Starfleet vs UNSC Ground Troops

[The Original Sixth]

Transporters are useful, but I think the issue is that without more supporting firepower, supporting firepower the UFP does not unequivocally possess (yes, they have worf's fancy bazooka, but it's observed firepower is on par with a grenade launcher. Any anti-tank capacity is conjectural), simply being able to move troops into position* doesn't help, because they won't be in a position to do anything. It is very difficult to win against a combined arms force, or even a partially functionally combined arms force, with only small arms, particularly inferior small arms.

I reject the argument that Starfleet doesn't use combined arms, simply because they don't have tanks rolling around on the battlefield. We see plenty of incidents where Starfleet will use shuttles, fighters, and roundabouts to support ground forces. Indeed, even the ships themselves with their transporters are a form of combined arms, as it's used to enhance the combat capability of Starfleet. And indeed they combine these with things like forcefields.

The bazooka is a non-issue, as we know that phasers can be readily set to a level that will take out any tank the UNSC has. They're simply another tool in their arsenal.

Federation phasers are, plausibly, more lethal per shot than a bullet, though as they're rarely used at the full power "make people go away" setting in combat there appears to be some limitations (either technical or doctrinal) to how they can be used.

And rare does not translate to "not used at all". There are several reasons why someone doesn't want to use that setting.

1) It probably drains the power from the phaser at a considerable rate.
2) It can be a danger to the user, should they miss or otherwise be forced to fire at someone closer.

We also know that phasers can be adjusted to several settings between vaporize and kill. The fact that this is not useful in most common security incidents, which is most of what we see in the series, doesn't really change the large strategic advantage phasers use. Especially against an opponent that does use heavy, unshielded mechanized units.

That is their solo advantage, UNSC weapons have a greater rate of fire,

...You know you can just squeeze the trigger on a phaser and it keeps firing, right? Granted, that's probably not recommended, given that it's probably likely to overheat, but phasers can sustain fire for a good while.

enabling a greater ability to employ suppressive fire and other modern infantry tactics, they have a comparable to superior range for most weapons (the federation has no sniper or DMR), and while a bullet wound may not be as lethal, it will be lethal enough. A single firefight could go either way, but over the course of a sustained conflict the UNSC will have the edge (it does not help the few non-combat uses phasers have, such as allowing federation troops to rapidly breach through walls, will be things the UNSC is already wary of as brutes and elites are known to do the same, and any such breech attempt can be detected beforehand via motion trackers).

I think there are various advantages that you overlook for Starfleet. Specifically;

1) Greater Situational Awareness. You brought up motion sensors. Good point. Well, everyone in Starfleet pretty much has a tricorder glued to their hip. Said tricorder is capable of scanning anything within several kilometers of themselves. Most ranges for troop-mounted motion sensors is what, a few hundred feet at most? Maybe a klick? And this does not include the information that the UFP soldiers would have from the ships and probes in orbit. The GCS and Akira in orbit can map out the planet's cave systems, let alone get detailed maps for the local geography. They're going to know where the UNSC has to travel through, where the best place to hit them will be, and they'll always be there to take advantage of it.

2) The Logistics Problem. The UFP doesn't need to hit the UNSC directly. They can target their supply train. Sure, they're safe in a cozy base or maybe even when flown in by pelican, were I to concede air superiority--but there's going to be a lot of travel on foot. That means supply wagons. It means supply chains. It means Starfleet can raid those supply convoys anytime they wish. The UFP does not have this problem. They can move troops and supplies around pretty much at will with their transporters.

3) Greater Mobility. A GCS could, using its personal transporters, easily beam 11.6 people from one part of the planet to another part of the planet every minute. The response time that Starfleet has would be incredible. You want to talk about combined arms? Imagine four UNSC firing squads pinning two UFP firing squads in a forest or valley. Within 2 minutes, the UFP could have 23 more troops arrive, in a flanking position on those troops. Or even a convoy of UNSC troops moving through a valley or a field. A full company of UNSC troops that could take hours cross through that area. The UFP could put 250 troops in the area in about 20-30 minutes. It's not like the UNSC is going to be able to consistently neutralize this advantage either; they are often times caught unawares by Covenant forces or otherwise outmaneuvered.

4) Disruptive Firepower. I agree that the disadvantage of a phaser is that it cannot be used for suppressive fire in the same way that a modern rifle can. However, let's look at what the weapon can do. A single shot is enough to kill any soldier with a solid hit to the torso. It rarely fails. Even a shot to the limb generally causes someone to lose that limb. The real advantage though, is the heavy firepower a phaser carries at level 16. Large vehicles like tanks, warthogs, troop transports, and even pelicans become really exposed when they enter this sort of environment. Instead of needing a dedicated launcher to take out something like a pelican or a tank, anyone in Starfleet with a rifle or a pistol can be a potential threat. They don't even need to max out the phaser. Large vehicles that the UNSC relies upon for its combined arms can be quickly eliminated. What's more, the UFP is more often than not, going to have an idea where that material is and how it can be destroyed.

I would also dispute the idea that federation photon grenades are any sort of anti-personal weapon. The federation has never been seen to use any sort of lethal anti-personal grenade, they have only used stun grenades and not during the time period cited here. Even in circumstances where they would have been useful, they were never employed.

You really have no evidence that photon grenades are anti-material weapons. It seems especially pointless when they have things like phasers, which are already about as anti-material as you can get without pulling out some really heavy explosives. It would also seem rather odd to me, at least, that Lyton would think that anti-material grenades would be useful in defending Earth from a Dominion invasion.

For example, in Seige of AR 558, the federation was forced to relay a dominion minefield, rather than simply setting a few of their grenades as tripwire traps instead (or alongside). It seems more likely they're the federation equivalent of modern thermite grenades, which are anti-material weapons and not anti-personal.

