Dominion vs Collective

[Baffalo]

A friend of mine on Star Trek Online was talking to me about future expansions to the game, and during the course of our discussion came the question: How would the Dominion deal with a Borg invasion? Would the mass produced warships and Jem'Hadar be a match for the quickly assimilated Borg? How would an assimilated Jem'Hadar react without Ketrecel White in their system? Could they be assimilated?

[Batman]

I vote insufficient data. The Dominion initially had the upper hand due to technobabble and later retained it thanks to numerical superiority, but pound for pound their fleet were no better than AQ ships (the Defiant went through Jem'Haddar bugs like they weren't there). Since Starfleet managed to get around Borg adaption to a degree, I suppose it's not unreasonable to assume the Dominion will manage to do so too, but we really have too little information to say for certain.
As for assimilating Jem'Haddar, same damned problem. Seven of Nine did not need to eat and drink (or go to the toilet, apparently) after assimilation, she just needed to go back to her technobabble booth to regenerate so it's possible the White addiction is not going to be a problem for the Borg, but I don't think we have any solid information either way.

[spaceviking]

Well it has been said that the Dominion war was basically a holding action, so they would have significant resources in a true war. The dominon's main advantage is their attitude. They would be willing to have every ship kamikaze the second shield failed, destroy a facility rather than have it fall.

[seanrobertson]

For starters, I'm pretty sure we've actually seen Jem'Hadar drones ("Infinite Regress" I think?). And if the stardates of "First Contact" and "Rocks and Shoals" are as they appear to be*, then the Borg might've already assimilated the means to adapt to phased polaron beams.

*This goes waaaaaay back, but I remember Mike pointing out that the stardate cited in "FC" corresponded with one in DS9's early sixth season. If you go by that, vulnerability to the Dominion's shield penetrating weapons could be null and void. Of course, "FC" was in movie theatres much closer to the time of the "In Purgatory's Shadow"/"By Inferno's Light" fifth season two-parter, in which Sisko specifically mentioned that, between the "... war with the Klingons and the recent Borg incursion, Starfleet's spread pretty thin."

Personally, I choose to believe the stardates got mixed up and the Borg did the "FC" thing in DS9's fifth season. That makes more sense to me than A., referring back to Wolf359 as a "recent Borg incursion" or B., a Borg ship attacking offscreen just a few months before "FC" That really doesn't mesh with the context of "FC" in general ... for one, Picard and company seemed surprised that the Borg were back. But if the Borg just popped up less than a year before, well ... that rather spoils the girl with the giant tits popping out of the birthday cake trick, doesn't it?

End aside.

Apart from that, I don't know squat about Star Trek: Online, just that some footage I've seen makes it laughably unbalanced and unrealistic. I literally saw a small KBoP ripping apart several B-Type Warbirds in one engagement! That's just fuckin' silly, ladies and gents.


However, I can say with great confidence if the Borg Collective decided to invade the Dominion -- and I mean, truly invade, as in sending hundreds or more cubes -- how would the Dominion stand a chance in hell? Their bugships, which compromise the vast majority of their navy, are tactically inferior to scout/raider-type Klingon Bird-of-Preys. Their battlecruisers are perhaps on par with a GCS (maybe a little superior, maybe not; in "Call To Arms," Dukat's flagship only took a couple of torpedo hits, and the second not only defeated his cruiser's shields, it blew a hole straight through its port nacelle), and their battleships are "three times as strong" as a GCS. Individually, none are a match for a cube. A small fleet of them are no match for a cube. Ramming is cute and all but the attack ships aren't very big. Even a swarm of direct ramming maneuvers shouldn't do crippling damage to a ship that's 28 freakin' cubic kilometers ... assuming the Borg just sit there and let themselves be rammed, that their shields don't stop any of those attacks (y'know, like DS9's did when a Hideki slowly crashed, and subsequently vaporized, when it rammed OPS' shield), etc., etc.

