What If? Star Trek Federation is transported into the 40k galaxy

[Sailor.X]

Regarding the overrall thread topic, for the record I don't think the federation is all that likely to run into significant opposition from the imperium. Yes, the imperium won't like them, they're clearly all heretics and blah blah, but the imperium doesn't like a lot of people and unlike, say, the Tau, the Federation isn't trying to manifest destiny a bunch of imperial planets. There will be conflict here and there when a segmentum commander tries to conquer some little chunk of the federation,and sometimes win and sometimes not, but it's going to be, in 40k terms, little more than skirmish and small wars (in ST terms I'd put it somewhere between the Klingon/Federation war in mid DS9 and the Dominion War).

Ditto orks, Tau, Eldar, etc. The federation is going to see its fair share of fighting but they're not going to catapult to the tip of anyone's "kill all these guys right now" lists. Most likely result is either they collapse from the constant pressure after a few centuries or they shrink down to a more defensible size as they tech up and reorganize.



You are overstating the difficulty on the imperium end, and drastically so. The imperium has FTL communications, and they're functionally enough to run a military. Imperial warp drive is not precise, but it reliably gets ships where they need to be at a roughly predictable time.

No, you can't time an offensive down to the minute or call on reinforcements to help you out mid-battle, but you're talking like the imperium will send 10 ships to take a planet, and half of them will arrive there sometime between 2 months ago and 20 years from now, with the other half ending up in the wrong system by accident, and that's not the case either.

GW invokes a lot of age of sail tropes when it comes to the warp, and that should be your guideline. So you'll know roughly how long a trip will take and roughly where they'll end up,, and some routes will be faster than others because of currents in the warp (even if the distance in real space is the same), but it's not a total crapshoot as to what happens when you give an order.



A response time of days still favors the imperium significantly, because imperial ships outmatch federation ones by a massive degree. You don't need to get a few ships to respond to an imperial incursion, you need a ton of ships. And the federation doesn't have dozens and dozens of ships within a two day range of every single planet, it will take time to gather them up and assemble a counterforce (also, needing only a few dozen ships to match a small imperial fleet is being very generous to the federation).

Add it gets much, much harder if you gave to respond to more than one crisis at once.



This is the same episode that stated the Romulans fought the Earth Romulan war with only impulse drive, and only figured out FTL drive at some point post balance of terror. You can't take every bit of the series as gospel, and particularly not TOS given the writers were still figuring out how everything was supposed to work.

I will put this here.



He has a whole playlist on the Romulan Earth War as well.

 

[Crom's Black Blade]

Regarding the overrall thread topic, for the record I don't think the federation is all that likely to run into significant opposition from the imperium. Yes, the imperium won't like them, they're clearly all heretics and blah blah, but the imperium doesn't like a lot of people and unlike, say, the Tau, the Federation isn't trying to manifest destiny a bunch of imperial planets. There will be conflict here and there when a segmentum commander tries to conquer some little chunk of the federation,and sometimes win and sometimes not, but it's going to be, in 40k terms, little more than skirmish and small wars (in ST terms I'd put it somewhere between the Klingon/Federation war in mid DS9 and the Dominion War).

Ditto orks, Tau, Eldar, etc. The federation is going to see its fair share of fighting but they're not going to catapult to the tip of anyone's "kill all these guys right now" lists. Most likely result is either they collapse from the constant pressure after a few centuries or they shrink down to a more defensible size as they tech up and reorganize.

I would largely agree with the above.

You are overstating the difficulty on the imperium end, and drastically so. The imperium has FTL communications, and they're functionally enough to run a military. Imperial warp drive is not precise, but it reliably gets ships where they need to be at a roughly predictable time.

The Imperium certainly can communicate at FTL velocities but it's more an analogue to age of sail sending messages which can arrives days or weeks later. Which means its going to be operationally slower. Granted it's not just their lack of real-time communications. The Imperium is described as being slow and bureaucratic taking decades if not longer to respond to a distress signal if they can find the resources to respond to them at all.

No, you can't time an offensive down to the minute or call on reinforcements to help you out mid-battle, but you're talking like the imperium will send 10 ships to take a planet, and half of them will arrive there sometime between 2 months ago and 20 years from now, with the other half ending up in the wrong system by accident, and that's not the case either.

