How Bad is the Raptor Class?
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- Опубликовано: 22 авг 2024
- Today we Discuss the fearsome Romulan Raptor Class Warbird. Entering service in the 2360s alongside the D'deriedex she was expected to serve as the Romulan fleets Primary Reconnisance and Raiding vessel. yet would soon be pushed out by the more advanced Neorexan Class after just a decade of service. We investigate why, and what the critical failings in the raptors design where...
STO Screenshots by the 4th Combined Fleet
Not to worry, we’re still flying half a D’deridex
Where is palpatine pooing himself? Is that general Chang
Your complaint about the Raptor... was that it didn't do anything except its job? It did its job. That's its job. If the Romulans need ships to do those other jobs, then they need ships to do those other jobs. And if they need an every-job ship, they already have one.
Why is my economical compact car bad at carrying bikes and grand piano. 😂
The point is that it's role is very limited. The fact that it's a battlecruiser that's far less capable than comparable designs from other powers shows that its "job" is far too limited.
@@intrepidgamer7942 My point is that the way he described the other battlecruisers as being "more capable" was by showing that they did different jobs. As far as I remember, he didn't say the other battlecruisers did what the Raptor did, but better. He said that what they did was more important than what the Raptor did. And he defined what the Raptor did as being the thing that makes a battlecruiser a battlecruiser.
So, the raptor did its job as a battlecruiser. The other battlecruisers didn't, but they did something more useful instead. Then, the problem isn't that the Raptor isn't a good battlecruiser, it's that a battlecruiser isn't the right tool. That doesn't make the Raptor a bad ship, it makes the lack of a ship that does the other things that the fleet needs a bad fleet composition choice.
@@thomasjenkins5727 I think we need @venomgeekmedia9886 to clarify
@@thomasjenkins5727 We need @venomgeekmedia9886 to clarify.
The single biggest problem the raptor has is that the romulans lacked any capable lighter assets at the start of the war for which the raptors could have been excellent support centerpieces.
POV when you accidentally drop your d’deridex model and the bottom brakes off but you decide to call it a new ship
In StarTrek Armada I spammed nothing but Raptors in the Romulan campaign. In the game they have these ridiculously long range torpedoes and they outrange basically everything in the game, space stations, Jemhadar battleships, Borg cubes... If enemy ships actually moved then there was almost no way to make the torpedoes hit, that was their only weakness.
It was my favorite ship to build 😆
Thr federation steam runner did the same thing. Super cheese
@@Phil-D83 o yeah
Firstly, which StarTrek Armada? We talking II or III? Cuz in II everyone’s favorite was the little Romulan worm ship that would detonate their singularity cores and just f*** everyone up! Lolol If it’s Armada III, then I gotta check out the Romulan gameplay…. I was always too busy gawking at the Excalibur class or whatever the hell the Federation dreadnaught was named.
@@Phil-D83Ohhh yeah, remember? I love those SteamRunners…. it made no sense to heavily armor a ship with a long-distance weapon like that but still, those were great little ships.
@@miamijules2149 game specific version. Not canon
In addition to the sins of procurement, I think the Raptor also represents the old problem of military's always preparing to fight the last war. The D'deridex is a fantastic design on many levels, but it is time and resource intensive to build and requires significant manpower to operate. The Raptor is designed to address those issues. It's less resource intensive than the D'deridex, but provides an almost equivalent firepower. In the event of war with the Federation they could be produced in larger numbers to (relatively) cheaply and quickly fill out the battle line of the Romulan void fleet.
The Romulans simply never imagined a war in which attack ships would play a significant role as a fleet escort and reconnaissance craft supporting a full order of battle. They likely conceptualized small attack craft in the context of the B'rel, which was produced and fielded in large numbers as a defensive measure by the Klingons after the destruction of Praxis. In other words, they saw attack craft as the tools of secondary powers who couldn't afford to field capital ships in large numbers. The role of the attack ship in Dominion doctrine was probably a bad surprise for the Romulans.
On a more meta level, no one was prepared for attack ships, even with the existence of the Bird of Prey/B'rel, the Defiant class was a paradigm changer to the entire franchise, and its existence is what makes the Jem'Hadar "fighter" make any sort of sense. Prior to that, bigger really was better, because bigger meant larger engines, meaning more power, meaning more systems that could be fed that power, and so on and so forth. In fact, it could technically be argued (using this line of questionable logic) that the Intrepid class was the first step into the realms of "smaller might really be better instead!"
@@williamcardish3106 The intrepid also shows the shift in Starfleet design towards more tactically oriented vessels.
@@theodoremccarthy4438 Agreed, though I have issues with it fielding Type X Phaser Arrays on such a small platform, when it clearly dialed back the torpedo spam prevalent in many of the prior era's Project Galaxy derived starships. It clearly is a tactical platform, but apparently it was meant to be a wunderkind style of do all for less vessel. Often times I find myself falling into the mental trap of thinking of it as a special one-off sort of do all hero starship, and that all other Intrepid class starships would be oriented more into one are (tactical, diplomatic, scientific, exploration, etcetera) or another, even though I know that isn't what they intended for this fairly small class of starships.
Kirk "If I had to beat those ships, I would not have to cheat on the Kobayashi Maru test"
They were TNG era so unless he was armed with a TNG era ship they'd hasve kicked his arse. I can still see him saying it though.
Armed in a capable ship I think Kirk would do pretty well. It's a man who could track a cloaked vessel by visual distortion, time how long it took to decloak it and have a gunner that could hit it with torpedos right when the shields were down.
