Star Trek The Birth of a Federation Military

Sailor.X said:

Would it have really hurt them to put actually Hull Armor on the Galaxy's instead of relying on shields. I mean you would die of Alcohol poisoning if you take a shot every time the Enterprise Ds shields dropped during combat scenes. They forgot the one rule of Empires (And yes the UFP is an Empire as much as they hate to admit it) Your Flagship needs to be a beast of a ship that can not only deal damage but take damage as well. Thankfully they sidelined that Brahams lady and her team and got in some real Warship Engineers to create the War Galaxies and the Galaxy Xs. But it took the Dominon anal raping the Odyssey to cause that change.

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Yes?

I get a lot of folks here thinks Trek ships are poorly designed, but it's really telling in setting that NOBODY seriously up-armors ships. Not the Klingons, not the Romulans, not the Cardassians, not the Dominion... NOBODY does it. They all similarly depend on the combination of Shields+SFI just like the Federation does.

This fundamentally means that within setting there must be some logical reason nobody does it. It's not been explicitly stated in canon, but I can think of a few logical reasons off the top of my head.

1. The tradeoff to acceleration and maneuverability isn't worth it.
It may be that more hits are evades by evasive maneuvers (which we see called for ALL THE TIME in Trek) and that adding armor to the ships would make it so that those maneuvers are dramatically less effective due to the Impulse drive and maneuvering thrusters having to accelerate so much more mass (as any serious amounts of armor on the ships is going to add considerable mass, given that you generally need fairly exotic high density materials to effectively armor against Trek weapons).

2. The materials needed are prohibitively expensive for large scale deployment.
As noted above, armor for Trek ships tends to be required to be made of highly unusual materials for it to be effective against Trek weapon systems. Think things like Neutronium and other exotic matter. These are things not easily replicated (as we know exotic materials often have difficulty being replicated) and thus likely take considerable investment in. This means that for large scale production lines like the Galaxy class it simply may be to cost prohibitive to manufacture the amounts needed.

3. They do not have effective armor materials at the time.
I'll grant this is a variant of the point 2, just coming at it from a different angle. It may well be that they simply do not have effective armor technologies that work against common weapons technology at the time, and so it's kinda pointless. This seems weird? Consider most of the 18th to 20th century re: armor for infantry, it wasn't until the late 20th century that we developed materials that were effective against the weapons in common use, Trek might be in a similar situation.

Further, no amount of armor would have saved the Odyssey. F=MA and Dominion fighters have a shitton of both. Plus, as I noted elsewhere in thread, the ship was rammed right in the main anti-matter storage area. Adding armor wouldn't have changed a damn thing.

Finally, it bears repeating that there's no such thing as a "War Galaxy" that was an idiotic bit of fandom dreamt up by SB, and the Gal-X is also not truly canon, though it's closer to being canon than War Galaxies ever were.

S'task said:

I get a lot of folks here thinks Trek ships are poorly designed, but it's really telling in setting that NOBODY seriously up-armors ships. Not the Klingons, not the Romulans, not the Cardassians, not the Dominion... NOBODY does it. They all similarly depend on the combination of Shields+SFI just like the Federation does.

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That's not quite true, the defiant has some sort of ablative armor coating or layer. There's also the polarized hull plating from the NX, which while not nearly as good as shields, could possibly have been used as an emergency system to buy a ship under fire a little bit more time.

S'task said:

Finally, it bears repeating that there's no such thing as a "War Galaxy" that was an idiotic bit of fandom dreamt up by SB, and the Gal-X is also not truly canon, though it's closer to being canon than War Galaxies ever were.

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The War Galaxy thing is based on a bit in the DS9 TM that was talking about some partially built galaxies that had been rushed out of the yards early, with some modifications or extra equipment, right?

Battlegrinder said:

A second possibility would be that while the Husnock bombarded the colony at first, they later followed up with a ground assault to finish off survivors.

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After boiling the oceans dry, killing every scrap of vegetation, and vaporizing every man-made structure? Really that's your idea? How tough do you think these colonists are?

DATA: Sensors are scanning ninety degrees of longitude as we orbit. I am detecting no bodies of water, no vegetation, no artificial structures.
WORF: Life form readings are negative.

Also, you didn't have 4 examples. You had one, and it was an attack on the heart of the federation itself, which was able to scramble all of five ships to defend itself. That's not a good basis for a claim that every colony (or every larger colony) should have like a dozen or so fighters on hand to defend itself.

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I had four examples of fighters scrambling to protect a planet/station. I'm not sure why you think aliens don't count in Star Trek but it's frankly a bit weird given that this is Trek we're talking about. We also have the example of Bajorans having militia fighters but no capital ships strongly suggesting that people who can't afford capital ships can still afford fighters.

Meanwhile you've managed to scrape up one ambiguous event that conveniently happened offscreen and may or may not have had any fighters.

Ultimately we know for a fact that the Federation, the Jem'Hadar, and many other races have fighters. We also know that these fighters are used extremely sparingly by the Federation, though the Jem'Hadar use them everywhere. Outside a few key battles in the Dominion war (and everywhere the Jem'Hadar go), a super majority of events that include fighters is them scrambling to protect a planet or station. It's not exactly an unfathomable leap of logic that fighters are often used to protect planets and stations.