The problem with that theory is that we've had aliens using weapons identified as photon grenades and they were always explosives of some sort. See Gravity and Living Witness, although in fairness, the photon grenade in Gravity looked more like an rigged bomb than an actual grenade. It also doesn't really make sense to me, that the UFP would use anti-material grenades when the various bombs we see them employ throughout the series. Nor would I understand why Lyton would stockpile them in an anticipated Dominion invasion, given how little armor that they'd be using. Especially when they already have phasers.

As for why they didn't use them in AR 558, they may simply have not had any. In the middle of a war, in a highly contested zone, they may simply of not had them on hand when they were restocking the men on the ground. Starfleet had already failed to rotate the people who were there out, so it's no stretch to believe that they didn't have sufficient grenades.

The UNSC also has a substantial edge in terms of overall combat equipment. A UNSC soldier deploys with NVG, rations, water, survival equipment, all of the standard issue kit that soldiers are expected to need. The federation does not carry most of that equipment, and in some cases what they have is not up to par. The UNSC, as mentioned, has night vision equipment. The federation has flashlights (and tricorders, but tricorders can't help you aim in the dark).

Neither will a flashlight, all things considered. Phaser rifles already come with their own holographic displays and built-in sensors. As for rations and other survival gear, they do carry rations, we know that. O'Brien loves them. The fact is though, Starfleet relies heavily on their transporters and sensors. This is a flaw, to be sure, but it means that their troops really don't need to carry all this gear. Because they can be in a completely different geography ten minutes afterwards.

The federation does possess starfighters, which based on the performance of shuttles, should be roughly as capable in atmo as they are in space. However, the galaxy class doesn't carry them, and I don't know if the Akira does either. In some secondary canon it does, but the show never says it so, and akiras regularly engage in combat where fighters are nowhere to be seen, which implies that if they are carried, they are not normally loaded aboard.

The Akira was designed with those large bays to deploy fighters. Secondary canon suggests they carry 40 fighters, so that's what I'm going with, in addition to about a dozen or so other shuttlecraft they employ. The GCS employs about 32 various shuttles and 5 special shuttlecraft (such as runabouts).

As air support is not common in ST battlefields, it seems at least possibly they would leave the fighters behind and save them for a more important front.

They use fighters for ground assaults plenty. From the Maquis to the Dominion War. I don't see why they wouldn't want to make use of them here?

That leaves them with shuttles, which are, as @The Original Sixth suggested, capable of engaging in air to air and air to ground combat. Though I would question some of his conclusions. The fact that the ruse in Lower Decks required making it look as though hand phaser fire attempted to down a federation shuttle, or the federation soldier in Nor the Battle that sacrificed his life to protect his platoon's troop transport from being shot down by Klingon infantry, both suggest a far greater vulnerability than the incident he cited (perhaps fighters are far tougher than shuttles, or atmospheric operations degrade their shields to massive extant?). But that's getting into stat quibble that I really don't care for.

Well, a fighter or a rounabout, which is what I was referring to as taking shots from a Galor, is going to be far less durable. Do you recall what was used in Lower Decks? Because it could have been a fairly small shuttlecraft. In any case, we know that larger shuttles are pretty capable. Voyager's Type9 shuttle was armed with Type V phasers when it blew apart a semi. And it was able to move at hypersonic speeds to reach Paris and his friend before it took that semi out.

The bigger issue is pilots. Merely because someone can fly a shuttle does not mean they can fly a shuttle into a dogfight, or conduct a strafing run. As in real life, that takes a degree of skill and training, and pilots with that sort of training are uncommon (Tom Paris being the only example of a federation shuttle pilot with a proven talent for dogfighting, and he's an unusual case). It is unlikely that the ships in question here will have a set of utility craft pilots that are up to air combat

What? They have squadron groups in Starfleet Academy. Wesley was part of one. I think Picard might have been one. Riker and Geordie were also considered accomplished pilots. I expect not everyone who flies a shuttle is skilled in using it as a weapon, to be sure, but there's no reason why they couldn't train someone up with holodecks at their disposal and there's no reason to expect that Starfleet has no accomplished pilots with such large crews.

The last point is close air support. Close air support is not just "shot things that are the ground", it's an entire doctrine all of it's own. There is a reason that Foward Air Controllers exist, there is a reason pilots train for this one task, sometimes even in aircraft specifically designed for that one task. It's very complicated and very, very dangerous. Without that system in place, a system there is no evidence the federation has, any federation attempt at CAS will be at best hapazard and unfocused.

I don't know why you'd assume that Starfleet wouldn't have a doctrine for close air support?

*Also, I must stress that being able to move troops into position and move troops into position covertly are not the same thing. UNSC soldiers have motion trackers, and as shown by The Flood, it's entirely common to have an AI monitoring security feeds, along with drone surveillance and other tools. I do not think it is likely the federation forces will be able to sneak around and into UNSC positions covertly.

I think they can. Will they be able to do it all the time? No. Will the UNSC try and counter that, if it is the case? Of course. But it can be very easy to overlook enemy troops that have to move by foot while your forces are in motion, it will be exceptionally difficult to do so against a force that just teleports into the area. Attacking bases will be more difficult, but those can be managed. Multiple raid teams hitting a base can divert attention or act after the security system is compromised/disabled. We saw how in Legacy, the Enterprise crew could plan their moves in orbit, beam into poorly occupied areas and hit critical infrastructure.

It's also entirely possible the UNSC will be able to jam transporters using it's own ECM gear, possibly without much trouble in general as the UNSC has already been shown to employ mobile ECM equipment as part of it's frontline forces. However, transporters are so utterly plot dependent that it's a total crapshoot (I would argue the UNSC can jam them, but I get there's a certain unfairness to "the writers make up stuff that turns this thing off whenever they want, we can do that too!").

The UNSC can probably find ways of jamming them, at least in certain areas. But I don't think they're going to be able to reliably keep them out and those systems can be disabled. The UNSC would also have to devout considerable time, energy, and resources to doing that.

