2nd best. Kilingon Bird of Prey is number one. IMHO. But I hear you!

2nd best for me. Good old Constitution, nothing beats that.

The Pontiac Firebird of Starships❤

You have great taste

​@FuzzyBunnyofInle lmao your not far off with that. I can easily see it with those "feathers" and those that love it are fanatical lol

'Plot armor is irrelevant. We are Borg.' 😉

Don't understand why some people need to explain everything by trying desperate to involve the Borg, it's just as pointless as saying "it must be the Romulans"!

@@bigfootwalker5399 A large part of that has to do with the narrative of the TNG era *heavily* relying on the Borg. Most of the events that shape the era in it's later part revolve around the Borg and the 'setup' for that happening comes early in the era too, so it's a constant theme throughout, even during the Dominion war. From an out-of-universe in real life perspective the Borg basically got slapped into any discrepancy they'd fit into pretty frequently

@@Deltarious 🤔

@@Deltarious The Borgieman. ;-)

I never thought of that

My theory is their homeplanet had a high copper content, and so their alloys would have some copper as well. But yours sounds better.

@@slewone4905 high copper content......... like say a vulcan? you dont say! rommies are just distant vulcans who may have rejected suraks way of dealing with there violent nature

@@YoLo-bb2vc no he didnt say that, he was talking about their homeworld, which isnt vulcan.

@@theendoftheline but that doesnt deny the fact they were once vulcans they have changed slightly since then but there base is undeniably vulcan.

Yes! Big big ships are just opportunities for the Borg to take a big part of your power out _in one move._ They use tractor beams, focus fire, hack the systems and/or beam over Drones to assimilate the ship. You fight the Borg best using the Attack ship swarm concept, so your firepower is diversified and can't be as readily adapted to. A whole bunch of ships all changing weapons frequencies are harder to adjust to, the Borg have to do that for each ship - assuming a competent opponent who knows Borg abilities. OT/ With *First Contact* and the Defiant. While a fan service with it being a hero ship (and the cheers in the cinema when it first appeared - I saw it with a non Trekie who went "so that's a important ship I assume?") First Contact really should have shown a bunch of Defiant class ships all fighting as the concept intended versus the Cube. Even including the attack pattens with their complimentary ships as Starfleet does a ballet of death. But then how do the Borg even get that far against Defiants swarming it doing strafing runs while Akira's bombard it at range with torpedoes and Sabers phaser it at range as well? The producers really cut back on the original battle sequence with multiple Cubes, due to budget considerations, however. With a Borg armada being cut down by Starfleet being able to blow away Cubes and the time travel being a hail mary to eliminate a actual threat to the Borg. But a good budget compromise that didn't break the lore regarding relative power between the factions is they could have shown a running battle versus two Cubes, with Starfleet able to destroy one just by pounding away before they got to Earth, but that's when the battle gets desperate as they're running out of time with the remaining Cube nearing it's goal. And the Enterprise-E comes in to stop that Cube as its getting close enough to Earth to risk being able to beam Drones to the surface. It would also hint at the the strategy of the Borg,.. if one Cube fails, send two. Then extrapolate from there. Next time Starfleet is looking at four Cubes....

Makes sense. If you see an "Enemy" doing something that COULD be evil, you tend to assume that's what it is. At least if your government is paranoid. There were major issues with the US Space Shuttle program. The Air Force was originally supposed to help develop it to use with spy sats. Then, pretty much backed out when they realized rockets were better. The Soviet Union on the other hand freaked out. I can't remember where or when it was, but there was a Soviet diplomat publicly denouncing the US "Space bomber". IIRC, that's also around the time the Soviets mounted cannons on one of their space stations. I can see the Romulans taking a similar route. "It COULD be a super battleship designed specifically to destroy us... So it MUST be and we have to outdo the dastardly Federation and their Galaxy class, and their 'Root beer'"

@@casbot71 I always wondered why the Borg time travel sphere didn't just beam down, or just land, on the Earth. If they landed near a population center, there would have been little resistance and the Borg would have had 1,000's to millions of new drones in a matter of days. Unless Picard decided to planet bomb the Earth with Quantum Torpedoes, there really was nothing that he or the Big E could do to stop them. They didn't need the technology of the Enterprise E, they could create their own out of the ruins of Earth's third world war. Nor would they have needed to stop first contact - they could have let it happen and stolen the Vulcan's ship by the time it landed, and assimilated them and once done with Earth, move on to Vulcan.