The first time the Federation faced a cloaked/stealthed vessel they couldn't get a quick technological workaround for he adapted tactically and was able to cripple it by figuring out how it worked and it's weaknesses. He was an incredibly capable tactician and able to adapt on the fly.
Can we get a video about the Dderidex wings? I have absolutely no idea how much usable space is in there...
Have you checked out his earlier videos on the Romulan warbirds? Like, earlier as in, back when he had like 300 subs…. way back…. they’re some of the best work on the subject anywhere. Utterly badass writing.
@@miamijules2149 I have seen at least "How powerfull is the Dderidex". I think, in that video he says he does not know what is in the wings...
The Raptor looks similar to one of the D'Deredex variants in STO.
The biggest issue with Trek is that navies in real life have the smaller ships because they can be churned out faster and because in an ocean navy there's an advantage to being smaller as you can go places bigger ships can't. In trek the bigger the ship the better it is with no downsides other than time to construct it and personnel/resources lost if captured/destroyed.
In universe they should still have a lot of smaller ships they can churn out for feet attacks escort duty and the like but in reality that would require building another model and putting it on screen when it would be part of a battle for a few seconds on a 4 by 3 tv in that was a foot wide in the corner of the room. It just wasn't worth it. Cutting a bigger model in half was possible and would give fans the moment of "Oh it's like the other thing."
I respect you greatly Venom for trying to give an universe explanation to why the moral of the week show didn't have a fully thought out and shown naval arsenal. I find your explanation very believable and knowing you're a Romulan fan gives it more weight.
To be fair, real world navies have been just as guilty (some still are) of building oversize ships with all the features and guns - see all the battleships of the last two centuries or the modern supercarrier. When you have enough money and resources to spend on that kind of project of course you do, if nothing else it serves as a testbed for ideas, emerging technologies and informs future designs.
That said, in Trek the Romulans are really the exception in their dedication to building almost exclusively massive things, when you look at the post Earth-Romulan war period and the TOS era the Romulan Imperial Navy predominantly deploys smaller craft in groups (The T'Liss, the Klingon ships they bought blueprints for...) but come TNG era we see none of them, the RIN appears to be predominantly D'Deridexs. On the flipside, the Klingon Defence Force has always been awash with Birds of Prey and probably always will be and Starfleet, by necessity of dealing with the Klingons has more Mirandas than there are spacial anomalies to destroy them. Then comes the Borg and Dominion war and you see the proliferation of Sabers, Norways and Steamrunners making up the majority of Starfleet assets because, again, Starfleet knows that it's necessary to have a large number of disposable starships.
I would find it strange if the Romulans hadn't relearned the same lessons from that war and adjusted their doctrine accordingly.
The problem with a handful of OP ships is they can't be everywhere at once. If you have six, you can win six battkes, but lose the 20 other battles they were not in.
@@ycplum7062 Which actually works to the benefit of the writers as they love to have the heroes be the only ship in range.
@@AdamKafei True, I guess I was underrselling what DS9 and the movies did.
@@farshnuke I think you confuse Star Trek and Star Wars. In Star Trek most warships actually were small. It is because power depended purely on reactor. Warships usually were cut to reactor and weapons. While Explorers tended to be beefier and full of additional crap. Even D'deridex was more a mobile base then warship in strict sense. In fact Trek is shockingly consistent in keeping size creep in check. TNG was always presented as rather exception from the rule. When Federation did go supersized, purely because they need ships to be in space indefinitely and it actually cause major force projection shortages.
I get that the Romulan fleet wasn’t ready to fight the Dominion but it had no excuse with neglecting anti-attack ship counter when your neighbours are the Klingons. I guess in the late 24th Century the war plan was to get other Klingons to fight the Klingons while you provide support.
Also I support the Chodak theory that the Romulans bordered an ancient aggressive race that used large ships that influenced Romulan doctrine while they were quiet with the Federation.
Another thing I was thinking about was how both the Federation and the Klingons had massive tests of their fleets several years before the Dominion War with the Battle of Wolf 359 and the Civil War respectively. These both required them to rebuild their fleets and give them important knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of their designs and holes in fleet operations that need to be filled. The Romulans had the failed attack on the Changeling Homeworld, but that was exclusively D'Deridexes and not enough time for them to completely reorganize like the Federation and Klingons did.
So, the Federation and Klingons built their battlecruisers to serve roles they saw as important. The Federation wanted a support and recovery ship with the firepower to fight its way in and fight its way out of the fray to assist a stricken ship. The Klingons wanted a fencer that could duel the opponent at range. The Dominion Battlecruiser was an expression of their military doctrine in ship form as its was the controller and rally point for the attack ship swarms. The Raptor was made to be half a D'Deridex and do the jobs of the D'Deridex when a full D'Deridex was not needed. It made sense in 2360, but not in the 2370's.
16:00 So basically if the Raptor class had tentacles and spoke in trochaic heptameter it would be a Gravemind.
Jokes asides, the Raptor class is just a cheap corporate money saving D'deridex.
Overall, it is not a bad ship, but it is a limited one due to lack of foresight.
Personally however, I think it is okay, it adds more variety to the DS9 Romulans beyond just D'deridex and scout ship spam.
Oh absolutely that's why I think it's a key inclusion
Trochaic Heptameter? Is that the red headed stepchild of Iambic pentameter? lol
@@miamijules2149 ; Trochaic is stressed, while Iambic is unstressed.