 

[Battlegrinder]

I reject the argument that Starfleet doesn't use combined arms, simply because they don't have tanks rolling around on the battlefield. We see plenty of incidents where Starfleet will use shuttles, fighters, and roundabouts to support ground forces. Indeed, even the ships themselves with their transporters are a form of combined arms, as it's used to enhance the combat capability of Starfleet. And indeed they combine these with things like forcefields.

I actually can't think of any time in DS9, TNG, or Voyager where we saw shuttles or fighters operating as CAS.

The bazooka is a non-issue, as we know that phasers can be readily set to a level that will take out any tank the UNSC has. They're simply another tool in their arsenal.

Max power phasers being able destroy a tank is speculation, we know they can more through rock, yes, but rock is not armor plating.

Moreover, even if we assume that is the case (it's not hugely different from every guy just having a rocket launcher or the equivalent), the fact that can harm enemy armor doesn't mean the enemy derives no benefit to having those tanks at all, or has no edge over you and your lack of tanks.

...You know you can just squeeze the trigger on a phaser and it keeps firing, right? Granted, that's probably not recommended, given that it's probably likely to overheat, but phasers can sustain fire for a good while.

And we've seen someone use a phaser like this when?

You seem to be arguing for the federation based on what they have the theoretical capability to do with their technology, not how they actually use it.

1) Greater Situational Awareness.

To a point, yes, but most of that is not as useful as you're making out. A rifleman doesn't need to know all that to fight effectively, and arguably shouldn't, I know there has been some speculation that systems like Land warrior risk overloading the troops with superfluous information.

As for the rest, while that technology is useful, the UNSC can gather the same information (perhaps not the caves, but contrary to what star trek says, it's not common to find a convenient cave system that leads you right to where you want to go in real life).

) The Logistics Problem. The UFP doesn't need to hit the UNSC directly. They can target their supply train. Sure, they're safe in a cozy base or maybe even when flown in by pelican, were I to concede air superiority--but there's going to be a lot of travel on foot. That means supply wagons. It means supply chains. It means Starfleet can raid those supply convoys anytime they wish. The UFP does not have this problem. They can move troops and supplies around pretty much at will with their transporters.

As far as I know, UNSC logistics are entirely airborne, using pelicans or darter dropships to deliver supplies to ground troops and FOBs.

FOBS the UNSC can just drop onto the planet from orbit and unpack, which come complete with automated gun emplacement, barracks, medical facilities, repair shops, etc.

3) Greater Mobility. A GCS could, using its personal transporters, easily beam 11.6 people from one part of the planet to another part of the planet every minute. The response time that Starfleet has would be incredible. You want to talk about combined arms? Imagine four UNSC firing squads pinning two UFP firing squads in a forest or valley. Within 2 minutes, the UFP could have 23 more troops arrive, in a flanking position on those troops.

And have we seen any star trek power actually use transporter in this way at any point?

4) Disruptive Firepower. I agree that the disadvantage of a phaser is that it cannot be used for suppressive fire in the same way that a modern rifle can. However, let's look at what the weapon can do. A single shot is enough to kill any soldier with a solid hit to the torso. It rarely fails. Even a shot to the limb generally causes someone to lose that limb. The real advantage though, is the heavy firepower a phaser carries at level 16. Large vehicles like tanks, warthogs, troop transports, and even pelicans become really exposed when they enter this sort of environment. Instead of needing a dedicated launcher to take out something like a pelican or a tank, anyone in Starfleet with a rifle or a pistol can be a potential threat. They don't even need to max out the phaser. Large vehicles that the UNSC relies upon for its combined arms can be quickly eliminated. What's more, the UFP is more often than not, going to have an idea where that material is and how it can be destroyed.

Ok, so first off a single bullet to the torso or a limb will at least incapacitate anyone that gets hit, it might not kill them but it's going to take them out of the fight just as well.

Secondly, the idea that handheld weapons pose a serious threat to armored vehicles is against speculation, we've never seen them actually used for that in the show. When one of voyager's shuttles attacked that semi truck in future's end, it did a fair bit of damage, seems to have blown the entire cab and engine to bits, but that's not actually all that impressive compared to modern anti armor weapons.


Scene at 4:24

Also, they apparently needed a shuttlecraft grade phaser back to do this, because Tom Paris was on the ground with a phaser and was limited to "jump out of the way and avoid getting run over" rather than just making the same shot.

You really have no evidence that photon grenades are anti-material weapons. It seems especially pointless when they have things like phasers, which are already about as anti-material as you can get without pulling out some really heavy explosives. It would also seem rather odd to me, at least, that Lyton would think that anti-material grenades would be useful in defending Earth from a Dominion invasion.

The issue there's no evidence that they're anti personal weapons either, and the fact that they have never once been used as such despite nominally being on hand for most of the show is itself evidence that starfleey lacks such a weapon. And unlike other issues, this can't be a matter of cost or other OoU factions leading to them never being used, Hollywood can do a fake grenade explosion for next to nothing.

for why they didn't use them in AR 558, they may simply have not had any. In the middle of a war, in a highly contested zone, they may simply of not had them on hand when they were restocking the men on the ground. Starfleet had already failed to rotate the people who were there out, so it's no stretch to believe that they didn't have sufficient grenades.

If you'll recall, the Defiant was visiting the site on a supply run, a supply run it had finished. If starfleet had any hand grenades, the guys on ARR 558 should have had some.

Incidentally they also had the perfect chance to use that continous beam suppressive fire tactic by just sweeping the checkpoint they were defending with phaser fire, but failed to do so.

Neither will a flashlight, all things considered. Phaser rifles already come with their own holographic displays and built-in sensors. As for rations and other survival gear, they do carry rations, we know that. O'Brien loves them. The fact is though, Starfleet relies heavily on their transporters and sensors. This is a flaw, to be sure, but it means that their troops really don't need to carry all this gear. Because they can be in a completely different geography ten minutes afterwards.

