>>62875409
One thing that might help is unifying the naval command structure. An intelligence agency acting on its own capacity to divert war material, and retain a monopoly on novel technology severely hampers an effective magnification of strength, asset capability, etc. The Keldon class, for instance, makes use of cloaking technology the Obsidian order selfishly guards for its own use, and is crewed exclusively by political officers, preventing training for use on its advanced systems for use within the Cardassian military, and depriving the fleet of widespread deployment of improvements.

>>62875409
mutagenic weapons on the homeworld, fuck the treaty and fuck spoonheads

>>62875435
>An intelligence agency acting on its own capacity to divert war material, and retain a monopoly on novel technology
the CIA?

>>62875441
as far as I am aware the CIA does not command its own navy

>>62875437
Prepare for Genesis Device wiping Cardassia

>>62875435
Cardassian officers need proper academy training. Co-operate with Romulans for tech purchase and officer exchange.

>>62875409


Drop the pod tactics and use wings.

Develop Hideki and Rasilak faster, move Boraks as training ships

Invest in photon torpedo tech.

>>62875465
While they're at they could improve the apertures for beam weapons, they effectively use a 23rd century blister coverage strategy versus a more modular bank that maintains fixed targeting

>>62875443
CIA’s Maritime Branch exists and failed spectacularly thinking they could win against a storm in 2008:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/the-cia-sent-a-team-of-four-operators-on-a-spy-mission-targeting-china-none-came-back-090041816.html
>Maritime Branch covertly operates sea vessels in South America, West Africa and a few other locations. They can be used to extract CIA officers or their assets if called upon. “Maritime Branch was trying to become relevant again in SOG and SAD,” a former CIA officer said, “because mostly it was just a place for former SEALs to hang out with between Ground Branch tours.”

>>62875540
call me when the CIA is operating a flotilla of cruisers, boomers, and carriers

>>62875409
>>62875435
>>62875465
>>62875486
In the God tier more important than all the other shows canon, Star Trek, the Next Generation, it's extremely obvious that the Cardassians are no near peer of the federation, not by a huge margin. The issue is not pairity, ton for ton federation ships can dominate Cardassians even with a numbers disadvantage (Lancaster's square law dictates that numbers advantages are exponential firepower advantages). The Cardassians are essentially the TOS era klingons transplanted into TNG, and the "threat" they pose is due exclusively to the fact that the Federation has found itself surrounded by danger on all sides and can't afford to take the time to single anyone out and crush them. They were just another one of these dime a dozen ultra minor factions they dealt with every week in TNG, 1/1000th the strength of the federation, but large enough to cause massive problems thanks to the absurd advantage of force concentration that exists in Star Trek.


The issue is that in Star Trek there is an enormous first-mover advantage in a space campaign because most inhabited systems are functionally unprotected. Fleets are stretched thin to the absurd, and so if you can get 50 ships together you can steamroll your way though a dozen colony systems, easily overwhelming any available patrol craft, before the enemy gets a fleet of 50 ships together and smashes your teeth in. This is why surprise attacks and "gun it for the homeworld" strategies are so effective in star trek, your ships are all days apart running around putting out a million fires, by the time you even realize you're under attack and have given the order to form a response fleet you've lost half a dozen worlds or the breen have nuked san Francisco or something. Thank god the borg were stupid enough in first contact to vaporize that colony first, that actually gave Earth a ton of advanced warning.

>>62875409
bump

>>62875540
I mean its just a couple of boats for moving agents around, not really comparable to commanding an outright navy

>>62875409
Easy I just do my six step program
>Step 1
Impregnate my Bajoran mistress
>Step 2
Create a mishmash alliance alliance involving the Breen, Romulans, Tzeenkhti (I don’t remember their name properly), Ferengi, Naussicans, Gorn, that race from the TNG episode where the Human boy had Stockholm Syndrome, Orions and other associated space niggers that don’t like the Federation
>Step 3
Impregnate my Cardassian wife (again)
>Step 4
Produce Biogeneic weapons out the wazoo, be a crazy ass motherfucker who is willing to turn my own boarder worlds into lifeless husks as soon as Federation boots touch its soil.
>Step 5
Only be willing to negotiate with the Federation if they send a fertile female Andorian ambassador covered in petroleum jelly
>Step 6
Win?

>>62878630
Gorn like humans you retard. Most of the ferengi are also pro-federation.

