Deep Space 9

[Captain Picard's Hair]

A station may have quite a bit more space for large shield generators than a ship, so she might be able to field more powerful generators than are on any ship in the fleet. My biggest concern is, can DS9 really power all this with only fusion generators? They would need to be pretty big indeed.

[Mikey]

Exactly, Jim. Terok Nor and Empok Nor, were designed as a blend of distinctly Cardassian architecture and industrial/shipping solutions in mind.

[Teaos]

You could proabably work out how much power went into them.

We know the amount of damage the station got hit with and could probably work out the energy involved.

[Captain Seafort]

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'.

Yes you can - its a question of which is the better weapon, as opposed to the better rifle. Techically, the M16 is better - is longer-ranged and is more accurate. It's also unreliable shite, which makes the AK the better weapon.

I'd say Kira's opinion counts for a lot - she was a combat veteran, unlike most of Starfleet, so she'd have the experience to know what worked in combat (as opposed to on the range), and what didn't.

[Deepcrush]

The newer M16s and M4s have removed much of their earlier problems thankfully.

[Captain Seafort]

They still have frequent stoppages from all I've heard of them - the major improvement over the early models is that they now have a forward assist to help deal with the problem when it happens.

[Deepcrush]

That and you don't have to take them apart to fix a jam, just eject the failed round.

[Teaos]

See even you can't agree on it. Its just your personal opinion. I happen to prefer the M-15.

And as I said Kira was a freedom fighter with limieted resources, those types always prefer simpler weapons.

[Thorin]

See even you can't agree on it. Its just your personal opinion. I happen to prefer the M-15.

Think you mean the M16 - IIRC the M15 went into retirment virtually straight after it was made.

[Teaos]

Probably. I always screw up numbers like that. Always forget the name of that Russian tank in WWII that had like 50,000 made... Be easiler if they named them after animals like the Germans did.

[Enkidu]

T34.

[Captain Seafort]

Probably. I always screw up numbers like that.

The manufacturer's designation was the AR-15, so its easy to get that and the US military designation mixed up.

[Captain Peabody]

DS9 is a fairly cool station; the pylon's seem to be a bit over-kill, but I think Mikey's right that a lot of the "unusual" construction decisions are due to the Bajoran insurgency. In addition, the pylons would also help protect the rest of the station from ship accidents or sabotage by keeping the docking ships as far from the habitat ring as possible. So, a pretty sound design, overall.

And IIRC, DS9 used conformal shields rather than a bubble, but it's been a while, so I may have forgotten that part.

Actually, it has both; if I remember it correctly, during the battle in Call to Arms the Docking Ring had conformal shielding, while the habitat ring and ops used bubble shielding. Which actually makes a good bit of sense, if the theory that conformal shields are more powerful but have a larger chance of bleed-throughs is true; the docking ring is sparsely populated, meaning that any bleed-throughs would be irrelavent, while the heavily-populated sections of the station would need to worry much more about that kind of thing. So...score one for the DS9 production staff.

[Graham Kennedy]

I have to wonder how DS9 compares to a typical Federation Starbase in terms of firepower. That I know of, we have never actually seen any other Federation space station in battle so we really have nothing much to compare with.

My impression isn't that DS9 is some sort of uber-warstation though. I'd personally rate it around the same ballpark as something like Spacedock, though it's more militarised than Spacedock since it's got that level of firepower in a much smaller volume.

I think mostly it was a matter of priority. It's obvious from the beginning of the series that DS9 simply wasn't that big a Federation priority. It only rated a Commander in charge, didn't even rate a Starship in regular proximity. Upgrading the weapons just wasn't a priority - didn't they only have six torpedoes in the pilot episode?

The wormhole upped DS9's status, of course. I always thought that Starfleet would have transferred Sisko in favour of a "real" officer if they could, but given the place he secured in the eyes of the Bajorans as their Emissary to the Prophets, that became a political impossibility. The wormhole made DS9 a significant place, significant enough that they probably upgraded those weapons to something a little more sensible. But still nothing major.

Then the Dominion. It becomes rapidly clear that the Dominion are a huge threat, and that DS9 is in fact the most strategically important place around. I'd be willing to bet that the folks back at Starfleet gave R&D the plans for the station and said "here's a question - how many weapons could you fit on this thing?"

DS9 always seemed a very under-used station to me. Waaaay bigger than a Galaxy class, yet we heard population numbers of around 300 in the early years. And of course the refinery and associated spaces were disused under Starfleet.

So... lots of space space there. And I just bet that Starfleet packed extra equipment into them for the upgrades. I'd bet DS9 lost as much as half it's cargo space and most of the empty crew quarters and most of the refinery spaces. Packed out with phasers, photon torpedo stores, shield generators, extra power systems, you name it.

[Teaos]

Yeah but we also heard of Labs and Gardens so what ever space the refinery took up probably got transfered to that. It would also carry a lot of cargo for ships passing by.