Romulan ship construction philosophies

[Starfox1701]

I never understood the D'deridex design. Philosophically it just doesn't match what we see of Romulan thought process and strategic thinking. Big hulking warships are a Klingon thing. The Nexorans are much more inline with a pure Romulan inspired design. I wonder how much influence the Duras faction had in the Empire at the time that class was taking shape. To me light and fast and mean are now and always have been what the Romulans do best.

 

[CABAL]

I never understood the D'deridex design. Philosophically it just doesn't match what we see of Romulan thought process and strategic thinking. Big hulking warships are a Klingon thing. The Nexorans are much more inline with a pure Romulan inspired design. I wonder how much influence the Duras faction had in the Empire at the time that class was taking shape. To me light and fast and mean are now and always have been what the Romulans do best.

I kind of thought that the D'deridex wasn't originally meant to be the Romulan design, instead being their heavy, border-patrolling craft. Naturally, it was easier to just recycle the D for when they needed more Romulan ships in later episodes and the plots rarely required something small, like a BoP, so they just didn't make more. I don't know why they stuck to that during DS9's Dominion War arc, though, especially after switching to CGI. Probably just laziness.

 

[Starfox1701]

I think the dominion wars stuff happened because they made a model for Voyager episode message in a bottle. They just reused the model to save time I think. as far as the design it was one of Probert's ships from early in the TNG series and from what Ive read was intended to be both huge and romulan from the start

 

[Hellkite]

Romulan ship construction philosophies

I move this out of Hellkite ship yard it's a worth wile topic

 

[Zelph]

I was rewatching some of the Dominion War episodes of DS9 recently and I agree. The D'Deridex design just didn't fit with the Romulans. I like the idea of it being a heavy border craft; it certainly has the intimidation factor while decloaking in their introduction episode of TNG.

 

[Atlantis]

I actually disagree with the OP here. To me the D'deridex is totally 100% the Romulan mentality. Stay cloaked until you're ready for an overwhelming alpha strike. Look at the Romulan BOP in Balance of Terror. Decloak, fire Plasma Torpedo, cloak. It was slow, it was cumbersome, and its weapon, while powerful, was slow to arm and fire. The D'deridex, while not quite as bad, does follow the same strategy.

Smaller fast strike craft are totally more a Klingon thing, and huge warships aren't really so well suited to them, except in rare cases (the Negh'Var and Voodieh types).

Oh, and as for the plots requiring something small... there was the Scout and Science Vessel. So it's not like they didn't have the option to reuse them. They deliberately chose the D'deridex to be the most commonly-seen Romulan ship, as that is the direction they wanted the Romulans to go in.

 

[CABAL]

Good points, Atlantis. Now that I think about it, the assault on Khitomer is a great example of the Romulan 'decloak and burn' strategy.

Considering how easily the E-D could detect cloaked vessels by the end of TNG, it kind of makes sense that they would go with less bulky and more agile ships in the post-TNG era, like the Norexan/Valdore, so that they could get away or fight if the cloak failed to hide them. The Klingons also rely on the cloak less over time.

So, maybe the agility of the craft depends on the reliability of the cloaking device at the time of design? The D'deridex's (and TOS BoP's) cloak was near undetectable when it was made so they didn't worry about making it agile while cloaking technology had depreciated when they designed the Norexan so they made the ship quicker?

 

[Dominus_Noctis]

That's a somewhat similar philosophy to why we chose the current ship types in Fleet Operations. On the one hand, we've got some big, bulky warbirds, capable of annihilating their enemies in a single barrage (ok... not for gameplay reasons ^^ ).

But then, in light of new and better types of detection, as well as an increased emphasis on speed, endurance (the D'deridex was renowned for being a slow thing - how it got to DS9 at warp 6 is an interesting question ...), and agility, we imagined that the Romulans would have designed more Defiant or Sovereign-like craft: ships that can get to a far-off firefight quickly, after the threat has been identified (rather than being there beforehand, as the older, sluggish warbirds did).

 

[Hellkite]

I look at it as the mirror of the real world battleship

D'deridex was meant to presence a great psychological and diplomatic impact. Similar to possessing nuclear weapons today, the ownership of served to enhance a nation's force projection or at lest the psychological force projection in a cold war arms race but as with the battleships in lue to the Federation growing ship sizes of the same era . Their construction is so costly, their effectiveness so uncertain and of such short duration, that the enterprise of creating an fleet seems to leave fruitless; this was proven in the Dominion war with the losses they took to fast, long-ranged attack enemy ships Namely the Dominion bug ship each lost a crippling expense to the empire in resources and man power to an cheaply fealded enemy ships. it was only logical for them to change construction philosophies

 

[Starfox1701]

Military practicality of such a design aside the way they presented the romulan fleet was without depth. Its essentially an all battleship fleet. Militarily the romulans have left themselves without any real flexibility. They don't strike me as being that dumb. Especially since they live longer then humans and have actually made that mistake before in their history. I think the idea the producers wanted was to have something big and scary to stand as a counterpoint to the Galaxy

 

[Hellkite]

I think that is more of the writers and producers trying to save on effects cost per ep

But your right it dose make the Romulan fleet seem less flexible but they do have the Scout and Science ships as well as the long range shuttle as see in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine "In the Pale Moonlight"

But this could be a deception the Romulans are Romulans they always play there cards close to their chest.