"Hepta-" means 7, while "Penta-" means 5.
The best version of Raptor is obviously in the Armada games. I haven't played many other Trek games, so I've never ran into any the problems the other versions have. In Armada 1 and 2 it's one the best ships in the game. Especially as I always mod them to have two artillery torpedo launchers, two phasers and four pulse disruptors. Don't worry though, I also quadruple the hit points of all ships in the game. The battles are amazing to watch.
I first saw this ship in the video game Star Trek Legacy I think it was also in encounters/Conquest
You forgot the tricobalt torpedoes. The Raptor had the best long-range splash damage firepower in the Romulan fleet (and unlike the Federation’s Steamrunner, they could cloak).
I remain disappointed that the Intrepid didn’t also get tricobalt torpedoes in Armada 2.
Because it was not its standard equipment. Jenneway clearly was a Black Ops operative.
A project without goals. What a wonderful idea.
Like the F35 😂
@@richardscathouse Then how has the program become so successful?
I wish we got to see more of the interiors of non-Federation ships. Not just the bridges but the cabins, any eating areas, science labs and engine rooms etc.
Yeah I wish we got to see proberts vision of the D'DERIDEX bridge. Essentially vertical
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I think some rooms within the D'Deridex were seen in TNG and DS9 episodes but I remember really wanting to see more of the Breen ship interiors.
Given the threat from Jem'Hadar Attack Ships, one has to wonder if the Romulans would have been better served by something based on Winged Defender or the White Wing. But, with a Quantum Singularity powering it?
It's the inter war french tank of battle cruisers
Built without doctrine in mind, lacks a lot of parts commonality with other ships, and was generally an afterthought
Oh no... not the french TONKS! any in particular?
@@venomgeekmedia9886 Well the Renault R35 fits the bill. It was built as the Renault Char D1 was to unreliable and their main project the Char B1 tank was still in development hell and had been ongoing since 1919. So in 1931 they got the mess that was the Char D1, meanwhile still waiting on the Char B1, then in 1934 having not delivered the Char B1 yet and having made a mess of the Char D1 they offered them the S35 and the French bit partly for political reasons as interwar France's government was extremely factional.
What would have been incredible is if during the war we actually got a sub plot exploring the Romulans doctrine comming up short in this kind of open conflict, for all the work that went into getting them into the fight their strategic value would have been somewhat lacking. But guess who has a large number of smaller more flexible ships that tend to get chewed up in the engagements due to not having the firepower of a destroyer class ship to back them up?
What I'm saying is, there was a meaty story right there about trying to integrate Romulan warbirds with starfleet support ships with the promise of making a truly vicious attack wing, if only the characters on either side could overcome their prejudices and mistrust, imagine being the crew of an uparmed Miranda expected to trust the warbird at their back isn't going to be treacherous as romulans are known to be, of a warbird crew being told to trust this old enemy is going to reliably screen you so that you can attack without instantly being overwhelmed.
Round it all out, Romulan heavies in numbers that the Federation and Klingons never tried to match, mated to Federation support ships that the other two never attempted to master, linked to scads and scads of cheap attack ships that the Klingons mastered and mass produced, which Romulan "scouts" can't hope to stand up to, and Federation Defiant class ships are far, far superior to, but fantastically expensive and time intensive to produce and maintain.
You end up with a mixed and balanced fleet, with the other two legs of that triad adding in when and where the can in the other areas they aren't quite as good at. Now tie all that into a story line lasting an episode or two at most where they're all forced to work directly with ech other to counter the capital ship and attack ship spam of the Dominion, coupled to the utility of the Breen, and the medium cruisers and "weak" attack ships of the Breen and Cardassians all at the same time.
I wonder if the problem was the Romulans were looking over at what the Federation was doing with the Nebula. The Nebula was a Galaxy without the neck and and a mounting for a mission module added. So, they figured they could do the same.
Except that is not what Federation actually did.
That’s kinda what the Klingons did with the Vor’cha too… with the mission pods and such. Mission pods for everyone! You get a mission pod! You get a mission pod! You get a mission pod!
…. you do not get a mission pod (I’m looking at you you Cardie bastards).
Spaceships in large cultures by their nature lean toward many specialized ships or fewer generalized ships. For sci-fi when you want each species to have their own style, it makes sense for most peoples going the generalist route. Humans being very creative people love having many specialized ships and in sci-fi this becomes one of the humans defining characteristics.
There should've a Parliament Class hero ship. I love that design way more than the California Class.
California basically was meant to be this crazy space truck who do fet of the tank.
Whole point of Parlament is that it is the cool big brother.
It's a loverly looking ship im pretty sure with a refit and better wepon systems installed it would be a good interceptor like the klingon bird of pray
The biggest problem of the Raptor is that it was competent and did the job required of it?
The Daenios by that point is a bit on the old side and can't really bring the weight of fire and tankiness that a Raptor unit could, even with serious upgrades.
Daenios, and others, should of been upgraded to a QS core, for sure, and in other ways as well, then taken it's place as a mid-lower level warship working with Raptor and D'Deridex as the heavier vessels.
The Failure of the Romulan navy to assign enough Raptors to do the job of screening isn't a failure of the class. More to that point why are only the Raptors going out to recon for enemy force? Where are the other smaller vessels to extend sensor coverage? That is a failure of tactics or doctrine not a failure of the class.
As a screening force I think Raptor could do quite well against most threats trying to flank the main force. The ability to suddenly decloak in the path of an enemy force and deliver near D'Deridex levels of firepower from 2-4 ships is going to wrinkle any plans of a flank or a solid defensive line.