If phaser rifle holographic displays can function as night vision, I'd like evidence for that, because the only known low light visibility system that phaser rifles are known to have is a built in flashlight.

Also, we know O'Brien likes rations and starfleet has them, we do not know they are part of the infant's field kit.

(If you have a better image, by all means share it).

I don't see a backpack, belt pounches, leg pouches, or any other means for federation soldiers to actually carry any of this equipment they supposedly have.

They use fighters for ground assaults plenty. From the Maquis to the Dominion War. I don't see why they wouldn't want to make use of them here?

Because they don't use them "plenty". It's incredibly rare for them to employ CAS of any sort. I can't actually recall anything of the sort happening in DS9.

Well, a fighter or a rounabout, which is what I was referring to as taking shots from a Galor, is going to be far less durable. Do you recall what was used in Lower Decks? Because it could have been a fairly small shuttlecraft. In any case, we know that larger shuttles are pretty capable. Voyager's Type9 shuttle was armed with Type V phasers when it blew apart a semi. And it was able to move at hypersonic speeds to reach Paris and his friend before it took that semi out.

In lower decks it was one of the bigger box shuttle, I think a type 6 or 8. Don't recall. Also, assuming you meant "more durable" there instead of less durable, while it's certainly possible that some craft are tougher and more capable, it does not seem plausible that a shuttle that's only about twice as big as a standard model would leap in durability from "vulnerable to small arms fire" to "can tank the main gun of opposing warships".

And I already pointed out the logical issues with the shuttle vs truck incident.

What? They have squadron groups in Starfleet Academy. Wesley was part of one. I think Picard might have been one. Riker and Geordie were also considered accomplished pilots. I expect not everyone who flies a shuttle is skilled in using it as a weapon, to be sure, but there's no reason why they couldn't train someone up with holodecks at their disposal and there's no reason to expect that Starfleet has no accomplished pilots with such large crews.

The US navy has fighter squadrons and training squadrons too, that doesn't mean all naval pilots are trained for combat. Red Sqaud suggests exactly the opposite of your point, the existence of an elite flight team that's training how to fly fight craft suggests that the average Academy cadet is not being training in the operation of those same craft.

Your own example with the truck even suggests this, as you say the shuttle was flying at hypersonic speed on the approach, but the pilot them had to slow down to a near stationary speed to actually fire, he wasn't capable of making that shot at a faster approach.

I don't know why you'd assume that Starfleet wouldn't have a doctrine for close air support?

Because there's no evidence of one.

We saw how in Legacy, the Enterprise crew could plan their moves in orbit, beam into poorly occupied areas and hit critical infrastructure.

The concept of "plan attack in safe area, and then execute attack against enemy" is not particularly unique to star trek.




Also, as a wider point, you keep assuming the UNSC will be having to run all around the planet, moving stuff through valleys and so on, giving the federation time to attack them......why? Both sides have the same goal, capture and hold forerunner facilities. The UNSC doesn't need to go running through some valley to do that, they can just drop directly onto the faculty and dig in there, or drop in, dig the federation out if they got there first, and then dig in.

 

[Husky_Khan]

I'm not sure how reliable transporters will be. Thanks to Star Trek being a series with many episodes and movies, they've made lots of plot devices to prevent transporters from being reliable. Deflector Shields, 'Magnetic' Shields, Thoron Radiation, Hyperonic Radiation, Ion Storms, Electromagnetic Fields, Dampening Fields, random substances like Kezanite and Magnesite as well as actual technology such as scramblers and inhibitors and scattering fields.

If the UNSC is aware of Star Trek technology, then I would imagine they would use their already well developed ECM technology and use to make transporter mishaps great again.

 

[Bear Ribs]

I actually can't think of any time in DS9, TNG, or Voyager where we saw shuttles or fighters operating as CAS.

...


Scene at 4:24

My dude, I have no horse in this race and no idea what Halo's like to have an informed opinion. But you literally just posted that you can't think of any time shuttles or fighters acting as CAS and a video of a shuttle doing CAS in the same post.

 

[Husky_Khan]

My dude, I have no horse in this race and no idea what Halo's like to have an informed opinion. But you literally just posted that you can't think of any time shuttles or fighters acting as CAS and a video of a shuttle doing CAS in the same post.

Kind of a broad definition of CAS if that episode counts as one though amirite?

 

[Bear Ribs]

Kind of a broad definition of CAS if that episode counts as one though amirite?

I can't see how. A shuttle comes down and provides fire support and protection to a dude on the ground. Pretty well establishes that, in fact, they will send shuttles to come down and provide support and protection to dudes on the ground.

 

[Battlegrinder]

My dude, I have no horse in this race and no idea what Halo's like to have an informed opinion. But you literally just posted that you can't think of any time shuttles or fighters acting as CAS and a video of a shuttle doing CAS in the same post.

That's not CAS, CAS is using aircraft to support ground troops as part of a larger, coordinated operation.

I've already said that yes, starfleet is certainly capable of launching airstrikes. What I question is if they have the system in place to conduct coordinated air support across an entire theater.

In that clip, voyager had only a few people on the surface, and only one major objective. Figuring out what to send where was trivial. It is much harder to manage a larger front, with many more targets that need to be engaged, more people calling for support, more anti-air assets, decisions that need to made about what to engage and what to leave be, how many ships to send and how to send them, etc.

I don't think Starfleet has a system in place to handle that.

 

[Bear Ribs]

That's not CAS, CAS is using aircraft to support ground troops as part of a larger, coordinated operation.

I've already said that yes, starfleet is certainly capable of launching airstrikes. What I question is if they have the system in place to conduct coordinated air support across an entire theater.

