Man, that's what subordinates are for. To come up with answers to stuff like that.
I will say I think you're overestimating how much the Sydraxians know about us and hear about us. Because frankly, think about how little we know about them. Why can't we check their Sydraxian-wikipedia and read up on their ships? Is it because they're so incredibly security-conscious... or because they are really far away and we don't share information networks?
The Sydraxians don't know listen to Federation news broadcasts. They don't read Federation wikipedia. They don't listen Federation entertainments. I'd guess the Cardassians encourage them not to do so. Which could now bite them in the ass.
You're thinking of the Galaxy as if it were 21st century interconnected earth, but it's far more separated than that.
Understood.
However, if we try something like this, we DO need the ruse to at least stand up to casual inspection so they don't detect it within the first few years of normalized relations, though. Remember, these are the guys who like to swap battle-songs. Once we normalize relations,
some Sydraxian envoys or merchants will probably come to our space, at some point. And one of the first things they will do is ask "what of the battle in which you lost two of your starships?"
If they are met with a blank stare of confusion, there is a high risk of it causing serious problems.
So we'd at least need a ruse that:
1) Convinces the Federation public that we've lost two or more ships, BUT that the crews are safe AND that they don't need to boil Starfleet Command in oil over the incident.
2) Convinces the Sydraxians that they've actually blown up two or more of our ships.
3) Won't fall apart the first moment that the Sydraxians and our own citizens compare notes.
huh, maybe I should change the class then? I admit I'm not one of the ship design people but I do remember someone saying a lot of our ships underperformed as pure warships, or at least where not cost effective.
Without refits, the
Centaur is marginally satisfactory, the
Miranda and
Constellation have a glass jaw, and so the only ship we started the game with that fights well was the
Excelsior.
With the refits, the construction of the
Constitution-Bs, and the upcoming construction of the
Renaissance-class, we have several types of reasonably effective fighting vessels available either now or in the near future. They may not be as powerful in combat as ships totally optimized for combat would be, but they are very much "good enough" to face all known types of warship of broadly comparable tonnage* without undue concern about the outcome.
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*This is ignoring Romulan/Klingon designs that have tonnage and combat stats totally out of proportion, which could NEVER be designed using the same rules as Federation ships. On which note...
Remember that other species do not use our design spreadsheet. They have their own design and technological paths that they took. It would be pretty weird if they had all the exact same technologies as the Federation, wouldn't it?
You're right, but assuming their technology isn't totally beyond ours, the strongest warships they can build on a given tonnage shouldn't be MUCH more powerful than the strongest warships
we can build on the same tonnage. We may not choose to actually build those warships, and they might...
But really, a 500-kiloton Klingon warship should not have stats that make it fully competitive with a 1.8-megaton Federation "warship," if there was such a thing as a 1.8-megaton Federation warship, which there isn't.
If I were in charge, I'd quietly retcon the tonnages of some of the Klingon and Romulan ships accordingly. Their statlines are totally reasonable, they just don't square well with the listed tonnage numbers is all.
Well the
Tomed Incident was supposedly something very similar to this. Starfleet Intelligence made it look like the Romulans killed thousands of Starfleet personnel spread across 13 outposts and the USS Agamemnon. Except all the outposts and the Agamemnon were empty, rigged to emit false lifesigns, and all the crews were officers who had already died but whose deaths were covered up.
While I am not sure we could actually pull that off...
Assuming we can do that, Remember that the Romulans and the Federation spent the following fifty years not talking to each other. The deception would have been far easier to detect had that not been the case.
The Federation
is an open society, and any cunning ruses we plan have to be based on that reality. Remember the lengths we're going to in order to conceal the
Kadak-Tor's capture and the defection of Miran and her senior officers? The only really good reason we would have for not going to similar lengths over this hypothetical ruse is if we're less afraid of the Sydraxians attacking us when they decide they were tricked.
Cardassians actually have two other escorts that can beat a Miranda-A (and Centaur-A):
I'm sorry, I was genuinely unaware that the former existed. I knew about "gun Takaakis" but didn't know their statline. I figured everything would be in the OP of the design thread, since that's the whole point of that post existing.
Ah, okay. I was thinking it was a 2-way exchange rate, so that although there wouldn't be a perpetual money making loophole, it would make the Excelsior cost infusion snakepit option completely obsolete.
Then we'd basically just be asking Oneiros "hey, can you give us a better deal on resources, oh, and let us trade them back in exchange for pp with no loss due to 'exchange fees?'
It'd be a really stupid thing to ask for.
The Miranda, Centaur, and Centaur-A are the escorts that aren't cost-effective in pure combat. Miranda-A should be, at least for the 2310s.
And the
Centaur-A is pretty good, it's just expensive enough that you wouldn't bother buying one if you didn't care about the Science/Presence/Defense package it offers.