GW invokes a lot of age of sail tropes when it comes to the warp, and that should be your guideline. So you'll know roughly how long a trip will take and roughly where they'll end up,, and some routes will be faster than others because of currents in the warp (even if the distance in real space is the same), but it's not a total crapshoot as to what happens when you give an order.

My position is closer that the Imperium has to travel such farther distances and is so slow to respond operationally they'll struggle to ever achieve the initiative. That the group could find itself running straight into half of Starfleet because a lone ship arrived a week early and inadvertently tipped the Federation of a coming attack. And that the Imperium will be in the dark on if the attack succeeded or failed for quite some time after which will hinder their ability to counter what the Federation is doing.

That rather than winning anything resembling the OODA loop, the Imperium will have to rely on sheer brute firepower and numbers thrown almost blindly into the fray.

A response time of days still favors the imperium significantly, because imperial ships outmatch federation ones by a massive degree. You don't need to get a few ships to respond to an imperial incursion, you need a ton of ships. And the federation doesn't have dozens and dozens of ships within a two day range of every single planet, it will take time to gather them up and assemble a counterforce (also, needing only a few dozen ships to match a small imperial fleet is being very generous to the federation).

Well, it depends. In the Voyager episode "Endgame" they had 18 ships within minutes of a Borg transwarp aperture being detected a lightyear from Earth with 9 more in-route. They likely could have gotten a lot more there over a 2-day period. So its seems the Federation learned its lesson from Wolf 359.

Nor should we discount the Federation both upteching and up-sizing their navy post-arriving in the 40k universe.

And once we get into the tactical side of the battle in-system things appear equally dreary for the Imperium with Starfleet able to dictate when and were combat takes place, having perfect intel thanks to their sensors while being able to warp in harass and then bug out leaving the Imperial fleet coasting towards the planet.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

The biggest threat to the Fed is going to be if they somehow sod of the IoM and cause a Crusade to be called. A few hundred IoM Warships would be an existential threat to them.

The Federation will be trying to figure out what's up with the players in the galaxy, and they are not used to the sheer insanity that is 40K OR what may light off the Machanicus or Inquisition or insert insane-faction-of-the-week.

 

[Battlegrinder]

I will put this here.

The Imperium certainly can communicate at FTL velocities but it's more an analogue to age of sail sending messages which can arrives days or weeks later. Which means its going to be operationally slower. Granted it's not just their lack of real-time communications. The Imperium is described as being slow and bureaucratic taking decades if not longer to respond to a distress signal if they can find the resources to respond to them at all.

That's incorrect on one count, and exaggerated on the other.

The imperium has instant FTL comms, via astropaths, there's no significant delay between sending and receiving a message. Those messages are not always detailed, but basic information can usually be sent just fine.

The imperium can be slow to respond to distress calls and take decades to mobilize a response, but that's not the default. In the Cain books, for example, the imperium regularly manages to scramble reinforcements to the front in a timely manner, and the delay is largely in terms of just making the trip rather than red tape stalling the deployment.

Well, it depends. In the Voyager episode "Endgame" they had 18 ships within minutes of a Borg transwarp aperture being detected a lightyear from Earth with 9 more in-route. They likely could have gotten a lot more there over a 2-day period. So its seems the Federation learned its lesson from Wolf 359.

And when Japan launched it's attack on Pearl Harbor, they ran into US navy forces almost the second they arrived. Therefor if they'd attacked, say, Anchorage, the response would have been just as fast, right?

And once we get into the tactical side of the battle in-system things appear equally dreary for the Imperium with Starfleet able to dictate when and were combat takes place, having perfect intel thanks to their sensors while being able to warp in harass and then bug out leaving the Imperial fleet coasting towards the planet.

Not quite. The imperium will dictate where the battle takes place, since they're attacking a target and the federation will try to stop them, the Federation will have to engage them along that course. The "prefect intel" I would heavily doubt, there's no reason to presume federation sensors are superior to imperial sensors (or imperial electronic warfare systems, for that matter), and you ignore that imperium has tools of it's own. What's the federation response to imperial psykers precognitively anticipating the federation's actions?

