Deep Space 9

[Teaos]

Deep Space 9 the space station.

To me it really made little sense as a design or function.

It was supposedly a orbital refinery station yet I see no reason why it would be. Materials would have to beamed or transported up to the station refined and then moved on. Why not just do it on the planet.

As a habitable station and HQ it also makes little sense. The ring design has no real purpose but to make it have a far bigger surface area than needed thus weakening the shields and offering no benefit.

But from what we saw of it in action it kicked some major ass a little to much to be believable I think. The Klingon fleet we saw should have been able to take it.

[Captain Seafort]

It was supposedly a orbital refinery station yet I see no reason why it would be. Materials would have to beamed or transported up to the station refined and then moved on. Why not just do it on the planet.

Simple - the Bajoran Resistance. Doing the refining in orbit in made the plant a much more difficult target, and provided a point from where transports could ship the refined ore from Bajor back to Cardassia. Similar logic applies to the siting of the Occupation HQ It also provided a centralised point of trade for the Bajoran system, making it more difficult for "neutral" ships to get supplies to the resistance by requiring all trade to go through Terok Nor, rather than being beamed directly to its destination. This meant that any transports beaming stuff to the surface were probably supplying the resistance and could be apprehended, rather than having to work through dozens of ships to determine which were carrying legitimate supplies and which were not.

As a habitable station and HQ it also makes little sense. The ring design has no real purpose but to make it have a far bigger surface area than needed thus weakening the shields and offering no benefit.

Again, the design makes sense from a counterinsurency perspective. By having the docking ring as far as possible from Ops, the reactors, and the ore-processing plants in the central core, and having limited routes from the docking ring to the core, any external resistance attack would have to travel at least half a kilometre through bottlenecks in order to reach those locations. As we saw in "Civil Defence", the station had an extensive counterinsurgency programme to defeat any internal action.

But from what we saw of it in action it kicked some major ass a little to much to be believable I think. The Klingon fleet we saw should have been able to take it.

This is the biggest problem - the station wasn't designed to take on fleets of modern warships. That can probably be put down to a combination of Fed technical expertise and the robust construction typical of the Cardassians.

[Teaos]

Ah I didnt think of it being designed to stop attacks and such. But didnt we see a second one aswell away from Bajor? It seemed to be a common design and away from the the situation of an oppressed population it loses a lot of the reasons you gave.

This is the biggest problem - the station wasn't designed to take on fleets of modern warships. That can probably be put down to a combination of Fed technical expertise and the robust construction typical of the Cardassians.

It did have an impressive amount of weapons so it should have given them a real bloody nose. But the size of the station would mean the shield could not be that powerful. Not a lot more than the likes of the Sov or GCS and their shields go down in a one on one fight so a fleet should have ripped them down.

[Captain Seafort]

Ah I didnt think of it being designed to stop attacks and such. But didnt we see a second one aswell away from Bajor? It seemed to be a common design and away from the the situation of an oppressed population it loses a lot of the reasons you gave.

Given the Cardassian tendency towards aggressive expansion, I'd be surprised if Bajor was the only planet they'd annexed forcefully - having a standardised design that could be modified for the specific requirements of its location - the type of ore being refined for example.

It did have an impressive amount of weapons so it should have given them a real bloody nose. But the size of the station would mean the shield could not be that powerful. Not a lot more than the likes of the Sov or GCS and their shields go down in a one on one fight so a fleet should have ripped them down.

As I said, this is the tricky bit to rationalise. The key equipment that starships have but DS9 lacks is related to mobility - the engines, mass-lightening fields, navigational deflector and the like. It's probable that the requirement for a starship to move is in some way responsible for them being substantially weaker than a station, perhaps due to power requirements, or a need to save on mass that a station doesn't have.

[Jordanis]

As I said, this is the tricky bit to rationalise. The key equipment that starships have but DS9 lacks is related to mobility - the engines, mass-lightening fields, navigational deflector and the like. It's probable that the requirement for a starship to move is in some way responsible for them being substantially weaker than a station, perhaps due to power requirements, or a need to save on mass that a station doesn't have.

I think the big thing would be that they didn't need to save mass. Impulse engines are supposed to reduce mass to allow fast accel, so more mass=slower ship. A station doesn't have that limitation, and can cheerfully build more solid bulkheads, heavier armor, more dense weapons and shield generators, etc etc.

[Teaos]

Armor is prety much irrelivant as DS9 has some major weak points structually. On a side note do you think a spacestation would have a SIF? Or at least depend on one as much as a ship does.