Bear Ribs said:

After boiling the oceans dry, killing every scrap of vegetation, and vaporizing every man-made structure? Really that's your idea? How tough do you think these colonists are?

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We have no idea what order those event took place in.

Bear Ribs said:

I had four examples of fighters scrambling to protect a planet/station. I'm not sure why you think aliens don't count in Star Trek but it's frankly a bit weird given that this is Trek we're talking about. We also have the example of Bajorans having militia fighters but no capital ships strongly suggesting that people who can't afford capital ships can still afford fighters.

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You had one example of federation fighters doing it, and 3 examples of less technological capable civilizations doing the same. Technology influences tactics, what is effective for them is not necessarily true for the federation and vice versa. Which ties into the Bavarian example, because those fighters were laughably ineffective against modern ships, just like the capital ships the military had were.

Bear Ribs said:

It's not exactly an unfathomable leap of logic that fighters are often used to protect planets and stations.

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So where's the evidence? Where are all the references to planetary defense fighter squadrons? Where are the ex milita pilots, the references to battles won by these brave local pilots? Where's the Star Trek: Top Gun novel series? Why does Tom Paris, Ace pilot and guy that invented a shuttlecraft space fighter, not mention growing up idolized the local pilots of whatever planet he's from? Why, when you combed through all of star trek looking for examples, could you only find 4 incidents scattered through hundreds of hours of television?

Regarding the orginal OP, this recent series of exchanges have sorta highlighted an issue and question that should be addressed.

Is the goal here supposed to be designing a federation military that could be created based on the show, or to design what a federation military would look like if it was in the show? Because these "they could do this/but they don't do that" exchanges show, those questions have very different answers.

S'task said:

Yes?

I get a lot of folks here thinks Trek ships are poorly designed, but it's really telling in setting that NOBODY seriously up-armors ships. Not the Klingons, not the Romulans, not the Cardassians, not the Dominion... NOBODY does it. They all similarly depend on the combination of Shields+SFI just like the Federation does.

This fundamentally means that within setting there must be some logical reason nobody does it. It's not been explicitly stated in canon, but I can think of a few logical reasons off the top of my head.

1. The tradeoff to acceleration and maneuverability isn't worth it.
It may be that more hits are evades by evasive maneuvers (which we see called for ALL THE TIME in Trek) and that adding armor to the ships would make it so that those maneuvers are dramatically less effective due to the Impulse drive and maneuvering thrusters having to accelerate so much more mass (as any serious amounts of armor on the ships is going to add considerable mass, given that you generally need fairly exotic high density materials to effectively armor against Trek weapons).

2. The materials needed are prohibitively expensive for large scale deployment.
As noted above, armor for Trek ships tends to be required to be made of highly unusual materials for it to be effective against Trek weapon systems. Think things like Neutronium and other exotic matter. These are things not easily replicated (as we know exotic materials often have difficulty being replicated) and thus likely take considerable investment in. This means that for large scale production lines like the Galaxy class it simply may be to cost prohibitive to manufacture the amounts needed.

3. They do not have effective armor materials at the time.
I'll grant this is a variant of the point 2, just coming at it from a different angle. It may well be that they simply do not have effective armor technologies that work against common weapons technology at the time, and so it's kinda pointless. This seems weird? Consider most of the 18th to 20th century re: armor for infantry, it wasn't until the late 20th century that we developed materials that were effective against the weapons in common use, Trek might be in a similar situation.

Further, no amount of armor would have saved the Odyssey. F=MA and Dominion fighters have a shitton of both. Plus, as I noted elsewhere in thread, the ship was rammed right in the main anti-matter storage area. Adding armor wouldn't have changed a damn thing.

Finally, it bears repeating that there's no such thing as a "War Galaxy" that was an idiotic bit of fandom dreamt up by SB, and the Gal-X is also not truly canon, though it's closer to being canon than War Galaxies ever were.

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Yeah sure because 2 Phaser Arrays on the Nacelles is standard issue for all Galaxy Class starships. Oh wait no it is not. And Klingon ships do actually have armor. A Neghvar can take more hits than a standard Galaxy can when the shields are down.

Battlegrinder said:

We have no idea what order those event took place in.

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That sure is convenient for you isn't it? Well then not any evidence for your position either, is there? Since you had "dozens and dozens" no doubt you can find several better ones that don't have this ambiguity? I mean, in your next quote you're complaining about how I only have four times more evidence than you do, that's a bit of strange logic, no?

So where's the evidence? Where are all the references to planetary defense fighter squadrons? Where are the ex milita pilots, the references to battles won by these brave local pilots? Where's the Star Trek: Top Gun novel series? Why does Tom Paris, Ace pilot and guy that invented a shuttlecraft space fighter, not mention growing up idolized the local pilots of whatever planet he's from? Why, when you combed through all of star trek looking for examples, could you only find 4 incidents scattered through hundreds of hours of television?

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I presented you four examples of onscreen fighter scrambles. The fact that you mysteriously believe aliens don't count in Trek is not my problem. I can present more.

