BRAD'S COMMENTS: This is it!  The big daddy of the Jem'hadar forces!  A truly colossal vessel--by Alpha and Beta Quadrant standards--matched in size only by the Romulan D'daridex, and matched in potency by nothing short of one of the major space platforms, like a Spacedock-type Starbase or the Nor Class stations.  Or perhaps a Borg cube.  But the Borg cube is in a whole other category all by itself, and so far as we know the Dominion and Borg have not yet crossed swords, so I won't get into that comparison.  Suffice to say, the Jem'hadar battleship is at the pinnacle of the food chain where capital ships are concerned.  Between its grand power output and advanced Dominion technology, this big monster can mow its way through scores of smaller, less advanced Federation and Klingon ships, without blinking an eye.  It takes several Alpha and Beta Quadrant capital vessels, working in concert, to pose a challenge to the Jem'hadar battleship, and even then, the outcome is never certain.  As with the large ships of the Alpha and Beta quadrants, I reason that such a gigantic craft is both expensive and time consuming to produce.  There can't be very many of them, and far from operating as a lone bear against packs of wolves, the Jem'hadar battleship ought to function as a flagship for medium to large fleets of smaller cruisers and destroyer type craft.  Really, there shouldn't be more than one of these in any given engagement.  Two or more would indicate a massed Dominion force of tens or even hundreds of ships.  And I don't know about you all, but past a certain point I grow weary with overly large fleet-vs-fleet scenarios.  You get bogged down in the details, running every little ship, and games can last days or even weeks.  In such cases I think it's prudent to break up such a scenario into smaller, mini-scenarios.  Within every battle there are always sub-battles, and so forth.  Anyway, I've had my say.  Do as you will.  But be careful!

* Denotes completely hypothetical model number and stats, devised by Brad R. Torgersen.
^ Next to the Borg, the Dominion fighting force is the most formidable yet encountered by the governments of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants.  As we see from early episodes of ST:DS9, even the smallest of the Jem'hadar war vessels possesses superior shielding and weaponry when compared to the finest Starfleet has to offer.  Now, in gaming terms, this presents a dilemma.  Making the shields of the Dominion impervious to Alpha Quadrant races eliminates the Dominion ships as viable playing pieces--they could last forever on the battlefield, against opponents of any number or potency.  Just the same, it seems clear to me that the Dominion ships do have superior shielding.  Rather than simply over-inflate the raw maximum shield power, or the power-to-point ratio, I have chosen to improve the Dominion shields with an unusual twist.  When attacking a Dominion craft, the attacking player must make one additional dice roll, assuming his strike roll yields a hit on a shielded side of the Dominion playing piece.  If that side is unshielded, then don't worry about it.  Apply damage as normal.  But if the side is shielded, then the attacking player rolls a ten-sided die (or a six, or a four, or a twenty, it does not matter) to see if the shot had any effect on the Dominion ship's shielding.  An even number means the strike does full damage.  An odd number means the strike has been deflected totally, with no loss of shield strength.  This means an attacker has a fifty percent chance of getting a solid hit--which I think somewhat reflects the fighting action seen between Alpha and Beta Quadrant warships, and the Dominion fleet.  Especially in the early phases of contact, when the Alpha and Beta Quadrants are still unsure of what they are up against.
** The Polaron Beam weaponry presents an inverted version of the shield problem, in that the Dominion weaponry seems capable, on occasion, of totally penetrating Federation or Klingon shielding regardless of how much energy is dumped into the shield generators.  As with the Dominion's superior shields, presenting the Dominion's superior beam weaponry in a game setting is problematic.  Making all Alpha and Beta Quadrant shielding 100% porous to polaron beams is unfair, I think, so in order to reflect the polaron beam's potency while still affording a defender some protection, I'm introducing another dice roll.  Any player being attacked by a polaron beam gets to roll a ten-sided die (or four, or six, or twenty; as with the shields, it does not matter) and if the result is an odd number, that player's ship's shields have no effect and damage is taken straight to the ship.  It's important to note that, in this case, the shield power is not reduced!  The shield is still up, at whatever power it happened to be at during the strike.  The polaron beam has simply passed through the shield, and has hit the hull directly.  Now, if the die roll is an even number, the shields are in full effect, and the polaron beam damage translates directly to the shield power.

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