In that clip, voyager had only a few people on the surface, and only one major objective. Figuring out what to send where was trivial. It is much harder to manage a larger front, with many more targets that need to be engaged, more people calling for support, more anti-air assets, decisions that need to made about what to engage and what to leave be, how many ships to send and how to send them, etc.

I don't think Starfleet has a system in place to handle that.

You're arguing that a critical planned military operation with a Galaxy-class and an Akira will be less capable of organization and have less support than a single Intrepid with Insaneway at the helm would?

 

[Husky_Khan]

You're arguing that a critical planned military operation with a Galaxy-class and an Akira will be less capable of organization and have less support than a single Intrepid with Insaneway at the helm would?

The argument is that a Spaceship being able to blow up an unarmed 20th century semi-truck driving along the road has almost no bearing on the idea of Starfleet being capable of CAS or having a doctrine built around it.

 

[The Original Sixth]

I actually can't think of any time in DS9, TNG, or Voyager where we saw shuttles or fighters operating as CAS.

Are you really going to sit here and argue that Starfleet has no means of coordinating their fighters or shuttles in attack runs?

Max power phasers being able destroy a tank is speculation, we know they can more through rock, yes, but rock is not armor plating.

I don't think it is speculation, really. If we look closely at the TM, we can see that phasers affect more than just rock.

"Setting 9: Disruption Effects; discharge energy 65,000 for 1.5 seconds, SEM:NDF ratio 1:7. The damage index is 300; medium alloy or ceramic structural materials over 100 cm in thickness begin exhibiting energy rebound prior to vaporization."

So there are a few things we can take from this. The first is that medium alloys or ceramic structural materials exhibit rebound BEFORE they vaporize. Another is from the show itself;

The Vengeance Factor

RIKER: Data, tell me about noranium. It vaporises at?
DATA: Two thousand three hundred fourteen degrees. Of course, noranium carbide
RIKER: Thank you, Data.
LAFORGE: Setting seven ought to do it.
RIKER: Three, two, one, now!

So setting 7, from 3 phasers, will vaporize noranium at 2,314 C. Titanium vaporizes at 1,750 C. Looking at the TM, a phaser spits out 4.9 kilojoules for 1.75 seconds. Damage Index is 50 (cm). That's 14.7 KJ from the phasers, with the SEM/NDF ratio being 1:1. That's considerably less than setting 9, which 65 KJ and has a SEM:NDF ratio of 1:7.

It also seems rather far-fetched to me that even at max setting, a tank is going to survive a phaser shot that put a 650 m3 hole into a rock face. Certainly it will be less effective, but not to the extent that you seem to have imagined.

Moreover, even if we assume that is the case (it's not hugely different from every guy just having a rocket launcher or the equivalent), the fact that can harm enemy armor doesn't mean the enemy derives no benefit to having those tanks at all, or has no edge over you and your lack of tanks.

I wouldn't say no benefit, as those tanks can still be used to shell enemy positions, draw fire, and otherwise give support. However, it does drastically reduce the effectiveness of a vehicle designed for pitched battle when they can be taken out by a guy with what amounts to a pistol.

And we've seen someone use a phaser like this when?

It's the standard? Like, you fire the phaser by holding the button down. The beam always terminates when you release the button. This is true regardless of setting. The only exception is if the weapon is a pulse phaser, such as some of the rifles. In which case, pulling the trigger releases the pulse and you need to pull it again to fire another pulse. This is pretty consistent behavior.

To a point, yes, but most of that is not as useful as you're making out. A rifleman doesn't need to know all that to fight effectively, and arguably shouldn't, I know there has been some speculation that systems like Land warrior risk overloading the troops with superfluous information.

What superfluous information are you talking about? Do you really think soldiers can't handle tracking their enemies with near 100% accuracy out to several klicks? Or knowing the size and composition of the enemy is too much? Certainly they won't know everything, but greater situational awareness is an advantage. Especially when they wed it with far superior troop mobility.

As for the rest, while that technology is useful, the UNSC can gather the same information (perhaps not the caves, but contrary to what star trek says, it's not common to find a convenient cave system that leads you right to where you want to go in real life).

My point being, the UFP can obtain that information faster, more reliably, and probably faster than the UNSC can.

As far as I know, UNSC logistics are entirely airborne, using pelicans or darter dropships to deliver supplies to ground troops and FOBs.

A great deal of the UNSC's logistics are airborn or otherwise dropped via space, but that is not always the case. Especially when they're moving through contested space. Once those tanks and warthogs are on the ground, we see that they tend to move on foot, through the city and into other regions. I don't expect that to be the case if you're going from say, Israel to Iran, but the UNSC shows that once their assets are on the ground, unless they're covering really large distances, they need to move on foot.

FOBS the UNSC can just drop onto the planet from orbit and unpack, which come complete with automated gun emplacement, barracks, medical facilities, repair shops, etc.

That does simplify logistics, don't get me wrong, but they only have ten of those and they're going to be a primary target by Starfleet. Either through sabotage or making an attack run with fighters.

And have we seen any star trek power actually use transporter in this way at any point?

Plenty of times? I mean, any use of a transporter to get into an advantageous position would qualify. Can you provide an argument of why they wouldn't do this? What, you expect they'll beam down 12 miles from where they want to be and then walk the rest of the way?

Secondly, the idea that handheld weapons pose a serious threat to armored vehicles is against speculation, we've never seen them actually used for that in the show.

That isn't true. Remember the Hopper incident? You don't have any proof that the Klingons were armed with anything besides their usual swords, knives, and disruptors. I think we can safely discount any Klingon dropping a UFP shuttle with a knife--so that leaves the disruptors that the Klingons were carrying. We also have the incident I believe you yourself brought up; that of a UFP shuttle being made to appear as if it had survived escape from phaser rifle fire.

And really, the general absence we see of ground vehicles would suggest that they aren't much use in most engagements. That's not surprising, given that there may be a tradeoff from how well a vehicle can shield itself against a phaser.