We know that Starfleet Academy includes fighter pilot training, because Wesley Crusher was involved in a fatal accident involving said fighter trainers as part of Nova Squadron. Why are they training these fighter pilots? Apparently because fighter pilots are a going thing, and Cadet Locarno wanted to get the admiration of others by doing a hotshot Kelvrood Starburst so there's your idolized pilot deal right there.

Tom Paris was involved in a similar situation that led to his expulsion which suggests that this is not unusual. Apparently hotshot fighter pilots are simply a thing in Trek given that we've seen it repeated, but they rarely appears around the big ships, almost like the fighter pilots hang around in planetary militias instead of hovering on Capital Craft.

Bear Ribs said:

That sure is convenient for you isn't it? Well then not any evidence for your position either, is there? Since you had "dozens and dozens" no doubt you can find several better ones that don't have this ambiguity? I mean, in your next quote you're complaining about how I only have four times more evidence than you do, that's a bit of strange logic, no?

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There's no evidence of fighters there. No debris or wreckage, and more evidence against your claim that fighters could have been involved. Rishon Uxbridge, the real one, was a botinist and a composer, not a milita fighter pilot, she would not have had any chance to take part in the defense if your version of what happened was true.

Also, again, you don't have 4 times the evidence. You have one example of the federation doing this, and 3 examples of far more primative civilizations on the other side of the galaxy doing it.

Bear Ribs said:

I presented you four examples of onscreen fighter scrambles. The fact that you mysteriously believe aliens don't count in Trek is not my problem. I can present more.

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Don't bother, since the relevant examples don't exist. I remind you, we are talking about what starfleet and the federation are like and what they do, not the behavior of random aliens from the delta quadrant.

Bear Ribs said:

We know that Starfleet Academy includes fighter pilot training, because Wesley Crusher was involved in a fatal accident involving said fighter trainers as part of Nova Squadron. Why are they training these fighter pilots? Apparently because fighter pilots are a going thing, and Cadet Locarno wanted to get the admiration of others by doing a hotshot Kelvrood Starburst so there's your idolized pilot deal right there.

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It's possible that Nova Squadron was a fighter unit, but not likely (Wesley is certainly not a fighter pilot, and the later Red Squadron, from the same academy, certainly wasn't a fighter squadron in training). And given that the only member of the squadron to return to the show did so as something other than a fighter pilot, that further undermines your theory.

Bear Ribs said:

Tom Paris was involved in a similar situation that led to his expulsion which suggests that this is not unusual. Apparently hotshot fighter pilots are simply a thing in Trek given that we've seen it repeated, but they rarely appears around the big ships, almost like the fighter pilots hang around in planetary militias instead of hovering on Capital Craft.

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Tom Paris was involved in some sort accident that killed several people, what it was has never been explained, but that was as a serving starfleet officer (which got him discharged, not expelled). And given that his crewmates find his hotshot pilot persona unusual, that actually suggests the opposite, since if fighter pilots were a regular thing in starfleet people would not find it odd that Tom is one.

Battlegrinder said:

That's not quite true, the defiant has some sort of ablative armor coating or layer. There's also the polarized hull plating from the NX, which while not nearly as good as shields, could possibly have been used as an emergency system to buy a ship under fire a little bit more time.

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The Defiant is a notable exception to the trend, and was new and unproven technology at the time. As to the NX's "polarized hull plating" that appears to be a precursor system to SFI or shields. I was speaking mainly in reference to armor through most of the TNG era ships which, save for the Defiant, Sovereign, and Validor-type ships the designs predate that technology being testbedded on the Defiant.

Sailor.X said:

Yeah sure because 2 Phaser Arrays on the Nacelles is standard issue for all Galaxy Class starships. Oh wait no it is not. And Klingon ships do actually have armor. A Neghvar can take more hits than a standard Galaxy can when the shields are down.

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Fanon art is hardly evidence? I'm trying to find any canon shots from DS9 showing that variant that aren't fanart and... well, I'm not seeing any. The Galaxies in "Sacrifice of Angels" all appear to be stock variants like the Enterprise and Odyssey, no additional phaser arrays on the top. Memory Alpha also makes no mentions of these modifications or that the frames brought out in the Dominion War were somehow extensively modified over the original design. Further, adding a couple of smaller phaser arrays is hardly a major modification to warrant all the supposed hype of being a "War Galaxy".

And of course a Neghvar can take more hits than a Galaxy, it's considerably larger and likely has much more expansive power as well as more redundant systems, though I would be curious exactly how you know that is attributable to armor, the only time we really see a Negh'Var taking an extensive pounding is in the DS9 Mirror Universe episodes where Mirror!Worf's flagship and the Defiant have a showdown, and that is hardly a stock Negh'Var, being even larger than the prime universe ship...

S'task said:

The Defiant is a notable exception to the trend, and was new and unproven technology at the time. As to the NX's "polarized hull plating" that appears to be a precursor system to SFI or shields.


Fanon art is hardly evidence? I'm trying to find any canon shots from DS9 showing that variant that aren't fanart and... well, I'm not seeing any. The Galaxies in "Sacrifice of Angels" all appear to be stock variants like the Enterprise and Odyssey, no additional phaser arrays on the top. Memory Alpha also makes no mentions of these modifications or that the frames brought out in the Dominion War were somehow extensively modified over the original design. Further, adding a couple of smaller phaser arrays is hardly a major modification to warrant all the supposed hype of being a "War Galaxy".