I'm not sure what a squadron of Jem'Hadar attack ships (Or praetor forbid, Cardassian attack ships) is going to do against a Raptor unit except get blown out the sky by coordinated fire. Maybe some scant few make it through the torrent of fire. Only to be chased down by the Raptors, or smashed against other Romulan ships with depleted numbers.
Raptor honestly seems like a better take on deriving from another frame then what we see elsewhere.
Voo'deh is just a Neg'Var with no big guns. Kind of feels pointless, like you could just put the guns on before you sent it out and get an actual full Neg'var.
Nebula occupies this very strange spot of being inexplicably less able than a Galaxy when really, it should be more capable given that it has a massive modular weapons/sensor pod on top and basically all the same parts and technologies in a more compact frame.
Either that or it form some reasons gets second rate equipment and technology for literally no reason?
I think whoever was designing Raptor did well to not fall into the trap of making it too reliant on the D'Deridex for design queues.
Raptor pulls a lot of the advancements of D'Deridex into it's design, and delivers a more compact economical vessel without being oddly restricted by forcing itself to be a near exact copy of the D'Deridex which is what happened to the Vooi'deh and the Nebula. It fully adjusts its form factor where it needed to and takes what it needed from the D'Deridex, to deliver a competent ship.
aye perhaps i am too harsh. so would you say that the neorexan is actually a complement to the raptor rather than a replacement.
i'll defend the Voodeih by saying that getting rid of the guns makes it faster and thus work better in klingon doctrine. as the negh'var could easily be left behind.
i agree that the nebula is basically a galaxy i'd say the main trade off is less maneauverability and less tactical flexibility since its traded both fore and Aft torpedo bays for its modular mounting. so no 20 torpedo alpha strikes from nebula.
so i definitely think you've got a point when comparing it to other "Battlecruiserisations" but not so much compared to "true" Battlecruisers.
@venomgeekmedia9886 hard question as to whether it was a direct replacement or a compliment.
Honestly it's probably both a bit.
Nebula does lose that 20 torpedo strike, but I'm actually of the impression the massive multi launcher of the Galaxy was a sort of dead end. I think rapid fire launchers provided the same capability with more practicality.
The Raptor feels like the birth of the federation Battleship and looks remarkably reminiscing in shape of the strike Cruiser
So basically, the Romulan Raptor was Jack of some master of none type of ship.
I know you've talked a little about the Klingon Raptor of the 2150s. In several videos, but it wood de nice if a member wood Request. a Wings of Kahless and/or a ship chat video for it.
Yes please
Battle Cruiser Operational
aka Cattle Bruiser
Daenios equipment rebuild with artificial quantum singularity would make a great Romulan cruiser which is the missing middle weight combative for their fleet, which is why the Excelsior class so long, it was the right size for the job at hand. And that version would be very useful.
You have forgotten the escorts each warbird carries.
"Modularity", for example of how that tends to go look at the U.S. littoral ships lol. Billions spent, nothing gained
And the LCS ships tend to break and are useless at everything.
Also "common chassis" vehicle family programs in the Army. Even less successful than the Navy, seeing as how all those programs ended up cancelled with maybe a few prototypes of one or two designs actually built at most.
@@nekophht I think that's a bit disingenuous. Modular vehicles are pretty successful. Boxer, CVRT, CV90, Stryker are all successful modular designs. That's totally ignoring things like the G-Wagon, HX series trucks, HEMMT common chassis types that are out there.
HMMWV also had it's fair share of variants which were pretty much module swaps.
Modularity always was a big thing in Trek and does work in European designs. Failure of LCS is purely result of the doctrinal failure.
Americans basically designed ships as large as Frigate, what did the same thing as Frigates, cost as much as Frigates. But were specifically NOT a Frigates. Designed instead to fulfill niche roles, according to some war game. What BTW actually concluded that what US need is a Frigate, because LCS is strategically unsustainable. But no one actually read the conclusion of the tests. And TBH Zumvalt was equally bizarre.
@@merafirewing6591 It is because contracts weren't granted to major shipyards but voter centers.
The Good Idea Fairy decided to pay the Romulans a visit this time.
I mean. In case of Alpha canon it can be debated. But in context of Beta canon, that actually is not a thing.
In Beta canon, after unfortunate confrontation between Vulcan Captain and the Klingon's. Federation become aware how under-powered they civilian build starships were. As such project started to introduce military design to starships, taking inspiration from old Poseidon (NX) and Loknar class starships. Its product were Anton class Destroyer and Constitution class Heavy Cruiser (famous Ares class, despite being Gamma, cleverly write itself as intermediate design).
Miranda was basically designed with inspiration from US WW2 cargo ship, what were designed with ability to be upgraded into Arenal Ships. To overcome weapon limitations, Starfleet start making those auxiliary ships, what basically did have same hulls as the Destroyers and could be easily refitted as such. Though later as technology progressed, those Destroyers were refitted into support ships. It is beta canon thing. But Reliant was actually refitted Anton and was over-gunned in comparison to most ships of this class. It is what take Kirk by surprise. Alongside actual surprise attack. And I don't recall Alpha canon ever claiming that Miranda was more militarily capable? On the opposite.
