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CLASS NAME: Defiant |
Port |
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Dorsal view |
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Bow view |
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BRAD'S COMMENTS:
From the outset, building stats for this DS9-era class was not an easy
chore. The Defiant is quite unlike anything ever before seen in the
Federation inventory. Roughly the size of a small escort or a large
corvette, the Defiant employs tremendously powerful weapons along with
tremendously powerful engines. Also, the original prototype that
eventually came under the command of Captain Sisko, and saw heavy action against
Gamma Quadrant foes such as the Jem-Hadar, was equipped with a cloaking
device!
Official text seems to indicate that
the cloaking device on the original prototype was a one-time loaner from the
Romulans, so it might be argued that one and only one Defiant Class
vessel would ever have the ability to cloak. Just the same, it has always
been my personal understanding that Starfleet's non-use of cloaking technology
is not a matter of can't, but instead just a matter of won't. Recall that
Kirk and the original USS Enterprise stole a Romulan cloaking device in
the 23rd century, taking it intact back to Starfleet after it successfully
tested out on the Constitution Class USS
Enterprise itself. Now, unless Federation engineers and scientists are
awesomely inept, it stands to reason that Starfleet very soon figured out how
the Romulan cloaking technology works. Therefore, it also stands to reason
that ever since the Kirk-era, Starfleet has been perfectly capable of building
cloaking devices for starships, yet they choose not to use this technology
because it flies in the face of Starfleet ethics.
The Jem'Hadar threat seems to have
scared Starfleet so silly that the ethic against cloaking technology was
suspended, at least for the prototype Defiant. But does this mean that any
future Defiant Class ships are also cloak-capable? We have seen in ST:DS9
and ST:VOY that more Defiant Class ships have been built since Sisko
originally dragged the prototype Defiant out of mothballs. If the cloaking
device on the original was seen as such a necessity when combating advanced
foreign threats like the Jem'Hadar, why wouldn't future Defiant Class vessels be
similarly equipped?
To make game fans happy, I have
therefore built stats for two different kinds of Defiant Class ships, one
cloaked and one not cloaked. I have also tried to make the weapons few,
but potent, and give this class a good movement point ratio as well as abundant
power from the engines. The ship's size easily places it as an escort, but
its mission seems to be simply that of and advanced destroyer, so I have grouped
it in with the other destroyers as a result. Some fans would no doubt
argue with me on this point, but it seems to me to be the most logical
decision. The Defiant is definitely not a conventional escort, nor
is it underpowered like so many corvette and scout sized ships. The
Defiant is a vessel with one and only one purpose in mind: hard, fast attacks on
the best the enemy has to offer.
Additional
comments on Federation cloaking technology by Michael
Hughes - December 2003
...About the defiant... the cloak: The reason the
federation never used cloaks was the Treaty of Algeron (sp). It was
the treaty that ended the Fed-Rom war, which the romulans demanded that the
federation could not develop Cloaking technology. This is refrenced in the
TNG episode where they search for the USS Pegasus, an Oberth class research
vessel that was testing a Phased cloking device (cloaked the ship, AND allowed
it to move through normal matter). Picard mentions it.
Official ship history, as copied
from an
article originally seen at STARTREK.COM
Never in the
proud history of Starfleet has there ever been a starship with the look or
evolution to compare with that of the U.S.S.
Defiant — the acknowledged first warship ever built by the
Federation's defense and exploration forces.
With its compact design, tucked-in nacelles and
bristling weapons array, the Defiant was a radical experiment borne of
the rush to counter the sudden Borg
threat of 2365-66. If anything, Starfleet's massacre by the Borg at the Battle
of Wolf
359 late in 2366 showed the dire need for starships far more nimble and
tough than the design lineage of most Federation ships. Most importantly, the
Borg's deadly tractor-beam attack required a target far smaller than Starfleet's
traditional profile of a large primary hull and warp nacelles atop standoff
pylons.
Commander
Benjamin Sisko, one of the battle survivors of Wolf 359, initially oversaw
the experimental Defiant project at Utopia Planitia as the prototype
was rushed into design and construction in just five years. Officially listed as
an escort, the otherwise secret program achieved its design and performance
goals with a radical change in Starfleet philosophy: its four decks were absent
any hint of family quarters or extensive science labs — although sensor and
analysis support is more than thorough to support the defense mission. Rather
than the familiar Type X phaser strips, the Defiant featured
non-traditional pulse phaser cannons; to save space, its meager two shuttles,
later upgraded to three, employed small drop-ship shuttlebays instead of a
traditional hangar deck. Austere space allowances, including bunk-like personal
cabins and compressed facilities all around, were the rule.
