Talk:Battle of Cardassia

Nomination
Self-nomination. It's the last in the series of Dominion War battles that I wrote, and IMO it's the best after Operation Return. -- Dan Carlson 18:40, 10 May 2004 (CEST)
 * Battle of Cardassia:
 * Seconded. I'm still missing a list of references. -- Redge 15:52, 13 May 2004 (CEST)
 * Archiving: Originally tagged as "Featured" by User:MinutiaeMan at 11:02, May 16, 2004. --Alan del Beccio 21:51, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Reconfirmation
Nominated en mass in 2004 with the rest of the other five Dominion War battles at the time. This article would require a blurb if reconfirmed, and I have no opinion either as of yet on if it should. - 18:02, April 7, 2012 (UTC)
 * Support. I've done a once over on this and I think it's still FA material. - 16:49, April 9, 2012 (UTC)
 * Support. Still an excellent article. 31dot 10:03, April 10, 2012 (UTC)
 * Support. I removed a red link ("civilian") because I don't think we need this link. My only concern is about the huge portion of free space after the first paragraph ("Prelude"). The image on the right looks lost, IMO. Tom 19:16, April 11, 2012 (UTC)
 * Comments - I have a few concerns which prevent me from supporting this article.
 * Neither "The Battle" nor the "Aftermath" sections have any citations.
 * The second and third paragraphs of "Aftermath" seem speculative and opinionated - was this alternative scenario ever mentioned in canon?
 * I think some of the language needs to be toned down, as it is too emotive for an encyclopedia article. Examples such as "despite having already lost an astounding 33% of their forces during the battle" and "As it was, the battle was nothing short of a disaster for Cardassia" could probably be written in a more neutral tone.
 * –Cleanse ( talk 09:38, April 17, 2012 (UTC)

I've done the cites, assuming everything in those sections are from the last episode, but I'll need to rewatch this to do the rest, since I do seem to remember the Female Changeling boasting about the amount of casualties an invasion would lead to. - 10:02, April 17, 2012 (UTC)

I've attempted to address the concerns, though I would say a few bits of "more colorful language" shouldn't be too much of an issue, as the result of the war can certainly be considered a disaster for Cardassia. That said, if anything else needs to be adjusted, I don't have an issue with it being toned down further. - 00:04, April 20, 2012 (UTC)

Ship numbers
How many Federation ships alone were at the Battle of Cardassia Prime? 66.177.61.78 23:11, 16 Oct 2005 (UTC)


 * One can only speculate, as it was never established in the episode. --Alan del Beccio 00:21, 17 Oct 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm curious as to where the figure comes from regarding the total size of the Allied fleet. 1,000+ just seems a little on the light side, given that at the very end of the preceding episode, "The Dogs of War", some vague numbers are thrown around by the leaders of the alliance. Specifically, the Romulan commander states that penetrating the Dominion line and seizing Cardassia prime would cost thousands of ships.  That comment doesn't really make much sense if the Alliance wasn't even planning to send that many.


 * So...where is that figure coming from? Is it conjecture, or was that number given in a script or something?


 * I agree that 1,200 seems way too low considering two Federation fleets alone during Operation Return were over 600 ships. The Romulans apparently don't have so big numbers (but big ships), but for the final assault of the war I'm sure the Klingons and Starfleet assembled every vessel they could, with no other frontlines to protect. Kennelly 14:30, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Location of Cardassia Prime
Is Cardassia Prime really only 5 light years from Bajor and DS9 in the Startrek Universe? That's insanely close. In real life many binary stars are 2.


 * Alpha Centauri is only four light years away from us.- JustPhil 14:51, July 30, 2010 (UTC)
 * I also somewhat doubt that binary stars are multiple light years apart. --OuroborosCobra talk 19:03, July 30, 2010 (UTC)

Mopping up
The "Aftermath" section seems to need some mopping up, actually of the stuff about "mopping up". Here is how it reads before my editing":
 * The result of the battle can be considered fortuitous, at the least. Had the Founder not chosen to surrender, the Jem'Hadar would have fought to the last man on Cardassia and on every other world in the Alpha Quadrant – requiring a mop-up operation that would probably have taken years, and required incredible resources that the Alliance may not have had the stamina to provide. This scenario assumes that sufficient stockpiles of Ketracel-white existed, or that production could be sustained.


 * As it was, the battle was nothing short of devastating for Cardassia, decimating a huge portion of its surface and killing over 800 million civilians. Hundreds of allied warships were lost at the cost of tens of thousands of lives. It was only in avoiding the final assault on Cardassia itself that more bloodshed was avoided.

