I have only seen a few DS9 episodes so I don't know that much about Dominion battle tactics and stuff like that. Because of this I am not understanding the topics going on and on about how to balance things out to give other empires a better chance against the Dominion. Just what make them so though?

Polaron based weapon technology
Jem'Haddar shock troopers (don't sleap, don't eat, fight to the last man, unparalleled loyalty, suicide mission friendly, geneticaly engineered)
Shape-shifting "Founders" (rulers of the Dominion), capable of any intel ops when needed
the fact that their empire is 10,000 years old and ocuppies 1/2 of the Gamma quadrant

The Jem'Haddar, they made from scratch. Made them the perfect soldiers and made them loyal by addicting them to a substance called "Ketracel White", which only the Founders supply them.

The Dominion is represented by the Vorta, a race the Founders reeingineered from monkey-like creatures to be the ultimate diplomats.

Thtat's the Dominion in a nut-shell

Oh, did I mention, they want to rule the galaxy by any means nessecary

That's about the gist of it, FoxURA.

The Dominion's Polaron Beam Weapons is far more advanced than the weapons technology of the Federation - when the USS Odysee comes under attack from the Jem'Hadar 'bugs', the Federation got their first tast of the power of the weapons.

The Beams sliced straight through their Federation shields - the shields were totally ineffective. Over time, the Federation did manage to make a defense against them, but that was only after the Odysee and other ships had been lost.

The Cloning capability of the Dominion means that they can just 'make' a new Vorta/Jem'hadar whenever they need one.

I'm not sure, but I think Weyoun dies twice in the various series (Don't quote me on that though) - the Dominion simply cloned him again.

Dominion space is massive. It is almost equivalent in size to Borg space - that puts it to more space than all of Federation, Klingon, Romulan, and Cardassian space combined!

Because of this, they have practically unlimited resources, are able to constantly churn out starships, and constantly create troops.

In one word, they are invincible. (Which is why the Federation/Klingon/Romulan Alliance won!)

a Jem'Haddar first Omet'iklan killed Weyoun 4 for questioning his loyalty to the Dominion
Weyoun 5 was killed in a "transporter accident" arranged by Damar
Weyoun 6 was defective and tried to help the Federation. Killed by Jem'Haddar
Weyoun 7 was killed by Worf, when he approached too closely during an interrogation Cardassia
Weyoun 8 was killed by Elim Garak during the attack on Dominion headquarters on Cardassia


The Alliance won because they stopped Dominon reinforcements. If the reinforcements ever came through, the Alpha and Beta quadrans would all be chanting "Victory is life"

the 6th weyoun terminated himself to save Odo.

jem'hadar fighters modular in design (just like mcdonalds) incredibly easy to build.. ditl.org reckons 20,000 were built or imported to the alpha quadrant in just 2 years

Dang... No wonder there has been so much debate about evening the playing field for BOTF2....

I dont believe that the Dominion's technology is that superior at all, I was under the impression that it was the breen weaponary that passed through the shields of federation ships. 1 on 1 against a federation ship the Dominion would lose everytime, you only have to see the scenes of the defiant destroying dozens of Dominion ships to realise that ^_^

What makes the Dominion formidable is there vast numbers and intel capability in my opinion.

the reason that the defiant was more effective against the dominion ship was because it was a very maneuverable ship not meant for slogging matches like other Starfleet ships that rely on shielding. The defiant gets in kicks **** and gets out.

the Other federation ship were not able to do this.

Remember that joint cardassian Romulan fleet each war bird a match for a galaxy class ship and 2 galore are a match for galaxy, they went against 150 dominion fighters and had there buts clearly whipped.

The dominion tech was superior, all the way down to sensors where they could easily detect cloaked ships.

But the federation caught up by the end of the war. And being able to avoid getting hit by those superior weapons was the corner stone.

Whoa!!


which episodes of DS9 were these? I must have missed them. I would have loved to have seen them..

What makes the Dominion so tough?

I would say Psychology.
Forget their technology and the Jem Hadar, consider instead their actions and their demeanor.
They are ruthless, they inspire fear in member races and enemy powers, changelings are incredibly dangerous (consider all the fear they inspired on Earth in episodes like "Homefront" and "Paradise Lost"). The Jem Hadar are also engineered with the idea of creating terror.
Sometimes the ability to inspire fear is more powerful than the actual inspiration.