When one of voyager's shuttles attacked that semi truck in future's end, it did a fair bit of damage, seems to have blown the entire cab and engine to bits, but that's not actually all that impressive compared to modern anti armor weapons.

It's not even all that impressive compared to the hand unit.

Also, they apparently needed a shuttlecraft grade phaser back to do this, because Tom Paris was on the ground with a phaser and was limited to "jump out of the way and avoid getting run over" rather than just making the same shot.

Sometimes it's just easier to get out of the way than to take the shot. Besides, what were to happen if Tom were to only blow up PART of the truck and the rest kept coming? In the scene there, it looks a though he jumps out, rolls, and the shuttle arrives to blow apart the semi.

The issue there's no evidence that they're anti personal weapons either, and the fact that they have never once been used as such despite nominally being on hand for most of the show is itself evidence that starfleey lacks such a weapon. And unlike other issues, this can't be a matter of cost or other OoU factions leading to them never being used, Hollywood can do a fake grenade explosion for next to nothing.

You're the one claiming they're anti-material grenades though. When there is no proof that they are and the two instances we've seen photon grenades used by alien species, they were as explosives, not anti-material weapons. It also doesn't make sense when Lyton is talking about repelling a Dominion invasion. What are they gonna do, lob them up at the Dominion Fighters? Nor does it make sense to drop a couple in an adjoining room if they're just some sort of anti-material grenade. LaForge talked about them as if they produced an explosion of some sort.

If you'll recall, the Defiant was visiting the site on a supply run, a supply run it had finished. If starfleet had any hand grenades, the guys on ARR 558 should have had some.

Starfleet obviously couldn't spare them any. That's the most obvious answer. We know they produce them, because Lyton stockpiled them. And the Enterprise D had them on the ship, even in times of peace. So they should have received some, regardless if they were anti-material or anti-personnel. The obvious answer is that Starfleet simply had none to send. I mean, they didn't even have any ultritium explosives, which we know Picard had taken with him for his little private war in Insurrection.

Incidentally they also had the perfect chance to use that continous beam suppressive fire tactic by just sweeping the checkpoint they were defending with phaser fire, but failed to do so.

That may have been a good idea, but not all portrayals are going to be fully competent. I mean, I haven't brought up the ODST square formation, have I?

If phaser rifle holographic displays can function as night vision, I'd like evidence for that, because the only known low light visibility system that phaser rifles are known to have is a built in flashlight.

Return to Grace:
KIRA: This is a standard issue, Cardassian phase-disruptor rifle. It has a four point seven megajoule power capacity, three millisecond recharge two beam settings.
ZIYAL: How do you know so much about Cardassian weapons?
KIRA: We captured a lot of them during the occupation. It's a good weapon, solid, simple. You can drag it through the mud and it'll still fire. Now this. (Federation phaser rifle.) This is an entirely different animal. Federation standard issue. It's a little less powerful, but it's got a more options. Sixteen beam settings. Fully autonomous recharge, multiple target acquisition, gyro stabilised, the works. It's a little more complicated, so it's not as good a field weapon. Too many things can go wrong with it.

Unless that phaser is firing on its own or beams the information directly into someone's head, I would expect that it would need some sort of display. Since the only display is the green flip scope, the hologram would need to be projected within or over it.

(If you have a better image, by all means share it).

I don't see a backpack, belt pounches, leg pouches, or any other means for federation soldiers to actually carry any of this equipment they supposedly have.

So we know they have access to backpacks, pockets, and probably belts/built-in-holster. Unless you're arguing that security and science officers have better holding equipment than actual troops.

Because they don't use them "plenty". It's incredibly rare for them to employ CAS of any sort. I can't actually recall anything of the sort happening in DS9.

Most of DS9 occurred in space. We rarely get any sort of conflict that we get to see, involving a full scale battle. All of these incident always occur off screen. We only ever get to see when the crew has been either thrown into something or is otherwise short of what they should have, because the circumstance is contrived by the writing staff.

In lower decks it was one of the bigger box shuttle, I think a type 6 or 8. Don't recall. Also, assuming you meant "more durable" there instead of less durable, while it's certainly possible that some craft are tougher and more capable, it does not seem plausible that a shuttle that's only about twice as big as a standard model would leap in durability from "vulnerable to small arms fire" to "can tank the main gun of opposing warships".

I didn't say main guns. I was talking about secondary guns on a Galor. A Galor's main cannon is like 700-800 MWs. The secondary guns, assuming they're roughly par with what we see for smaller weapons in the TNG and BoP manual, would be closer to 20-40 MWs. And again, those were fighters and runabouts, not the shuttles. And I'm pretty sure they'd used a small shuttlepod in that episode.

The US navy has fighter squadrons and training squadrons too, that doesn't mean all naval pilots are trained for combat. Red Sqaud suggests exactly the opposite of your point, the existence of an elite flight team that's training how to fly fight craft suggests that the average Academy cadet is not being training in the operation of those same craft.

But why, if they were going into a situation focused on ground combat, would Starfleet not either train up the pilots they do have or send pilots familiar with that sort of operation? Especially when this occurs during the Dominion War era?

Your own example with the truck even suggests this, as you say the shuttle was flying at hypersonic speed on the approach, but the pilot them had to slow down to a near stationary speed to actually fire, he wasn't capable of making that shot at a faster approach.

Well no, it suggests that not all pilots are as skilled as others and in particular, maybe Chakotay or whoever was at the firing controls wasn't experienced with that sort of thing. It could have been Tuvok or Torres operating the controls.

Also, as a wider point, you keep assuming the UNSC will be having to run all around the planet, moving stuff through valleys and so on, giving the federation time to attack them......why? Both sides have the same goal, capture and hold forerunner facilities. The UNSC doesn't need to go running through some valley to do that, they can just drop directly onto the faculty and dig in there, or drop in, dig the federation out if they got there first, and then dig in.

