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Cardassian O.D.P.

SpecsImagesInternals
Size Comp
Universe : Prime Timeline
Class Name : Cardassian O.D.P.
Type : Orbital weapon system [1]
Unit Run : 1,400 built in total. 600 have been lost in all.
Commissioned : 2374 [1] - 2375, class remains in service
Dimensions : Diameter : 46 m
Height : 40 m [2]
Decks : N/A
Mass : 25,000 metric tons
Crew : None [1]
Armament : 3 x High Power disruptor cannon, total output 60,000 TeraWatts
1 x  [1] + 1,000 torpedoes
Defence Systems : Regenerative [1] shield system, total capacity 4,320,000 TeraJoules
Light Kelindide Single hull.
Low level Structural Integrity Field
Docking Facilities : None
Cardassian O.D.P. : Not capable of independent movement; attitude control and/or orbital adjustment only.
Strength Indices :
(Galaxy class = 1,000)
Beam Firepower : 1,200
Torpedo Firepower : 400
Weapon Range and Accuracy : 250
Shield Strength : 1,600
Hull Armour : 1.88
Speed : -
Combat Manoeuvrability : -
Overall Strength Index : 791
Diplomatic Capability : None
Expected Hull Life : 27
Refit Cycle : Minor : 1 year
Standard : 1 years
Major : 9 years

Notes

In some respects the design of these orbital weapon platforms is typically Cardassian. Like the Dreadnought class heavy penetrators the ODP's are an interesting and innovative system in many ways, but are badly let down by a single aspect of their design. In the case of the Dreadnought it was the detonator [3]; in the case of the ODP it is by the power system. [1]

The platforms are one of the first Cardassian systems produced entirely under their membership of the Dominion. The alien influences are apparent in the power of the platforms - even though they are considerably smaller than a Miranda class starship, each one holds a regenerative shield generator, three heavy phaser banks and no less than one thousand plasma torpedoes. [1] This makes every single platform more than the equal of a standard Galaxy class starship. However, although the Cardassian designers have clearly used their new technology to the fullest, their attitude to design seems to have remained firmly fixed in the past. Cardassian philosophy has always been shaped by the need to face down foes who are considerably larger and more powerful than themselves; to this end they have employed various tactics to wring every last ounce of combat capability out of a given design. In the case of the ODP's, they chose to power the entire system from a central reactor unit which would be located on an asteroid or other suitable body within the network. [1] This allowed both reactor and fuel to be removed from the individual platforms, making them significantly smaller. This in turn allows a more compact field geometry, which increases the effectiveness of the shields. Building one large reactor is also considerably more efficient than many small ones of equal overall output.

This over-emphasis on weapons has often proved to be the undoing of Cardassian designs, and never more so than in the ODP. Although the Cardassians were confident that the asteroids own regenerative shields would protect it from all but the most determined and costly attack, they reckoned without the ingenuity of Starfleet personnel. During the attack on the Chin'toka system the USS Defiant was able to imprint a Federation warp signature on the asteroid, causing all nearby platforms to open fire on their own power system. [1] That the ODP's controlling computer system could allow this to happen is, of course, another glaring deficiency in the design.

Once the platforms destroyed their power system, the entire network was useless and the Allies were able to destroy most of the remaining platforms with ease. [1] Three were deliberately left intact, however, and once the initial planetary landings had proved successful one platform was returned to each of the Allies for research.

Correcting such a fundamental weakness in the design was difficult for the Dominion given their shrinking resources by this point in the war. The Dominion proper appears to have made little effort on the project after Chin'toka; apparently the Founders began to lose faith in the Cardassians after this point, a trend which increased rapidly as the war progressed towards it's conclusion. The Cardassians decided to press ahead with deployment of the system without modification, but provided each network with several independant power sources. A network of these platforms was employed around Cardassia itself during the latter stages of the war, although the Allied fleet was not forced to engage it due to the political settlement reached with the Founders. [4]

Colour key

Canon source Backstage source Novel source DITL speculation

References

# Series Season Source Comment
1 DS9 6 Tears of the Prophets
2 Speculative Speculative
3 VOY 2 Dreadnought
4 DS9 7 What You Leave Behind, Part 2
Series : DS9 Season 6
Episode : Tears of the Prophets
Source : Speculative
Comment : Speculative
Series : VOY Season 2
Episode : Dreadnought
Series : DS9 Season 7
Episode : What You Leave Behind, Part 2

Comments

Seen only in the episode "Tears of the Prophets", the battle against the defence platforms was in four basic stages. The initial scenes involved all the platforms being off-line. In this state they were unable to defend themselves at all, and several were destroyed fairly easily.