And of course a Neghvar can take more hits than a Galaxy, it's considerably larger and likely has much more expansive power as well as more redundant systems, though I would be curious exactly how you know that is attributable to armor, the only time we really see a Negh'Var taking an extensive pounding is in the DS9 Mirror Universe episodes where Mirror!Worf's flagship and the Defiant have a showdown, and that is hardly a stock Negh'Var, being even larger than the prime universe ship...

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I tried to post the DS9 shots but they won't render on this board. Google USS Venture and you will see the modifications.

Battlegrinder said:

There's no evidence of fighters there. No debris or wreckage, and more evidence against your claim that fighters could have been involved. Rishon Uxbridge, the real one, was a botinist and a composer, not a milita fighter pilot, she would not have had any chance to take part in the defense if your version of what happened was true.

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Not Shown: Battlegrinder presenting some of his claimed "dozens and dozens" of examples.

And what kind of fighting is a botanist and composer qualified for? If botany disqualifies her from flying an armed shuttle why doesn't it disqualify her from operating a fixed gun emplacement or otherwise engaging the enemy?

Also, again, you don't have 4 times the evidence. You have one example of the federation doing this, and 3 examples of far more primative civilizations on the other side of the galaxy doing it.

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You keep saying that the aliens don't count, but there's no reasoning behind it besides your own desires. We know for a fact that the Federation uses fighters and aliens use fighters, and they both operate in the same general way so their technology can't be so different that fighters are some kind of OCP for the Federation. The Federation uses fighters as a last ditch defense, and so do several aliens. Clearly it's a thing that happens.

Don't bother, since the relevant examples don't exist. I remind you, we are talking about what starfleet and the federation are like and what they do, not the behavior of random aliens from the delta quadrant

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So... uses fighters as a last-ditch defense just like aliens do, since that's exactly what we see them do?

It's possible that Nova Squadron was a fighter unit, but not likely (Wesley is certainly not a fighter pilot, and the later Red Squadron, from the same academy, certainly wasn't a fighter squadron in training). And given that the only member of the squadron to return to the show did so as something other than a fighter pilot, that further undermines your theory.

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They pilot fighter trainers so apparently fighter training is a thing they do. And I can't help but notice, Sito Jaxa's ability to pilot small craft was significant to the plot of the episode she appeared in and her role in it.

And this is obviously the image of "not a likely a fighter squadron" right?

Tom Paris was involved in some sort accident that killed several people, what it was has never been explained, but that was as a serving starfleet officer (which got him discharged, not expelled). And given that his crewmates find his hotshot pilot persona unusual, that actually suggests the opposite, since if fighter pilots were a regular thing in starfleet people would not find it odd that Tom is one.

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Federation people in general find bloated ego and hotshot behavior strange, not just piloting. They do, after all, work to better themselves instead of seeking wealth. This is no evidence that there aren't fighter pilots, just that their morals work on a different compass than ours and we shouldn't expect most of their pilots to have Chuck Yeager's attitude.

Bear Ribs said:

Not Shown: Battlegrinder presenting some of his claimed "dozens and dozens" of examples.

And what kind of fighting is a botanist and composer qualified for? If botany disqualifies her from flying an armed shuttle why doesn't it disqualify her from operating a fixed gun emplacement or otherwise engaging the enemy?

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Firing a phaser or something takes next to no training, as compared to being a fighter pilot.

Bear Ribs said:

You keep saying that the aliens don't count, but there's no reasoning behind it besides your own desires. We know for a fact that the Federation uses fighters and aliens use fighters, and they both operate in the same general way so their technology can't be so different that fighters are some kind of OCP for the Federation.

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As I mentioned and you didn't address, all of those aliens were technologically inferior, in two cases vastly so, and technology has a massive influence on tactics. Fighter might not be unknown to the Federation, but that applies to a bunch of things. Cloaking devices, disruptors, raiding ships, etc are all known to the federation, but they still don't use any of them.

Bear Ribs said:

The Federation uses fighters as a last ditch defense, and so do several aliens. Clearly it's a thing that happens.

So... uses fighters as a last-ditch defense just like aliens do, since that's exactly what we see them do?

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One example is not a trend. EDIT: Particularly because this example works against you. This happened in Sol. The biggest, richest, most important system in the federation. It's their seat of government, military HQ, primary shipyard, etc. It off all systems should have the biggest, most powerful fighter force in space. They had FIVE ships. Not five wings, not five sqaudrons, 5 single ships.

This is like you claiming that every city in the US has a large emergency milita they can call upon in case of invasion, and backing this up by pointing to an incident when DC was invaded by an enemy and six guys with bolt action rifles showed up to defend the city.

Bear Ribs said:

They pilot fighter trainers so apparently fighter training is a thing they do.

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There is no evidence whatsoever, even in side material, that those ships are fighter trainers.

Bear Ribs said:

And I can't help but notice, Sito Jaxa's ability to pilot small craft was significant to the plot of the episode she appeared in and her role in it.