>>62878634
I’m Cardassian of course I’m going to be retard, any way I could just sick the Obsidain Order on their politician’s asses to try and flip them to the Union’s side

>>62876063
DS9 is the show that had them as a step down from the Federation, TNG was pretty consistent that the Federation viewed them as a serious threat. The Federation-Cardassian border wars also occurred when the Federation was largely at peace with the Klingons and Romulans. Given canon information, the most reasonable explanation is that the Federation and Cardassians were more evenly matched at the start, but the Federation leveraged a superior industrial and scientific base into a qualitative, and possible quantitative, advantage in ships. However due to the Cardassians already being dug in the Federation settled for a treaty, not knowing that the Cardassians had nearly exhausted its war effort. By the time DS9 rolls around they're clearly on the decline, but at that point the Romulans have started shit again, Klingon politics are fairly unstable, and the Borg are a looming threat. It also should be noted that despite being a declining power, with a little forewarning the Cardassians were able to stalemate the Klingons for a year before the Dominion War kicked off.

build several dozen atr-4107 drones to attack federation bases and stations within contested areas in a surprise attack. then tell them to fuck off and from there, we'll leave them alone.

if they wish to continue hostilities, we mass produce atr-4107s.

>>62878717
>DS9 is the show that had them as a step down from the Federation, TNG was pretty consistent that the Federation viewed them as a serious threat.
DS9 had them a step down, TNG had them ten steps down.
A single fucking Nebula was trashing them even after the federation gave them it's shield shutdown codes and they had to beg the federation to help.

The first exchange with a cardassian warship is it opening fire on the Enterprise when their shields are down, doing no damage, and the enterprise basically ignores them while they hammer the shields for a minute and a half before zapping them with the phasers and shutting them the fuck down.

They're laughably backwards in TNG.

>>62878720
>1000 kg of antimatter per single ship

Yeah, Cardassian economy cant do that

>>62875409
Use my spies to incite a civil war in the Klingon Empire and distract the Federation while I secure some Vulcan gfs

>>62878720
>unironically going full Pearl Harbor strategy
Brilliant move, Gul Yamamoto

>>62875409
How the fuck are they going to win? They were fighting the UFP that wasn't even concerned enough to put any of their Galaxys on the front lines.

The moment the Federation gets serious they're fucked hard.

>>62878905
>A single fucking Nebula
Nebulas aren't 'nothing' ships, they're very nearly a Galaxy class.

>>62875409
Realise that despite their advantages the Federation are desperate for a solid peace, so use your information to negotiate a treaty that will have the Federation secede worlds on the border with negligible colonial presence, granting you a solid territorial expansion in return for pulling out of and abandoning the occupied homeworld of a rather preachy and annoying species that have fast become more trouble then they're worth anyway.

Then use this peace to go to town with your intelligence services and steal/copy/replicate as many federation technologies as you possibly can to drag you up toward technological parity.

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>Be Cardassians
>Fight the Federation to a stalemate in a war it does not give two shits about
>Act like big dogs because you can bully Bajorans
>Finally talk enough shit to get into an ACTUAL war with Klingons
>Get your shit kicked in so fast that Starfleet has to step in to prevent the Klingons from wiping out your leadership and annexing you in less than a week
The Cardassians were always at best going to be a third-rate faction that could be the last weight on a scale to tip things in someone else's favor. Ferengi-tier to be honest, except that the Ferengi were smart enough to not sell themselves into Dominion slavery out of pride.

>>62881665
The Ferengi are fairly powerful, they just don't put all of their efforts into their military. They have economic power and their marauders are nothing to sneeze at.

The Cardassians are basically idiot fascists who can't into economics and had finally exhausted their own people and the slave planets they subjugated. Militarily they're not bad, but they lack adaptability because their entire culture is about rigidly saving face and obedience.

>>62881665
You left out:
>with only a few hours warning turn the Klingon's fait accompli into a year-long stalemate

The Cardassians are neither as powerful as they think they nor as weak as everyone else thinks they are. If anyone is the real third-rate power it's the Romulans, who have never done anything of note, had their intelligence service controlled by the Dominion, lost their flagship in the Dominion War, had one of their high ranking government officials be a Federation plant, had their entire government destroyed when a bunch of slaves hijacked a top-secret superweapon, then had their entire civilization collapse because the top echelon of their spooks/shadow government were all a bunch of retard cultists. Say what you will about the Cardies, but the Cardassian Union still stands while the Romulans are reduced to some warlords and being refugees under Federation care.