The only accurate bit is that the federation can more easily use hit and run tactics, but that in and of itself is of little value. Today, hit and run tactics work because the ambushing forces possess similar firepower to their targets, and can inflict meaningful damage before retreating, and damage they do take is minimal. That is not the case here, the federation does not enjoy firepower parity with the imperium, they'll do less damage on the attack and will take a lot more when the imperium responds.

 

[Sailor.X]

That's incorrect on one count, and exaggerated on the other.

The imperium has instant FTL comms, via astropaths, there's no significant delay between sending and receiving a message. Those messages are not always detailed, but basic information can usually be sent just fine.

The imperium can be slow to respond to distress calls and take decades to mobilize a response, but that's not the default. In the Cain books, for example, the imperium regularly manages to scramble reinforcements to the front in a timely manner, and the delay is largely in terms of just making the trip rather than red tape stalling the deployment.



And when Japan launched it's attack on Pearl Harbor, they ran into US navy forces almost the second they arrived. Therefor if they'd attacked, say, Anchorage, the response would have been just as fast, right?




Not quite. The imperium will dictate where the battle takes place, since they're attacking a target and the federation will try to stop them, the Federation will have to engage them along that course. The "prefect intel" I would heavily doubt, there's no reason to presume federation sensors are superior to imperial sensors (or imperial electronic warfare systems, for that matter), and you ignore that imperium has tools of it's own. What's the federation response to imperial psykers precognitively anticipating the federation's actions?

The only accurate bit is that the federation can more easily use hit and run tactics, but that in and of itself is of little value. Today, hit and run tactics work because the ambushing forces possess similar firepower to their targets, and can inflict meaningful damage before retreating, and damage they do take is minimal. That is not the case here, the federation does not enjoy firepower parity with the imperium, they'll do less damage on the attack and will take a lot more when the imperium responds.

Could you elaborate as to what is incorrect. The last time I checked S'Task was our resident Romulan Expert.

 

[Knowledgeispower]

I will note that if need be the federation has awfully long list of shit they don't use normally that are stupidly scary. Hell even merely the phase cloak is super useful. Let alone some of the other stuff whose specs are buried in the archives. Trans Phasic Torpedoes for one

 

[Battlegrinder]

Could you elaborate as to what is incorrect. The last time I checked S'Task was our resident Romulan Expert.

Sorry, forgot I quoted you. The video you linked is neat, but it's just fanfiction, and unless there's a specific point you from it you want to address, I don't want to watch a 25 minute video for this.

 

[Crom's Black Blade]

That's incorrect on one count, and exaggerated on the other.

The imperium has instant FTL comms, via astropaths, there's no significant delay between sending and receiving a message. Those messages are not always detailed, but basic information can usually be sent just fine.

Communication via Astropaths was what I was refering too actually which was the only form of FTL communication, other than using message boats like the Tau, I was under the impression the Imperium had. To quote from the rule book :

Only astropathic communication can bridge the vast distances between Imperial worlds' passing from one straining warp-sensitive mind to another through the treacherous dimension of the immaterium, this process of psychic messaging is heavy with symbolism, vagary and inaccuracy.

Page 20

With the Wiki stating cross communication across a Sector can take "weeks" and Inter-Segmentum communications can take "months".

So I'd be curious which book show instant astropathic communication and which show another FTL form of communication employed by the Imperium.

The imperium can be slow to respond to distress calls and take decades to mobilize a response, but that's not the default. In the Cain books, for example, the imperium regularly manages to scramble reinforcements to the front in a timely manner, and the delay is largely in terms of just making the trip rather than red tape stalling the deployment.

I'm not sure we have a hard fix on most of the response times in the Cain books. They are undoubtedly on the shorter end but, at least off the cuff of my memory, I don't think we have anything that would contradict the lower band of "months" giving in the rulebook. Which isn't exactly the swiftest response.

And when Japan launched it's attack on Pearl Harbor, they ran into US navy forces almost the second they arrived. Therefor if they'd attacked, say, Anchorage, the response would have been just as fast, right?

I wouldn't say that, no. But then I never claimed the Endgame example would be a literal 1 to 1 example for every system no matter how remote. It is an example of what I was talking about, of Starfleet being able to quickly shift resources to a surprise appearing on their doorstep.