Starfleet engineers soon realized, however, that they
did their job almost too well after the Defiant was launched on
Stardate 47538.5 for its shakedown cruise from the Antares Shipyards, carrying
prototype registry NX-74205. For all its weaponry and toughness, the
ship soon proved to be overgunned and overpowered for its design; in fact, the
ship nearly tore itself apart in full-power performance tests. But no sooner had
the project been abandoned for a fresh approach than galactic events caused a
rethink of that decision in late 2370: the looming hostility with the mysterious
Dominion
of the Gamma
Quadrant and its Jem'Hadar
super-soldiers.
In fact, official first contact with the Dominion in
late 2170 proved so ominous that the ship was pulled from mothballs by none
other than its onetime overseer, Sisko — now in command at Deep
Space Nine, where the nearby Bajoran
wormhole had opened up contact with the Dominion in the first place. The
station, previously defended by only three Danube-class Runabouts,
was increasingly at the crossroads of galactic tensions and its commander wanted
more muscle to handle any contingency.
Following Sisko's surprise return to DS9 with the Defiant
after the Dominion invasion threats in early 2371, the ship was plunged into a
host of duties while based at the station. For its covert and combat missions,
the Defiant was destined to stand out in Starfleet lore in yet another
way: it would be the first ship of the line ever outfitted with a cloaking
device. Thanks to its similar perception of the Dominion threat, the Romulan
Star Empire took the incredible step of loaning a cloaking system to
Starfleet for the Defiant in return for shared intelligence, initially
posting Sub-Commander
T'Rul as part of the loan to oversee its use and security.
Even so, the "tough little ship” was still far
from refined, and would receive numerous on-the-job upgrades and tweaks, largely
under the oversight of DS9 Operations
Chief Miles O'Brien. In fact, in its first encounter with Jem'Hadar ships
during a mission to meet the Dominion's Founders
only days after arrival at the station, the ship was easily overtaken in battle;
it was later hijacked for a time to Cardassian
space by a Maquis
cell led by Tom
Riker, the "twin” of Commander
William T. Riker. A hull upgrade to durable ablative armor was soon in
place, withstanding severe weapons fire for nearly two minutes even when
unshielded; unreported to Starfleet initially, this proved key in disrupting the
would-be military coup of Admiral
Thomas Leyton on Earth
in 2372. Still, even during the Dominion War after years in service, the ship
could not make its potential Warp Factor 9.5 speed, or any speed above Warp 9,
without tapping spare power reserves to reinforce the structural integrity field.
The Defiant's hard-luck situation soon
changed, though. Thanks to the tactical integration of its cloak, the ship
rescued Major
Kira Nerys from capture on Cardassia
Prime itself in 2371, retrieved staff trapped amid the Dominion's massacre
of a failed Romulan-Cardassian armada against the Founder's homeworld, and saved
the Deteppa Council members from Klingon
invasion and capture in 2372, during the Cardassian Union's short-lived civilian
government. Its durability was further confirmed when, after an interrupted
trade mission to the Karemma,
the ship took refuge in the corona of a gas-giant planet by modifying its
shielding and outfought pursuing Jem'Hadar attack ships while inside.
And, despite the sabotage of a massive cascade computer
virus implanted by Maquis leader Michael
Eddington that left Defiant dead in space, the crew set out in
their ship only days later to capture him — and did — with less than full
computer control, a top speed of Warp 6, manually-targeted weapons, and no
internal communications, cloak,
transporters,
and replicators.
Though armed for bear, the Defiant did find
time for use on several science and diplomatic assignments earlier in the
pre-war 2370s. The ship discovered dimension-straddling planet Meridian
in the Trialus system, and studied a subspace inversion in the Bajoran wormhole
as well as an nearby subspace compression effect. The crew also assisted a Trill
team testing the creation of an artificial wormhole, and aided in the launch of
a planned Cardassian-Bajoran subspace relay on the far side of the wormhole.
During its time, so to speak, the Defiant was
also involved in three bizarre temporal incidents. En route to Earth for a
symposium on Gamma Quadrant affairs in 2373, a chroniton buildup produced
localized temporal distortions that sent the ship and crew to the year 2124, on
the eve of the Bell Riots on Earth. Later, a Klingon spy's unauthorized use of
the Bajoran Orb of Time while aboard sent the ship to 2267 as part of a plot to
kill history's James
T. Kirk. And, during the Dominion War, an otherwise routine recon mission
turned surreal at Gaia when the crew encountered their own descendants, borne of
survivors from a crash-landing after a temporal accident sent their ship back
some two centuries. In the mainstream observable timeline, the effects of all
three incursions were reversed and negated.
