Which is the perfect combination of traits for large scale warfare. Because with that, you can sustain your forces and grind down any enemy via attrition who doesn't have the same capabilities and resources at his disposal. That is the true OP strength of the Dominion forces.
My friends and I watched Star Trek the Next Generation in the 80s and all throughout school in the 90s Trek was our cultural go too. This channel does justice to Star Trek discussion, one of the very few that does on RUclips.
That spherical warp core is pretty on point for Jem'hadar ship requirements. An extremely precise, well made bit of kit with no moving parts - impossible to really repair, but far less prone to failure to begin with. Perfect for a crew with limited technical capabilities, in which there is only going to be a binary between operational & dead.
Ultimately their greatest virtue was their versatility and ease of construction. For Dominion Fleets, where your troops are 100% expendable yet easily replaced, the only thing that matters is the volume of firepower in the engagement. In that regard 100 disposable ships that can be replaced immediately is more worthwhile than 50 more effective BoPs that may outlive the engagement but cannot be so easily replaced. Of course, one wonders if this doctrine was not handicapped by virtue of the Dominion's experience in the Gamma Quadrant, putting down rebellions and attacking smaller powers. Within the context of the Alpha/Beta Quadrant, the fleet structure of only having battleships/battlecruisers and attack ships was less useful against the large powers. The Dominion benefitted greatly with the integration of the Cardassian fleets as the Cardassians specialized in cruisers that just happen to be the exact ship classes necessary to round things out. As such, Dominion/Cardassian fleets were quite successful with each providing the other with what they did not have.
Yeah if you look at how the jem'hadar appear in the gamma quadrant they seem to only operate in small squadrons it's possible they took some tips from alpha quadrant powers
@@nousername368 Having a army of smaller ships is useful but there is nothing more awe-inspiring or horrifying than giant warship that can potentially wipe out a civilization looming overhead. Large ships are great in persuading potential training partners and or subjugating your opponent.
Weyoun: "Impossible! Federation shields have always proven useless against our weapons." Gull Dew Cot: "I've found it wise to never underestimate the Federation's technical skill." 😉
I suspect that its disposable nature and willingness to use Kamikaze tactics is the big reason the Federation got knocked onto its back foot so quickly. At the end of "Call to Arms," the Federation and Klingon fleet appeared to be marshaled for a counter-attack. "And then we make the Dominion sorry they ever set foot in the Alpha Quadrant," was Nog said. The ships rendezvous with an assembled armada headed towards Dominion holdings, and heroic music is playing. The next episode, General Martok groused, "War is much more fun when you are winning!" We saw how easily Federation and Klingon weapons can pop Dominion ships, and this never really changes. Heck, later in the war, we see *a Runabaout* target a weak spot in the shields and destroy a Jem'hadar fighter. The only thing I can figure is the Dominion used their production advantage to make lots of "bug ships" and used them as superheavy missiles to take out Federation and Klingon ships, breaking the counter-offensive and inflicting losses the Alliance could not swiftly compensate for. No doubt they would fight instead of ram whenever feasible, but when you can exchange a single attack ship for a Vor'cha or Nebula, that is a really good exchange. Materiel aside, it takes *years* for the Federation or Klingons to train up new crewmen, while the Dominion has new warriors three days after they are "born." They could afford to grind down their opponents via attrition, while using the Cardassians and Dominion battlecruisers to take and hold space
True but the jem'hadar only use ramming as a last resort. They mostly employ it later in the war where the tide is against them. At that point there would be no need for ramming. Numbers and tactics were winning the war enough for them.
Like any good villian, they fell to the trope of diminishing power with each showing: Borg, Hirogen, the Kayzon, etc. However to be fair, like in any war, continued exposure to them allowed starfleet to adapt their weapons, shields and tactics. Add to that, very little was shown of Jemhaddar research and development that showed they were doing the same. Its easy to consider the Dominion as being technologically stagnant as they have no competitors at all in their own quadrant and didnt need to continue developing and improving as part of their normal day to day which is likely a contributing factor to their performance.
The only ship that seems to play against this trope is the Cardassian Galor Class. Throughout DS9 they became progressively stronger until the final year of the Dominion War when they could one-shot kill not only smaller attack ships like the BoP or Bug Ship, but even classes a step up as seen with the single shot destruction of a couple Breen Frigates during the Battle of Cardassia. And this was even after it was established that the Breen Frigate was considerably larger and more powerful than attacks ships to the point it took four quantum torpedoes, or to destroy them during the invasion of Chintaka and that a full phaser barrage by the Defiant could only moderately damage them.
@Crown Prince Sebastian Johan of Ponte Corvo if those single shot destructions happened during the battle of cardasia, you could chalk it up to previously sustained damaged, knowing a specific weakness or another trope: temporary villian redemption power up lol
I had the thought after watching the Jem'hadar Fighter video about the Japanese Zero fighter in WWII, where it seemed unstoppable in armament, range and speed (though even the Zero couldn't destroy a battleship by itself). And at first the Zero was countered more by tactics and loss of experienced pilots, before comparable or better airframes were developed. I admit it only covers the 'attack ship' side of its capability.
Dominion polaron weapons were a huge advantage, until everyone got their shielding adapted, after which they were just purple disruptors. If they weren't bottlenecked at the Bajor Wormhole, they still would have been an incredible problem.
That stolen Jem'hadar Fighter that Sisko and Co. took on that undercover mission, was rather impressive. Just about every other one we saw, was destroyed in one or two hits, yet somehow theirs survived at least a dozen hits, AND somehow stayed relatively intact as it fell from from orbit onto a planet. I guess the Federation reinforced it with plot armor.
I had the same thought. The Jem’hadar fighter seemed more cannon fodder because it was always fighting the hero ship, but in that episode you mentioned it seemed to hold its own pretty well despite taking the initial hits fighting against a larger federation ship.