Which, as I said, means how quickly they can shift resources to a particular incursion is going to depend on numerous factors many of which we can only speculate on. Such as how quickly and effectively can Starfleet upgun their fleet, how quickly and to what extant can they increase numbers ect.

Not quite. The imperium will dictate where the battle takes place, since they're attacking a target and the federation will try to stop them, the Federation will have to engage them along that course. The "prefect intel" I would heavily doubt, there's no reason to presume federation sensors are superior to imperial sensors (or imperial electronic warfare systems, for that matter), and you ignore that imperium has tools of it's own. What's the federation response to imperial psykers precognitively anticipating the federation's actions?

I don't see how the Imperium can dictate the battle if they are dropping out days from their target and slow-boating it in as we've been discussing. Starfleet can use tactical warp drive to drop in, attack and bug out all while, to the Imperium's perspective, appearing and disappearing into the ether.

In terms of sensors you are welcome to post examples but my impression was that they viewed a star system as this big thing were enemy ships could hide and ambush. Where as in Trek any two ships can usually detect each other in a starsystem or frequently outside of a star system.

But I am willing to look at examples.

Considering how technologically stagnant the Imperium is, where even their tech-priests view innovation as borderline heresy, and how alien Starfleet technology is it's doubtful they will employ any meaningful ECM measures. If anything Starfleet will be more likely to mess with their systems.

Similarly you can post examples of how they use Pyskers in battle. From my knowledge it rarely comes up in battle but I am again willing to hear your examples.

The only accurate bit is that the federation can more easily use hit and run tactics, but that in and of itself is of little value. Today, hit and run tactics work because the ambushing forces possess similar firepower to their targets, and can inflict meaningful damage before retreating, and damage they do take is minimal. That is not the case here, the federation does not enjoy firepower parity with the imperium, they'll do less damage on the attack and will take a lot more when the imperium responds.

For the record I'm assuming they do not enjoy firepower parity, no. If they did it would pretty much be a turkey shoot at this point.

I think you are greatly underestimating the effect of constantly being ambushed for days at a time. Their only warning when a ship drops out of warp to unload a volley of torpedoes and then vanishing seconds later. The fact there's a coin flip on whether or not their Void shields will even stop said torpedoes. The difficulty in acquiring a target in that small window especially in a messy, constantly changing battle environment.

 

[Zachowon]

@The Whispering Monk I chose what I did because it would be unfair to count subspace as thw Warp because I don't see them as the same.
Add in I feel like that would make this heavily lopsided

 

[Sailor.X]

For the record I'm assuming they do not enjoy firepower parity, no. If they did it would pretty much be a turkey shoot at this point.

I think you are greatly underestimating the effect of constantly being ambushed for days at a time. Their only warning when a ship drops out of warp to unload a volley of torpedoes and then vanishing seconds later. The fact there's a coin flip on whether or not their Void shields will even stop said torpedoes. The difficulty in acquiring a target in that small window especially in a messy, constantly changing battle environment.

We actually have an analog to such combat on film



The Borg Cube got kited down with hit and run attacks over several hours

 

[Crom's Black Blade]

We actually have an analog to such combat on film



The Borg Cube got kited down with hit and run attacks over several hours

Love it!

The Borg: Lower your shields and surrender your ships. Resistance is futile.

Starfleet: Fuck that! Shoot them!

 

[Sailor.X]

Love it!

The Borg: Lower your shields and surrender your ships. Resistance is futile.

Starfleet: Fuck that! Shoot them!

And had that fight taken place in the 25th Century. That Cube would have died even faster.

 

[Battlegrinder]

So I'd be curious which book show instant astropathic communication and which show another FTL form of communication employed by the Imperium.

Ok, that might have been my bad, I checked the other wiki, which said this:

Being soul-bonded with the Emperor is necessary, however, as it greatly heightens an Astropath's already formidable psychic powers and gives them the ability for which they were chosen -- to send telepathic messages through space instantaneously across large interstellar distances, thereby becoming the main network of interstellar communications in the Imperium.