So….how did the Cardassians LOSE their wars? I vaguely recall them being presented as militarily, economically and technologically superior…and yet they were getting their asses kicked all the time?

>>62875409
They already won the border wars. In all the cardassian TNG episodes there are starfleet officers traumatised by the war, the cardassians are scheming over exploiting the new strategic foothold they have, or the bargaining chip they picked up in the last round of negotiations. And the federation will always eat a wheelbarrow of cardassian bullshit to avoid confrontation.
The chain of command two parter began to build on the concept of the cardiassians having massive internal economic issues and this carried through to DS9, which is really just the Nazi Germany allegory of needing to invade thier neighbours to "export the inflation".
Sure they never occupied earth but there isn't a single canon source that they didn't meet all their war goals- it's just meeting thier war goals didn't stop them from being a massive shit hole.

>>62882706
In no way, shape, or form were they any of those things. Maybe you were just drinking yamok sauce and swallowing Cardassian propaganda whole.

>>62882706
>>62882769
>be irrelevant empire 1/100th the strength of the federation with ships generations out of date
>the federation is stretched thin and dealing with a million crises
>attack them full force with everything you have
>take the worst casualties in your history, nearly collapse as a culture
>WE WON CUS THEY GAVE US TEN ASTEROIDS

Jesus christ star trek really is realistic.

>>62883271
Federation sends Prometheus on test cruise, ends up doing orbital bombardment over Cardassia until morale improves or C*rdassians surrender

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>Damar: Well Helloooo!
>Weyoun: I'm glad you find the death of my predecessor so amusing
>Damar: You misjudge me, I miss him deeply. Here-lets drink to Weyoun 7
>Weyoun: When will the prisoners be executed?
>Damar: When their trial is completed. The legal protocols must be observed
>Weyoun: When?
>Damar: The execution is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. 1400 hours
>Weyoun: Have they signed the confessions?
>Damar: No... maybe you should talk to Worf again :^)

>>62882769
>In all the cardassian TNG episodes there are starfleet officers traumatised by the war,
They were all traumatised because the Cardies were ultra-niggers that excelled in only three areas: torture, rape and war crimes. No wonder every single veteran of that conflict had a burning hot hatred of the spoonheads.

>>62883271
For extra realism there’s probably a half Cardi-Bajoran mutt bastard living on a Federation world who makes space-tube videos about how the Union “totally smoked” Feddie-Klingon marines during the Dominion war and that the Ferengi are the reason why Vulcan women ignore him

>>62875441
I wish the CIA was as cool and powerful as you schizo nignogs think it is.

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>>62883415
>>62883271

>>62880975
why thank you.

the federation are pragmatic and will deescalate after facing such a harsh strike.

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>>62883482
>Oops! All warp nacelles!

>>62883582
Gotta go fast

>>62883642
that's not how nacelles work

>>62883935
I don't think they work at all.

>>62884509
Oh great, another whacko who thinks Zefram Cochrane faked the first warp flight.

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>>62875435
This. The fact the Obsidian Order had its own mini-fleet is like the ATF having the ability to call in airstrikes, it's absurd. Made worse by the fact that any agent with a recognized passcode can literally tell military patrols to fuck off without any oversight or scrutiny.

>>62875409
As the Feddies or as the Spoonheads? If I were the Feddies I would have Section 31 mass clone tens of thousands of Miles O'Briens, give them a ghost fleet of 'lost' junker ships and set them loose behind Cardy lines with no oversight or supervision and blame the ensuing genocide on some Romulan skullduggery.

If I were the Cardies, I'd crank up the strip-mining of Bajor to fund the fleet and weapons production and deploy Obsidian Order operatives behind Feddie lines to sow discontent with the conflict. The result would be making anything but a full commitment untenable while also facing cratering public support of the operation.

>>62884509
>I don't think they work at all.
explaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain the enterprise then?

>>62875409
Cardassians were inferior technologically to Federation. It's like Iran fighting USA.

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4 MB WEBM

>>62887066
>It's like Iran fighting USA.

>>62875409
So many of these are from computer games where they were used to flesh out the spoon heads' forces in the most forced "balance" imaginable. Mad Doc and Activision should have taken a page from SC1 and made each race truly unique and encourage different play styles. Instead we got this mess.

