Yeah, the D'deridex is a dedicated warship while the Galaxy is a multipurpose ship for exploration, scientific, and humanitarian missions.  I would give the D'deridex the edge, but am pretty sure they are both powerful enough to maul each other.  They are also both capable of disengaging from a bad fight with the other, the Galaxy via speed and the D'deridex via cloak.  I suspect this 1v1 never played out in the series because the Romulans aren't inclined to fight on even footing unless desperate.

An interesting note is that DDeridex class ships did not fair very well in the dominion wars. The "Bigger is Better" doctrine failed vs hordes of jem'hadar fighters. Many Romulan ships were destroyed. It was hard to believe the Romulans used only one huge jack of all trades ship during the wars. This is why we put "old ships" in the romulan line ups. To show that their "grand fleet" was decimated, and that they needed ships desperately. So they followed the footsteps of the Klingons. They reactivated, and refitted 100 to 200+ year old ships, and put them on the front lines.

The Galaxy class's seen in battle all survived. With the one exception of the pre-upgrade Oddessy. The feds knew the galaxy was wanting when it came to warfare. When she was launched she was the most powerful ship in the fleet, but the other factions still had the edge. The war refits removed most of the exploration ability (labs, familys serving on board. etc), and geared her more for warfare. One Galaxy class (The Venture) had extra phasers installed on her nacelles. The shields of all ships were upgraded to withstand the poleron weapons. Then the hulls were upgraded to deal with the Breen. With help from the Klingons, because the Klingon ships seemed immune to the breen energy dissapators. Another interesting note is the Feds followed the klingon footsteps too, and reactivated old excelsiors, and miranda's.

I   the lore of Star Trek.  Thank you all for such a reasoned discourse on a weekend no less.  

The Akira is pure eye candy.  Don't tell'em I said that.  

backs out of the room slowly... 

awesome.  I have no idea why, but I just love the very specific idea of fielding Tamarian ships (my favorite experience with the Borg honestly was capturing one of their deep space cruisers).

Count me as well. All of the factions have at least one cruiser that is at least 20 supply cost (K'Veik, Akira, Vor-cha) while the Federation and Klingons have multiple (K'vort, Excelsior). It would be nice if the Dominion had something to counter those units other than just building more light cruisers.

The counter to large, powerful ships, is the Energy Dissipator.

It is in need of adjustment, but one does not need large, powerful ships, when half their fleet can be upgraded to debuff them.

I guess I am not referring to the firepower aspect but the durability aspect. It seems like most Dominion cruisers, unless you can overwhelm the opponent with sheer numbers, can't last in a sustained battle.

Is it my imagination or are Jem'Hadar elite ships not as easily assimilated?

The primary method to assimilate them is based on shield removal, as they have very high shield values they're the hardest to take down.

The frigates actually are harder to take over.  One of the numerous, but not so obvious methods in the madness that is the ability files.

I am returning to play SOA2 after around a year hiatus and I feel lost.  The last I played was with Trinity and the diplomacy Mod 0.6D I think it was.  Reading the past few months of posts here I see a lot of talk about new planets and other new abilities.  Are these feature's something that was added in Diplomacy or are all these part of Rebellion?

We spent a lot of time post Rebellion working on Diplomacy, so there is lots of stuff added to SOA2 Diplomacy before we stopped working on it. Most of the new stuff, like terraforming, and AI cloaking, is because of new features added in Rebellion.

You will have to be a lot more specific.

I guess I was looking for what differences have occurred in diplomacy since last I played.  And then what changes happened due to rebellion?

They didn't add titans at all in the game and there are no loyalist/rebel issues, any changes made to the game are just upgrades of the existing content.

Very little changed between .6D and the last version put out for Diplomacy.  It's basically just some bug fixes.

Rebellion has added a great deal of flexibility.  Terraforming, smarter AI countermeasure usage, independent cloaking methods the AI can use.  We were able to significantly improve performance with increased functionality.

Some of the things discussed aren't new however, the X Class planets are in the Diplomacy version, they're much better implemented in the Rebellion version, but a less fleshed out version was already around before the switch.

Most of the work has been in the aesthetic side of things.  Some of the work under the hood has been extensive, but the lion share of the labor and improvements have been towards audio and visual additions.  Many model improvements, replacements, audio and string work.

Thank you all for your responses, looks like I'll be saving up for rebellion.  I am reinstalling the diplomacy mod today, so excited. Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam!

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion is 75% Off on Steam

10 bucks

http://store.steampowered.com/app/204880/

I have seen ships assimilated while they still have some shields left. How does this work?

Elites can't be assimilated by the normal ability the frigates have.  That particular ability fires based on ships taking damage during a very short interval, and works irrespective of shields being up.

So just to make sure I understand, elites can't be assimilated until their shields are gone but frigates can?

Have to wait for the designer, psy, to be sure, but I am pretty sure only elites can assimilate other elites and only when shields are down.

With the exception of Unicomplexes, correct.

AbilityBorgStarbaseAssimilation fires just like the normal frigate ability, and targets Elites.

And I missed it. :(  I was so absorbed in whipping some romulan green blooded behind that I missed the sale.  I am sure it will come around again.

At the request of my friends in the TalShiar, I have attached a tracer ping to your Karma, they are on their way. 

mephistopheles
Obsidian Order 

Korunks,

I have a copy of the game you can have.  I sent you a private message on how to contact me.  Check your inbox.  This is not a joke.  

backs out of the room slowly...  

You sir, are an awesome person!!  Thank you very much, the least I can do is send some karma your way. +1