The Bog problem with DS9's shields is the fact that a station of comparitivly little mass covers a very large area. And with the giant pylons sticking up the shield bubble is huge.

Really I wouldnt be suprised if its shields were weaker than a Galaxy class.

[Mikey]

Well, we've mentioned the lack of necessity to dedicate any but nominal power to mobility systems - as opposed to a starship. As far as the anti-insurgency, paranoiac design in common with Empok Nor:

#1 - Seafort is right. Bajor is undoubtedly not the first planet Cardassia conquered and held down by force, and I'm sure they didn't expect it to be the last.

#2 - Fear of insurrection is a major preoccupation of any government installed by junta, or dependent in any way on martial mandate. Thsi fear would certainly pervade the design philosophy of that government. Why else did the main city on Cardassia prime have ancient-style anti-seige walls and towers?

Regarding the almost unbelievable amount of shielding and firepower that was refitted to DS9, remember this - that was a project headed up by Chief Miles O'Brien; the man who IN HIS SPARE TIME AS A HOBBY completely fixed the SIF and surge problems in the Defiant, which problems all of Starfleet R&D couldn't solve.

[Teaos]

Fixing bugs in a system is all well and good but making the shields more powerful by a order of magnitude is not.

[kostmayer]

The shields did appear to be one big system, but to me it would make more sense to have several smaller shield generators for each area of the station, with the most vital systems having 2 different shields protecting them.

As for its existing defenses, it may have been well defended against interior threats (Bajoran rebels), but I doubt it had much to fear for external assualt.

[Mikey]

...but to me it would make more sense to have several smaller shield generators for each area of the station, with the most vital systems having 2 different shields protecting them.

Absolutely this would make more sense; in that case, a chance or focussed attack wouldn't be able to take down the entire system. But we certainly can't accuse Fed design of common sense, and there's no reason to think the Cardies do any better.

And Teaos - you may not think it were possible to refit the shields and armaments the way they did, but we all saw it happen. What's onscreen supercedes our ideas, whether they be nonsensical or not. And IIRC, DS9 used conformal shields rather than a bubble, but it's been a while, so I may have forgotten that part.

[Teaos]

Yeah I was just pointing out the unbelivablity of it.

And all eviedence does point to the shield being made up of sections.

[Deepcrush]

Those big docking pylons didn't get much use and with Fed weapons tech and a bajoran crew who were told to build as much a they want (Come on boys and girls! Take as much as you want!). Fed weapons with trigger happy Bajorans, they had more then enough space to build on and the main body of the station seemed to be the sheild area with weapons packed like "rednecks in a bar" on those huge pylons. Some of the damage that DS9 gave out was truly plot built but its not out of reason. They had two years to build on what they had and unlike a ship that has to make service repairs nonstop a station isn't suffering the same troubles. In fact it always looked to me that DS9 had a huge maintance work force. Almost every episode showed tech staff working all over. They most likely never stopped building the weapons on the station. Everytime they finished one they just thought 'what the hell, why not' and started more. O'Brian was just that kind of guy to encourage his people to always find things to do. He said so himself that the station was so poor in shape when he got there that he could always find something to fix or just upgrade when he had time. I get to do some of the same stuff at work, they hand me something new and I get to play with it until I run out of ideas then they give me something else. Its a dream job and O'Brian didn't have a budget constrant!

[Captain Seafort]

Absolutely this would make more sense; in that case, a chance or focussed attack wouldn't be able to take down the entire system. But we certainly can't accuse Fed design of common sense, and there's no reason to think the Cardies do any better.

We've got Kira's comments in "Return to Grace" as evidence that the Cardies are much more sensible than the Feds when it comes to building stuff. In that example she mentioned that the Cardassian rifle doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the Fed one, but it's a superior weapon because of that. I can see them using a similar KISS principle in starship/station construction.

[Teaos]

That was just her opinion. Remember she was a freedom fighter for a long time. People like that prefer simple.

Its like the old M15 Vs AK47 debate.

AK47 is for more reliable. You can do anything to it and it will still run. Thats why 3rd world countries love it.

But the M15 is more accurate and when maintain generally better.

You can't really say which gun is better since they both have strenghts and weakness'.

[Jim]

DS9 was not constructed with a fight in mind. The pilons keep docking ships a minimum distance from the core of the station. That way if loading/unloading accidents happen, it really wouldn't effect central opperations. The quantity of docks has more to do with turnover and volume than anything else.