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Yes, they picked her because she was a trained pilot, but that wasn't her day job. She was a security officer, not a shuttle pilot and certainly not a fighter pilot, IE, the thing you're insisting she is trained as. If the federation had spent years of time training her as a pilot, a highly specialized, difficult skill to learn that is rare, she would be doing that, not running as a security officer.

Bear Ribs said:

And this is obviously the image of "not a likely a fighter squadron" right?

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Correct. "It's kinda pointy looking" is not evidence it's a starfighter.

Bear Ribs said:

Federation people in general find bloated ego and hotshot behavior strange, not just piloting. They do, after all, work to better themselves instead of seeking wealth. This is no evidence that there aren't fighter pilots, just that their morals work on a different compass than ours and we shouldn't expect most of their pilots to have Chuck Yeager's attitude.

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Except that attitude is displayed in spades by most of the people you've tried to cite as proof that federation totally uses tons and tons of fighters.

Battlegrinder said:

Firing a phaser or something takes next to no training, as compared to being a fighter pilot.

As I mentioned and you didn't address, all of those aliens were technologically inferior, in two cases vastly so, and technology has a massive influence on tactics. Fighter might not be unknown to the Federation, but that applies to a bunch of things. Cloaking devices, disruptors, raiding ships, etc are all known to the federation, but they still don't use any of them.

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But the Federation do use fighters, don't they? So they must actually, y'know, use fighters. Hence they're using the same thing as aliens, albeit more advanced and capable models. You're arguing that Federation fighters must occupy a completely different niche than aliens with no proof besides "the aliens don't count because they're not as advanced."

You might as well claim that Kirk firing a phaser is fundamentally different from Picard firing the phaser because Picard's phaser is "more technologically advanced."

One example is not a trend.

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Agreed. Your one offscreen example isn't a trend. My four onscreen and three off are.

EDIT: Particularly because this example works against you. This happened in Sol. The biggest, richest, most important system in the federation. It's their seat of government, military HQ, primary shipyard, etc. It off all systems should have the biggest, most powerful fighter force in space. They had FIVE ships. Not five wings, not five sqaudrons, 5 single ships.

This is like you claiming that every city in the US has a large emergency milita they can call upon in case of invasion, and backing this up by pointing to an incident when DC was invaded by an enemy and six guys with bolt action rifles showed up to defend the city.

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Well no, it's like I'm claiming that most cities will have some guys with rifles after they showed up at DC, and also at Mexico City, Belize, and Cairo and we've seen guys with rifles standing around guarding London, Bern, and Madrid. Meanwhile you keep loudly protesting that because the guys in Mexico City, Belize, and Cairo had Garands instead of AR-15s, they don't count.

To pile up more evidence, let's add the Cardassians using Hideki class armed shuttles, which they moved to their colonies to protect colonial interests in The Maquis. Yet another case of fighters being moved to provide support to colonies, though I'm sure you've got a new reason why Cardassians also don't count because it sure seems like your whole strategy is denying that anything, ever, counts unless it supports your arguments.

I'll also note we see five fighters onscreen, we don't know how many might have been destroyed offscreen just like the 40 starships that were destroyed offscreen. And Sol being so rich, it had Starships, they weren't a small poor planet Like Bajor so wouldn't need to invest heavily in cheap fighter defenses when they had 40 Starships available.

There is no evidence whatsoever, even in side material, that those ships are fighter trainers.

Yes, they picked her because she was a trained pilot, but that wasn't her day job. She was a security officer, not a shuttle pilot and certainly not a fighter pilot, IE, the thing you're insisting she is trained as. If the federation had spent years of time training her as a pilot, a highly specialized, difficult skill to learn that is rare, she would be doing that, not running as a security officer.

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How do you know it's a highly specialized, difficult skill to learn? What episode is that stated in? Driving a car isn't a super advanced skill for us today, what makes you think they treat flying a small craft any differently? And if it's so hard to learn why did they have Nova Squadron doing it?

Their education system clearly also teaches at a different rate than ours. They have a little kid who looks to be grade-school aged attending calculus classes with a group of his peers in When the Bough Breaks.

Correct. "It's kinda pointy looking" is not evidence it's a starfighter.

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Is there anything that's a fighter in your view? You've spent an inordinate amount of this discussion claiming that everything "doesn't count" for one reason or another whether it's because Jem'Hadar fighters are too big, the aliens are too primitive, there weren't enough of them at Sol, or these trainers are merely fighter shaped and doing fighter stunts with a hotshot fighter pilot leading the squad, but not actually training people to fly fighters.

Except that attitude is displayed in spades by every single person you've tried to cite as proof that federation totally uses tons and tons of fighters.

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When the heck did I claim the Federation uses tons and tons of them? I claim they exist which is hard to deny, and that we see fighters used to defend planets and stations, especially poorer colonies, and in their more desperate wartime fleet battles.

Bear Ribs said:

But the Federation do use fighters, don't they? So they must actually, y'know, use fighters. Hence they're using the same thing as aliens, albeit more advanced and capable models. You're arguing that Federation fighters must occupy a completely different niche than aliens with no proof besides "the aliens don't count because they're not as advanced."

You might as well claim that Kirk firing a phaser is fundamentally different from Picard firing the phaser because Picard's phaser is "more technologically advanced."

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Given that the federation uses starfighters in offensive fleet action and aliens use them as a defensive force, they do occupy difference niches.

