The Die Is Cast Question

[Deepcrush]

Commander Eddington stated that Starfleet was sending 9 Starships to reinforce the area. Sisko described this as 'substantial forces', seems like a rather small force to me to defend against any counter attack.

Since they, just like the ships WoTW could arrive same day wouldn't really be that bad. Also, substantial is a relative term to what they were facing.

Assuming the attack was succesful and the Romulan Cardassian Fleet wasn't wiped out, I wonder what Garak would have done? Stayed with Tain, or helped Odo escape.

I'd expect both.

[Mark]

Nine starships is nothing to scoff at, when you consider you've got a choke point threw which they are coming through.

You have 9 starships plus the Defiant is ten. Plus DS9's firepower. Plus the Runabouts (which they keep fielding for some reason), PLUS the Cardassian ships (which seem to run in packs of three anyway).

Assume that if the Cardies only match SFs numbers, you've got a score or so of ships blasting away at the mouth of the wormhole, combined with the stations firepower, plus mines and automated defense system (if they employed them).

Nothing to sneeze at.

[Deepcrush]

True enough, DS9 destroyed 50 Dominion ships at the start of the war. Supported by another 20 or so ships, the defenses would be impressive to say the least.

[SolkaTruesilver]

True enough, DS9 destroyed 50 Dominion ships at the start of the war. Supported by another 20 or so ships, the defenses would be impressive to say the least.

But DS9 wasn't fully upgraded to the powerhouse we've seen in WotW yet. We don't even know far she was upgraded, except that she could launch up to 50 photon torpedoes @ the Warbird in "Visionary" (might have been bluff on Sisko's part, however. And 50 might have been the number of torpedoes they have in reserve, not what they can launch at once)

[Deepcrush]

But DS9 wasn't fully upgraded to the powerhouse we've seen in WotW yet. We don't even know far she was upgraded, except that she could launch up to 50 photon torpedoes @ the Warbird in "Visionary" (might have been bluff on Sisko's part, however. And 50 might have been the number of torpedoes they have in reserve, not what they can launch at once)

I don't believe we have any information on when the upgrades to the station were completed or any time table stating when which weapons were installed.

However Sisko doesn't really bluff and if he had 50 PTs ready to hit a single enemy ship, I'm willing to bet he had more in stock then that.

[BigJKU316]

The big problem for the Dominion is that they are coming through the wormhole blind. If the allies destroy 50 ships right at the event horizon then its all over until someone on the AQ side clears the wormhole of wreckage. New ships would transit out right into the busted and broken parts of previous ships.

And the important question here is how quick can the Dominion push ships through. I would assume they pushed through all they could at any one time when they first started moving through. No reason to wait and do it every few days just for the heck of it after all.

[kostmayer]

I don't believe we have any information on when the upgrades to the station were completed or any time table stating when which weapons were installed.

When O'Brien was working on the systems in WOTW he said that he was almost glad the Dominion was around, otherwise they wouldn't have had started upgrading the weapons systems, let alone have them 'almost finished'. He also regretted that they didn't have time to test them. Seemed that they were just getting finished in WOTW.

Its likely the upgrades were well underway during The Die is Cast - even if only half the systems could be bought online DS9 would still make a formidable weapons platform.

[McAvoy]

A good indication of how the Dominion fleet and how many ships will be exiting the wormhole is in Call to Arms. Plus the 2,800+ ships that was transiting through the wormhole. I don't think it's a chokepoint where a a couple of dozen of ships even with the help of DS9 could handle. I think what we are realistically looking at is a few hundred ships backed up by DS9. The simple reason is that you want to destroy each ship on that spot and not doing a running fight between two fleets. Overwhelming firepower.

That is until they mine the wormhole and that would be the end of it for the time being. I see three things:

1. The remains of the Dominion stay put.
2. They bypass the wormhole altogether and head for a long journey to the Alpha Quadrant. Not likely.
3. They come up with a plan to bypass the minefield. Takes time though.

[Mark]

Let's play this through for a moment.