Even without access to their transwarp network, the Borg have transwarp drives with limited range ("Dark Frontier"). Those drives are fast enough that they could show up all over Dominion territory while the Jem'Hadar scrambled to intercept them. And assuming it did come down to a large fleet battle, I simply can't see the Jem'Hadar winning without a 20:1 numerical advantage. Even that strikes me as generous. The cube at Wolf359 plowed its way through 40 starships, and it was the sole target. Imagine trying to coordinate an attack against cubes that occupy your entire field of vision.

To me, the Dominion is like a "grimdark" Federation. They have a massive fleet, nasty stormtroopers and do whatever needs to be done to enforce the Founders' will. At the same time, it's quite clear the Dominion doesn't field ships with vastly greater firepower, shields, speed and armor than any of their opponents in the War. Their biggest, baddest ship probably outgunned anything the Allies had (maybe even including superwank ship Scimitar, which I remain convinced was a design Shinzon stole from Vorta engineers), but they were giant slugs and incredibly few in number. Shields? Like the Cardassians, I think the Dominion navy depended more on their ships' armor and overall integrity than anything.

There's nothing wrong with those things, mind y'all -- I just don't see how the Dominion would fare any better than the Federation, Klingons or Romulans vs. the Borg. Their shipbuilding capacity's undeniable but, as I said, just what kind of INVASION are we talking about? If the Borg are determined to conquer Dominion space, I've little doubt they have the numbers to do just that, and in steamrolling fashion.

[spaceviking]

Where the fuck does the dominon get hundred of cubes? If they only send one to take the alpha quadrant, are they just going to empty the delta quadrant of every cube.

[Batman]

That'd presumably be the 'and I mean, truly invade, as in sending hundreds or more cubes' part of his post?
Now if you want to discuss why the Dominion would rate a full scale invasion force while the Alpha Quadrant did not, you'll have to take that up with Sean.

And we are talking STO you know. The Borg sending in cubes by the truckload doesn't only happen, it happens pretty much on a daily basis

[Ted C]

A friend of mine on Star Trek Online was talking to me about future expansions to the game, and during the course of our discussion came the question: How would the Dominion deal with a Borg invasion? Would the mass produced warships and Jem'Hadar be a match for the quickly assimilated Borg? How would an assimilated Jem'Hadar react without Ketrecel White in their system? Could they be assimilated?

According to "I, Borg", drones have implants that can synthesize any nutrients they need as long as they have an energy supply, so I expect that the Borg could get around the White problem.

The Founders won't be able to infiltrate the Borg Collective like they could the Federation or the Klingon Empire, either. They could look like a drone, but they wouldn't have a drone's real-time connection to the Collective, so they wouldn't be fooling anyone.

Presumably Dominion ships would fare against the Borg about as well as Federation ships. The Dominion would probably take care of a cube just by ramming it with a bunch of bug ships, so the Borg would probably have to invade in force to assimilate Dominion worlds.

[Metahive]

The Dominion seems to be quite deficient in the R&D area as well. When the Federation adapts to their shieldbreaking beams, they're never able to restore its former effectiveness. They also don't manage to find a cure to a disease whose structure is simple enough that a normal human being can memorize the cure for it.
I guess they're in one way like the Borg, their technological progress is mostly taken from others, either through changeling subterfuge or brute force.

It must have to do something with the Changelings being as inflexible in mind as they're flexible in form.

[Darmalus]

R&D deficiency could be a result of their police state. It could be most of their scientists and researchers only go through the motions, since any solid who shows too much initiative or creativity in dangerous areas might "disappear".

[Alyeska]

The Founders genetically modify their primary servants. It is possible that in doing so, they have taken away by accident. They could have created genius's who have little to no imagination or creativity. So they could reverse engineer technology from other races, potentially even improve on it. But creating new technology is significantly harder.

[spaceviking]

Maybe the Dominion is kinda like the allies in WW2, they will allow some upgrades but the emphasis is on continued high production.

[Nathaniel]

It's rather unfair to say that the Dominion are inflexible, or deficient in R&D. Just off the top of my head I can think of several upgrades and new technologies that they used during the war:

-The Jem'Hadar Battleship
-Upgraded plasma rifles
-The "Alpha" Jem'Hadar
-The installation of Breen energy dampening weapons on Jem'Hadar ships.