I'm not sure we have a hard fix on most of the response times in the Cain books. They are undoubtedly on the shorter end but, at least off the cuff of my memory, I don't think we have anything that would contradict the lower band of "months" giving in the rulebook. Which isn't exactly the swiftest response.

Caves of Ice and Traitor's Hand come to mind, where the imperium sends backup to a planet where orks crash landed on another hemisphere in time to defend the one installation on the planet, and in the latter they not only hear about a Chaos raiding fleet hitting a world, they hear about it in time to anticipate it's next target and bet them to the target.

I don't see how the Imperium can dictate the battle if they are dropping out days from their target and slow-boating it in as we've been discussing. Starfleet can use tactical warp drive to drop in, attack and bug out all while, to the Imperium's perspective, appearing and disappearing into the ether.

The federation can't hit and run and escape unscathed. It takes time drop out, it takes time to get a firing solution, it takes time to fire off a salvo, it takes time to fire up the engines and jump out. Given that imperial ships have guns pointed out at every arc, they can easily return fire during that process. They'll probably miss a lot, but they'll get hits in, and the feds will take those hits a lot worse than the imperials will.

In terms of sensors you are welcome to post examples but my impression was that they viewed a star system as this big thing were enemy ships could hide and ambush. Where as in Trek any two ships can usually detect each other in a starsystem or frequently outside of a star system.

Yes and no. ST ships tend to run active sensors all the time, so they have an easier time finding one another. 40K ships do not, and so can hide from each other a bit better.

But ST ships are not as good as they're cracked up to be, it's entirely possible for a ship to hide from another ship within the same system without using a cloaking device. Peak Performance comes to mind, where a Ferengi ship ambushed the Enterprise, with the enterprise only detecting them once they got to extremely close range.

Considering how technologically stagnant the Imperium is, where even their tech-priests view innovation as borderline heresy, and how alien Starfleet technology is it's doubtful they will employ any meaningful ECM measures. If anything Starfleet will be more likely to mess with their systems.

That doesn't make any sense. We know the imperium has ECM technology, the fact that they're anti-innovation doesn't mean they wouldn't have ECM or use the ECM that they do have. It means they would be slow to develop new ECM tech, and would instead just continue to reproduce the examples they already have.

Similarly you can post examples of how they use Pyskers in battle. From my knowledge it rarely comes up in battle but I am again willing to hear your examples.

I don't have a quote of it happening, but it's entirely possible. The imperials have pskyers, and some psykters have precognitive abilities, so this is a tactic well within their means.

For the record I'm assuming they do not enjoy firepower parity, no. If they did it would pretty much be a turkey shoot at this point.

I think you are greatly underestimating the effect of constantly being ambushed for days at a time. Their only warning when a ship drops out of warp to unload a volley of torpedoes and then vanishing seconds later. The fact there's a coin flip on whether or not their Void shields will even stop said torpedoes. The difficulty in acquiring a target in that small window especially in a messy, constantly changing battle environment.

You assume they don't have sensors capable of detecting the ST ships coming in, assuming the ST ships can fire and disengage within mere seconds, that there torpedoes will penetrate void shells merely because they're physical objects (macro cannon shells are physical, but don't pen void shields), that it'll be a "messy, constantly changing enviroment", that feds can actually put out enough damage to meaningfully hurt the imperials (void shields are layered, regenerate fast and recharge fast, so if you don't make a rapid followup hit they'll just restore thier shields and take no damage), and that return shots from the imperium will be so ineffective that the feds can maintain this for days, rather than bleeding away as they take hits as well.

So, basically it's a great plan, unless the imperials do literally anything to screw it up.

 

[Crom's Black Blade]

Ok, that might have been my bad

No worries and considering how inconsistent 40k can be at times it wouldn't surprise me if both statements are true.

Caves of Ice and Traitor's Hand come to mind, where the imperium sends backup to a planet where orks crash landed on another hemisphere in time to defend the one installation on the planet, and in the latter they not only hear about a Chaos raiding fleet hitting a world, they hear about it in time to anticipate it's next target and bet them to the target.

Is there any hard details on how long the Orks have been on the planet in Caves of Ice? If the Orks landed in another hemisphere and the Promethium refinery is the only installation on it I could see it taking a while for things to progress to where the story started.