The second stage involved the platforms becoming operational. Here they were pretty fearsome; once active, we didn't see so much as a single platform even sustain visible damage, let alone get destroyed. For their part, they were blasting Starships to hell with apparent ease.

Stage three revealed a crucial flaw in the design. The platforms turned out to all be powered entirely from a central generator located on a nearby asteroid. This also proved to be virtually impossible to destroy by conventional attack from the fleet, so the Defiant imprinted a Federation warp signature onto the asteroid. Recognizing it as an enemy vessel, the platforms opened fire on their own power source and destroyed it. This is a really strong indicator that the system operated entirely automatically - it's hard to believe that even a fairly low key level of management by a Dominion operator wouldn't have prevented such an attack.

Once the power system was destroyed we had the final phase, in which the platforms were destroyed by the remaining fleet unit. Again, it seemed fairly easy to do this.

The most obvious question is just how big a problem is this flaw? Well, there are two ways to look at it. On the one hand, it's highly likely that the system could be reprogrammed to ignore its power unit as a target no matter what. Put a few dozen platforms around the power system at the same time, and you should have a system which is pretty hard to beat in theory. On the other hand, the system is dependant on a single link - no matter how strong you make that link, it's a bad idea in principle to have a whole system totally reliant on one part. You may be able to make the power system all but invulnerable to conventional attack, but Starfleet has demonstrated an incredible ability to find sneaky ways to get around such obstacles in the past. And they only have to succeed once to make an entire network useless.

As such, I tend to regard this system as being massively flawed. And fixing it is going to be no easy matter - putting a power plant into every platform is likely to mean a total redesign, a task not far short of designing the whole thing in the first place. And after this battle was over the Dominion itself was steadily getting weaker for the remainder of the war, hardly an ideal situation to launch an effort like this.

As to the individual platforms, they are stated to have one thousand plasma torpedoes each along with regenerative shield systems. They also fire beam weapons which appear to pack a heavy punch, presumably phasers or disruptors - the Cardassians have used both weapons in the past. I tend towards phasers myself, since disruptor beams are usually - but far from always - green. There seems to be three beam emitters, one per arm, and a single torpedo launcher on the centre. In some of the images I've snapped the torpedoes look like they consist of two or three individual balls of light in a cluster, and I was tempted to claim that the platforms fired a triple burst of torps which travelled to the target together, but in the end decided the evidence was too thin for this.

It's very hard to judge the platforms size, but it seems that they are quite small - those we see around the Excelsior class ship appear to be no more than 40 metres or so tall, and according to the scale diagram in the Encyclopedia 3rd edition that makes them 46 metres across when extended. Packing a thousand torpedoes into something this size is an impressive feat - so either the FX people messed up the scaling, or plasma torpedoes are significantly smaller than the photons we've seen throughout Trek.

Just how many platforms there are is an interesting question. The first picture on the images page shows them only about ten or twenty times their own size apart - maybe a kilometres or so. Assuming the planet is Earth sized, that would put their numbers well on the way to a hundred million! But the Encyclopedia third edition shows a schematic of the Chin'toka system, and on this there are two planets very close to one another, with a shell of platforms completely enclosing both planets. This would put the numbers well over a hundred million, even towards the billion mark!

If the fleet was so massively outnumbered it would at least explain why they had such little luck once the platforms were active. Nevertheless it's hard to credit such numbers, and I think we have to look for an alternative explanation. Certainly the number of symbols visible in the schematic is not even close to millions - there are eighty three visible markers orbiting the planets. I think we have to assume that the platforms detected the approaching fleet and "swarmed" - that is, adjusted their orbits to bring them into one or more groups clustered around the likely approach vectors. Given their apparently state of the art weapons technology I would guess that eighty or so should easily be able to hold off an entire fleet, so I've pegged this as the number deployed in Chin'toka. We also see some of these platforms orbiting Cardassia in "What You Leave Behind", the last episode of DS9.
© Graham & Ian Kennedy Page views : 27,009 Last updated : 20 Sep 2016