The Defiant wasn't meant to take down Borg ships directly, it was a support ship, and the ships it would support were quite large.

They did eventually show something like that in Voyager's "A Message in a Bottle" with two Defiant-class starships as escorts in in a squadron lead by an Akira-class starship that were tasked with retaking the USS Prometheus from the Romulans.

Yeah, the Romulans seemed to REALLY adopt the, "speak softly, but carry a big stick" mindset. ESPECIALLY with the D'Deridex.

The problem for the concept might have emerged by the change in present stealth tactics, from disguising as some harmless creature or thing to the demand of being recognized as nonexistent : |

They did about 15 years ago. I don't know what happened to it, but I used to have an official "star atlas" of the Alpha and Beta quadrants. The Federation was depicted as covering nearly 45% of inhabited Alpha quadrant space, although their weakness was that Federation territory was "scattered" compared to the other major powers, with narrow bottlenecks of space leading to larger sectors and such. In terms of sheer size and population, the atlas depicted the 24th century Klingon Empire as comparable, although their total territory was nearly equally distributed between the Alpha and Beta quadrants. In contrast, Klingon space was not as "scattered" as the Federation was, but their government was never as well unified. The Romulan Star Empire was shown as directly bordering the Klingon Empire, but apparently they didn't share a border with the Federation until the TOS era was over. Compared to the other two, their territory and population were smaller, but they also had many more older and highly developed systems under their control. By their introductory description in the atlas, it was suggested that the reason the Klingons had not successfully invaded the Romulan Empire was because their defenses were just too sophisticated. And the reason the Romulans couldn't defeat the Klingons outright was because they were simply too greatly outnumbered. Interesting stalemate conditions. Please pardon my extensive reply. That's just what I remember from the atlas, and I thought it would be interesting to share.

@@GlidingZephyr very classic Master of Orion style!

@@GlidingZephyr I am aware of numerous Star Trek Star maps, but an official Canon one still eludes me. I'll renew my efforts to find it, if it indeed exists.

There is a Star Trek Star Charts book by Geoffrey Mandel from 2002, though it may be out of print. There's a stellar cartography book by Larry Nemecek, but even used copies (per amazon) are expensive. I'm glad I bought the Star Charts book when I did.

The Chodak theory is that there is a big and nasty ancient empire on the opposite border of Romulan space that the Romulans have been dealing with while things were quiet with the Federation.

Seems like an obvious invitation to a Prometheus style multi vector war ship...maybe that's why they were after it??

why was your last girlfriend deadly what did she do???

@@pillepolle3122 I'm guessing she killed the relationship or killed his dreams.

@@williamstewart2372 or worse.....his dog....

There's long been speculation that, much like the Imperial-class Star Destroyer, its meaht to frighten and intimidate enemies with its sheer perceived size, mass, and power.

​@@vic5015 That's rather obvious. However, I've always believed it's design would allow smaller warships to be carried in the large internal space between the "wings"...

​@charlestaylor253 maybe, but the Romulabs *love* deception and subterfuge. Is it *that* had to imsgine that the D'deridex might be a bit less than meets the eye?

From what I’ve heard, it has the gap in the centre to maintain line-of-sight with each other. In the early days of Star Trek it was a rule of starship design, as the in-universe explanation was that they had to interact with each other to form the warp field.

​@@charlestaylor253or, possibly, an entire colony set-up.

That was done by Picard in one of the books once. I can't remember which one but they hid the Enterprise D inside the gap of a cloaked Romulan ship whose captain was wanting to defect or something. Picard then rammed the other D'Deridex that arrived to prevent the Romulan captain from defecting. I can't remember how it went, but it was an interesting scene.

@@darthhauler9947 so in theory that's true. True thanks for the information.