The Traitor's Hand does sound like it sharp contradiction to the usual 40k time table. Was it presented as standard or unusual? On the other hand in Death and Glory we find out, through one of the various excerpts of book within the book, that it was "several months" from the time the Orks invaded before the first of the Imperial Guard arrived. Page 44, Defender of the Imperium Omnibus.

The federation can't hit and run and escape unscathed. It takes time drop out, it takes time to get a firing solution, it takes time to fire off a salvo, it takes time to fire up the engines and jump out. Given that imperial ships have guns pointed out at every arc, they can easily return fire during that process. They'll probably miss a lot, but they'll get hits in, and the feds will take those hits a lot worse than the imperials will.

Completely unscathed? No, of course not. Ships will be lost.

But the window to hit a ship is going to be quite small. For an example of how quickly Starfleet can identify and hit a target watch the clip from First Contact that @Sailor.X where in under a minute the fleet could be directed to concentrate their fire on a key system of the Borg ship. So isn't like a random starship has to sit motionless computing targeting data or anything.

While it various depending on the class, most Starfleet ships can have some maneuverability which will further make it harder to hit anything outside of blind chance. And that this will be part of an ever growing swarm of ships presenting multiple targets appearing and vanishing which is going to perplex Imperial gunners and risk shots being wasted at ghosts of where ships were moments before they jumped back into warp.

Hour after hour, day after day. It can certainly add up.

Yes and no. ST ships tend to run active sensors all the time, so they have an easier time finding one another. 40K ships do not, and so can hide from each other a bit better.

But ST ships are not as good as they're cracked up to be, it's entirely possible for a ship to hide from another ship within the same system without using a cloaking device. Peak Performance comes to mind, where a Ferengi ship ambushed the Enterprise, with the enterprise only detecting them once they got to extremely close range.

Peak Performance is a pretty poor example to cite. The ship was detected approaching at Warp five but was dismissed because they thought it was a sensor trick. If anything the example confirms the Federation have a very long range and the Imperial fleet will be identified and tracked from the moment they land in-system.

As for 40k, if they can scan at the range and detail why wouldn't they? It would make more sense than not using it and risking entering into an unseen enemy's range of fire.

That doesn't make any sense. We know the imperium has ECM technology, the fact that they're anti-innovation doesn't mean they wouldn't have ECM or use the ECM that they do have. It means they would be slow to develop new ECM tech, and would instead just continue to reproduce the examples they already have.

Yes, and Starfleet both employs technology that uses the completelyunknown to them subspace and are quite good with fiddling their tech. There's no reason to assume Imperial ECM is going to be particularly effective against them.

You assume they don't have sensors capable of detecting the ST ships coming in, assuming the ST ships can fire and disengage within mere seconds, that there torpedoes will penetrate void shells merely because they're physical objects (macro cannon shells are physical, but don't pen void shields), that it'll be a "messy, constantly changing enviroment", that feds can actually put out enough damage to meaningfully hurt the imperials (void shields are layered, regenerate fast and recharge fast, so if you don't make a rapid followup hit they'll just restore thier shields and take no damage), and that return shots from the imperium will be so ineffective that the feds can maintain this for days, rather than bleeding away as they take hits as well.

The inability to detect Starfleet ships is multi-faceted. One their sensor ranges appears to be quite limited as I alluded to earlier and which you kind of agreed with while also not but not further elaborating. So a Federation vessel sitting say a couple of AU's out likely couldn't be reliably detected. Second the ships would be moving in and out at warp speed. To my knowledge the Imperium doesn't have the ability to track FTL targets since no one, outside of maybe the Necron, utilize an FTL along those lines. They instead employ jumpdrives or tunnels outside of space time ect. Much like how the Federation can't detect a Warp engine equipped vessel the Imperium is going to be equally blind to warp-equipped ships.

I have already elaborated on why a few seconds to drop from warp and fire and retreat isn't an unfair assessment. So I won't repeat myself.

In the particular statement you are replying towards I am not assuming the torpedoes will go through Void shields. I said it's a coin toss because their abilities are inconsistent per you.