In most games. Nebula is considered as weaker and more scientifically focused version of Galaxy class. Even in case of original NX, the Columbia class was way more capable. Poseidon was just cheaper to produce during the war. As such Columbia ended sidelined. With overtime more numerous Posejdon receiving major refits, even if Columbia did have experimental tech. In all those cases Miranda style ships were considered as cheaper mid-variants. They end superseding they larger brothers, purely because cost factor.
In short, Federation was actually working other way around. They design warships. What then were cut to legally accepted Explorer and Support variants (what BTW is also the reason why Terran Empire used the exact same design just in X variants). Explorer missions usually demanded way heavier armed ships, but in rather limited numbers. Then switching to less armed but needed in larger number "medium" ships. Though of course during the war, the X variants were re-introduced, what typically were the actual original design. Klingons in fact did realized that Federation was pulling the punches whole time. Which is why in the end peace was signed.
Still good video about the Romulan Raptor class being a Battlecruiser and how its role in the Romulan Imperial Navy and its service doing the Dominion War.
With two different visual versions of the Romulan Raptor class from two different Star Trek games, gives it a mark 1 and mark 2 or a refit.
Excellent as always.
Thanks Mike!
😎👍
The first rule of a battle cruiser fight is have a battle cruiser.
Hi. Woow! Its soooo fascinating!!! 😂 I wonder if you could do geometry video for Galaxy NCC 1701 D like you did one 1 year ago?
Maybe including the Manual for Engineering? I do have doubts here. Dilithium crystal acts like piezoelectric, bringing more % of matter and antimatter together, which gives us plasma for Electroplasma Conduits, which are already filled with it, which fill more and more, raising pressure and may blow up sometimes, thats why Nacelles may be vented when necessary, right? If so, where exactly in each Galaxy nacelle is the venting port and where inbetween MARA engineering matter antimatter reactor and the Nacelle plasma can be vented in case Pressure is too high?
Thanks for exciting Channel and Video!
mwuaah!
Kylie Desire
France, Paris
They are fine... They served well in the war used by important commanders, if used well, deploy 2 warbirds with 2 raptors each, each raptor and each warbird are supported by attack fighters
The Roms can tear it up
Great video but so intellectual I had to rewatch several times! Wow you’re challenging my attention span and that’s great!
It may not be the best ship in the Romulan Star Fleet.But I say build more of them just for the aesthetic beauty
The Raptor was made to deal with things from the generation prior to the dominion war. Like they figured they would use them to deal with Klingon Warbirds or Federation Miranda class.
I once mentioned in another video that the Sovereign was a Battleship, they looked at me like I was weird.
Just discovered your channel... LOVE these deep-dives into these awesome ships. But as I seem to recall from the Trek lore I've studied, the actual "Half-a-Warbird" ship was called the D'Kazanak, a very secretive project. It has also been called the Warbird-C in some circles. Supposedly, It was designed to surpass the Galaxy Class's speed, maneuverability and firepower. Do you have plans to cover the D'Kazanak in more depth in the future?
Venom, you stated that the first Raptor was launched in 2360, which I believe makes it the first of the battlecruisers developed in your comparison (same as the D'Deredex amongst the battleships). Isn't that far before the rise of the attack ships in the Dominion war? You state that the Raptor could deal with destroyers and larger ships: were there signs of the rise of the attack ships (leaps in powerplant, weapons, etc) in the period of the Raptor's development and early service for the Romulans to build a with modular capability like the Neorexan?
You've never done a "Star Trek Factions Compared" for the battlecruisers. If attack ships hadn't rose to prominence in the Dominion war, how would that change where you think the Raptor stands compare to its peers?
The Raptor does look very cool, wait that isn't a truck. It's cool that there is a battlecruiser version of the D'Deridex. But yeah they should've make it more D'Deridex-ish.
So basically my take is that the Raptor was a competent enough ship, especially for its time(Which pre-dated the whole attack ships are OP plz nerf stage BTW) but that Romulan fleet doctrine was poor focusing almost completely on the Big Guns(TM) and neglecting anything lighter. The Romulans were really only set up for what they were doing between the Tomed Incident and the Dominion, puffing themselves up to keep the Federation and the Klingons on the back foot through clever use of the cloak and impressive seeming assets. Once they got pulled into an actual war they choked hard and had to scramble to address their fleets deficiencies
Going by these videos, the Romulans actually had a fairly competent Reconnaissance asset, the Raven class, it's only downside was it's use of a M/AM drive versus the singularity. Building a ship that is basically a Raven with a singularity would give the Romulans better tactical awareness. They definitely missed a major opportunity when they declined to not build any medium and light weight singularity powered units until the Neorexan. Upgrading the Daeinos and Ravens with singularity cores would have definitely made things easier, but then again you go to war with the fleet you have, not the one you want
Can't help but feel that the term Battlecruiser versus Battleship is what's wrong with the Raptor class.
In regards to real-life navy, battleships were similar to frigates being they're relatively quick moving ships but in regards to battleships have a lot of fire power and designed for combat.
Battlecruisers are similar to carriers in be large and rather than deployed ships are made for deealing vast amounts of fire power and can also serve as command platforms.
The Raptor is clearly a battleship and not a battlecruiser. The Romlans oversold a battleship and put it in a situation it couldn't use it's best strength. Had the right idea in operating in pairs but switched the ratios 4 D' Deridex and 12 Raptors would've been vastly more effective.
Ok so direct Question here: earlier in the video you mentioned comparing a Miranda to a Constitution to establish the boundary line for the "Battlecruiser". However, wasn't this line just as valid when we called a Miranda a Light Cruiser and a Constitution a Heavy Cruiser? And why isn't the Heavy Cruiser a battle cruiser?
