The Defiant does not have a small/low powered reactor.  Quite the contrary, it's massively powered, and it's been explicitly stated in the show.  They specifically said that she has the power of a ship several times larger.  In fact, that massive level of over-powering was the ships original problem, until they managed to find a way to work with it ("The class-7 warp drive was extremely powerful for a ship of this size, and as such, Defiant-class vessels put out a warp signature equivalent to much larger starships. (DS9: "The Search, Part I", "One Little Ship"))

The Defiant doesn't have advanced sensor pods and diplomatic capabilities because it's designed for one single purpose, combat.  While classified as an Escort, that's only the "official" word.  She's a warship, plain and simple.  The abilities and stats should reflect this.  She has more defenses than most ships (ablative hull armor, and "The most durable of its kind in all of Starfleet's shield systems' arsenal")

If going for canon, the Defiant should be the Federation's top warship, but I understand that balancing has to be considered too

Just an extra note about science, the Defiant has performed science missions, despite science not being its role.  Don't forget it was the first ship to ever open an artificial wormhole.  The DS9 technical manual gives the Defiant's sensors at 80% of standard Starfleet sensors, which reflects its dedicated combat design

Wow, trying to find official total power plant output power for star trek ships is pretty hard.  I can find various system outputs, but that doesn't tell me if the systems all run 100% power all the time = kind of useless!

Anyway, to make is as simple as possible.  There is a decade time difference between the Original Galaxy Class and the Defiant Class.

The Ship PowerPlant in the Galaxy takes up 12 decks.

The Ship PowerPlant in the Defiant takes up 3 decks.

Sigh, tried to compare the schematic of the Sovereign against the Defiant, but the powerplant seems to be split up/stretched out than it was on the Galaxy class....I'll keep looking into this.

You see the problem right?  Even taking miniturization advancements into account, the Defiant's power supply must be less than the Galaxy's.  Granted, a lot of power in the Galaxy class would be bled off into crew quarters, increase life support, science labs, holodeck, + other stuff....and the Defiant only has to deal with engines/weapons/shields.

So, in the end, you have the Defiant that has a bit more firepower than the Galaxy class, but no where near the same sized reactor.  Nor does the Defiant have any of the Galaxy class's special abilities/functions.

Dude, this actually supports the idea that the Defiant should be more a Heavy Cruiser than an ability based Capital Ship.

Improvements to crew efficiency would be done through stat upgrades.

Oh look, they're right here!

weaponCooldownDecreasePerc
    StartValue 0.000000
    ValueIncreasePerLevel 0.030000
weaponDamageIncreasePerc
    StartValue 0.000000
    ValueIncreasePerLevel 0.050000

Abilities make perfect sense in the Star Trek universe.  There are the tactical breakthroughs like split second warp jumps to confuse sensors, modified torpedoes that track engine trails or do more damage.  Experience based abilities like these would be good for capital ship upgrades.  They'd be less likely for a Defiant though, because the Defiant does not have a crew of 400 with a sizable percentage of those being scientists.

There are however the standard fare, built around power in a fairly logical fashion.  Shields can be restored to full strength in a matter of minutes when not active.  While active, that power output to maintain them is massive.  Recharging them at that point requires diverting power from other sources, weapons or engines for instance.  Every ship could have a shields down ability that restores them either to full, or the same level the hull remains at in a minute or two.  During combat, when one would obviously want them to stay up, you could make a trade off.  Completely canon.  These wouldn't be the kinds of things you'd want to award a capital ship with though.  It's not relevant to experience.

The Defiant was the Federation's first dedicated warship.  It was severely over-gunned, and over-armored for her size.  As well as being fast and maneuverable.  And look, theres an idea for 3 abilities, they can be a passive bonus, one increases attack slightly, another does armor/shields, and the third makes it harder to hit.

Oh, just so people understand where I am coming from on that Defiant issue.  I love the ship.  It is cool and I like the barebones weapon platform philosophy. I am just trying to figure out a balanced way it can fit into this mod AND stick to canon.  I am trying to get away from the 'Hero-i-tis' that the Defiant suffers from....of course it can take on all commers in the show, because otherwise all the main characters would be dead!  Hehe, the same can be said for Voyager, but do we want to see the Intrepid become an uber powerful Capital Ship?

Right now, it takes forever to research (as it should, since it was developed at about the same time as the Sovereign) = nobody will ever use the Defiant because it takes up precious capital ship slots, AND is much weaker than the Sovereign (also as it should be).  Just costing less isn't enough.  It could cost NOTHING, and I still wouldn't take it over a Sovereign simply because of value of capital ship slots.