But it was the Dominion War and the tensions leading up
to it that contributed the most storied chapters in the Defiant's saga.
Oddly, the ship's early record at DS9 was marked by a joint venture with
Dominion forces to put down rebel Jem'Hadar who had seized an ancient Iconian
gateway on Vandros
IV in the Gamma Quadrant, threatening even their own masters. Mutual
mistrust barely allowed the Federation-Dominion operation to succeed, and
unfortunately never again would there even be a hint of cooperation between the
two sides.
More typical in pre-war years would be missions such as
the late 2371 diplomatic flight to a supposedly destabilized Tzenketh
— a ruse later unmasked as Founder sabotage to spark an unintended war. Or the
salvage mission to retrieve a downed Jem'Hadar attack ship in 2373 from Torga
IV that would prove to be a covert godsend when war did break out late that
year.
The Dominion/Cardassian invasion that marked the war's
opening volley included the capture of DS9 and its joint operation with a newly
neutral Bajor
for nearly three months. Initially the Defiant had bought valuable time
by laying self-replicating mines at the exit of the wormhole to prevent Dominion
reinforcements from arriving, but as part of the Second Fleet the new year began
for the Defiant with a series of discouraging skirmishes and retreats
that left Federation morale low.
That period ended when Sisko developed a bold plan,
"Operation Return,” to retake the station as the first key to overall
comeback. Even though the timetable had to be stepped up without many expected
ships or Klingon help, his own Defiant and tactics played a key role
with a risky breakthrough in the Dominion lines and run to DS9, aided by late
Klingon help. Even so, with the minefield at last cleared it was only
intervention by the non-linear Prophet
aliens worshipped by Bajorans that kept the Dominion reinforcements at bay;
Sisko and his crew had been ready to take them on in a suicide mission in the
wormhole. Instead, retaking DS9 led to the Defiant's reassignment to
the Ninth Fleet, which was then based at the station for the duration of the
war.
Throughout its posting at DS9, the Defiant had
remained under the direct command of Captain Sisko. However, in his absence, the
ship was captained by Lieutenant
Commander Worf, Sisko's Strategic Operations Officer at DS9 from 2372-2375.
Starfleet's only Klingon officer commanded the Defiant when it forced
the U.S.S.
Lakota to stand down from backing Leyton's failed coup of 2372, and he
was exonerated when falsely accused of recklessly firing on Klingon civilians on
convoy escort duty, during brief tensions with his homeworld only months later.
Worf was in the captain's chair too when the Defiant
got the chance to take on its intended adversary during the Borg incursion of
2373, proving its rapid fire guns and low-profile silhouette were as effective
as planned. Though severely damaged and actually abandoned during the Typhon
Sector battle, the ship survived the conflict after its captain and remaining
crew were picked up by the U.S.S.
Enterprise-E; it returned to service at DS9 in record time.
The lone exception to Sisko's captaincy came with his
wartime reassignment to Starbase 375 during DS9's occupation. With Worf serving
with General
Martok at the same time, Lieutenant
Commander Jadzia Dax provided operational command for combat missions —
including the destruction of the Dominion's sensor array in the Argolis
Cluster. (Major Kira Nerys, Sisko's Bajoran first officer on DS9, had also
previously led the Defiant during missions in Bajoran space, as when
hunting and destroying Klingon mines laid there.)
By war's outbreak, the Defiant design had
proved its mettle well enough to Starfleet to go into production. Two vessels of
the new family joined a Nebula-class starship in retaking the Prometheus
multi-vector prototype attack ship from Romulan capture in 2373. The cadet
trainer U.S.S.
Valiant NCC-74210, proved infamous when it was caught behind the lines
at war's outbreak and its trainees filled in for its dead seven officers for
eight months until they too perished in combat in 2374. Even a duplicate of the
original ship, built from plans stolen from DS9 by "Smiley” O'Brien, is
assembled in time by his Terran rebels of the mirror universe to free their Terok
Nor station from the oppressive Klingon-Cardassian Alliance of that
dimension.
But perhaps the most unusual production craft of this
already unusual lineage was the U.S.S. Sao Paulo NCC-75633. In the
darkest hours of the Dominion War, when the surprise entry of the Breen
nearly wiped out Allied fleets with a new energy-damping weapon during the
disastrous Second Battle of Chin'toka, the gallant Defiant had to be
abandoned along with dozens of others. Only a few months later, as a replacement
for Sisko's command — and as practically a personal favor from Admiral Bill
Ross — the same-class Sao Paulo was fully renamed and renumbered as
an all-new U.S.S. Defiant. Despite going into production as a
standard design, its experimental "NX” designation was never officially
changed — even on this replacement.