Hm, all this time, did not know those circle thing on the Defiant were plasma vents. Neat. The Jem'hadar fighter is one of the most well-crafted alien warships in Star Trek. Meant to swarm & kill enemies both as fast & as cheaply as possible. Yet despite being so expendable, only the Saber & Defiant have a quality advantage in terms of tonnage peers. Also, aren't spiders and scorpions arthropods. I think the classification you were looking for was the subphylum *"hexapoda".*
The writers said hey we need a Kamakazi. You got to admit DS9 combat has always been on smaller ships, where TNG it was the massive Galaxy Class, D'Drex Warbird the smallest adversarial ship (that wasn't a 3rd world planet state) was the K'vort (well there was the B'rel which was the Enterprise Bane of existence). In DS9 it was much smaller scale of ships, first basically Patrol craft with Danube "Runabouts" that is little more than a large shuttle with torpedoes, to Marqui fighters which are armed civilian ships, Defiant class. The largest ship there was essentially the Galor and later Keldon class of the Cardasians. Sure there was Vor'cha and Galaxy and Jemhadar Battlecruisers but those were mostly in the background. The Dominion War made the D'drex class a Paper Tiger.
These are the types of ships that Starfleet really needed against the Borg. Powerful, but also numerous, with small crew requirements. Ideal for swarm tactics against a large target.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I think that was the intent with the Defiant, but they never built them in numbers. Or at least didn't appear to on screen. And the Defiant was definitely much more tanky, able to take tremendous damage. Nova or Saber might have been good analogs, but Starfleet undoubtedly added a bunch of other systems not needed for defense.
@@jasonsylvander3089 Such a lost opportunity. I get why they didn't do that during DS9, as they wanted the Defiant to stand out during the battles. But the battle during First Contact would have been perfect, and you could have had Defiant leading that swarm.
An amazing concept and solution to the bug ships was the Achilles class phalanx micro quantum torpedo array seen in the ‘Dominion Wars’ PC game. Capable of keeping these fighters at bay while still unleashing a slaughter of 6-8 pulse phasers and quantum torpedo pulse launchers on its primary target.
The Single shot torpedo tubes also have a big advantage over the Klingon BOP with only a single shot between long reloads. You can Alpha strike with them or 2/3 short volleys. Also the biggest problem facing you is that no matter how MANY you kill the dominion will simply build more. So you can take out a whole fleet of these buggers and in a few weeks tops they’re back. Very much the T-34 of Star Trek in design, which has effort spent on the important parts like the gun and engine but anywhere you can be a little rough and get away with it does that. Granted the T-34 was produced under circumstances if having to defend the homeland which was still very much in danger in 43 so the circumstances where a little different.
This was a well done, indepth dive into these. There are A Lot of comparisons to irl tech setup and ideas here. *) Your comparison of a high tech, but disposable war device is pretty comparable to a guided artillery shell, or guided bomb. Very high tech to deliver a specific outcome but not so expensive it's not disposable. *) The power plant\warp core being the equivalent of the steam engine of matter\anti-matter generators was interesting. Or it's the RBMK reactor of warp cores. Just enough shielding to not bake the crew. Thankfully Jem'Hadar fighter ship's power plants don't explode. They NEVER explode. *) The tactical networking for tying together every fighter's weapons targeting, to combine and make their shots efficient is VERY reminiscent of the late Soviet era Interceptor fire control system.[I saw it on a wings of the red star docu about either the MiG-29 or the Foxbat mig-25] The flight or wing would head up and intercept an inbound target. One of the fighter's would paint the target and that info would be transferred to all the other fighters in it's wing etwork. Could tie missile strikes to one target OR be the only one running it's radar sensors at capacity, so the enemy wouldn't detect the radar radiation from the other 4 fighters. The newer US fighters as well are setting up telelinking for their fighters too. A flight of F-35's can link with a local AWACS, share radar info and setup missile strikes while most or all run "silent" as well. [I hope that last one made sense, I'm high on edibles right now.] *) This ship actually uses off angle gravity to have more room instead of the traditional setup of long straight decks? COOL. I'd be interested in having canon explain how the Dominion's ship yard and engineers could produce ships at their blindingly fast pace.
I have always speculated that their far superior transporter technology belies a far better mastery of energy to matter conversion. Whereas we have always seen Starfleet ships being built piece by piece with metal created from mined ore, Dominion shipyards seemed to feature ships being constructed in large parts, like preassembled Liberty ships. Perhaps the Dominion is able to create metal alloys out of any sort of matter via advanced replicator technology thus allowing for much faster staging and assembly of large pre-fabricated parts. As we have seen these techniques are not limited to Dominion vessels because Cardassian ships were also being built extremely quickly. The Cardassian Fleet went from being diminished by the Klingon War, to fielding 1000s upon 1000s of warships in a very short period. This sort of mass replication of metal from the whole-cloth of the galaxy would explain how the Dominion was able to create and feed the largest industrial base in the Alpha/Beta Quadrants from what was repeatedly cited as the resource poor Cardassian Union.
I always thought of it as looking more closer to that of a scarab beetle and I loved the diagram of the bird of prey with the whales in its lower cargo bay😂, Any ways a very great job well done and very informatively explained in every way and detail possibly provided on this ship indeed in every way shape and form...
It's a glass cannon. It's aggressive and focused. The best defense is a strong offense kind of thing. It's a warship manned by a clone race that doesn't sleep. It doesn't need sleeping quarters. It doesn't need recreational services. It's not unarmored but it's not focused on slugging it out but ending the fight as quickly as possible. That's why it was so scary to begin with and less so later on. During the negotiating phase it was a glass cannon that if it shot first it could be the only one that shoots. During the full scale war it was a target. It has weaknesses and blind spots but those were discovered over time. Once discovered they could be exploited. It's a mass produced glass cannon that emphasizes first strike capabilities operated by a fanatical cannon fodder species that is engineered and not naturally occurring, with no regard for their own lives. That is terrifying but ultimately weak in the greater sense.
Funny thing is a friend of mine was gonna make a more accurate MSD of the attack ship after he was done working on the Columbia escort MSD. He had a interesting idea that the lights we see on the attack ship that we think is windows are instead sensors for the head gear both the vorta and jem'hadar first wears
Not to mention the Jem'Hadar is a really nasty kamikaze fighter. Also come to think of it, it would be very wild to see a dogfight between a klingon B'Rel and the Jem'Hadar fighter.
On Gmod there is a addon of star trek ship minis that have an AI setting for ai combat and funny enough the attack ships in the mod swam targets and kamikaze large targets dispite sharing the same ai
A pure attack ship doesn't need much space for internal facilities. Nor does it need windows. And Jem'Hadar, being bred for war, have little need for Science labs, recreational facilities or comfortable accomodations. So they can keep their interior crew space requirements lower than most other species, which makes for more compact and resource effective ships.