Bear Ribs said:

To pile up more evidence, let's add the Cardassians using Hideki class armed shuttles, which they moved to their colonies to protect colonial interests in The Maquis. Yet another case of fighters being moved to provide support to colonies, though I'm sure you've got a new reason why Cardassians also don't count because it sure seems like your whole strategy is denying that anything, ever, counts unless it supports your arguments.

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Actually, now that I think of it, that does in fact undermine your point yet again. Sisko was shocked to civilians duking it out with one another in fighters, he had no idea that that sort of thing would be going on. In a universe where it is normal for planetary militias to fight using swarms of relatively weak starships, why would find militias fighting one another in weak starships unusual?

Bear Ribs said:

I'll also note we see five fighters onscreen, we don't know how many might have been destroyed offscreen just like the 40 starships that were destroyed offscreen. And Sol being so rich, it had Starships, they weren't a small poor planet Like Bajor so wouldn't need to invest heavily in cheap fighter defenses when they had 40 Starships available.

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If Sol decided to rely on full sized starships for defense rather than the normal fighter militia, why did they have any fighters all all, let alone just five (which is all they had. There were no more fighters coming in to join the battle, and no debris or wreckage from earlier waves)?

Bear Ribs said:

How do you know it's a highly specialized, difficult skill to learn? What episode is that stated in? Driving a car isn't a super advanced skill for us today, what makes you think they treat flying a small craft any differently? And if it's so hard to learn why did they have Nova Squadron doing it?

Their education system clearly also teaches at a different rate than ours. They have a little kid who looks to be grade-school aged attending calculus classes with a group of his peers in When the Bough Breaks.

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Driving a car was never a super advanced skill at any point, whereas being a pilot of any sort, let alone a combat pilot, has always been a difficult skill that requires a ton of time and energy to learn. As for Nova squadron, they know how to fly. That is all, and it's far from unheard of for officers that are not at any point intended to be fighter pilots to learn some advanced skills, both Geordi and Riker, people who have never at any point in their career been pilots or intended to be pilots, have some advanced fight skills. Riker is in fact the best pilot on the ship, better than even any of the actual shuttle pilots or the trained fighter pilots the ship is supposedly full of.

Bear Ribs said:

When the heck did I claim the Federation uses tons and tons of them? I claim they exist which is hard to deny, and that we see fighters used to defend planets and stations, especially poorer colonies, and in their more desperate wartime fleet battles.

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We have never once seen starfighters used to defend poor outlying colonies of any race or faction. Your examples were the federation capital, the Lysian Central Command station, the vaadwaar homeworld, and the Rakosan homeworld.

Battlegrinder said:

Torpedoes are missiles, and they can be shot down, Voyager did it. Nor does the ability for torpedoes modified for a particularly mission to withstand being fired into a sun (for a moment anyway) mean that therefor all torpedoes are capable of withstanding fire from other weapons, or even just a counter-missile being fired at them. If they were, why not just use torpedos to intercept incoming weapon fire, letting hostile phaser beams bounce off it's invulnerable shielding?

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1) Even if Voyager did shoot down your standard torpedo (I couldn't find that one), that is what, one incident out of a thousand?
2) I don't remember modifications mentioning adding shields - only modifications to the guidance program are mentioned. We have also had torpedoes smack into planet and dig through crust before detonating, as well as being modified to match target's shield frequency to bypass shields. At this point, shields are if not the only logical then certainly the most logical explanation.
3) And why would enemies shoot invulnerable torpedoes instead of, say, shooting past them?

Battlegrinder said:

Replacing a starship that's been blown to atoms by a torpedo salvo is a much greater waste of time, space, and energy, not to mention lives.

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And that is much better prevented by investing energy and space into additional shield emitters rather than trying to shoot down swarms of small, heavily shielded and fast-moving objects.

Aldarion said:

1) Even if Voyager did shoot down your standard torpedo (I couldn't find that one), that is what, one incident out of a thousand?
2) I don't remember modifications mentioning adding shields - only modifications to the guidance program are mentioned. We have also had torpedoes smack into planet and dig through crust before detonating, as well as being modified to match target's shield frequency to bypass shields. At this point, shields are if not the only logical then certainly the most logical explanation.
3) And why would enemies shoot invulnerable torpedoes instead of, say, shooting past them?

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1. Workforce. And you only need 1 to prove it possible.
2. They only mentioned the guidence system, but the payload was also reconfigured, and given that the ship can't go anywhere near that deep, even with it's vastly greater power generation and special shields to protect it, obviously the stock torpedo couldn't. Surviving planetary impact, on the other hand, doesn't require very strong shields, nor does bypassing shields themselves, torpedoes have to do that normally to pass through the firing ship's shields in the first place.
3. Because they can't, at least not for beam weapons. It's a beam, it goes in a straight line, and if you move the path it's following the torpedo can follow.

Aldarion said:

And that is much better prevented by investing energy and space into additional shield emitters rather than trying to shoot down swarms of small, heavily shielded and fast-moving objects.

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I don't think that's how it works, that you can just keep piling on more and more emitters and the shield will just constantly get stronger. Alternatively, if they can make generators powerful enough to easily survive inside a sun, and can make enough to fit them on ever single torpedo, why not just use a bunch of those all over the ship, it'd be invincible.