To be fair, since many of these terms were last used in World War II, it might be necessary to pick a couple of the combatants from the 1940s to find a navy which has both. The Germans might not make a good control sample, but the Japanese or the U.S. would.
so basically its because starfleet doesn't like to have "Battle" anywhere in the name. certainly the klingons thought the connie was a Battlecruiser. what that makes the miranda in comparison is another thing because in many ways the miranda is better armed than connie
You forgot about the Excelsior and the Centaur. ;)
The Raptor just looks like a Norexan-class like the D'Talla looks like a D'Deridex.
I must point out however that the Miranda, Centaur and Nebula are not battlecruisers, they are destroyers. The Constutution, Excelsior and Galaxy aren't battleships, they're heavy cruisers. In fact, in Star Trek III, the Klingons describe the Enterprise as a "Federation Battlecruiser" not a battleship. In the case of the D'Deridex and Negh'Var however, I agree with you because they are DEFINITELY battleships.
As an example of this, during the time of the Constitution and Excelsior, the designated battleships were the Proxima-class and Yamato-class. Federation battleships were recognisable by their 4-nacelle layout with twin secondary hulls. The Proxima can be seen in Star Trek: Legacy and the Yamato-class can be seen in Star Trek: Starfleet Command Volume II. In Starfleet Command Volume II, we also see the progenitor of the D'talla and D'Deridex classes, the Praetor-class.
The Federation has frequently been loathe to make dedicated battleships and carriers which are why they're so seldomly seen. However, when they do, there are always four nacelles. The most recent dedicated battleship that the Federation made was the Prometheus-class. Again, it also had four nacelles and while it didn't have the standard twin secondary hulls, its ability to split into three combat vessels does follow the similar theme of secondary hull redundancy.
There was no battleship in the time of TNG because there was no need for it as building a ship more potent than the Galaxy-class at the time would've been extremely daunting and expensive. The Sovereign-class was built as a battlecruiser because the Federation realised that they weren't capable of building a battleship potent enough to stand toe-to-toe with a Borg Cube so a battleship would have been a waste of time and resources. It would also have been a catastrophic loss if one were destroyed or assimilated by the Borg. Thus, the actual battleship, the Prometheus, wasn't put into full production as it was prohibitively expensive in time, resources and technology (the Federation doesn't use money after all).
Producing a cheaper version of a marquee class is a smart move because it allows for the modularity that you're describing. Even if they don't look outwardly identical, they may be inwardly-identical using standard parts with a differently-designed outer hull. After all, why would you incur the cost of using an Excelsior for standard patrol when a Centaur would be perfectly up to the job for half the cost? When one considers that a ship the size of a D'Deridex must be frighteningly expensive so smaller ships for everyday operations like the Raptor, Shrike and Gryphon classes make perfect sense. In that regard, I would consider the Raptor-class as the most sensible because of how many parts it shares with the D'Deridex.
A good real-world example would be the Royal Swedish Navy. Their standard surface vessel is the Visby-class Stealth Corvette. Compared to Frigates, Destroyers and Cruisers of other nations, they appear pitifully-small with a main gun that is so small that it is also used by the Gripen fighter jet.
However, the Visby is stealthy, fast, is equipped with an advanced Saab "Giraffe" radar, has a flat surface in the rear large enough to land a helicopter and is armed with 8 RBS.15 "Odin's Spear" long-range anti-ship missiles. It is also partially constructed of composite materials which reduces its weight and thus, increases its effective range and makes it more resistant to extreme temperatures,. It is astonishingly inexpensive to produce which means that more can be produced in less time than larger vessels.
Against several Visby-class corevettes, larger (and theoretically more potent) vessels would be sitting ducks. Even if a billion-dollar destroyer could sink three of these before going down itself, Sweden would still have won the battle because three Visbys would be a fraction of the cost of the enemy destroyer. In truth, no ship on the seas today can survive being hit by even a single RBS.15 anti-ship missile so that wouldn't happen anyway. Even a massive US carrier would suffer catastrophic damage from one Odin's Spear so size isn't everything.
In-universe, we have already seen that smaller ships can be incredibly potent in combat and this is exemplified by the Sabre-class corvette, the Defiant--class frigate, the B'rel-class BOP and Jem'Hadar fast attack craft. I always thought that the creation of cruiser-based destroyers or in the case of the Klingons, destroyer-based cruisers (the K'Vort-class) were an ingenious and realistic part of the story.
With the exception of the United States, budget constraints are always a factor in a country's military and white elephants (like the US Zumwalt-class) are avoided at all costs. This only recently changed with the advent of the F-35 (what a joke that thing is!) but the cost of an aircraft is nothing when compared to the cost of a naval unit. It would be like comparing the cost of a Peregrine-class fighter to even a Sabre-class frigate. They simply are in a different realm. It's therefore quite ironic that it was production budgetary constraints that resulted in these kit-bash ship classes as that's exactly what would happen in real life. It's a perfect example of art mimicking (and correctly predicting) life.
They should have made more raptors, looks like it's cheaper and faster to build, and clearly they didn't learn anything from the Federation's modular designs.
People forget that Romulans were all about presentation. They basically pretend to be as capable as Federation. And Federation start using those massive Galaxies. So they needed have own big hunkers, even if they couldn't really afford them and they were only pretending that they have more of them then they actually did.