Actually, in WW II, face hardened plate armor (work harden and tempered through rolling, and then surface diffused with carbon) had much more resistance to penetration, but you could not have curved surfaces to better deflect rounds. And all the welding of plates took more labor and time. Casting allowed for complex shapes, but the steel could not be worked for greater hardness and toughness.
3:24 - in a DS 9 episode where the Jem’hadar had to work with the Federation, one soldier told Dax that the Jem’hadar do not eat or sleep. Basically they would have no need for quarters. As long as they get the White, they follow the Vorta.
Great video and very informative. Would love to see a break down like this of the Vor'cha and Negh'Var class. Especially with the Vor'chas modules. Keep up the great work!
Love the Jem'Hadar bug ship. Small, fast, pretty powerful for its size and operates in swarms. And just like the Jem'Hadar is totally disposable and can be very quickly replaced.
The Dominion's strength was in just making more soldiers, and more ships. They are basically the Klingon Empire but with endless warriors, and ships. Not the smartest, or technologically advanced, but relentless and never ending.
The biggest weakness of these ships was the limited endurance and range. These vessels can't operate as long distance explorers on their own, or as anything but an attack ship with a limited sortie/patrol time of 1 battle or 1 month at best. They are dependent on bases and larger stations for long term use. Which isn't a weakness from the Founder perspective, as they are control freaks.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 the Cardassian Hedeki and the Federation Defiant have much longer endurance and range then the others (6 months, in increasing discomfort), and the B'rel can do extended tours of up to 4 months. The only ship in this category that has a similar range to the Dominion Fighter is the Romulan Scout, and that is because the scout is not intended as a strike element but a glorified shuttle.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 for a better analog, the Romulan scout is a ship launch, a Dominion Fighter is an early 1910s torpedo boat, the B'rel is a refit 1900s fleet torpedo boat, the Hedeki is an 1890s fleet torpedo boat destroyer and the Defiant is a 1910s torpedo boat destroyer. A fleet TBD has to be able to keep up with the fleet.
The Bug Ships were shown to be weak, because 90% of the time it was going against the Defiant. Which not only had ablative armour, the best in Starfleet, but also plot armour. And nothing can beat plot armour. 😅
When you started off with "looking extraordinarily fearsome, the most deadly and respectable ship that quickly became cannon fodder," my first thought was the Miranda class.
Seems odd that there's a massive cut out of the radiators where the door to the cargo bay is. Perhaps it's just mad theory crafting with way too much retrospect, but I'd imagine that the warp core and impulse engines are in the central bit. Perhaps like so many of the federation's ships and their mission pods, the engines can be replaced to extend the life of the ship? Of course, the dominion war suffers from so much hindsight (and trek in general). Why up the production of the full galaxy class when all you need is the stardrive? Minosian weapon systems would have come in handy, etc.
Seeing these ships wreck the odyssey and then the Dideredex (maybe more shocking) for the first time in the 90s was kind of shocking, the speed and ferocity was very different to usual trek battles. It looked like those powerful ships were woefully outmoded. Thinking about it though for an empire it would have made sense that they had big ships I think but the smaller ships were cool and subverted my expectations in a good way at the time. Still I’d think in terms of basing and distance to police the dominion you would need big ships especially as it’s implied they aren’t everywhere, they are just sent in when you miss behave.
My favorite ship on Attack Wing. If only their abilities were not range 1 :( The writers admitted they made the Jem Hadar too powerful early on and had to nerf their shields teleporting and phased beam mechanics.
Should be noted that it was an escort/patrol/assault ship. General purpose ship for fast response and patroling an already dominated quadrant. It being called cannon fodder is correct since the Dominion military doctrine is overwhelming force carried out by extendible assets.
The bug ship😂. I have always liked this ship though. Especially after what they did to the USS Odyssey. They went completely Japanese kamikaze. They didn't give a damn.
There's a level of ruthless operational art in the Jem Hadar fighter that goes beyond simply being tough but expendable. The idea is to decentralize the firepower and staying power of a fleet so that only so much of a Jem Hadar fleet can be damaged/destroyed at once no matter how powerful the foe (as the enemy only has so many guns shooting at once). The point of all of this is to transform war as much as possible from an art to a science, something that the Soviet armed forces often did with Deep Battle doctrine. A Vorta can quickly calculate the odds of victory from the composition of its immediate enemy rather than skill, morale, or other intangible factors. Tactical decisions can then be formulaically derived whether it be attack, defend, or outright kamikaze so long as it is the most favorable calculated outcome on the operational level.
And the reconstitution of force is much easier. Instead of replacing various classes in a fleet. You only need to replace one so long as the battlecruisers survive.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I think that having the bulk of the fleet be composed of small, short-duration, ships might have been part of the Founder's method of reducing the chances of a mutiny going wide-scale (or at least diminishing it's potential damage). The Founders were all about dividing up their client races in an effort to reduce their effectiveness alone. One race did all of the government functions; but, had no military power of their own. The Jem Hadar were capable fighters; but, had to depend on others for their logistics. Having a single fighter, or even squadron, go rogue would be much less dangerous than having a smaller number of cruisers or battlecruisers do so. Their is only so much that a small, short-ranged, craft can do without support.
Gem'Hadar do not install windows. They are linked to the universe outside their ship through sensors only. Remember the funky head gear that gave everyone headaches? Tough little ships.
I just noticed the top part that joins the back half to the front half, looks like part of the kit they added to make the Defiant that was the Essex class ship I think (the one Scotty broke the trans warp drive when Kirk stole the Enterprise to get Spock).. Tho the Defiant has two sets of 8 circles where the Jem'hadar fighter has one on each side...
@venomgeekmedia9886 Imma steal this thing and woob-woob-woob all the way to the Goa'uld empire with it. It's a space scarab! Also nice whale reference at 3:17 in the BoP.
@Venom Geek Media 98 that thing was so stupid. It was also incredibly stupid not to include Ra's race from the original movie. The SG1 novel Barque of Heaven attempted to explain that Ra was a different, even more advanced yet ancient race that the Atlanteans had some political ties to.
The zero fighter in ww2 was at one point, one of the most dominant war birds in the world. That is until tactics and new equipment were brought against it. Then it was just an under armoured target. I see the bug ship as similar to the zero.