[Alyeska]

-The Jem'Hadar Battleship

Bigger and carries more weapons. Does not indicate any level of science research

-Upgraded plasma rifles

What upgrades are we talking about? Brand new technology?

-The "Alpha" Jem'Hadar

No evidence of the Alphas being any better or worse. They are just Jem'Hadar bred in the Alpha quadrant, and with an ego. Common for Jem'Hadar.

-The installation of Breen energy dampening weapons on Jem'Hadar ships.

With the installations being done by Breen engineers in the first place.

[Nathaniel]

Bigger and carries more weapons. Does not indicate any level of science research

So the creation of a battleship more than twice the size of any previously observed Dominion ship isn't evidence of any R&D? That seems like an odd position to take.

What upgrades are we talking about? Brand new technology?

It's not quantified or discussed in any detail. Nonetheless, it's evidence of R&D is it not?

No evidence of the Alphas being any better or worse. They are just Jem'Hadar bred in the Alpha quadrant, and with an ego. Common for Jem'Hadar.

The Alphas are described as being different to the Gammas and more suited to combat in the Alpha quadrant, and there are physical differences. Note that that this isn't just Jem'Hadar ego, as the Alpha First in the episode had replaced the old Gamma First, who had been demoted to second, so clearly the Vorta viewed them as a different kind of Jem'Hadar. Whether they were better than Gammas is debatable, but they definitely represent something new.

With the installations being done by Breen engineers in the first place.

It's a willingness to exploit new technologies, and runs counter to the idea that the Dominion is inflexible or reluctant to make major upgrades to its equipment.

[Gandalf]

The Founders genetically modify their primary servants. It is possible that in doing so, they have taken away by accident. They could have created genius's who have little to no imagination or creativity. So they could reverse engineer technology from other races, potentially even improve on it. But creating new technology is significantly harder.

It's possible that in the GQ they face no real opposition, so there is no need to improve or upgrade their military.

Also, I could understand taking away the creativity of the Vorta. If they make them too curious or imaginative, they might stop viewing the Founders as godlike.

[Metahive]

Nothing suggests that the battleship is some new design, they might as well just deploy that particular type for the first time in the Alpha Quadrant. The plasma rifles are inferior to the weapons they used before since they lack the anti-coagulant effect and it looks to me more like they want cheaper weapons to arm more soldiers with. The Alphas failed to make a difference since after their failure on the Defiant, the Alphas that show up afterwards behave just like their Gamma counterparts (which indirectly supports the theory that the Dominion abhors change) and the installation of the Breen superweapon is an act of desperation to overcome the stalemate in the war as well as all the Founders not having much time left to win it.

None of that shows any sort of R&D prowess on behalf of the Dominion.

[Prometheus Unbound]

How about the phased polaron beams? When the Dominion attacked DS9, Weyoun expressed surprise that the Federation shields were holding. Later on in the war (Battle of Chintaka for instance), they're once again melting through Federation ships as if shields weren't there (USS Galaxy's engineering hull and the Romulan warbird that had it's "head" disintegrated by the weapons platforms?

Or for that matter, the new unmanned weapons platforms themselves - those were expressly said to be new.

[Ted C]

How about the phased polaron beams? When the Dominion attacked DS9, Weyoun expressed surprise that the Federation shields were holding. Later on in the war (Battle of Chintaka for instance), they're once again melting through Federation ships as if shields weren't there (USS Galaxy's engineering hull and the Romulan warbird that had it's "head" disintegrated by the weapons platforms?

Or for that matter, the new unmanned weapons platforms themselves - those were expressly said to be new.

By Chintoka, the Dominion has been hanging out with the Cardassians for a while, and it may be the Cardassians driving innovation.

I'm not familiar with the episode, so I don't know about a drastic change in weapon performance. I thought that the weapon platforms were just high-powered, which is easy enough to explain by their lack of propulsion systems, life support, and other features that non-starships don't require, allowing them to devote more power to weapons and shields.

