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Mark wrote:That only happened because they didn't have Wesley at the helm. HE could have figured out a way to get the shield working, increase phaser power, and redesign the ships warp field to dodge at the last second.

Captain Seafort wrote:True, but IU they fit very well - all DS9 needed was something to potter about the system, with occasional short interstellar journeys. Anything bigger would have been a waste of time. In any event, the runabouts didn't do so badly. They lost a few, but they usually kept their passengers alive even if the ship was a write-off

I'm not disagreeing, IU they are a logical type of ship to have and they fit was DS9 needed. The problem is that the writers then treated them as starships when logically a larger, more well equipped ship should have been called for doing what the runabouts were doing.

The problem with starships is that a) they need significantly larger crews (i.e. can't just be run by a couple of the main cast) and b) you can't fit even the front half of one onto the Planet Hell set when they crash.

The biggest problem with starships in this context is that it's very hard to justify keeping one at a station waiting to be someone's personal hackney. Unless, of course, you handwave a magical reason of writer's fiat as in the case of the Defiant.

I'm talking a Raven size ship, hell the Raven itself seemed to do just fine with only a pair of researchers and their daughter and they gave it to a pair who's ideas were fringe to begin with.

We have no idea if the Raven was a Starfleet ship class or not. A ship of that size and seeming capabilities would do a fine job at the runabouts' role at DS9, but I haven't seen any indication that it was more capable than the runabout.

Well, the speed factor alone would give something like the Raven an advantage. A runabout tops out at what, like warp 5? The Raven must have had a much better speed than that to track down a Borg ship. One big problem I always had with runabouts was how slow their warp drive was, yet how quickly they seemed to be able to get everyone someplace.

All warp drive ships move at the speed the plot requires them to.

It's one of my many complaints about Enterprise. Slower ship my ass, it went the same speed as the others.

GrahamKennedy wrote:All warp drive ships move at the speed the plot requires them to.

Which is why the MST3K mantra is also my mantra for life.

Runabouts? Good, useful little vessels for their design specs. The crew simply needed more than that. Hence the Defiant.

Well, it makes sense. It was using the TNG warp scale since it was just a modified Akira class

Runabouts, just fine for what they were used for at the start. The UFP didn't seem to take Bajor to seriously which was carried over in that most Bajorans didn't take Bajor to seriously. Grabbing fifty people and sticking them on a station that is mostly crewed by the locals is perfect. Shuttles aren't going to do the trick so they got the Runabouts which were larger/better. BUT, its also clear that SF didn't want to plant a ship there. It took the threat of the Dominion to get SF to let Sisko bring in the Defiant and even then the ship wasn't completed when it arrived. O'Brian spent two more years getting the Defiant into shape. So to me, they work as a natural part of the growth of DS9.

Right, the attachment of the Defiant to the station was due at least as much to the fact that Starfleet couldn't get it to work, and gave to O'Brien as his Vo-Tech project, as it was due to the fact that DS9 needed it. Of course, OOU you can read that as "the writers needed an excuse to plant the Defiant there."

The only problem with the runabouts wasn't a problem with the runabouts - it was with the way the show, and therefore the crew, attempted to employ them.

Pretty much, though at least the OOU action makes IU sense.

Another thought I had. In "The Emissary", I vaugley remember hearing that the E-D offloaded a half dozen runabouts, yet we never see more than three on screen, or even referenced later. I wonder why.

They are like a Humvee. Under armed and armored... but used front line.