Yes, the Zero was deadly in the beginning of the war. It was widely believed to be 'unbeatable'. No one knew the strengths or weaknesses of the plane or what tactics to use against it. But a Japanese pilot attempted to land a damaged fighter on one of the islands in the Aleutians in what he thought was an open field. Turned out it was a swamp, when the landing gear sank into the morass the fighter flipped over instantly breaking the pilots neck but leaving the plane mostly undamaged. A few days later a Canadian recon plane spotted the wreck and a joint US/Canadian expedition recovered the Zero and brought her back to the States. The plane was taken apart and every millimeter examined by engineers then reassembled and repaired then flown against a number of US and British aircraft. We learned the Zero's strengths and weaknesses and pilots now knew how to fly against it to the best effect. So the fighter went from unbeatable to being a much easier target. I'd assume the same here, the Jem'Hadar attack craft was deadly until the episode 'The Ship' where Sisko and company captured one. After that it became far less deadly. I'd assume the Starfleet Corps of Engineers tore the ship apart and studied every millimeter. After that Starfleet knew how to beat it.
I think the armoured radiator is a bit of a flaw in the design. If a hole gets punched in it, either you get a plasma explosion or vent out all your plasma. Kind of like why the concept of using the wings as radiators was dropped from fighter design in the 1930s.
I'm not buying that the warp core doesn't have dilithium. If it were possible that you could have (in any Star Trek universe technology) M/AMRA function without dilithium, then the Federation pre-and post-Burn would have figured it out, certainly. What I think is a better idea is that your "semi-porous inner sphere" must be a hollow sphere of dilithium. The whole description of being "semi-porous" and serving to control the M/AM reaction effectively describes the role of dilithium anyway.
I was about to disagree until he clarified, it's a defiant; same premise, and fielded by a government with few local enemies if any. They're not exploring or researching, and don't need many larger ships.
Obviously he doesn’t know what a beetle is. A head and a rear. Especially the thick exoskeleton around the wings transfers over to this ship. It’s a beetle ship.
Dominium is not one civilization. For example Karema build torpedos. This ships are modular. Torps from one civilization. Engins from other. Brean weapons at one point. Even crews from cilivzation that specializes in cloning.
That map kind of looks like the Dominion deliberately stopped short of Earth either to (a) give the Federation a false sense of hope or (b) to taunt the Federation, as if to say "we can completely conquer you any time we want". 3:36 - How dare you! Sci-fi writers have a perfect sense of scale! Just kidding. You're calling electronic systems designed to manipulate matter and anti-matter on the atomic level "simple"? Hope it's not controlled by software that can hang for no apparent reason. Very insightful.
I love the Bug ships warp reactor very simple we could build that system to day ..bar the ridiculous amount of anti matter we would need lol ...the white elephant in the room is what magical material would you have to use that could contain the explosion created by mater anti mater reaction lol 😆 even in the ST universe thats pusing the limits of believability....dont get me wrong i eat drink sleep ST but this tickeled me 😊
![Twenty One Pilots - The Line (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Audio]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XCz7WUotXs8/mqdefault.jpg)
The ship is an analogy of the Jem'hadr themselves high capabilities and quick to build but ultimately disposable
Not to mention a real appreciation for pastel colors.
...And one of the best
Which is the perfect combination of traits for large scale warfare. Because with that, you can sustain your forces and grind down any enemy via attrition who doesn't have the same capabilities and resources at his disposal.
That is the true OP strength of the Dominion forces.
My friends and I watched Star Trek the Next Generation in the 80s and all throughout school in the 90s Trek was our cultural go too. This channel does justice to Star Trek discussion, one of the very few that does on RUclips.
That spherical warp core is pretty on point for Jem'hadar ship requirements. An extremely precise, well made bit of kit with no moving parts - impossible to really repair, but far less prone to failure to begin with. Perfect for a crew with limited technical capabilities, in which there is only going to be a binary between operational & dead.
i got the legendary version of this in STO and its by far my favorite Ship. amazing
Ultimately their greatest virtue was their versatility and ease of construction. For Dominion Fleets, where your troops are 100% expendable yet easily replaced, the only thing that matters is the volume of firepower in the engagement. In that regard 100 disposable ships that can be replaced immediately is more worthwhile than 50 more effective BoPs that may outlive the engagement but cannot be so easily replaced. Of course, one wonders if this doctrine was not handicapped by virtue of the Dominion's experience in the Gamma Quadrant, putting down rebellions and attacking smaller powers. Within the context of the Alpha/Beta Quadrant, the fleet structure of only having battleships/battlecruisers and attack ships was less useful against the large powers. The Dominion benefitted greatly with the integration of the Cardassian fleets as the Cardassians specialized in cruisers that just happen to be the exact ship classes necessary to round things out. As such, Dominion/Cardassian fleets were quite successful with each providing the other with what they did not have.
Yeah if you look at how the jem'hadar appear in the gamma quadrant they seem to only operate in small squadrons it's possible they took some tips from alpha quadrant powers
Why would they need larger ships? One jem hadar ship can just suicide run a galaxy, warbird or klingon cruiser
@@nousername368 Having a army of smaller ships is useful but there is nothing more awe-inspiring or horrifying than giant warship that can potentially wipe out a civilization looming overhead. Large ships are great in persuading potential training partners and or subjugating your opponent.
Weyoun: "Impossible! Federation shields have always proven useless against our weapons."
Gull Dew Cot: "I've found it wise to never underestimate the Federation's technical skill."
😉
Gull Dew Cot?
Gul'Dukat
"Or Captain Sisko's resourcefulness." Which were both true.