That’s not exactly true. The Romulan ship was just slightly larger than the Enterprise. Only the saucer section could fit inside and that would take some precise maneuvers at that. I built almost all the models back than. I thought about it than and tried it with same scale models. Non canon means they don’t know what they’re talking about because they only know bits and pieces. They also don’t know the difference between an isolinear rod and a self sealing stem bolt

​@@charleskroman5006that _DS9_ reference had me grinning! Not canon, But _TNG_ novel "The Romulan Prize" by Michael Jan Friedman DID have a prototype warbird larger than the D'Deridex. The _Syrinx_ dwarfed _Enterprise-D_ . Its singularity propulsion powered the cloaking grid. And had surface area, volume and mass comparable to a Starfleet dock. *SPOILER:* it took the combined effort of a Galaxy and Constitution class ( _U.S.S. Independence_ ) to square up to the vessel.

@@ai6894 I’m only into canon Star Trek but I know most novels are not. The 3rd installment of the Invasion Series tells of the Defiant going to warp from the station to the wormhole. Far from canon but still a good novel. But as for the Enterprise hiding in the Warbird, I never read that novel but that does make sense now. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

I've heard they wanted a verical ship because it would look more unique then all the other horizontal ships in trek, But someone made the decision to make it horizontal to make it fit better on screen. And I think the horizontal version fits better into the theme of romulan ships looking like birds

Also turns out warp rings are also the likely best configuration of warp drive irl based on the math updates to the Alcubierre drive.

Something like that would likely be given to the Tal Shiar. In that case, they could have been part of the fleet that attacked the Founders. But, I'd argue it's more likely they kept them in hiding and planned to keep them there even if it cost the empire.

Same here.

More likely THREE - remember in first contact in TNG one of Romulans said that 'urgent matters' occupied their attention. Federation didn't know entire galaxy. Probably, empire was embroiled either in serious rebelion or maybe even WAR.

Sounds like the description of the runabout concept, like Starfleet's Danube class. I think there is a ship in STO that would fit the bill...

Wasn’t there one in the season 4 finale as a part of nova fleet

@@Iron_10 it's actually the same one.

It would've made for an interesting tactic in the Dominion war, if a galaxy without the saucer could fit in the void of the D'Deridex. Imagine the Dominion's surprise with that decloaking behind your vanguard.

@@LARGO125 The Dominion didn't seem to have much of an issue fighting the D'Deridex.

@@LARGO125 The Dominion was doing fine against the Federation and Klingon empires. The same Klingons that the Romulans could not invade. Also there is no point in trying to intimidate the Jem'Hadar. The Romulans joined in by were countered by the Breen. It's not like the Romulans were ever overwhelming.

I love the fan theory that the Romulans know the singularity field is not the most efficient choice but it has two major advantages: 1) No dilithium, means no stopping to refuel or obvious economic weakpoints in dilithium mine worlds. 2) If the vessel is compromised, it implodes rending all components down to their molecules and making salvaging crew/components/data absolutely impossible as the only thing left is plasma and scattered molecules.

@@littlekong7685 Oh my! I love your thinking, it's totally Romulan!

Like my ex-girlfriend...🖖

Except there is zero proof that the romulans created giant ships to fight the borg while smaller federation ships for tat purpose are canonical.

A lot of high volume fire power make a lot of sense in fighting the borg. The small crews mean you can have more ships. Remember that Riker was offered the command of a squadron of cruisers as a roving anti-borg force. The Defiants allows such a strategy in volume. The main problem with the Battle of the Wolf is that the Federation just came at the Borg piecemeal and took the time firing. That's plain stupid. It's shown that a simple photon torpedo will do major damage to a Borg Cube. The same cube will repair that damage in a minute if you sit around doing nothing. Now take those 40 Federation ships and split them into 6 groups (a cube has six sides). Just have those groups do a "rolling thunder" attack where one from each group fires their torpedoes, then the next, then the next while the first ones reload. While they are doing this the groups surround the cube with one for each face. Dead cube. A squad of Defiants with a game plan can do the same.

Solid points.

The Tal Shiar didn't want to join up with the Dominion, they joined up with Tain to try and take them down. In my head cannon, they had an idea that Garak's memory stick was a fake but went along because the Dominion was an even bigger than they thought - and Garak was also counting on it.