The wormhole has a finate opening. So you know EXACTLY where the ships are coming out of to a degree. The ships coming out of the wormhold are blind. Sensors can scan space from inside, so they'll need a few seconds to get oriented. So basically before they can even think straight, they are subjected to a withering barrage of fire. If they survive the initial wave, they need to manuver, to get out of the way and plot firing solutions of their own. That takes a few more seconds. And finally, as Big just mentioned, there is the wreckage of whatever ships are adrift. Hell, you could even move big rocks out there, and they'd cause significant KE damage to a ship at combat speed coming out of the wormhole.

Defenders always have the advantage.

[McAvoy]

I agree. But like I said you need a significant amount of firepower for the Feds/Klingons/Romulans/Cardassians to make sure no ships would survive. I am not talking about a huge fleet of 1,000 ships but more like 200 or more. I think we need to count how many ships come out of there per second.

EDIT: Let's assume that the mouth of the wormhole allows 10 ships per second to come through. Assuming that it takes let's say five seconds to destroy a single ship. Then it would take fifty ships to defend the wormhole at minimum. You would need more as insurance and backups, because those ships before they get destroyed could fire at least one or two shots.

[stitch626]

Defenders always have the advantage.

Well, on equalish terms. If the modern US army wanted to take ancient Egypt, I don't think the defenders would make it.

In this case, if the Dominion brought through their mega sized ships first, that would catch the Feds and others by surprise because (IIRC) the only ships they knew of were the bugs. That is assuming the Dominion already had the big ships made.

[Deepcrush]

Defenders always have the advantage.

Well, on equalish terms. If the modern US army wanted to take ancient Egypt, I don't think the defenders would make it.

In this case, if the Dominion brought through their mega sized ships first, that would catch the Feds and others by surprise because (IIRC) the only ships they knew of were the bugs. That is assuming the Dominion already had the big ships made.

Bugs and Cruisers, however there were no signs of Dominion Battleships until the USS Valiant found the prototype. So it would have been bugs and cruisers against the combined defenses at DS9.

[Coalition]

The other fun is that the attacker knows the time of the attack, while the defender can only sit there, waiting, hoping the attacker comes through before fatigue catches up with everyone on board.

Figure a sneaky Jem'Hadar decides to do expendable waves. Essentially a group of 10-20 Bugs that are all slaved to target a single ship at a time. The first wave comes though, picks a single ship, and fires on it, damaging/destroying it. Those 10-20 are then destroyed. The Jem'Hadar then sends through 10-20 more ~3 hours later. Those volley and kill another ship. The J'H commander then waits five more minutes and sends through another wave.

Do this for a week. Add in a surprise so that 2-3 groups come through every now and then, to cause even more problems.

Essentially random times between assaults, so the defenders never know when a force will come out and kill them.

[Deepcrush]

The other fun is that the attacker knows the time of the attack, while the defender can only sit there, waiting, hoping the attacker comes through before fatigue catches up with everyone on board.

Hardly a problem since it only takes one person per ship to open fire. The rest will have plenty of time to rotate watch and even for R&R on the station next to them.

Figure a sneaky Jem'Hadar decides to do expendable waves. Essentially a group of 10-20 Bugs that are all slaved to target a single ship at a time. The first wave comes though, picks a single ship, and fires on it, damaging/destroying it. Those 10-20 are then destroyed. The Jem'Hadar then sends through 10-20 more ~3 hours later. Those volley and kill another ship. The J'H commander then waits five more minutes and sends through another wave.

Do this for a week. Add in a surprise so that 2-3 groups come through every now and then, to cause even more problems.

Essentially random times between assaults, so the defenders never know when a force will come out and kill them.

Sure, if they did this they would lose 10 ships per kill... at least 20 defenders of unknown types outside of the Defiant. Then the station... if that would mean the Dominion would lose 300 ships before getting through and thats only if the defenders for some reason decided not to reinforce their lines. Again, not really a wise move for the attacker.

There is only one way to remove a fixed point of defense from a fix point of attack. That is through vastly superior numbers and firepower.

[Reliant121]

The way I see it, the only way I can think of the Dominion softening things up sufficiently is if they fired a massive volley of torpedoes or some such large scale weaponry set on proximity detonate BEFORE the main fleet goes through. The best this can do is either blind the AQ fleet with either crippled ships or some radiation...thing, and then plow as many ships through that wormhole as possible. Even then, its still gonna pose a problem in the form of the wreckage Big mentioned earlier.