Battlegrinder said:

Given that the federation uses starfighters in offensive fleet action and aliens use them as a defensive force, they do occupy difference niches.

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Going to just ignore their defense in Best of Both Worlds since it doesn't support you huh? And the Vaadwaur explicitly also using them to attack, that's just irrelevant since it doesn't support you?

Actually, now that I think of it, that does in fact undermine your point yet again. Sisko was shocked to civilians duking it out with one another in fighters, he had no idea that that sort of thing would be going on. In a universe where it is normal for planetary militias to fight using swarms of relatively weak starships, why would find militias fighting one another in weak starships unusual?

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You know, you're really adopting some horrible debating habits here. You refuse to prove anything and are producing one of my major irritants, a person who simply makes (untrue) statements and refuses to ever pony up proof and instead just keeps posting statements of fact while blithely never proving anything. That double-irritates me when their statement is an obvious lie and I have to dig up the proof myself. How many times have I asked you for your "dozens and dozens" of incidents and yet what you've managed to supply was one, which I had to dig up the transcripts for and show how feeble it was.

Since you haven't supplied a drop of proof for any of your claims, let me expose that this one about Sisko is another falsehood:



Sisko is hardly shocked at these civilians duking it out, he doesn't bat an eye at it. He's more surprised there's a Federation vessel he's not familiar with. The closest he comes is questioning why such a small civilian craft has photon torpedoes.

And what's Dukat's response? "Something from one of your colonies perhaps." And Dukat notes that colonists on both sides have started their own war, using these fighters.

So here we have yet another strong line of evidence that fighters tend to be deployed to colonies, Dukat regards it as standard practice from the Federation and Cardassians both, and both sides have enough to start their own war.

If Sol decided to rely on full sized starships for defense rather than the normal fighter militia, why did they have any fighters all all, let alone just five (which is all they had. There were no more fighters coming in to join the battle, and no debris or wreckage from earlier waves)?

Driving a car was never a super advanced skill at any point, whereas being a pilot of any sort, let alone a combat pilot, has always been a difficult skill that requires a ton of time and energy to learn. As for Nova squadron, they know how to fly. That is all, and it's far from unheard of for officers that are not at any point intended to be fighter pilots to learn some advanced skills, both Geordi and Riker, people who have never at any point in their career been pilots or intended to be pilots, have some advanced fight skills. Riker is in fact the best pilot on the ship, better than even any of the actual shuttle pilots or the trained fighter pilots the ship is supposedly full of.

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So you're saying you don't have any proof and just want to make unsupported statements?

We have never once seen starfighters used to defend poor outlying colonies of any race or faction. Your examples were the federation capital, the Lysian Central Command station, the vaadwaar homeworld, and the Rakosan homeworld.

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Going to ignore the Cardassians doing it to their colonies even though you quoted my proof of it above huh? And of course we have Dukat noting that the Federation does it to their colonies in the video I had to post for you.

S'task said:

You're comparing apples and oranges. Yes, the Defiant class is only slightly slower than the Galaxy class, but that shouldn't come as a surprise, the Galaxy class is at least 20 years older as far as design goes and, to be frank, has terrible warp geometry based on pretty much every other Starfleet cruiser design ever (the Galaxy is also arguably a failed design per Starfleet standards, seeing use for only about a 20 year window compared to the Excelsior and Miranda class' nearly 100 year service history). Further the Defiant is said to have a power plant of comparable size TO a Galaxy class ship (hense its overpowered phaser cannons), but with a smaller frame and its terrible warp geometry it is SLOWER at warp than a Galaxy. Meanwhile the Sovereign class, which came out only a few years after the Defiant, is pulling a warp speed of 9.985 to 9.995 depending on the sources while all the ships of a similar size to Defiant are, in fact, faster, as I already laid out.

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The Intrepid is roughly twice the mass of the Defiant. There's really no reason why, even with 20 years of technological advancement, why they're slower than the Galaxy Class. Nor is my argument that speed does not scale with size. What my argument is that it does not scale as quickly as it probably should. Thus, you can pack a lot of power in a smaller ship. You might need to make design compromises, but you can still pack a lot of power there.

Also, the output of the ship's reactor feeding into the pulse cannons or any phaser bank or array really isn't all that big of a game changer. It's what the actual device is capable of putting out that is the real deciding factor. And we already know that those emitters can't come anywhere close to putting out any significant amount of energy. All it really does is provide those ships with near-limitless energy endurance.

As another noted, the Defiant fills the role of a "shore monitor" quite well, and works quite well in fleet engagements, but is slower and has shorter range when compared to other designs.

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No one has questioned that. My point is that the scaling with size is not nearly as radical as it should probably be, due to energy efficiency. Therefore, you can have a small fighter or scout pose a threat to a capital ship, despite the massive difference in size.

Battlegrinder said:

Because the federation has an established habit of not doing advantageous things.

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Are you being stubborn or is this the autism?

It's a TV show that is primary focused on the naval/explorative aspect of the setting. You're not going to see guys with full on tactical gear. Even if they had the budget for it. Which they didn't.