>>62887066
not fully. rather they were depicted like all factions, meaning it depended on the plot and who they were going up against.

the aforementioned dreadnought
the orbital weapons platforms
the galor/keldon could go toe-to-toe with defiant when the plot called for it

>>62876063
Cardie ships might not have any fancy bells or whistles on them, but they still have the power output of a godamn star apiece and under the right situation one is all it takes to melt the atmosphere of any habitable planet. Starfleet is cagey with even its 23rd century tech getting leaked for that very reason.

Do the Cardassians have any piece of tech which gives them some sort of advantage or field-leveling to some degree against the Federation? I mean, how do they even exist as a star empire under the overwhelming power of the Federation?

>>62887891
see >>62887705

they're depicted as both very powerful and also weak, much like everyone else when it comes to the federation and any heroes. when they're fighting randoms, they're generally equal to the various factions.

>>62887891
They're not completely inept; it's not like the US fighting Sudan. They're a highly regimented society with an authoritarian government. They're like a weaker Soviet Union c.1980 - slightly backwards, well organized, but with an entrenched bureaucracy, devotion to the state, and a well established secret police.

They were fighting closer to home over unclaimed rocks that the UFP was trying to settle as well. It was a border skirmish that both sides probably wanted to deescalate. The only people who really harbored grudges were a handful of Starfleet officers; you never see the Cardassians crying about getting killed by Feddies - instead they're always whining about the loss of empire and how they were once great.

>spoonhead shill thread
what blew up on Cardassia Prime this time?

>>62888040
>They're like a weaker Soviet Union c.1980
The near peer argument has been proved for all time to be propaganda. Not theirs, ours, to sell defense contracts.

America has not had a Near Peer for over a century.

>>62888412
I don't think you've done all that much research on the capabilities or professionalism of either the Soviet Union or the Untied States during the Cold War.

Don't confuse today for yesterday.

>>62879199
Antimatter isn't special here. It's what fuels the starships, and a basic Galaxy-class has on the order of 3000 m3 of storage for three years of operation. It's just that the Federation is unwilling to make something akin to a suicide drone to be used as a WMD.

>>62875409
Liqueur up my allies and then use planetary blockades. I'm just parking here bro, nothing wrong with that.

>>62887299
The sand was very evil

>>62888429
>Okay sure the last thirty years of propaganda have been proved false but the previous twenty before that were totally legit

Reminder that the only times US and Russian infantry have met since WW2 we fucking reamed their assholes 10-1. Russia isn't worth shit now, it wasn't worth shit in 1985, it wasn't worth shit in 1940, and it wasn't worth shit in 1918.

>>62887856
>but they still have the power output of a godamn star apiece
We've got a noguns spacebattlefag in the thread, warning! Warning!

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>>62875409
I avoid conflict with the Federation and focus on Bajor. I eliminate the resistance movement by aggressively breeding pure Bajorans out of existence and replace them with half Cardassians.

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>>62875409
>Serious(ish) answer
Stage a series of false flag attacks along the Cardassian side of the border. Have the Obsidian Order use whatever skulfuckey they need to to make the attacks look as horrific as possible while doing as little actual damage as is necessary to sell the attacks as genuine, we'll probably need at least a few million dead and a number of the less useful border worlds rendered uninhabitable for decades. Make sure that news of the 'not so obvious' links to the Federation that the Cardassian investigation turns up - including testimony of several Federation citizens taken into custody following their conviction for terrorist activity. Use the political pressure to claim that the Federation are covertly attacking Cardassia, and agree to a diplomatic resolution where you can use the stink all of this has caused to force significant territorial concessions out of the Feddies (at least major enough to warrant the cost). If at all possible make sure that the Enterprise is off doing something Borg related on the other side of the quadrant while all of this is happening.

>Much more fun answer
Have Pa Wraith empowered Dukat one-man-army his way through the entire Federation fleet to Earth, conquer the federation personally, and order the construction of a truly kick-ass statue of himself in the middle of San-Francisco, make it at least five times the height of the Statue of Liberty.

