federation into a strategic disadvantage where they had to give up all research on cloaking technology.
They've defeated the Borg again and again - and have almost always done it, incidentally, not through luck as you claim but through some scientific quirk or weakness they have found, rather than brute strength. Given the track record, a fleet of battleships is the very last thing you'd attack the Borg with.The Cadassians forced the Federation into creating the DMZ, forcing the Feds to sacrafice numerous planets.
Wolf saw the loss of 40 Federation ships. By sheer luck they managed to defeat the Borg in that instance.
I'm not talking about individual actions as such, though I quibble with some that have been labelled as defeats. But you can't judge a system on the outcome of any one action. If you did, then to use your example we would say that maintaining a military fleet was a stupid idea since one was defeated at Pearl.Why do you consider these to not be defeats? One forced the Feds into a major strategic disadvantage, another forced them to give up numerous planets and the third saw the loss of numerous ships and their crews.
You say these aren't defeats because the Federation continued on after them. By that logic, Pearl Harbour wasn't a defeat for the US, as they continued to exist after that. By that logic WWI and WWII weren't defeats for Germany since the country maintained its sovereignty after both wars.
I don't see how it's a "reach" to call Tomed a defeat. We know precisely nothing of the incident except for this: the Federation gave up a strategic technology.It's rather a reach to paint Tomed as a defeat for anybody. All we know of it is that it cost a lot of lives and led the a treaty that forebade cloaking tech to the Federation. For all we know it was a Federation victory and they were only too happy to surrender cloaking tech. That wouldn't actually surprise me, given how often cloaks lead directly to defeat for the forces using them. Or they may have ceded it in return for who knows what advantages in other areas
They've defeated the Borg a grand total of twice, destroying two ships (I don't count VOY's losses in this, since the situation there was all over the place).They've defeated the Borg again and again
The Cube in FC was heavily damaged by the Federation fleet, and later destroyed when someone had the brains to concentrate the entire fleet's fire on one area. This shows quite clearly that brute force isn't a non-issue when dealing with the Borg. The Borg can only adapt to so much firepower at once.and have almost always done it, incidentally, not through luck as you claim but through some scientific quirk or weakness they have found, rather than brute strength. Given the track record, a fleet of battleships is the very last thing you'd attack the Borg with
Except we're not judging it one any one action, we're judging it on pretty much all actions.I'm not talking about individual actions as such, though I quibble with some that have been labelled as defeats. But you can't judge a system on the outcome of any one action.
What? I never said a defeat invalidated the use of a military force. I said that if a force continously suffers defeats that could have been avoided, or gains victory only through the needless sacrafice of many more troops than would otherwise have been needed, then there might be a point to looking into modifying the military force in question to make it more effective.If you did, then to use your example we would say that maintaining a military fleet was a stupid idea since one was defeated at Pearl.
During WW2, the Soviet Union suffered more than ten million casualties among its armed forces when fighting against the Nazis. The Nazis lost less than half that amount, despite fighting against Britain and the USA on numerous fronts and eventualy getting invaded and carved up by the victors.What matters, in my view, is long term success. The Federation system works, over the long term. That's really the only criteria that matters, and in my view it's shortsighted in the extreme to simply dismiss it as stupid