This ship went on to honor its namesake in its very
first engagement, the extended Battle of Cardassia Prime that ended the Dominion
War — thanks to shield modulation routines fleetwide that countered the new
Breen advantage. In fact, it was Sisko's Defiant that led the flanking
maneuver in the first phase of the battle, along the Cardassian border, and then
fought through to Cardassia
itself once Dominion forces fell back there.
As the tumultuous postwar years unfold and peace and
exploration again flourish, the unique offensive niche served by the Defiant
and its class ships in Starfleet's arsenal will hopefully be far from crucial.
Still, the ships have a lot of life left — and a lot of lessons — for all
future starship designers and tacticians. For the Defiant itself,
neither the loss of Captain Sisko to be among the Prophet aliens nor the
promotion of now-Col. Kira to command DS9 has altered the "tough little
ship” or its posting.
Construction Data: Model Numbers- Ship Class- Date Entering Service- Number Constructed |
I V 2370 A.D. (classified) |
II V 2372 A.D. (classified) |
Hull Data: Superstructure Points- Damage Chart- Size Length- Width- Height- Weight- Cargo Cargo Units- Cargo Capacity- Landing Capability- |
38 C 130 - 170 meters? 95 - 120 meters? 20 - 40 meters? 50,000+ tons 10 units 500 tons yes |
40 C 130 - 170 meters? 95 - 120 meters? 20 - 40 meters? 50,000+ tons 10 units 500 tons yes |
Equipment Data: Control Computer Type- Transporters: Standard 6-person- Cloaking Device- Power to energize- |
DCAX-1 2 DCD-1XA 75 |
DCAX-1 2 none! |
Other Data: Crew- Passengers- Shuttlepods- |
47 none 4 |
47 none 4 |
Engines and Power Data: Total Power Units Available- Movement Point Ratio- Warp Engine Type- Number- Power Units Available- Stress Charts- Maximum Safe Cruising Speed- Emergency Speed- Impulse Engine Type- Power Units Available- |
100 2/1 FXMW-2 2 40 D/E Warp 8 Warp 9.9 FNIS-120 20 |
107 2/1 FXMW-2 2 40 D/E Warp 8 Warp 9.9 FNIS-210 27 |
Weapons and Firing Data: Beam Weapon Type- Number- Firing Arcs- Firing Chart- Maximum Power- ** Damage Modifiers +3 +2 +1 Beam Weapon Type- Number- Firing Arcs- Firing Chart- Maximum Power- Damage Modifiers +3 +2 +1 Missile Weapon Type- Number- Firing Arcs- Firing Chart- Power To Arm- Damage- Missile Weapon Type- Number- Firing Arcs- Firing Chart- Power To Arm- Damage- |
Pulse Phasers 4 in two banks 2f/p, 2f/s U x2, 15 (1 - 10) (11 - 17) (18 - 24) FAHW-28 4 1f, 1p, 1s, 1a X 20 (1 - 10) (11 - 16) (17 - 22) FP-17 2 1f, 1a X 3 27 FQT-8 2 F Y 5 38 |
Pulse Phasers 4 in two banks 2f/p, 2f/s U x2, 15 (1 - 10) (11 - 17) (18 - 24) FAHW-31 4 1f, 1p, 1s, 1a Y 23 (1 - 11) (12 - 18) (19 - 24) FP-17 2 1f, 1a X 3 27 FQT-8 2 F Y 5 38 |
Shields Data: Deflector Shield Type- Shield Point Ratio- Maximum Shield Power- |
NGSS-O 1/5 30 |
NGSS-P 1/5 35 |
Defense Factor- Weapon Damage Factor- |
(classified) (classified) |
(classified) (classified) |
* Denotes completely hypothetical
model number and stats, devised by Brad R. Torgersen.
** The Pulse Phasers were an interesting problem, in that they are assumed to be
radically more powerful than your ordinary phasers. When applied to the
STSSTCS gaming system, it would seem to me that the most straightforward way to
do this would be to afford the Pulse Phasers a power-to-damage ratio
making them inherently more potent than standard phasers. The "x
2" in the maximum power listing indicates that whatever energy is dumped
into the Pulse Phasers during the game, the damage done is at least double
the amount allocated. For instance, if you charge one Pulse Phaser with 6
points of energy, when that weapon is fired it will inflict 12 points of damage
on a direct hit; two times as much as an ordinary phaser. And that's even
before we figure in damage modifiers for range. The "15" after
the comma indicates that the total maximum power any Pulse Phaser can be charged
to is 15 energy points, for a total of 30 damage points, excluding range
modifiers. I hope this makes sense, and if not, let
me know.