Some problems with this. Mainly, the speculation of what would have happened had the Founder not surrendered. It is just that, speculation, and it does not jibe with what we saw on screen. Whether the Founder surrendered or not, whether the fighting had to go on in orbit and include a ground assault or not (which was discussed in the final episode), Sisko and the others made clear that the end of the war was going to happen here, with this battle. They certainly did not discuss a years long "mopping up" operation, etc. Then the speculation about the Alliance ability or stamina, Ketracel-white resources, hell, even having Jem'Hadar on a large number of other worlds. I'm also not sure about the casualty figures for the alliance. "Tens of thousands" certainly seems likely, but given the large numbers of ships lost (especially Romulan Warbirds), it could have been in the hundreds of thousands. We don't really even know the number of ships lost, let alone crews. I'd rather say "many thousands". I'm also going to reword the last paragraph a bit. "Decimate" used to have a real definition, with the root being in "one tenth", and that certainly is not what is depicted on Cardassia Prime. --OuroborosCobra talk 06:59, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Re-used footage from other episodes.
I've been wondering this for some time, and have noticed that it is also sometimes discussed within the Star Trek community: Did Sovereign-class starships participate in any battles during the Dominion War? Specifically, I'm wondering about the Battle of Cardassia, since in a YouTube video (I've never gotten the chance to see the actual series, shut up) on the Dominion War, it showed footage from the Battle of Sector 001.

My questions are this:
 * 1) Which episodes/shows/movies was footage reused from in the Battle of Cardassia?
 * 2) Were Norway and Sovereign classes shown at any point in DS9?
 * 3) Yes, I know they were kitbash designs and such, but were any of the ship classes made for the "Graveyard" scene in TNG: The Best of Both Worlds, Part II, besides the Excelsior, Nebula and Ambassador classes, shown in DS9?TimberWolf 19:04, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Well most of this can be found on the class pages or image citations for the ship designs and visuals in question, but here is a breakdown of quicklinks for you to follow:
 * Seeing as the "Battle of Cardassia" appeared in the last episode, you probably should strike the "from" from your question. Otherwise, footage from, , and was most obviously reused for this episode (with likely some bits and pieces from other episodes too). There was also a fair bit of new footage included as well.
 * Here is a list of all Sovereign class appearances. The only non-film appearance of the ship, weren't really appearances, but rather, *blips* appearing in computer graphics. Everything you need to know about the Norway can be found here, including appearances and what happened to it, but in short, it needed to be resurfaced, and as rumor has it, the CGI file for it was lost/destroyed and the ship never appeared after . So to answer you question, neither were shown participating in any DS9 episodes.
 * No Ambassador classes were shown in the 'main time frame' of DS9. The kitbashes that appeared in DS9, starting in DS9 Season 5, were all new and include the, , , , . So to answer you question, no ships from BoBW2 appeared on DS9 – several did appear, however, in.
 * Hope this helps. --Alan 19:38, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Pretty sure doesn't belong on that list. It is an BoBW2 creation only reused in "Unification", not one of the Frankenstein Fleet from DS9. --OuroborosCobra talk 20:18, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * yeah, you're probably right. :) --Alan 20:21, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Alright, thanks for answering my questions. Now, of course, is this question: If the Sovereign-class appeared as LCARS graphics, does that not imply that they participated in various battles, just not shown on-screen?
 * I would have to say 'no,' because there were several other ships that were also *blipped* in those episodes that would have most certainly not been there, namely the, and the D-7 class in "Sacrifice of Angels" (as the Romulans were not involved in the war at that point, and the D-7's were both supposedly retired, not to mention the Klingon's weren't involved at that point of the battle), other doubtfuls include the Bajoran raider and the Long range shuttle (the Bajorans had a non-aggression pact, the Vulcan shuttle was rather antiquated), and the orbital office complex and Relay Station 47 would have had curious roles in that battle (logistics maybe?). As well, the Phoenix and were both over 3 centuries old. Finally, the  and es participation would be plausible, but the same would apply for these as it would for the Sovereign.
 * On the other hand, referring back to question #2, I would like to point out this graphic, from, which included the Norway-class, and heavily implied its involvement in the war. --Alan 23:34, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Minor Edit
Made two minor gramattical/mathematical corrections (Dominion resources strained "by" multiple fronts, not with. Also, added 400 *starships* instead of just *400*; which is 33%, not 30% of the original fleet of 1200).

Also made a minor factual correction. Cardassian vessels are not heavier than Federation or Breen starships in terms of armor or firepower. Galor class vessels were not equal to Starfleet's ships of the line during the Federation-Cardassian War, ultimately leading to a Central Command directive that Cardassian warships were not to engage Federation starships unless they held a numerical advantage of 2-to-1.

(Interestingly, and of unknown relation, this directive is identical to one issued by the British Admiralty to the commanding officers of all British frigates when engaging American frigates during the war of 1812.) SwordandScales 00:34, 30 May 2008 (UTC)