Negh'Var or Romulan Warbird, which is more powerful?

[Catamount]

On the question question of firepower, the exact phrasing in the TNG Writer's Manual regarding the D'Deridex is  "This is a huge vessel, which is probably more than a match for the Enterprise in terms of firepower"


This fits what we see. Not only has the D'Deridex fired shots that knocked down the GCS' shields 10% a shot, but in MiaB, a tap on the shoulder from a D'Deridex knocked the shields of the Prometheus down by EIGHTY PERCENT, literally from a tap on the shoulder (there was no sustained fire, it was just a shot or two, prior to the main battle). The Prometheus may only be a smaller cruiser, but that still means the D'Deridex can basically make Federation cruisers just go away, in opening shots, like nothing. There's certainly a lot more evidence, as Ilithi has mentioned, but the ship definitely has absurd firepower.


A ship of line, however, it is not, or at least it doesn't appear to be. Endurance seems rather low, and I can't help but note (having recently gone through DS9) that Romulans seemed to have problems holding a line of battle, which adds to the credibility of the notion that the D'Deridex is an ambush predator with tons of focus on firepower and little on sustained endurance.

[Warbird]

I searched for the Battle of Narendra III and found this, Awesome!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdU-M40eGIo

[Unimatrix325]

Ad Narendra III : I see, ok. Then I suppose it may have been some bird of prey, or D7s. Or some other ships, which are designed as frigates or similary weak ships. Because they probably didn't expect any resistance.

it was at least implied, if not directly stated that the D'Deridex had never been encountered prior to "The Neutral Zone,"

Encountered and REPORTED. I think if the Ent-C has been lost, no records of the warbirds could be found.
But anyway - generally I agree with you.

Ad hull strength : I would say it is ridiculously fragile for the ship of it's volume. Not that it is necessarily less (or even much less) durable than Galaxy or Vor'Cha.

Ad opening salvo : noted, but in my opinion the firepower shown in Tin man is off the scale and unreliable. I consider it either an error in the script or some highly special conditions. Otherwise it would make warbird stronger than cube or 8472 bioships. It is however true, that it may be balanced by the fact, that the warbird can fire such a powerful volley only once per 30 minutes of charging - as you suggested. Still I would say, that this is too much firepower.

The D'Deridex has shown a remarkably high degree of maneuverability, generally turning at a rate comparable to the Galaxy class

Source ?

Ad warbird cost : good points, but I still tend to think the cost would not be 4-5 times more.

Well, the mechanics of an engagement of multiple weaker ships against a single stronger ship are difficult to measure, especially given the different fighting styles of the two ships.

Agreed.


Black Patriot :

Except that we've seen Starfleet engineers interact with a Romulan warp core before and they weren't the slightest bit surprised or unaware of the workings in the reactor. This implies that the tech isn't beyond the Federation

Hm, good point.

that'd still leave a crew of over 2000, and as before I'd lean towards 4k, but I'll compromise at 2500 if that'll help

Well, I still think, that the crew size is more related to number of systems to maintain, rather than the ship size. It's probably more than on Galaxy.
Also I don't count any "troops" as a crew. Galaxy does not carry any troops. But warbirds may.

[Sheva]

Sorry to necro this topic, but I want to give in additional views:

We have to think about, for what the big D was designed for. While I think about it, the D'deridex was created to fullfill many tasks like the Galaxy-class and in this manner not good for a single purpose, but for many at the same time. Like the Galaxy, the D'deridex
  will have a large storage room, large shuttle-bays, a considerable amount of weapons and defense systems, it can cloak VERY well, so it can also do task for scouting, it may carry many troops and so on. In short, the D'deridex is a multi-purpose warship.

While I see the direct battle-strength to be highly variable in many engagements, I think that the battle-power of the big D depends highly on how well it is equipped. As we know in the dominion war, the romulans were put into the war at a short hand, so they may not have had the time to upgrade all D'deridex-class ships to their latest technology. As we know, the D'deridex is an old design but is used a long time (like we know from the BoP or the K'tinga) which means, that this ship may be highly able to be refitted with the latest technology and even stay en par with it.

If the warbird would be inferior, the romulans would have set other ships to replace it in the war. I speculate, that they did not had the time to refit all of their ship, because I think it takes a f****** huge amount of time to upgrade such a behemoth and will also nom nom away a huge amount of resources.

We also see, that the weapon-platforms in the battle of Chintoka were able to hit the ships as they had no shields. I see it in nearly any engagement of the later DS9-shows, that there is no shield bubble. So at this point, we have a biased view.  We just cant say, if the scene was realistic or not.

I also think, that the romulans are not inferior in their technology development. I agree, that they don't have the resources of the federation, but their technology seems to be highly advanced. Look at the Scimitar (okay, biased I admit) or the Valdore. The Valdore looked pretty powerful and was only taken out so fast, because the Scimitar knew on what to aim for (I'm sure they had the tactical layout of this ship-class) while the Valdore itself was able to penetrate the shields of the Scimitar to a critical level ("They nearly have us!"), while the Ent-E was'nt able to come even near that. (The shields of the Scimitar regenerated to 70% at the 'end' of the battle) I must say, that the shields of the Scimitar must have a freaking regeneration rate, so maybe this is also a plot-armor which won't reflect 'reality' - haha.

To, back to topic. If we refit a D'deridex with the tech of a Valdore (armor, shields, weapons and so on) the big D would be really fearsome. But at the same time, I think that the romulan star empire would be a sitting duck while refitting them.

I think it all depends on the internal systems - and if you want, the big D could be more powerful than the Negh'Var - IF you can pay the bill. The romulans cant, so they have chosen the golden middle between costs and power.

[Vert8472]

The Defiant and peregrine were flying so close to the hull that the weapons couldn't track fast enough to land hits. However, the solution to that is stupidly simple, actually there are a bunch of solutions.

MajorD's top three.

• Expand the shields from the hull and push the Defiant outward.
• Predict the Defiant's path and point the guns ahead of time. Durp.
• Tractor beam.

I would have also accepted going to warp to put distance between the ships, point blank proximity detonated torpedoes, fire wide beam shots, and flying into the sun.

I would also accept nosing down, reversing for a clear shot and, again, tractor beam
though we don't have specs on mirror one, it could be a completely different ship underneath to that of the prime neg-var, we can roughly estimate that the mirror defiant is the same as the normal defiant as they are both based of the same schematics but we just don't know enough about the mirror neg-var to say it would be the same situation with a regular neg-var.