>>62875409
Going through this thread I have had a (retarded) revelation. The Cardassian Union aren’t the Nazi’s, they’re fucking Indonesia.
>Regional power that is quite a threat in their own back yard but gets smacked down as soon as they go up against one of the big boys (Indonesian attempted invasion of Borneo and the subsequent Commonwealth shutting said invasion down)
>Invaded improvised neighbour and proceeds to occupy them for decades while committing a harsh counter insurgency campaign involving torture and rape, before finally giving up because they can’t afford to keep it going (Indonesian invasion and thirty year occupation of East Timor)
>Ongoing insurgency that they need outside support to try and deal with (getting the Federation/Dominion to help deal with the Marquis - getting American/Australian support to help deal with Islamic Aceh insurgents and West Papua separatists)
>Lizard men-Komodo Dragons
>Threatens to join a opposing side if they don’t get what they want (Indonesia complaining that if they didn’t get West Papua that they would join the Soviet camp)
Probably a retarded reach cause all I have said lines up with multiple countries (Syria/Morocco/Turkey/etc)

>>62891898
In TNG I think they were just 'generic brand authoritarian bad guys', growing into 'obvious serb parody' in DS9 (up to the point where a captured Cardassian war criminal awaiting trial accuses the Federation of withholding his heart medication).

>>62892011
Yeah It was a self admitted reach, really it could be any amount of RL counties but I was able to connect enough lines between the Cardies-Indonesians for it too make sense in my head. :p

>>62891898
I think it´s more space North Korea, due to public knowledge of its reality, but your assessment is valid.

>>62875409
Throw all the Ferengi into ovens.

>>62889595
You're retarded if you still believe the jewish lies that such an attack only caused one casualty of a Palestinian being hit by wreckage.

>>62875435
>first post itt is an anon who falls out of an open window to his death within hours of writing this order
You don’t fuck with the obsidian order

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>A major factor was the Federation response.

They were still in their "Golden Century" period, before the Borg and Dominion showed up, before the Romulans came out of their geopolitical hibernation.

Cardassia was one of several minor wars the Feddies fought during this period, but there was a defining characteristic in each case: The Federation had no real interest in fighting.

It was a true border war. There was no real attempt by the Federation to fight their way to Cardassia and its core worlds. There was no mass military or defense-economy mobilization (though they did accelerate some existing ship production and improve their R&D). They lived in a state of peace, their government was founded on the idea that everybody gets along, all the time, and the Cardassians only ever attacked border worlds (because they were too small to do much more), so the Fed Council was...confused...more than anything else. They mainly wanted the Cardassians to just stop attacking them, and they maintained a limited effort to avoid escalating, and when the Cardies ran out of steam & showed a glimmer of willingness to negotiate, they were even willing to throw the border colonies (the eventual Maquis) to them to return things to "normal".

No wonder guys like Maxwell or Cal Hudson flipped their shit afterwards; imagine being in the trenches, seeing ships get blown up, watching Fed colonists get massacred, and your own side just views it as an icky, irritating sideshow.

>>62878630
>>Step 1
>Impregnate my Bajoran mistress


Based and Dukat-pilled

>>62891786
>>62891551
Based and Dukatpilled

>>62894925
The DS9 writers have said they intentionally muddled the waters regarding the Cardassians by take from a lot of different authoritarian cultures.

>>62887891
Competent small group tactics and ship design.
>Starfleet: Lets make every ship a cruiser! And every single other possible role a ship could be! At the same time!
>Klingons: Disruptors! Photon torpedoes! Cloaking device! Engine! Honor! Glory!
>Romulans: Lets spec our ships entirely around an overwhelming strike from cloak to targets directly in front of us.
>Cardassians: We'll use 3 or 4 ships in tight formation so that their dorsal, ventral, and stern-mounted phasers provide overlapping fields of fire for defense while also capable of being used in conjunction with bow-mounted heavy disruptors to bring overwhelming firepower to bear in a forward arc.

>>62900250
>Competent small group tactics and ship design.
Doesn't matter when you're putting ironclads up against Iowas.

>>62900250
>The Dominion: Fuck it, Ramming Speed! Founder Ackbar!

>>62900653
Talking an awful lot of shit for a redshirt on the bridge of a Miranda.

>>62875409
You don't miss a fuck huge anomaly right next to a planet you occupy.
The wormhole should have been spotted decades prior.

>>62876063
>This is why surprise attacks and "gun it for the homeworld" strategies are so effective in star trek
Nah, the real reason is people from Earth don't care about losing druyiuaya 5, home of 34billion humans, so they need to magically get aliens to invade earth every 60 episodes to keep tensions high.
This is also why planet defences don't exist unless they're enemy worlds, unless they don't have any for no reason because they want to land there for some reason, the fleet ship count was always bullshit to make up for this shit too. There should have been tons of sunlight defence ships/turrets near earth orbit, massive arrays for detection of incursions exist in lore too, but heaven forbid they actually use them.

It's just all plot.