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Well continuing with the theme of thread for the main ships of the series here's the Defiant.

In my opinion the ugliest, most outrageous starship design to date.

It is shown to be far more powerful than it should be for its size. While I do kind of like the idea of the phaser canons they are again to powerful. They need to be placed on a bigger ship and have more hardware behind them.

It is to fast for a ship with small warp coils. I would sit it at 7.5 cruise and 8.3 max.

But then you have the problem of the fact that it is an escort and it needs to be able to keep up with other ships. So then it needs to be larger so as to justify the high speed and power.

The size is a huge problem. There are official figure and then on screen ones.

For me it is possibly the ugliest ship trek has produced.

Also while the idea of escort class is a good idea it needs to be kept that way. The defiant was treated like a flag ship. It would work well with other ships but by itself it wouldn't stand a chance against most ships. But the star of the show can't be that weak so the writers overpowered it.

So in my opinion a terrible ship design.

While I agree that the Defiant was too fast for a ship that small, I disagree that a convoy escort needs to be fast. On the contrary - most escorts are the smallest, slowest and weakest ships in a fleet - their designed to be ceap and chearful so they can be mass-porduced in very large numbers.

Also, the idea of the Defiant being significantly more powerful than, say, an Excelsior, isn't really much of a problem. It's Starfleet's only purpose-built warship, and as such should to much better in battle than the larger ships. Even the Sovereigns were built with some concessions to pre=war Starfleet ideas on ship design.

The flaw in the execution was, as you say, taking a decent escort design and making it out to be some sort of battleship, the worst case being in "The Changing Face of Evil", where it was blasting Breen ships apart willy-nilly.

While true that they don't need to be to fast I think making them anything less than warp 7 would be severly limiting their effectivness.

I think the Defiant should be powerful. But it should not be able to take on shipd 4 times it size. It could take an Intrepid in a fight but not a Akira or Nebula.

Teaos wrote:While true that they don't need to be to fast I think making them anything less than warp 7 would be severly limiting their effectivness.

It depends on the speed of whatever they're escorting - they'll need to match them, plus a margin to be able to catch up if they're detached to engage a threat. During WW2 the typical frigate was capable of around 20 knots, compared with a convoy speed of around 10 knots.

I think the Defiant should be powerful. But it should not be able to take on shipd 4 times it size. It could take an Intrepid in a fight but not a Akira or Nebula.

An Akira would hammer it easilly thanks to the torpedo spam they can put out. The Nebula I'm not so sure - those things have a big aft blind spot and the Defiant is manoueverable enough to stay there and hammer it. It would certainly take time to punch through the shields though.

The Soverign has a bit of a blind spot behind the two nacelles yet I doubt the Defiant would last more than a minute in a fire fight.

It depends on the speed of whatever they're escorting - they'll need to match them, plus a margin to be able to catch up if they're detached to engage a threat. During WW2 the typical frigate was capable of around 20 knots, compared with a convoy speed of around 10 knots.

Whats the slowest thing we know that is still in operation in trek. I can't imagin it would be much bellow warp 6.

I love it. Starfleet's design team finally got their heads out of their collective asses and put together a proper warship. It has a good design, it lacks many of the flaws other ships have and works as an excelent ship.

I do agree that it was far too overpowered and fast, but it makes such a change from Starfleets usual, idiotic designs.

I agree if it had been handled right it would have been great but like all ships it was misused.

It has its flaws also. Remeber all the problems it had the O'Brian had to sort out.

The defiant wasn't an ubership to start, look at its first year of service (makes me laugh). Starfleet has shown that even with ships using only a third of the weapons space of other ships their size they are still an even match and sometimes better. This is because of UFP idea of ships being works of art, not just big guns. The advantage of the defiant came when all of its systems were working as one, STF, sheilds, hull, armor, weapons, engines. When one failed they all failed. Look how fast she went down when the breen, who by the way have some very weak ships, started slapping her with torpedos! She is only uber till her systems crash then she's just a 170m paperweight.

It had huge problems in the first year but that was due to an ruched design which has now been sorted out.

Every ship went down to the Breen fast not just the Defiant.

My point exactly, the defiant can't hold up with its def systems down. She is either uber or dead.

But no ship can hold up with those systems down. Its hardly a weakness.

Er, you could say the same about any ship. If any ship loses power it will, as you put it, be an over sized paper weight.

Hear, hear. Not being able to withstand a volley of torps WITHOUT any shields, SIF, or power at all is hardly a weakness; more like an inevitable fact.

I do like the idea of the Defiant for the first true purpose-built warship of the Federation. And I don't have a problem with the ship's power and abilities of themselves; I think those would be easier for everyone to accept if there had been more consistency with the way the ship was treated onscreen.

That it! While I think it is an ugly ship I could see it was a good design. But it wasnt treat as an escort most of the time it was treated as a flag ship.

The vast majority of what we saw of the Defiant class was in fact the Defiant herself, which ship was attached to DS9 and pretty much used as the personal expeditionary vehicle of that station - a role which the Defiant was patently NOT built to fill. Unfortunately, for screenplay purposes, many inconsistencies were shown about her capabilities.

If we had seen the Defiant class predominantly in her intended role, I'm sure the general opinion of her would be much higher.