chapotraphouse

Starfleet ships are not, by and large, warships. Smacking around a California class doesn't necessarily mean anything about your chances against a Defiant class or an Akira class

sorry for late reply! my summary was poorly worded. the dimensional rift connected the Sol system and the environs around Courscant together. in the story the Enterprise-E crew we all know and love figured out along with starfleet that the forces they were up against was not an experienced conquering battlefleet but basically a colonial police force/coast guard and used that to their advantage. it took place post-Dominion war so starfleet ironically had far more combat experience and combat capable ships and they were able to outmaneuver and essentially isolate and tactically destroy the star destroyer and Imperial fleet elements because they were so overconfident and not used to fighting a force that had such radically different doctrine and technology.

it treated the star destroyers as tough to take down heavily armored behemoths that had inaccurate manually crew served plasma weapons that individually didn't pack a huge punch.