So, I was thinking one way of fixing this would be to simply turn it into a Heavy Cruiser that is useful for escorting your Capital Ships...the Defiant is even listed as an 'escort' hehe.  Players would actually use this ship now AND  it wouldn't steal experience away from your other ability based capital ships.

The Defiant can even keep it's high combat power (strong weapons, engines and armor) as long as it's fleet supply stays somewhere between an Ambassador and a Galaxy.

The die hards who want this ship to gain power with experience can be placated with a research tier that gives 'Defiant Prototype advanced training' techniques for the Defiant Class.  Maybe give the ship a chance to evade attacks or something like that.

defiant class ships are not normaly as good its only because o'brian tinkered with it that the ds9 defiant is so uber.

ever seen the episode with red squad and their defiant?

nog had to sort it out because it was still standard

also the episode where the lakota attacks the defiant the captain says "someone put special hull plating(armour) on the defiant and didnt tell starfleet command"

so what im saying is the defiant from ds9 is far from standard issue

This has been discussed and the answer was NO. Its a capital to prevent spamming!! Abilities and research is what will make capital ships stand out . I would take 3 defiants with kick a@@ abilities over two sovies without any abilities any day!!(\B):vulcan:(\B)

Well, okay I guess.

Giving the Defiant super abilities and not giving any at all to the Sovereign might balance things.  Not so sure about sticking to canon, but you must know what you are doing in terms of balancing.

Hey, that might not be a bad idea for a passive Defiant ability!
"Special Hull Plating"

I think you guys are over-valuing capital ships in comparison to the cruisers too.  That Sovereign is hosing a lot of DPS in return for a single ship with 10k+ shielding.  You can fit seven cruisers into that fleet point usage.  The Defiant might be a wimp out on capital ship slots, but it's really nice from a fleet point perspective.  When it comes to taking a maxed out starbase out with minimal casualties, you can sit a bunch of Sovereigns in the well for a couple minutes and not lose any, but you can't take on a supporting fleet that way.  They wont make the base go byebye fast.

Paradoxnt   you oviously have no idea on the premis of the defiant class.

In space  just as a heads up, Life support(food heat and breathable air) would take up more energy then weapons hands down..  to break it down for ya,    Galaxys had 1100+ people on board at any time sometimes as many as 1700  defiant has 100 at max(usualy 80 or less)   thats around 15X  the energy used on just Life support alone.

Navigational Shields and inertial stabalisers  would also use significantly more energy due to the mass of the galaxy vs the defiant.

add on the extensive sensor, steller cartography and science facilitys, also dont forget the lighting and more.

Hands down the galaxy would use a crazy amount more energy to remain running.. your looking at more then 10 times the energy use  just off basic ship funtions not counting defences

Secondly  based on simple reality(and stated in star trek) the amount of energy used to project a forcefield  is determined by the size and strength of the shield..    The Defiant is 1/8th the size of the galaxy..  to have shields as strong as the galaxys it would need 1/8th of the power ..  in the case of the sov..  it would need 1/6th of the power.. if not less  given the volume the shield would hold within.

Your argument for power vs ship Core size.. is totaly off base. The larger ships need a larger core just to run standard.

Im sure the defiant puts out less power thru its warp core..  indeed it must.. however given that it would have extreamly significantly less power usage.. im sure its still way overpowered.  It is designed for war..  hands down any system not directly related to combat and survival im sure is disabled during battle.

For the person who stated that The Defiant was the only one with hull plating...  its Standard with the ships design. The design was Classified till the Dominion war..  hardly expect a Captain of a none combat ship to have access to the detailed specs for a classified ship that wasn't expected to show

 Personaly  mod wise, id like to see a bit more survival related abilitys added to the defiant, with a perhaps 20% boost to hull and shields..  or at least shields..    and a significant boost to cost, the ship should cost similar to other cap ships

The Defiant is too powerful for a cruiser slot. We make it a cruiser and it's ridiculously gimpy (tried and proved in other releases). We're talking a ship meant to take on borg (not necessarily take many hits from them but meant to deal the hurt). I think the current setup reflects this very well. If you get attacked by one you know it. On the other hand they don't live long if you don't take care of them.

We can come up with abilities for them that aren't science based or w/e. Also while on the subject of canon, it is only consistent in so far as it is consistently inconsistent.

I'll say what I said when we had complaints about the Akira, if you don't like it don't use it.

All good points Namoge!  In fact, everyone here has put forward valid points.  Together, they make me more able to swallow the Defiant as capital ship worthy.  So I withdraw my 'vote' for the Defiant as a Heavy Cruiser.

As for abilities, I suppose if they are totally combat based (ie, speed, manuevering (chance to dodge), weapon power, and so on), I can even go with that.

Hehe, not that I have any say in any decisions to start with!