Would you canonized any of the Romulan ships from Star Trek Bertha the Federation if so why and what role do you think they truly would fill D'ridren-class destroyer, R'derex-class Cruiser, R'tan-class strike Cruiser.
Sooo... wait, you're telling that the Romulan Admiralty got ripped off by a used car salesman?! The indignity!!!
I personally like the Raptor, she was fine for the time she was introduced, simply had the misfortune of being asked to do more than she was never intended to do. I suppose if anything, as you said, she was an example of the need for a good procurement process, and the benefits of specialization.
PS, srs vibes of the RCAF's Sea King replacement project. Look it up, it fits the Raptor to a T.
PPS.... Tirpitz returns!!
I tend to look at the Consitution/Miranda thing as similar to the Gundam animes where they build their fancy does all the mission types thing aka the Constitution/Gundam and then build even more of the generic mass production version that they just build a specific version of for whatever they need it to do which ends in a lot of sub variants aka the Miranda/GM type. Of course then Strange New Worlds also added the Sombra which sounds similar to the taking spare parts of the fancy thing to make something similar like the Gundam Ground type.
Thing with modularity in warship design......how often do you plan to return the ships to base (ie. pulled from service) to swap mission modules?
It's not so much about the ability to swap a mission module on the fly.
Much like real life it's about the ability to produce a base design to readily accept a new or different configuration much more easily than trying to produce a bunch of individual designs, or modifying an existing one to try and fit a requirement.
There's quite a few examples of that being done. Stryker, CVR(T), CV90, Boxer. etc.
They are built and quite likely won't change from one variant to another, but can if they need to plus construction and future development is easier.
The Romulans really needed a good attack ship to supplement their big ships. The Scout, while cheap and easily replaced, was insufficient for the job they were assigned.
Watching this made me think of a question, is there any in-universe explanation as to why Starfleet used such a variety of ship classes in comparison to everyone else
I first saw the ship in Star Trek Legacy video game and I liked the ship.
SHUT UP !
I'M NOT LISTENING !
I love the Raptor !
Sounds more like Romulan tactics are the bigger issue
I love how mostly artistic and creative ship designs then have “engineering” lore forced upon them and then that’s what’s critiqued 😂
It seems like the Romulans had no real doctrine as well for major fleet engagements. They seem to not have a lot of shipyard production available and thier ships have a long turnaround in building. At the onset of the war it was said they had like a dozen D'Deridexes deployed and four Raptors? And whatever lighter ships that were probably mostly used for raiding.
If the Romulans had built more of them and had them available in the front lines they wouldn't have been /as/ bad just for redundancy and not having to put all their recon assets in a single task (minus whatever smaller ships they might have like scouts or destroyers). If they had a couple dozen they could operate in multiple squadrons and split up to cover different angles of the battle.
But this is what you get when the Romulans seemed to enter the war deploying a few dozen capital ships, the Federation having multiple thousands, and the Klingons likely hundreds as well. The Romulans also don't seem to have had the ability to massively increase their shipbuilding capabilities. In an actual conflict with the Federation or the Klingons they'd have been pretty badly mauled just due to being so heavily outnumbered and unable to counter if the enemy is pulling off several different attacks if your fleet is outnumbered by five or more to one..
If Gowron had gotten aggressive with cross-border raiding in retaliation for the Romulans supporting his enemies it probably would have been pretty messy for the Romulans. Didn't really realize until your videos how /few/ ships they had that were modern. Maybe a couple hundred not counting the light ships or older ones in reserve. If even that.
Oh yeah. The romulans don't like to fight full scale wars much perfering smaller continuous wars. So they don't have much experience operating In large numbers.
Which is weird given the impression from DS9 is that by entering so late they bring fresh guns and troops, unless what they actually bring is an officer corp that hasn't been evicerated.
The Romulans made a difference in their hit and run attacks broke up Dominion commerce raiding and let the Federation deploy fleets that had to cover supply lines back to the front and forced the Dominion to put a lot of resources to covering thier own supply lines.
Fleet battles I'd suppose didn't go well for them given limited numbers, nowhere really near on the front lines they could repair and refit at that didn't have to come ferried from Romulan space, and them not having a lot of ships or trained crews to use as replacements. I'd guess by the end of the war proportionally they probably lost more of their fleet than the Klingons did.
@@Wedgekree Yup. That was the case.
Even with their preference for avoiding pitched battle, one would think for the Romulans that their primary opponents in the alpha quadrant having dozens of times more ships than they did in active service would be reason enough to increase their shipyard production and industrial base. Doctrinal or not, they couldn't think they could take on the Klingon/Federation Alliance in pitched combat where each side had fleets that outnumbered their entire navy. At the most here it seems like the Romulan fleet had a hundred cruiser level ships or above (being generous) of varying ages and technology. They could only produce I think three D'Deridex ships a year.
Going by background pictures in episodes Utopia Planitia on Mars had more ships under construction at one point than the entire Romulan Navy had in active service.
Note: this comment isn't directly related to this video.
What would be the "best" ship from each faction to face the same kind of situation as Voyager being stranded in the delta quadrant that are also contemporaries of Voyager's class of starships?
So that's why the Romulans risked stealing the Prometheus.
They wanted to be able to split the D'deridex into Raptors with multi-vector attack mode. ... ....😉
The raptor has the firepower of a galaxy class, an infinite power source with unlimited range and the romulan cloaking device which is vastly superior to the Klingon cloak. The raptor would defeat every single battlecruiser you listed in the comparison in combat,especially taking into account the romulan cloak advantage, with the possible exception being the voo’deh which you admitted was more of a battleship. The raptor is a hunter killer. It is the romulan version of the k’vort from the Klingons, except more heavily armed and with a better cloak and infinite range. It is an excellent superior quality ship. It is not a reconnaissance ship. The romulan scout ship serves the purpose of reconnaissance, hence the name “ romulan SCOUT ship”.