Those facilities are the size of cities and their infrastructure expands into the surrounding environments. They won't have to travel from one state to another, obviously, but the UNSC can't just drop down into a shooting zone with all of their infrastructure and support ships. They'll need a safe forward operating base. And if Halo Wars is any indication, that's going to be at least a few miles away from the actual fighting.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Are you really going to sit here and argue that Starfleet has no means of coordinating their fighters or shuttles in attack runs?

Name one canonical starfleet FAC.

I don't think it is speculation, really. If we look closely at the TM, we can see that phasers affect more than just rock.

Ok, and when have we actually seen phasers vaporize meter thick metal alloys or ceramics?

The Vengeance Factor

That's clearly a writing goof, because they didn't actually vaporize the metal, they set it on fire to create a smokescreen, and ignition temperature is not the same as vaporization. That also conflicts with the TM, which claims setting 7 is so damaging to organic tissue that it causes "immediate cessation of life processes". A welding torch is about as hot, and it will certainly be incredibly painful and cause severe injury if you point it at someone, but it's survivable.

That also doesn't suggested it's viable as an anti-armor weapon. Merely being able to burn through a material or cut a hole through it won't kill a tank, and that's what phasers consistently do to metal (and they rarely do it quickly).

HEAT warheads and other anti-tank weapons work by getting though the armor and then doing something to the interior, such as directing a spray of molten shrapnel throughout the interior to damage components and kill the crew. If you just punch a little hole through the armor that's not actually going to stop the vehicle.

We even saw this happen in "Who mourns for Morn" when a shot penetrated a metal crate quark was hiding in and shot back out the other side, leaving him no worse for wear.

It's the standard? Like, you fire the phaser by holding the button down. The beam always terminates when you release the button. This is true regardless of setting. The only exception is if the weapon is a pulse phaser, such as some of the rifles. In which case, pulling the trigger releases the pulse and you need to pull it again to fire another pulse. This is pretty consistent behavior.

No, I mean when have we seen someone just sustain a beam and sweep it around across enemy positions to suppress them?

What superfluous information are you talking about? Do you really think soldiers can't handle tracking their enemies with near 100% accuracy out to several klicks? Or knowing the size and composition of the enemy is too much? Certainly they won't know everything, but greater situational awareness is an advantage. Especially when they wed it with far superior troop mobility.

No, infantry soldiers probably cannot handle tracking every enemy and allied unit within several klicks.

That does simplify logistics, don't get me wrong, but they only have ten of those and they're going to be a primary target by Starfleet. Either through sabotage or making an attack run with fighters.

Oh, certainly, it's not invincible, but it's a literally air droppable fortress the UNSC can put just about anywhere to fortify their positions, that's a considerable edge and the federation doesn't have anything even close to it for their bases.

Plenty of times? I mean, any use of a transporter to get into an advantageous position would qualify. Can you provide an argument of why they wouldn't do this? What, you expect they'll beam down 12 miles from where they want to be and then walk the rest of the way?

Soldiers in star trek will occasionally beam down into a advantageous position, or beam down nearby and then walk/sneak to a good spot, but that's not what you're arguing, you're arguing for repositioning and beaming more troops down into combat mid-fire fight, that I don't recall ever happening (at least, not intentionally).

Frankly though, on second thought it's just a bad idea. Troops beaming in are highly visible given the transporter glow, and completely helpless while beaming, if the federation actually tried this they'd probably stop pretty quickly, since the first thing the reinforcing squads will see on materializing is the frag grenade someone from the UNSC tossed at them while they were beaming down.

That isn't true. Remember the Hopper incident? You don't have any proof that the Klingons were armed with anything besides their usual swords, knives, and disruptors. I think we can safely discount any Klingon dropping a UFP shuttle with a knife--so that leaves the disruptors that the Klingons were carrying. We also have the incident I believe you yourself brought up; that of a UFP shuttle being made to appear as if it had survived escape from phaser rifle fire.

First off, I said "armored" vehicles. Shuttlecraft are not armored, and it's not likely hoppers are either given the construction of other UFP vehicles. They're likely fairly sturdily built, but then so should UNSC vehicles.

Secondly, it took at least a platoon sized force of klingons to threaten that hopper (as it was carrying a starfleet platoon and they likely wouldn't have had to retreat from that engagement if they significantly outnumbered the Klingons), and the shuttle in "Lower Decks" was staged as if there had been a prison break and several pursuing security guards took shots at it as it fled. It requires a considerable volume of small arms fire to threaten vehicles in star trek, which argues against your claim of federation troops easily knocking out tanks with handguns.

EDIT: I actually forget (read: suppressed the memory of) Picard's dune buggy shootout in Nemesis, but the Argo's mounted phaser wasn't exactly putting out tank-wreaking blasts there either.

You're the one claiming they're anti-material grenades though. When there is no proof that they are and the two instances we've seen photon grenades used by alien species, they were as explosives, not anti-material weapons. It also doesn't make sense when Lyton is talking about repelling a Dominion invasion. What are they gonna do, lob them up at the Dominion Fighters? Nor does it make sense to drop a couple in an adjoining room if they're just some sort of anti-material grenade. LaForge talked about them as if they produced an explosion of some sort.

It's difficult to rationalize, yes. It is even more difficult to rationalize them being anti-personal weapons though, since those would have been very, very useful at numerous times in the series and they were never once used.

Starfleet obviously couldn't spare them any. That's the most obvious answer. We know they produce them, because Lyton stockpiled them. And the Enterprise D had them on the ship, even in times of peace. So they should have received some, regardless if they were anti-material or anti-personnel. The obvious answer is that Starfleet simply had none to send. I mean, they didn't even have any ultritium explosives, which we know Picard had taken with him for his little private war in Insurrection.