Even if the polaron beams have been modified to be more effective against AQ shields again, they're not really a new technology. A tweak to something old is not a major innovation.

[Metahive]

The weapons platforms are Cardassian tech as shown by Weyoun's unfamiliarity with the design. The phased polaron beams never get the effectiveness back they had in "The Jem'hadar".

[Nathaniel]

Nothing suggests that the battleship is some new design, they might as well just deploy that particular type for the first time in the Alpha Quadrant.

The fact that it had never shown up before was a pretty strong hint that it was new. Remember, the ships that the Dominion brought through the wormhole had to fly right past DS9. The fact that Starfleet had ordered the Valiant to track what's described as a "new" ship confirms that it hadn't come through the wormhole. Now, you could argue that it was an existing design that was simply built for the first time in the Alpha quadrant, but then why didn't the Dominion send any of their most powerful ships on the invasion, and why did it take 2 years for them to begin appearing in fleets?

The plasma rifles are inferior to the weapons they used before since they lack the anti-coagulant effect and it looks to me more like they want cheaper weapons to arm more soldiers with.

They only appear four episodes from the end of the series, and as far as I know we don't see them enough to know what the difference is. All we know is that they're described as "upgraded".

The Alphas failed to make a difference since after their failure on the Defiant, the Alphas that show up afterwards behave just like their Gamma counterparts (which indirectly supports the theory that the Dominion abhors change)

First of all, we don't see enough of the Jem'Hadar to know one way or the other if they're effective, so you can't just say they were the same. Secondly, even if they do end up being similar, that doesn't negate the fact that they were a new piece of technology and a change to the Dominion's established way of doing things.

and the installation of the Breen superweapon is an act of desperation to overcome the stalemate in the war as well as all the Founders not having much time left to win it. None of that shows any sort of R&D prowess on behalf of the Dominion.

There's nothing that suggests it was an act of desperation as rather than simply the Dominion recognising an effective weapon and exploiting it. If you have any evidence that this was an act of desperation, then by all means...

[Batman]

Nothing suggests that the battleship is some new design, they might as well just deploy that particular type for the first time in the Alpha Quadrant.

The fact that it had never shown up before was a pretty strong hint that it was new.

But not proof of it.

Remember, the ships that the Dominion brought through the wormhole had to fly right past DS9. The fact that Starfleet had ordered the Valiant to track what's described as a "new" ship confirms that it hadn't come through the wormhole. Now, you could argue that it was an existing design that was simply built for the first time in the Alpha quadrant, but then why didn't the Dominion send any of their most powerful ships on the invasion, and why did it take 2 years for them to begin appearing in fleets?

They may not have all that many of them, they may not have thought they'd actually need them until that time, and as a complete outlier theory that is probably contradicted by a fuckton of evidence, the damn thing might simply not fit through the wormhole.

The plasma rifles are inferior to the weapons they used before since they lack the anti-coagulant effect and it looks to me more like they want cheaper weapons to arm more soldiers with.

They only appear four episodes from the end of the series, and as far as I know we don't see them enough to know what the difference is. All we know is that they're described as "upgraded".

'Somehow'. Could be anything from cheaper construction through bigger clip size or greater range (though Valen alone knows what they'd want that for, if there's been an infantry fight in DS9 at rangers greater than 200 or so meters I never caught it) up to better sights or merely a more ergonomic grip. None of those necessarily need D&D improvements, they could simply represent them reprioritizing what to do with the capabilities they already have.

The Alphas failed to make a difference since after their failure on the Defiant, the Alphas that show up afterwards behave just like their Gamma counterparts (which indirectly supports the theory that the Dominion abhors change)

First of all, we don't see enough of the Jem'Hadar to know one way or the other if they're effective, so you can't just say they were the same. Secondly, even if they do end up being similar, that doesn't negate the fact that they were a new piece of technology and a change to the Dominion's established way of doing things.