Id post some suggestions for the defiants  "combat" abilitys  except that the site lists they need to be in mod form.. well beyond my capabilitys currently.

however id suggest these, 

Ability 1, Ablative Hull Armor, 3 Ranks 5 armor each rank(would give it some serious survival boost)

Ability 2, Weapons Dispursal(spelling) 3 ranks use of a tractor beam to affect targeting of the target ship reducing its chance to hit to 25% for 5/10/15 seconds..    or simply have it last 10 seconds with a 75/50/25% chance to hit per level instead(this was done in an episode against a vorcha so it fits cannon very well)

Ability 3, Evasive Pattern, 3 rank levels, give a 25/50/75% chance to avoid weapons fire for 6/8/18 seconds(various versions of this has been done in the show.. the defiant was particularly adept at it due to size speed and agility.

Ability 4, (requires rank 6) Quantom Volley(or whatever you want to name it, 1 min cooldown 1 Rank, fire a full quantom spread, high damage bust ability, Damage should be capable of dropping any frigate in 1 volley, cripple a cruiser.. and even dent a cap ship at some level.   Cannon behind this is simple..  watch many episodes of the war.. the defiants quantom shots would often destroy a ship in a single wave

You might want to send those ideas to the email address listed in the topic header.

As for those +5 armor boosts, they'll actually do less than you think....but still, it would fit the canon quite well.

It's the newest download, but when I turn on the team mesh colors all the ships change color

here's my 2 cents about the whole argument. A lot of what makes a large warship powerful is it's size. Larger powerplants and the ability to house bigger cannons. Defiants should be more maneuverable but have "higher firing rate/lower damage" weapons.

could be modified to 10/20/30 armor then..  that should make more of a dent

Enhancement request mailed,

suggested 2 other abilitys,   a Skill that would boost the Nebulas range 5/10/15%  to sort of fit the torp roll it seems to fit

Also suggested a deflector dish shot for the galaxy that would disable and damage the target while disabling the galaxy at the same time(like in the Best of both worlds)

why not wait until the mod is finished before all of you redesign everything???

because they are looking for suggestions to finish the mod .. they are doing all the basic gameplay but as they havn't done abilitys.. they wanted suggestions

They're looking for more in the way of actual contributions than just ideas.  Read the part of the post mentioning contributions.

The Defiant shouldn't be wimpy by any stretch of the imagination, but it shouldn't be able to utterly destroy everything as a sort of super-tier starship either.  The Defiant is easily the ship with the biggest "Hero Complex."  However unpopular as this idea may be to some of you, I think it still has merit.

*********************************

Personally, I'd be more for the idea of the Defiant and the Akira switching places.  The Defiant could be a cruiser (don't yell at me about canon classifications, I'm talking ingame), an expensive, heavy upkeep cruiser with quite alot of firepower, speed, and high armor.  Make it top-tier research along with the Sovvie and Akira, around there.  It doesn't have to have lousy stats just because its a cruiser, so long as the upkeep for it is significant enough to make up for it, much like the Akira is now.  The closer it gets to cap-ship ability the higher the upkeep for it would be.  Maybe its a "Cruiser killer" ship to tear through the enemy's bulk force and do decent damage against capital ships as well.  Its still destroying ships well, just capital ships aren't its forte, which I think makes decent sense in the game.

Then, you make the Akira the "Carrier" capship.  It can be just as powerful as it is now (and because it'd be a capship it could even be allowed a small boost perhaps).  Give it a few squadrons of Peregrine fighters, perhaps a sort of "Torpedo Volley" ability based off of its weapons pod, and some abilities to enhance its fighters, and you have something that adequately fits the situation without stealing any glory from the Defiant, or any other ship for that matter.

So, what's the problem with this?

How about someone make some abilities and send them into

[email protected]

You all should see the new abilities we have cooking in the kitchen. It speeds things up drastically if someone not only thinks about it but also makes them!!  The armor on the defiant is a  good ability "also is cannon".
I would like to have a new ability for every capital ship before the next release. this can only happen with help from you. Keep in mind new abilities not just stock. You can use a stock ability for reference, but tweek it. to make it more trek like. On a side note the Romulans are coming along nicely. I would like to request from the community a working tractor beam ability for the galaxy class. thnx

LIVE LONG AND PROSPER

i am working on getting the standard weapons of all ships to randomly disable a targetted ships weapons, warp out or engines for 7secs.

its proving a bit tricky but i think i am making headway!

will be on hols for 2 weeks now so hopefully be able to mail it in after that!

*edit* does anyone know what the constraint is called that will only cause an ability to target a ship that has no shields?

For those wishing to build abitiities buffs etc.   The following page is of great assistance with q & a.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/306405