I think this is the best ship chat i've ever listened to. I've literally listened to this thing four times
We call it a bug because it evokes a scarab beetle
I suspect that its disposable nature and willingness to use Kamikaze tactics is the big reason the Federation got knocked onto its back foot so quickly. At the end of "Call to Arms," the Federation and Klingon fleet appeared to be marshaled for a counter-attack. "And then we make the Dominion sorry they ever set foot in the Alpha Quadrant," was Nog said. The ships rendezvous with an assembled armada headed towards Dominion holdings, and heroic music is playing. The next episode, General Martok groused, "War is much more fun when you are winning!" We saw how easily Federation and Klingon weapons can pop Dominion ships, and this never really changes. Heck, later in the war, we see *a Runabaout* target a weak spot in the shields and destroy a Jem'hadar fighter. The only thing I can figure is the Dominion used their production advantage to make lots of "bug ships" and used them as superheavy missiles to take out Federation and Klingon ships, breaking the counter-offensive and inflicting losses the Alliance could not swiftly compensate for. No doubt they would fight instead of ram whenever feasible, but when you can exchange a single attack ship for a Vor'cha or Nebula, that is a really good exchange. Materiel aside, it takes *years* for the Federation or Klingons to train up new crewmen, while the Dominion has new warriors three days after they are "born." They could afford to grind down their opponents via attrition, while using the Cardassians and Dominion battlecruisers to take and hold space
True but the jem'hadar only use ramming as a last resort. They mostly employ it later in the war where the tide is against them. At that point there would be no need for ramming. Numbers and tactics were winning the war enough for them.
"in space no one can conduct your heat away!" I saw what you did there!! 😁
Like any good villian, they fell to the trope of diminishing power with each showing: Borg, Hirogen, the Kayzon, etc. However to be fair, like in any war, continued exposure to them allowed starfleet to adapt their weapons, shields and tactics. Add to that, very little was shown of Jemhaddar research and development that showed they were doing the same. Its easy to consider the Dominion as being technologically stagnant as they have no competitors at all in their own quadrant and didnt need to continue developing and improving as part of their normal day to day which is likely a contributing factor to their performance.
The only ship that seems to play against this trope is the Cardassian Galor Class. Throughout DS9 they became progressively stronger until the final year of the Dominion War when they could one-shot kill not only smaller attack ships like the BoP or Bug Ship, but even classes a step up as seen with the single shot destruction of a couple Breen Frigates during the Battle of Cardassia. And this was even after it was established that the Breen Frigate was considerably larger and more powerful than attacks ships to the point it took four quantum torpedoes, or to destroy them during the invasion of Chintaka and that a full phaser barrage by the Defiant could only moderately damage them.
@Crown Prince Sebastian Johan of Ponte Corvo if those single shot destructions happened during the battle of cardasia, you could chalk it up to previously sustained damaged, knowing a specific weakness or another trope: temporary villian redemption power up lol
I had the thought after watching the Jem'hadar Fighter video about the Japanese Zero fighter in WWII, where it seemed unstoppable in armament, range and speed (though even the Zero couldn't destroy a battleship by itself). And at first the Zero was countered more by tactics and loss of experienced pilots, before comparable or better airframes were developed. I admit it only covers the 'attack ship' side of its capability.
Yes this is what I was thinking too.
Dominion polaron weapons were a huge advantage, until everyone got their shielding adapted, after which they were just purple disruptors.
If they weren't bottlenecked at the Bajor Wormhole, they still would have been an incredible problem.
One of my favorite "enemy" ships. That scene is burned into my mind harder than the graveyard of Wolf-359. We all know what scene I'm talking about
Not............not the Odyssey
That stolen Jem'hadar Fighter that Sisko and Co. took on that undercover mission, was rather impressive. Just about every other one we saw, was destroyed in one or two hits, yet somehow theirs survived at least a dozen hits, AND somehow stayed relatively intact as it fell from from orbit onto a planet. I guess the Federation reinforced it with plot armor.
I had the same thought. The Jem’hadar fighter seemed more cannon fodder because it was always fighting the hero ship, but in that episode you mentioned it seemed to hold its own pretty well despite taking the initial hits fighting against a larger federation ship.
The three that fought the Oddessy seemed to hold up well enough.
Plot armor is strong with the Emissary.
Hm, all this time, did not know those circle thing on the Defiant were plasma vents. Neat.
The Jem'hadar fighter is one of the most well-crafted alien warships in Star Trek. Meant to swarm & kill enemies both as fast & as cheaply as possible. Yet despite being so expendable, only the Saber & Defiant have a quality advantage in terms of tonnage peers.
Also, aren't spiders and scorpions arthropods. I think the classification you were looking for was the subphylum *"hexapoda".*
You are technically correct. The best kind of correct. -Futurama
The writers said hey we need a Kamakazi.
You got to admit DS9 combat has always been on smaller ships, where TNG it was the massive Galaxy Class, D'Drex Warbird the smallest adversarial ship (that wasn't a 3rd world planet state) was the K'vort (well there was the B'rel which was the Enterprise Bane of existence).
In DS9 it was much smaller scale of ships, first basically Patrol craft with Danube "Runabouts" that is little more than a large shuttle with torpedoes, to Marqui fighters which are armed civilian ships, Defiant class. The largest ship there was essentially the Galor and later Keldon class of the Cardasians. Sure there was Vor'cha and Galaxy and Jemhadar Battlecruisers but those were mostly in the background. The Dominion War made the D'drex class a Paper Tiger.
Huh good observation. Although I feel in that respect they kinda did the hideki dirty compared to the other attack ships
The DD got overly disrespected I gotta say.
These are the types of ships that Starfleet really needed against the Borg. Powerful, but also numerous, with small crew requirements. Ideal for swarm tactics against a large target.
Would the defiant or nova not count?
Wish we could have see swarms od defiants, like the white stars from B5
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I think that was the intent with the Defiant, but they never built them in numbers. Or at least didn't appear to on screen. And the Defiant was definitely much more tanky, able to take tremendous damage. Nova or Saber might have been good analogs, but Starfleet undoubtedly added a bunch of other systems not needed for defense.
@@jasonsylvander3089 Such a lost opportunity. I get why they didn't do that during DS9, as they wanted the Defiant to stand out during the battles. But the battle during First Contact would have been perfect, and you could have had Defiant leading that swarm.
@@nunya3163 imagine a swarm swooping in unleashing torpedoes, phasers, and aft torpedoes on the way out
Great content thanks for it you are one of last real trekkies on yt
Dominion/Founder: We operate like a hivemind.
Borg: Hold my cube.
An amazing concept and solution to the bug ships was the Achilles class phalanx micro quantum torpedo array seen in the ‘Dominion Wars’ PC game. Capable of keeping these fighters at bay while still unleashing a slaughter of 6-8 pulse phasers and quantum torpedo pulse launchers on its primary target.