There's actual R&D into finding something new, and there's changing the way you use the stuff you already have. The Founders may not be totally hardwired into 'That's we've done it for thousands of years, we're not changing anything now', but they're obviously not ones to deviate from the Way Things Are Done all that far.

and the installation of the Breen superweapon is an act of desperation to overcome the stalemate in the war as well as all the Founders not having much time left to win it. None of that shows any sort of R&D prowess on behalf of the Dominion.

There's nothing that suggests it was an act of desperation as rather than simply the Dominion recognising an effective weapon and exploiting it. If you have any evidence that this was an act of desperation, then by all means...

Doesn't change the fact that it was the Breen who came up with the weapon.

[Nathaniel]

Some of you guys seem to have a very narrow definition of R&D that excludes anything other than a brand new scientific discovery or a revolutionary new technology. By that standard just about the only thing in the whole Dominion War that qualifies would be the minefield, and even that was based on existing technology.

[Metahive]

Some of you guys seem to have a very narrow definition of R&D that excludes anything other than a brand new scientific discovery or a revolutionary new technology. By that standard just about the only thing in the whole Dominion War that qualifies would be the minefield, and even that was based on existing technology.

For fuck's sake, just take a look at WW2, where there was a regular Lensmen Arm's Race between the factions for the whole duration of the war, culminating in the deployment of a city-busting nuclear bomb. In the Dominion War it's mostly the Alpha Quadrant powers who step-by-step dismantle the enormous advantage the Dominion held over them at the beginning. The Dominion never manages to counter this process in any meaningful way which shows their R&D is sorely lacking. Just look at how quickly the AQ managed to overcome the Breen superweapon while the Dominion struggled to breach Sisko's minefield, a technology that was invented more or less on the fly.
Contrast this with the ever-changing tank designs the Nazis and the Soviets threw at each other whenever one side had the upper hand for a moment.

Also, the Battleship? Yeah, such a successful design that it was only ever deployed deep within Dominion territory and at the end just as a stationary weapons platform. Successful R&D looks different.

EDIT:
They did build ships in the AQ, so just because they didn't bring one with them doesn't mean the design is new.

[Metahive]

Missed this one:

There's nothing that suggests it was an act of desperation as rather than simply the Dominion recognising an effective weapon and exploiting it. If you have any evidence that this was an act of desperation, then by all means...

The Founder calling for a general retreat right after the AQ powers manage to nullify the effectiveness of the weapon should have clued you in...

[Prometheus Unbound]

How about the phased polaron beams? When the Dominion attacked DS9, Weyoun expressed surprise that the Federation shields were holding. Later on in the war (Battle of Chintaka for instance), they're once again melting through Federation ships as if shields weren't there (USS Galaxy's engineering hull and the Romulan warbird that had it's "head" disintegrated by the weapons platforms?

Or for that matter, the new unmanned weapons platforms themselves - those were expressly said to be new.

By Chintoka, the Dominion has been hanging out with the Cardassians for a while, and it may be the Cardassians driving innovation.

I'm not familiar with the episode, so I don't know about a drastic change in weapon performance. I thought that the weapon platforms were just high-powered, which is easy enough to explain by their lack of propulsion systems, life support, and other features that non-starships don't require, allowing them to devote more power to weapons and shields.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg_6eeJ5eVc

Approx 1:20

They had no on-board power, they were all powered remotely by a generator on an asteroid. They shut them all down simultaneously after the asteroid was destroyed*. You can see there isn't even an attempt by the shields to stop those beams - even when being overpowered by the Borg, Hirogen, Kevin Uxbridge or Species 8472, Federation shields at least glow when struck, even if they're taken down in one hit.

Presumably they couldn't fit a powerful enough reactor on to each platform so that's why they had one massive facility that powered them remotely.

The Cardassians at this point are part of the Dominion - this was a totally new design at the very least - which means there was R&D put in to it.

It also possibly shows an adaption to Federation shields on most ships (including the Romulans) as there are no visible shield impacts (but that's open to interpretation).

Definitely R&D though.





* They [technobabble] frequency [technobabble] signature of Allied ships' signatures on sensors and made it so the weapons platforms thought their own power central power generator was a massive Federation ship signature, causing all the weapons platforms to target it and blow it up.