Basical its like a ww1 british battlecruser vs the British battleship.
What about their use in the Armada games? I vaguely remember seeing the Raptor there as a long-range artillery cruiser. Could it perform better there?
I've always wondered what situations the battle cruiser version isn't the better option since it seems to be as powerful and useful in any role as the original without being as expensive in resources and manpower as what they're based on.
The Miranda replacing the Constellation was obvious due to the warp core issue, but the Nebula entering serving at basically the same time as the Galaxy and in much greater numbers basically relegated the Galaxy to being a diplomatic vessel sent to send a message. Because outside of being the center if a formation during the Dominion War what would see a Galaxy be better then a Nebula
Technically, I think the Nebula entered service 5-10 years prior to the Galaxy. Oldest known Nebula is 60205. Galaxy herself is 70637. I like to think of the Nebula as an Excelsior successor, while the Galaxy is an Ambassador successor. That would mean the Nebula's construction numbers wouldn't actually affect the Galaxy's numbers as they're replacing different roles.
@@nekophht I think the Nebula were the actual general purpose vessels for the mid 24th century, while the Galaxies were intended for deep multi-year long term exploration away from Federation space but circumstances resulted in the Galaxies never actually fulfilling what they were intended for.
Epic
Raptor, Romulus readymade Razee
Pretty much
2:15 but wait, that's not all.
With the same power supply and less weight (and science facilities ect), the Raptor could have had more firepower as there was a lot of energy to spare.??
Slap a bunch of phasers on it with good firing arcs and it'll swat Attack ships at all angles.
Isn't half a Dididex a Magodor and the Raptor much much smaller ...
SO, is there a ship made out of the rest of the D'deridex?
So in the end the Raptor is a good ship, but the Romulan doctrine is dump A F and not flexibel at all.
In startrek legacy I can destroy Klingon destroyers with the raptor, they cannot fire from behind and the raptor eats them alive with that plasma beam.
Yayyy
I'm unfamiliar but where does all of this lore come from anyways
The Raptor Class was flawed because it did not have a purpose. Was this supposed to be a battlecruiser, cruiser or what? It cannot take on things that are smaller than a Miranda since it will always be out-run and maneuvered. It cannot take on anything bigger than an Akira, it is not a dedicated cruiser killer, does it have a specialized ability to hit starbases and fortified facilities? You can put the Raptor in there if you can exploit mis-matches perfectly and cover up its weaknesses but how often does that really happen?
10:20 If what you say is true is true then that's just dumb. What happened to recon probes? Hell the Enterprise was launching them to scan sectors in season 1 of TNG! Then you have weapon systems like Juggernaught by the cardasians automated weapon systems. Now we are talking Romulans. What are the Romulans known for? Intel that's what i think when i think Romulan. In all seriousness id write in cannon the Tal shiar having automated cloaked recon probes and the Tal Shiar being the TS they are they choose to withhold that intel from the Romulan Fleet. Similar to the OO cock blocking the Cardasian Fleet. Which brings us to real life. You all know the CIA has these forces as well right? They are NOT suppose to but they do.
What does the raptor do?
Fire TRICOBALT torpedoes
Vooday? Does he mean Negh'Var?
The VoDIeh is just a Negh'Var without the siege gun pods on the ventral side of the pylons. The VoDIeh was introduced in the final episode of Star Trek TNG, "All Good Things."
voDleH ("Voodieh") is essentially the version of the Negh'Var that appeared in All Good Things. The original version of the design, episode production-wise, that would be modified into the design we see in DS9.
So... yes, he essentially means Negh'Var.
Maybe not run them 500 meters apart. The sensors could cover more ground. Also, it makes them harder to target. Star Trek never gets it. Fleet Admirals are all Ukrainians? 😢
Ok dont get me wrong but in st to compare ships with today standard is stupid, they can scan millio/billion Kilometer away whats happening to sneak up on ships is almost impossibel, only if you cloak the whole time and or got some space Anomalie.
Also lets remember battlecriser is armed like battelship but fast and armored like a heavy cruiser so what is the diffrence to a fast or light battleship? Almost non and than we still have the idea of that the other powers use 1-3ships wille the ufp use 20 diffent typs thing, i know budegt stuff and that but come on give all ppwers a shuttle,recon, destroyer/light cruiser, heavy/battle cruiser, battle/command ship and a carrier to make them not look like idiots
Did you refer to the joke ship AKA parliament as a battle cruiser ? My guy please.. fighter, scout ,frigate, destroyer, light cruiser, cruiser, heavy cruiser, battle cruiser ,battleship. The parliament is somewhere between a scout and a frigate nothing more.
It’s like 600 meters though :(
I was never a fan of that ship in Star Trek Armada.
The Raptor is the one with the crazy long range torpedoes right?
Yup she and steamrunner have the same torp@Broockle
@@paulrasmussen8953
o wow tru i think i remember the steam runner.
I spammed those Raptors back when I played the Romulan campaign. It was so satisfying watching 20 of em just nuke the crap out of a space station from out of range, or a JemHadar battlecruiser or a Borg cube 😀
@@Broockle and uncloak on th eir ass
gross
?