The Single shot torpedo tubes also have a big advantage over the Klingon BOP with only a single shot between long reloads. You can Alpha strike with them or 2/3 short volleys.
Also the biggest problem facing you is that no matter how MANY you kill the dominion will simply build more. So you can take out a whole fleet of these buggers and in a few weeks tops they’re back. Very much the T-34 of Star Trek in design, which has effort spent on the important parts like the gun and engine but anywhere you can be a little rough and get away with it does that. Granted the T-34 was produced under circumstances if having to defend the homeland which was still very much in danger in 43 so the circumstances where a little different.
This was a well done, indepth dive into these. There are A Lot of comparisons to irl tech setup and ideas here.
*) Your comparison of a high tech, but disposable war device is pretty comparable to a guided artillery shell, or guided bomb. Very high tech to deliver a specific outcome but not so expensive it's not disposable.
*) The power plant\warp core being the equivalent of the steam engine of matter\anti-matter generators was interesting. Or it's the RBMK reactor of warp cores. Just enough shielding to not bake the crew. Thankfully Jem'Hadar fighter ship's power plants don't explode. They NEVER explode.
*) The tactical networking for tying together every fighter's weapons targeting, to combine and make their shots efficient is VERY reminiscent of the late Soviet era Interceptor fire control system.[I saw it on a wings of the red star docu about either the MiG-29 or the Foxbat mig-25] The flight or wing would head up and intercept an inbound target. One of the fighter's would paint the target and that info would be transferred to all the other fighters in it's wing
etwork. Could tie missile strikes to one target OR be the only one running it's radar sensors at capacity, so the enemy wouldn't detect the radar radiation from the other 4 fighters. The newer US fighters as well are setting up telelinking for their fighters too. A flight of F-35's can link with a local AWACS, share radar info and setup missile strikes while most or all run "silent" as well. [I hope that last one made sense, I'm high on edibles right now.]
*) This ship actually uses off angle gravity to have more room instead of the traditional setup of long straight decks? COOL.
I'd be interested in having canon explain how the Dominion's ship yard and engineers could produce ships at their blindingly fast pace.
I have always speculated that their far superior transporter technology belies a far better mastery of energy to matter conversion. Whereas we have always seen Starfleet ships being built piece by piece with metal created from mined ore, Dominion shipyards seemed to feature ships being constructed in large parts, like preassembled Liberty ships. Perhaps the Dominion is able to create metal alloys out of any sort of matter via advanced replicator technology thus allowing for much faster staging and assembly of large pre-fabricated parts. As we have seen these techniques are not limited to Dominion vessels because Cardassian ships were also being built extremely quickly. The Cardassian Fleet went from being diminished by the Klingon War, to fielding 1000s upon 1000s of warships in a very short period. This sort of mass replication of metal from the whole-cloth of the galaxy would explain how the Dominion was able to create and feed the largest industrial base in the Alpha/Beta Quadrants from what was repeatedly cited as the resource poor Cardassian Union.
I always thought of it as looking more closer to that of a scarab beetle and I loved the diagram of the bird of prey with the whales in its lower cargo bay😂, Any ways a very great job well done and very informatively explained in every way and detail possibly provided on this ship indeed in every way shape and form...
It's a glass cannon. It's aggressive and focused. The best defense is a strong offense kind of thing. It's a warship manned by a clone race that doesn't sleep. It doesn't need sleeping quarters. It doesn't need recreational services. It's not unarmored but it's not focused on slugging it out but ending the fight as quickly as possible.
That's why it was so scary to begin with and less so later on. During the negotiating phase it was a glass cannon that if it shot first it could be the only one that shoots. During the full scale war it was a target. It has weaknesses and blind spots but those were discovered over time. Once discovered they could be exploited.
It's a mass produced glass cannon that emphasizes first strike capabilities operated by a fanatical cannon fodder species that is engineered and not naturally occurring, with no regard for their own lives. That is terrifying but ultimately weak in the greater sense.
Funny thing is a friend of mine was gonna make a more accurate MSD of the attack ship after he was done working on the Columbia escort MSD. He had a interesting idea that the lights we see on the attack ship that we think is windows are instead sensors for the head gear both the vorta and jem'hadar first wears
funnily enough thats what me and my members were speclulating
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I'm surprised he's not on your team lolXD
I was thinking something similar about the 'windows'.
Not to mention the Jem'Hadar is a really nasty kamikaze fighter. Also come to think of it, it would be very wild to see a dogfight between a klingon B'Rel and the Jem'Hadar fighter.
Yeah that was the strongest fact of the fighter.
On Gmod there is a addon of star trek ship minis that have an AI setting for ai combat and funny enough the attack ships in the mod swam targets and kamikaze large targets dispite sharing the same ai
Bang on as usual. Kinda fascinating the differences in building philosophy. Almost like the bugs were built for fighting first...
A pure attack ship doesn't need much space for internal facilities. Nor does it need windows. And Jem'Hadar, being bred for war, have little need for Science labs, recreational facilities or comfortable accomodations. So they can keep their interior crew space requirements lower than most other species, which makes for more compact and resource effective ships.
Your take on the fighter was really interesting, most people proably think of them as canon fodder.
I think it's status as cannon fodder is largely down to Jem'Hadar tactics.
Actually, in WW II, face hardened plate armor (work harden and tempered through rolling, and then surface diffused with carbon) had much more resistance to penetration, but you could not have curved surfaces to better deflect rounds. And all the welding of plates took more labor and time.
Casting allowed for complex shapes, but the steel could not be worked for greater hardness and toughness.
The Dominion wouldn't stand a chance against the Borg with ships like these. One on one the Defiant cut through one in a episode.
3:24 - in a DS 9 episode where the Jem’hadar had to work with the Federation, one soldier told Dax that the Jem’hadar do not eat or sleep. Basically they would have no need for quarters. As long as they get the White, they follow the Vorta.
Do the two whales come standard on the Klingon bird-of-prey? 😉
Worth mentioning that Soviet/Russian Submarines like the Akula class have external torpedo tubes for extra weapons in the hull
Great video and very informative. Would love to see a break down like this of the Vor'cha and Negh'Var class. Especially with the Vor'chas modules.
Keep up the great work!
Love the Jem'Hadar bug ship. Small, fast, pretty powerful for its size and operates in swarms. And just like the Jem'Hadar is totally disposable and can be very quickly replaced.