They don't issue helmets, night vision equipment, grenades,

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They do use grenades. We literally had an admiral talking about stockpiling grenades. Stop assuming that we see everything the setting has to offer us. That's the one thing I can't ever seem to get across to you. And I'm not sure if you're being disingenuous for the hell of it or if this is an autism thing and you feel like I'm breaking some kind of rule.

or personal shields to their soldiers.

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I'm not really arguing that they use personal shields. So I'm not even sure why this is a thing right now.

Their soldiers are limited to semi-automatic rifles, with no dedicated sniper weapons

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You realize the magnification on their weapons is more than enough, right?






It reminds me much of the modern scopes coming out.






You can see a similar set-up for the Phaser IIIa's base model. That flip piece in the back is the display. Later models would include an integrated flashlight and a more stocky scope.




Not to mention a better interface. And those rifles included auto-tracking. I mean, it really just comes down to how far the particle weapon itself can fire before it loses potency.

, SAWs, or other weapons for effective infantry tactics.

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Shocker. Directors and actors aren't good at infantry tactics.

Their ships lack anti-missile point defense weapons.

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The fuck do you think shields are? And that's assuming the guns that are designed to hit something that small and fast can penetrate any sort of ablative armor that they might have.

And they have the technology to do all of these things.

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Yes...so why wouldn't they do them? I mean, I get some of the stuff you're arguing for, but some of this is just insanely silly. If the UFP comes up against a power that uses guns and frag grenades, they're going to switch to things to save lives. There's just no real good defense against a phaser rifle. Because it's really, really hard to block particle weapons. And defense tends to lag against offense.

I

t was a complete curbstomp in the larger ship's favor in the second engagement,

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...You mean the new prototype warship designed by a peer power? The one that was 28x more massive than the Valiant? Which was crewed by cadets? Yeah, no kidding it got its shit shoved in. That ship probably had torpedo launchers longer than the Defiant itself. Why is this at all an issue? No one is arguing that power doesn't scale with size. My argument is that it does not scale so quickly as to invalidate the utility of the smaller fighters. Proven by the utility of said fighters.

and given ST treknology, and the Lakota had the edge at the end of the fight as well, despite it's age.

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The Lakota had been heavily upgraded. They were surprised that the Lakota packed such a powerful punch. In fact, even with both ships holding back, they seemed more or less equal.

Battlegrinder said:

1. Workforce. And you only need 1 to prove it possible.

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Holy shit, but I gotta scavange for a dozen grenade references while you fight me tooth and nail? Seriously? C'mon.

Second, that scene--everything about it was the height of mental retardation. Those are two ships, in close proximity and in order to take them out, he needs to create a "photonic shockwave"...despite the fact that he could just arm a 45 megaton antimatter warhead and vaporize the shit out of them. They are literally so close that you wouldn't need a shockwave.

Even if we assume they're far enough apart, it's still stupid. A half dozen torpedoes would have solved the problem. It's really just bad writing.

2. They only mentioned the guidence system, but the payload was also reconfigured, and given that the ship can't go anywhere near that deep, even with it's vastly greater power generation and special shields to protect it, obviously the stock torpedo couldn't. Surviving planetary impact, on the other hand, doesn't require very strong shields, nor does bypassing shields themselves, torpedoes have to do that normally to pass through the firing ship's shields in the first place.

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Agreed, there is no evidence that torpedoes are generally shielded. Nor is there proof that this torpedo was shielded. You can speculate, but you have no proof. As for those specially designed shields, you realize that there's a large difference between keeping inorganic devices going and keeping complicated lifeforms from getting a sudden lethal dose of radiation?

As for the torpedoes, they may just be really tough. The Enterprise D's hull--without the metaphasic shielding, rose to 12,000 C--and the people inside were still alive. In fact, there didn't appear to be any sort of major deformations in the hull or any real structural damage. All we saw was the ship's armor begin to glow. For comparison, gold melts at about 1,000 C. The Enterprise D's windows were still there.

And torpedoes are made with duranium, which is used in ship hull construction. And we might imagine that there are other materials the torpedo could be made of.

It may not be economical to try and detonate a torpedo.

3. Because they can't, at least not for beam weapons. It's a beam, it goes in a straight line, and if you move the path it's following the torpedo can follow.

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The fact is though, they generally don't bother with using phasers to take out torpedoes. I mean, you really liked assuming that they generally don't do beneficial stuff simply because you don't see it enough, but you have one, ONE example (which makes no sense in-universe, no matter how you slice it) of them doing this to their own torpedo and suddenly it's proof that everyone in the setting is just too stupid to defend against one of the most dangerous and numerous weapons in the setting?

This is what leads me to believe you act rather disingenuous on this topic.

I don't think that's how it works, that you can just keep piling on more and more emitters and the shield will just constantly get stronger. Alternatively, if they can make generators powerful enough to easily survive inside a sun, and can make enough to fit them on ever single torpedo, why not just use a bunch of those all over the ship, it'd be invincible.

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Well, it depends on a lot of factors. For example, how long would the torpedo be exposed to that heat? If you only expect the torpedo to be exposed to the heat for a few seconds, then maybe the material is tough enough to survive. Instead of say, a ship that carries people and needs to still exist a few seconds from now.