The fact that dozens if not hundreds of vessels swarming around the Imperial fleet warping in and out will be a messy, constantly changing environment largely goes without saying. I suppose you could put the best possible spin and say its a target rich environment but I've not so far been overly impressed with Imperial accuracy. But again any examples you have I'd be happy to look at.

That the starships can do meaningful damage depends on how many starships there are, how upgunned the Federation has become, how many Imperial ships there are ect.

And of course any examples of how quickly Void shields can be brought back up would be lovely to look at.

Further if you have examples of them instantly nailing targets a few hundred meters in length in the span of mere seconds I will be glad to revise my opinion.

I don't have a quote of it happening, but it's entirely possible. The imperials have pskyers, and some psykters have precognitive abilities, so this is a tactic well within their means.

Without any data on the Pysker(s), how their ability was used, how wide spread it is ect there's really nothing I can determine.

 

[Husky_Khan]

We actually have an analog to such combat on film



The Borg Cube got kited down with hit and run attacks over several hours

Where is the scene of the Federation ships warping in and out of combat since that is the main tactic being suggested here?

 

[Sailor.X]

Where is the scene of the Federation ships warping in and out of combat since that is the main tactic being suggested here?

Might be in one of the DS9 Episodes. I am at work now. I will have to search over the weekend.

 

[Crom's Black Blade]

Where is the scene of the Federation ships warping in and out of combat since that is the main tactic being suggested here?

Fair question. There isn't such a scene in that clip. However it wouldn't be a very effective tactic in the Star Trek galaxy since any peer opponent could easily follow/return fire.

Edit: To elaborate further, I'd argue that under more ideal circumstances the tactic is pretty lack-luster jumping in and out of warp to engage and retreat. It would only really be with Imperium ships, who can require days to travel in-system to a target, or similar ships without any tactical FTL drive or ability to engage FTL targets that the tactic starts making sense. And even then only because of how deadly the Imperial fire is going to be if it lands.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

But the window to hit a ship is going to be quite small. For an example of how quickly Starfleet can identify and hit a target watch the clip from First Contact that @Sailor.X where in under a minute the fleet could be directed to concentrate their fire on a key system of the Borg ship. So isn't like a random starship has to sit motionless computing targeting data or anything.

1. Despite their vaunted sensors, the Federation ships were completely unable to detect the vulnerable point in question. Picard had to order them to manually target this coordinate based on tapping the Borg Cube's own systems using his remaining implants, and even then Data immediately protested that this "did not appear to be a vital system".

2. After Picard stated he was "taking command of the fleet", he ordered every surviving ship to target and fire on the coordinates he gave. We then see on screen only seven ships (including Enterprise) firing on that spot with several volleys of phasers and then also torpedoes. This makes it clear that the Federation lacks tactical networking or even basic automated target handoff capability; orders to coordinate fire need to be relayed verbally and manually executed by individual ships "as they bear".

 

[ShadowArxxy]

Fair question. There isn't such a scene in that clip. However it wouldn't be a very effective tactic in the Star Trek galaxy since any peer opponent could easily follow/return fire.

It is mentioned by Picard himself in "Star Trek: Picard" that the Picard Maneuver is completely useless against a large fleet. The reason is not explicitly stated, but appears self-evident -- a large fleet can simply fire at both locations at once instead of having to pick one. Unfortunately, this also makes the Picard Maneuver equally useless against even single 40K warships, which are capable of engaging multiple targets at once using their numerous independently targeted, simultaneously powered weapons batteries.

 

[Sailor.X]

1. Despite their vaunted sensors, the Federation ships were completely unable to detect the vulnerable point in question. Picard had to order them to manually target this coordinate based on tapping the Borg Cube's own systems using his remaining implants, and even then Data immediately protested that this "did not appear to be a vital system".

2. After Picard stated he was "taking command of the fleet", he ordered every surviving ship to target and fire on the coordinates he gave. We then see on screen only seven ships (including Enterprise) firing on that spot with several volleys of phasers and then also torpedoes. This makes it clear that the Federation lacks tactical networking or even basic automated target handoff capability; orders to coordinate fire need to be relayed verbally and manually executed by individual ships "as they bear".

Or you know Picard and Starfleet remembers what happened at Wolf 359 and was not gonna repeat that mistake.