That would be the Battle of the Omarion Nebula, DS9, season 3, The Die is Cast

Gotta disagree with you Mortse. If the Feds were by themselves against only the Dominion forces that were in the Alpha quad, they would not have stood a chance. If the Dominion managed to get their reenforcements from the Gamma quad, even the cmbined forces Fed/Kling/Rom alliance would have been goners. Mangan also has a good point , the Dominion scared the hell out of everybody who knew of them.

Winterhawk, the best seasons of DS9 are 4-7, thats where the majority of battles take place. A few specific episodes I know of tat are good fights are Call to Arms (wen they loos the station to the Dominion), Sacfifice of Angels (where the Feds win back the station) The Siege of AR-558 (not much for ship to ship fighting, but this episode showed the grittier side of the Dominion war, and is one of my personal favorites), What You Leave Behind pt1 ( Second to last episode, good fight scene). There a good couple more (including the Odyssey fight matress mentioned above). Keep an eye out for them.

My favorites are (including those that Rigel posted)
SEASON 7 "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges",

SEASON 6 "Valiant", the excelent "In the Pale Moonlight", "One Little Ship", I just loved one quote from that one... lol

SEASON 5 Winterhawk should love "Trials and Tribble-ations" - a tribute to TOS ,"In Purgatory's Shadow" and "By Inferno's Light"

SEASON 4 I loved "Little green men" lol; "Homefront" and "Paradise Lost", "Starship Down"

SEASON 3 "Improbable Cause" and "The Die Is Cast", a tribute to Romulans wits lol, "Prophet Motive" I found amussing,


SEASON 2 "Armageddon Game", "The Homecoming", "The Circle" and "The Siege" three-parter is OK,

SEASON 1 Whatch it alone, to get into the spirit

Most Seas 6 and 7 age good episodes... The ones with Quark and his nephew Nog and the Nagus are sometimes quite funny.

Maybe I missed a few, but there are so many, so don't blame me

Wow,


They all sound good. I gotta stop working night jobs. lol.


i'm going to watch for those shows... thanks guys..

now what was the name of the one DS9 episode with the sanctioned being being hunted? I lked that one.... also I liked "TNG the skin of Evil..

I could see Matress playing that part ! lol ( A complment there Matress!)

Just out of curiosity... Is there still a concern about balacing things out in the game any? I think I remember hearing that there isn't anymore but I'm not sure.

I personally wouldn't want to see balance where balance did not exist in the show... kind of misses the point of this whole thing, doesn't it? (At least for the cannon map mode anyway...)

Still... Games have to have some semblence of balance to give the other races more of a chance... Which means some of the cannon would have to be sacraficed...

I felt the dominion were tough but at the sametime starfleet was just aimless, it seemed only Sisko was the effective leader. Did the Dominion show any signficant stragetic planning over the federation at any particlar point that made them so dangerous?

I disagree. We have seen the dominion war from one perspective: DS9, because the series was DS9. There is no reason why popular leaders like Captain Picard or Admiral Ross, Admiral Nechayev should be intimidated and thus be aimless. I'm quite sure they did an outstanding job as well in leading the federation people and forces.



What do you mean? The startegic advantage of the dominion were two things basically:

1. Their polaron beam technology. It took a long time for starfleet engineers to put anything particulary useful against it together. (Besides ablative armor...)

2. Their numeric predominance: They could build their ships incredibly fast and grew their soldiers, the Jem'Hadar right from the laboratories.

I think he meant STRATEGY, ftranschel.

No strategic planing is also wrong. They attacked Earth with the Breen, they took over DS9, what more strategy did they need. Their strategy was to conqer everything with rush techniqes and they would have done it if it weren't for some unfortunate events (Sisko and Damar, namely)

Even with the combined Federation, Klingon and Romulan forces, the Dominion still had more ships, most of which were powerful and of course the cursed
Jem' Hadar soldiers. As Sisko put it in Paradsie Lost (Season 4) "The Jem' Hadar don't care about taking civilians and they are the strongest soldiers i have ever encountered" (not sure if it was that way round!)

That's what I said - their best strategy was the huge number of ships and soldiers!

Sorry, i've been trying to pick out every point given so far. But i think most people would say that, and i haven't watched much of DS9 anyway.