War of the Week: VII

[Teaos]

Ok this comes from a comment Deep made in another thread about the AQ powers combined being able to take on the Dominion proper.

So the Senario is and Alliance of the Federation, Klingons, Romulans Vs the Dominion.

Now since the Wormhole really ties the hands here we will assume for this senario that DS9 isnt there and no other starbase is either and the wormhole has not been, and cannot be closed in anyway what so ever during the war, the wormhole aliens can't help either.

So the AQ powers are on one side united and the Dominion is on the other side. The Caradassian union isnt part of the Dominion and is staying out of it.

The war starts around the same time it does in DS9 but with the Dominion holding no territory in the AQ and the AQ powers holding no space in the GQ.

All the rest of the AQ powers stay totally out of it, neither helping nor hindering either side. Its just the big three AQ power vs the Dominion. The Romulans are full members of the alliance right from the start.

We will assume both sides have seen this war coming for a few years and are thus fully mobilised.

[Reliant121]

Difficult. Quite difficult. If AQ alliance can get a station set up at the wormhole then it would mean the Dominion is sorta screwed. But if not, then the Alliance just doesnt have the economic or military capability to take the dominion on.

[Sionnach Glic]

The Alliance is in a good position here in that all enemy forces will be coming through one choke point. Even if DS9 isn't there, simply assembling a massive fleet from all three races and throwing it at the wormhole should be sufficient to be able to hold off any assault.

[kostmayer]

If the Dominion Fleet is that much larger, could it punch through?

And if the Alliance did simply send every ship it had to guard the Wormhole, the war would be over pretty quickly one way or another

[Mark]

It would be a defensive war. Whomever tried to invade the others space would suffer god awful losses, and likely not even be able to get a toehold on the other side due to constant re-enforcements and the surprise factor. Attrition would play a HUGE part. I'd see WMDs get brought into play to try and establish some footing on either side. I'm really up in the air at this point.

[Graham Kennedy]

The allies could mine the wormhole with vast numbers of mines, site a few starbases there, and base a few hundred ships each on them. A hell of a force to try and get through.

A big question is how many ships can come through the wormhole at once? Its size seems to expand to acommodate whatever size object is going through it, but surely there is a limit to that.

If it can expand big enough for 10,000 ships to come through at once, say, then nothing much is going to be able to stop them. They can overwhelm whatever is waiting and just pour through. If the ships are coming out in a stream rather than a huge cloud, then they're just going to get picked off.

Either way, I think it's either a Dominion victory or a stalemate. No way are the allies going to be able to go through and take on the Dominion directly, unless they go for "ultimate war" tactics like cloaked ships with masses of planet-busting weapons.

[Teaos]

Well I said at the start that there can be no starbases there and the wormhole cant be closed, this include mining it.

This is an actual war, not just a holding pattern.

So far no one has suggested that either side can get a foothold on either side.

[Captain Seafort]

As Graham says, everything depedns on whether the wormhole is an effective chokepoint. If it's small enough that ships can only come through in relatively small numbers, then the alliance ought to be able to hold off the invasion indefinately, by either buiding starbases or stationing a massive fleet at the entrance.

If the Dominion establishes a beachhead then they win, and there's no way the AQ powers could take them on on their home turf. End of story.

[Sionnach Glic]

Agreed. If the Dominion gets through then it's all over. If the wormhole becomes a serious chokepoint then the Allies can win.

[Deepcrush]

I don't see the Dominion as any clear victor here. The Dominion/Cardassian/Breen forces were at best even with the UFP/KDF/RSE. Remember they were in fact lossing the war. Slowly but truly. Once the Cardassian fleets turned on the Dominion, the war became a very one sided battle.

If the Allies were fighting the Dominion all on its own. I would see a costly but clear victory for the Allies. That is if the Allies could gain control of the GQ side of the wormhole and keep a hold of it.

[Captain Seafort]

I don't see the Dominion as any clear victor here. The Dominion/Cardassian/Breen forces were at best even with the UFP/KDF/RSE. Remember they were in fact lossing the war. Slowly but truly. Once the Cardassian fleets turned on the Dominion, the war became a very one sided battle.

Those were only the Dominion forces in the AQ, cut off from their main industrial base. The attitude towards the Dominion in the early months of the war, while they controlled DS9, implied that if the Dominion managed to regain access to the Gamma Quadrent the resulting offensive would be short and decisive.

[Mikey]

Agreed with Deep. In addition, there did seem to be a size limit on what could get through the wormhole, from which one could deduce that wormhole traffic is limited in volume.

[Deepcrush]

I don't see the Dominion as any clear victor here. The Dominion/Cardassian/Breen forces were at best even with the UFP/KDF/RSE. Remember they were in fact lossing the war. Slowly but truly. Once the Cardassian fleets turned on the Dominion, the war became a very one sided battle.

Those were only the Dominion forces in the AQ, cut off from their main industrial base. The attitude towards the Dominion in the early months of the war, while they controlled DS9, implied that if the Dominion managed to regain access to the Gamma Quadrent the resulting offensive would be short and decisive.

Also the Dominion had Cardassian support plus a NAT which allowed them to attack into UFP space from the RSE border. This meant the UFP was now thinly spread trying to protect its borders. This war we're talking about now has the RSE as part of the allies from the get go. Plus the UFP is only guarding one point in space. The Wormhole. The Allies are going into this war with a far greater amount of manpower and ships then they did in DS9-DW. Plus, the Allies have the chance to build up their own forces, by the by most Allied ships are better then their Dominion counter parts.

[kostmayer]

How many Dominion ships were coming through the wormhole in "Sacrifice of Angels"? It looked to me like there was enough room inside the wormhole for that many ships ten times over - even if they couldn't all come through at once.

Is there a limit to how many ships can come through the wormhole at once, other then the width of the opening? I'm not convinced that the Dominion couldn't punch through any barricade around the wormhole.

[Mikey]

Well, they sure seemed to be scared of the barrier that was up in DS9.