The Dominion's strength was in just making more soldiers, and more ships. They are basically the Klingon Empire but with endless warriors, and ships. Not the smartest, or technologically advanced, but relentless and never ending.
Feel better, VG! Sounds like the throat needs a bit of a rest.
Thanks yeah that was tough
It Is a small Powerful ship BUT consider how quick they were to build and the few crew requirements..
Pretty good cost/benefit ratio vgm
The biggest weakness of these ships was the limited endurance and range. These vessels can't operate as long distance explorers on their own, or as anything but an attack ship with a limited sortie/patrol time of 1 battle or 1 month at best. They are dependent on bases and larger stations for long term use. Which isn't a weakness from the Founder perspective, as they are control freaks.
Yeah but thats most ships in this category they all have limited range.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 the Cardassian Hedeki and the Federation Defiant have much longer endurance and range then the others (6 months, in increasing discomfort), and the B'rel can do extended tours of up to 4 months. The only ship in this category that has a similar range to the Dominion Fighter is the Romulan Scout, and that is because the scout is not intended as a strike element but a glorified shuttle.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 for a better analog, the Romulan scout is a ship launch, a Dominion Fighter is an early 1910s torpedo boat, the B'rel is a refit 1900s fleet torpedo boat, the Hedeki is an 1890s fleet torpedo boat destroyer and the Defiant is a 1910s torpedo boat destroyer. A fleet TBD has to be able to keep up with the fleet.
Paramount needs to hire you to write the technical manuals for Star Trek.
The Bug Ships were shown to be weak, because 90% of the time it was going against the Defiant. Which not only had ablative armour, the best in Starfleet, but also plot armour. And nothing can beat plot armour. 😅
When you started off with "looking extraordinarily fearsome, the most deadly and respectable ship that quickly became cannon fodder," my first thought was the Miranda class.
Yep the reliant...
Seems odd that there's a massive cut out of the radiators where the door to the cargo bay is.
Perhaps it's just mad theory crafting with way too much retrospect, but I'd imagine that the warp core and impulse engines are in the central bit. Perhaps like so many of the federation's ships and their mission pods, the engines can be replaced to extend the life of the ship?
Of course, the dominion war suffers from so much hindsight (and trek in general). Why up the production of the full galaxy class when all you need is the stardrive? Minosian weapon systems would have come in handy, etc.
Seeing these ships wreck the odyssey and then the Dideredex (maybe more shocking) for the first time in the 90s was kind of shocking, the speed and ferocity was very different to usual trek battles. It looked like those powerful ships were woefully outmoded. Thinking about it though for an empire it would have made sense that they had big ships I think but the smaller ships were cool and subverted my expectations in a good way at the time. Still I’d think in terms of basing and distance to police the dominion you would need big ships especially as it’s implied they aren’t everywhere, they are just sent in when you miss behave.
I still wish the odyssey used the enterprise d bridge set. Just to drive home that it could have happened to the enterprise.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 funny my brain remembers it as the Enterprise bridge set!
@@davidreeves4556 no it was the generic bridge set
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I didn’t doubt you but I had to look it up, funny how your memory can mix things up like that, probably down to association
Reminds me of a bedbug with twin outboard warp nacelles...
I've always thought that they looked like angry ticks!
My favorite ship on Attack Wing. If only their abilities were not range 1 :( The writers admitted they made the Jem Hadar too powerful early on and had to nerf their shields teleporting and phased beam mechanics.
Related question, if tapered nacelles sew up space behind it, could a four nacelle ship trick a enemy into thinking they're tracking a larger ship?
Hmm. No 4 nacelles looks very different to 2 big nacelles.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I was thinking in terms of Warp field footprint.
The Dominion - Making the complex simple.
ticks, they're ticks
Those windows are they scaled wrong? Wouldn’t they be tiny?
I think you're question is backwards, autocorrect will do that, they wouldn't be tiny about Defiant size 40-50 crew three? decks.
Should be noted that it was an escort/patrol/assault ship.
General purpose ship for fast response and patroling an already dominated quadrant.
It being called cannon fodder is correct since the Dominion military doctrine is overwhelming force carried out by extendible assets.
thanks for showing where the whales were stored for st4 lol. also this was a great video
Could you do other Dominion ships too? Like the Cruiser, Battlecruiser and Battleship soon too @Venom Geek Media 98?
Already covered the battlecruiser and battleship in a ship-chat and battlespace episode.
The bug ship😂. I have always liked this ship though. Especially after what they did to the USS Odyssey. They went completely Japanese kamikaze. They didn't give a damn.
if this thing looked any more like a bedbug, you'd find it hiding in your mattress waiting for you to turn off the lights
The perfect Name for the dominion fighter is the "Scarab Class" Light attack ship
Where do you get all your informations on the ships?
There's a level of ruthless operational art in the Jem Hadar fighter that goes beyond simply being tough but expendable. The idea is to decentralize the firepower and staying power of a fleet so that only so much of a Jem Hadar fleet can be damaged/destroyed at once no matter how powerful the foe (as the enemy only has so many guns shooting at once). The point of all of this is to transform war as much as possible from an art to a science, something that the Soviet armed forces often did with Deep Battle doctrine. A Vorta can quickly calculate the odds of victory from the composition of its immediate enemy rather than skill, morale, or other intangible factors. Tactical decisions can then be formulaically derived whether it be attack, defend, or outright kamikaze so long as it is the most favorable calculated outcome on the operational level.
And the reconstitution of force is much easier. Instead of replacing various classes in a fleet. You only need to replace one so long as the battlecruisers survive.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I think that having the bulk of the fleet be composed of small, short-duration, ships might have been part of the Founder's method of reducing the chances of a mutiny going wide-scale (or at least diminishing it's potential damage).
The Founders were all about dividing up their client races in an effort to reduce their effectiveness alone. One race did all of the government functions; but, had no military power of their own. The Jem Hadar were capable fighters; but, had to depend on others for their logistics.
Having a single fighter, or even squadron, go rogue would be much less dangerous than having a smaller number of cruisers or battlecruisers do so. Their is only so much that a small, short-ranged, craft can do without support.
Do we think Ronald D Moore was involved with this design? If you think about it they have similarities to cylon raiders
The Jem/Hadar do not eat, sleep, or procreate… The only ones who need personal living space at all would be the Vorta, or a Founder.
Can u do the jem hadar Battlecruiser and Battleship please ?
Cheers . You sound better
Gem'Hadar do not install windows. They are linked to the universe outside their ship through sensors only. Remember the funky head gear that gave everyone headaches?
Tough little ships.
Yeah those lights might be visual sensors
I just noticed the top part that joins the back half to the front half, looks like part of the kit they added to make the Defiant that was the Essex class ship I think (the one Scotty broke the trans warp drive when Kirk stole the Enterprise to get Spock).. Tho the Defiant has two sets of 8 circles where the Jem'hadar fighter has one on each side...
An obscenely powerful and high-quality ship for its size, but still a small ship so there's limits to how much protection it can have.
do you think that guy ever refunded the Dominion for that faulty torpedo he sold them?
What ship/faction in Eve would most be the most accurate representation of the Jem'hadr ship tech
Ship looks like Angry Junebug 🖖👽🖖
I think the fighters look more like a horseshoe crabs
@venomgeekmedia9886
Imma steal this thing and woob-woob-woob all the way to the Goa'uld empire with it.
It's a space scarab!
Also nice whale reference at 3:17 in the BoP.
Would be be a nice alternative to the al-kesh bomber
@Venom Geek Media 98 that thing was so stupid. It was also incredibly stupid not to include Ra's race from the original movie. The SG1 novel Barque of Heaven attempted to explain that Ra was a different, even more advanced yet ancient race that the Atlanteans had some political ties to.
I've always thought that it's shape was closer to that of a (non-bloated) tick. Scarabs are typically more rounded and less pointy.
The zero fighter in ww2 was at one point, one of the most dominant war birds in the world. That is until tactics and new equipment were brought against it. Then it was just an under armoured target. I see the bug ship as similar to the zero.
Yes, the Zero was deadly in the beginning of the war. It was widely believed to be 'unbeatable'. No one knew the strengths or weaknesses of the plane or what tactics to use against it.
But a Japanese pilot attempted to land a damaged fighter on one of the islands in the Aleutians in what he thought was an open field. Turned out it was a swamp, when the landing gear sank into the morass the fighter flipped over instantly breaking the pilots neck but leaving the plane mostly undamaged. A few days later a Canadian recon plane spotted the wreck and a joint US/Canadian expedition recovered the Zero and brought her back to the States. The plane was taken apart and every millimeter examined by engineers then reassembled and repaired then flown against a number of US and British aircraft. We learned the Zero's strengths and weaknesses and pilots now knew how to fly against it to the best effect. So the fighter went from unbeatable to being a much easier target.
I'd assume the same here, the Jem'Hadar attack craft was deadly until the episode 'The Ship' where Sisko and company captured one. After that it became far less deadly. I'd assume the Starfleet Corps of Engineers tore the ship apart and studied every millimeter. After that Starfleet knew how to beat it.
I think the armoured radiator is a bit of a flaw in the design. If a hole gets punched in it, either you get a plasma explosion or vent out all your plasma. Kind of like why the concept of using the wings as radiators was dropped from fighter design in the 1930s.
Take that up with @resurrectedstarships
Those 8 tornadoes are as much as the whole ship costs.
The USS odyssey learned this the hard way…
I'm not buying that the warp core doesn't have dilithium. If it were possible that you could have (in any Star Trek universe technology) M/AMRA function without dilithium, then the Federation pre-and post-Burn would have figured it out, certainly. What I think is a better idea is that your "semi-porous inner sphere" must be a hollow sphere of dilithium. The whole description of being "semi-porous" and serving to control the M/AM reaction effectively describes the role of dilithium anyway.
Possibly ultimately the point is that it doesn't burn through dilithuim crystals
It's to bad that we didn't get a chance to see squadron-level combat between Arachnids and Defiants.
I was about to disagree until he clarified, it's a defiant; same premise, and fielded by a government with few local enemies if any. They're not exploring or researching, and don't need many larger ships.
They could have had dedicated non Jemhadar crewed science ships
It looks more beetly, with the mostly fused throax and abdomen and the the elytra.
Those engines are easier on sub space then. Unlike the other powers ships
Love the whales in the B’rel 😂
One on one, they’re not any more fearsome than a Defiant or a B’Rel. It’s the swarming of many of these ships that make them fearsome.
It doesn't have the horse power of other ships and they will perform kamikaze runs .They are expendable .
Obviously he doesn’t know what a beetle is. A head and a rear. Especially the thick exoskeleton around the wings transfers over to this ship. It’s a beetle ship.
So... You're telling me starfleet forgets entirely about this containment field based M/AM reactors during the Burn?
Economics…. One 3 man fighter can ram a galaxy class with hundreds of officers.
Dominium is not one civilization. For example Karema build torpedos. This ships are modular. Torps from one civilization. Engins from other. Brean weapons at one point. Even crews from cilivzation that specializes in cloning.
That map kind of looks like the Dominion deliberately stopped short of Earth either to (a) give the Federation a false sense of hope or (b) to taunt the Federation, as if to say "we can completely conquer you any time we want".
3:36 - How dare you! Sci-fi writers have a perfect sense of scale! Just kidding.
You're calling electronic systems designed to manipulate matter and anti-matter on the atomic level "simple"? Hope it's not controlled by software that can hang for no apparent reason.
Very insightful.
They secretly feared the Mars Defensive Perimeter ships!
@@TheMrPeteChannel You mean the ones destroyed by the Borg?
And all that time I had an anti polaron shield module…….
I called it the tick ship myself
This ship is a Toyota Camry 6 cylinder all wheel drive. With guns and torpedoes.
So it,s Toyota Supra in space nice
I love the Bug ships warp reactor very simple we could build that system to day ..bar the ridiculous amount of anti matter we would need lol ...the white elephant in the room is what magical material would you have to use that could contain the explosion created by mater anti mater reaction lol 😆 even in the ST universe thats pusing the limits of believability....dont get me wrong i eat drink sleep ST but this tickeled me 😊
I think it was always weaker than you think, they had to go kamikaze for 3 of them to take out the Odyssey and a few runabouts
its not an arachnid its a tick/ixodid
Good point
🙂
Why are they called Jem'hadr ships when they are Dominion ships?
looks like a water beetle