That doesn't really work though, if they were out, the troops on 558 would have complained about it, they spent a great deal of the episode complaining about the conditions on the planet, the lack of reinforcements, that they'd been there too long, etc. If after months of over-deployment they finally got resupplied and a bunch of the stuff they were out of wasn't there, they certainly would have added that to their list of grievances with starfleet HQ.

Unless that phaser is firing on its own or beams the information directly into someone's head, I would expect that it would need some sort of display. Since the only display is the green flip scope, the hologram would need to be projected within or over it.

Ok, but all that information is so vague as to mean nothing, it's just technobabble. What does "fully autonomous recharge" mean, are phaser perpetual motion machines now?

So we know they have access to backpacks, pockets, and probably belts/built-in-holster. Unless you're arguing that security and science officers have better holding equipment than actual troops.

It doesn't matter that someone somewhere in starfleet has a backpack, because if it's not part of the issued gear for ground troops, which it visibly is not, then they won't have them, because that's what standard issue means.

AR-558 again reinforces this, where Reese was running from position to position putting spare power packs down at easy grabbing distance for the federation troops, which he did instead of giving them the packs and then the troops put them in their pockets or pouches because the guys on 558 didn't have any pouches or pockets on their uniforms.

Most of DS9 occurred in space. We rarely get any sort of conflict that we get to see, involving a full scale battle. All of these incident always occur off screen. We only ever get to see when the crew has been either thrown into something or is otherwise short of what they should have, because the circumstance is contrived by the writing staff.

That's not really a good excuse, there are ways to do world building other than having everything happen onscreen (and DS9 spends enough time on the ground or discussing ground combat that some things should logically have come up). Most cop shows don't have the budget to rent or use a helicopter very often or at all, but they mention them enough that even if you're only basing your knowledge on what the show says, you will still get a rough impression of what a helicopter is and what it can do.

This is not difficult to do, when some gizmo breaks down have O'Brien mention a workaround he learned in the war, when his comms break broke and he really needed to call in an airstrike to save the day. DS9 mentioned self-sealing stem bolts so much you'd think that was the station's primary or only export, maybe scale that back at bit and say some of it was spare parts for an atmospheric gunship or something. There are ways this can be done.

But why, if they were going into a situation focused on ground combat, would Starfleet not either train up the pilots they do have or send pilots familiar with that sort of operation? Especially when this occurs during the Dominion War era?

Ok, well first off you don't just toss a guy into a simulator for a few weeks and boom, out comes a trained combat pilot, it's a slow process. It takes years to become a combat pilot IRL, and Starfleet training times seem fairly consistent with modern day militaries.

Secondly, since starfleet is not established as having pilots that are trained for this sort of thing be part of the standard complement of their ships (unlike the UNSC), it does actually need to be proven that they are part of the standard complement.

Third, the fact that this is happening during the war makes it less likely they'd be able to send combat pilots along on this, not more. Because sending a sqaudron of fighters here means someone else who also wanted them doesn't get them, vs peacetime where you probably had the idle capacity to send whatever you wanted wherever.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

The fundamental weakness of Starfleet, as has been elaborated on here, is doctrinal. It is a fleet devoted to exploration, diplomacy, science, and peacekeeping. The Galaxy class for example is less a battleship and more a flying embassy with a warp core and phaser banks. Thus their away teams are more devoted to these pursuits than killing the enemy (the poor buggers don't even have armour).

The UNSC meanwhile is a military, full stop. Its purpose is to fight wars in the defence of Earth and her Colonies, and that's what it does with devastating effectiveness (there's a reason the Covvies got ground into bloody paste on the ground). A Halcyon class cruiser is essentially a giant gun, strapped to an engine and coated in armour and point defence. The UNSC's troops are trained in modern infantry tactics, and fight alongside massed armour formations and air support. These chaps could give some Astra Militarum formations a run for their money.

These are not alike, and one is far better suited to fighting large, planetside engagements. Spoiler warning: it isn't the hippies with laser guns.

 

[Battlegrinder]

(the poor buggers don't even have armour).

That's at least possibly defensible, if one assumes it's justified under the logic that Trek infantry weapons are strong enough to easily peirce body armor and so it's not worth bothering with.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

That's at least possibly defensible, if one assumes it's justified under the logic that Trek infantry weapons are strong enough to easily peirce body armor and so it's not worth bothering with.

Nah, armour's bloody useful for things like shrapnel, that other great danger of the battlefield.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

Nah, armour's bloody useful for things like shrapnel, that other great danger of the battlefield.

Which is the biggest cause of casualties in modern war.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Nah, armour's bloody useful for things like shrapnel, that other great danger of the battlefield.

Shrapnel is usually thrown out from artillery shells, grenades, and other things ST powers generally do not encounter or have.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

Shrapnel is usually thrown out from artillery shells, grenades, and other things ST powers generally do not encounter or have.

Shit explodes in Star Trek ALL THE TIME. It's one reason I'm floored the bridge crew isn't in armor.

 

[The Original Sixth]

Name one canonical starfleet FAC.

What reason do you have to assume they wouldn't have it?

Ok, and when have we actually seen phasers vaporize meter thick metal alloys or ceramics?

Why would we doubt the TM?

That's clearly a writing goof, because they didn't actually vaporize the metal, they set it on fire to create a smokescreen, and ignition temperature is not the same as vaporization.

So it must be a writing goof and not a production mistake because...?

That also conflicts with the TM, which claims setting 7 is so damaging to organic tissue that it causes "immediate cessation of life processes". A welding torch is about as hot, and it will certainly be incredibly painful and cause severe injury if you point it at someone, but it's survivable.

What is the conflict with the TM? Your argument thus far in regards to phasers is that they react to different materials differently. Why would you be surprised if they reacted to some kind of alloy or metal differently than they would to human flesh? And we have, by the way, seen what happens when a human is hit by a phaser on setting 6 or 7.

That also doesn't suggested it's viable as an anti-armor weapon. Merely being able to burn through a material or cut a hole through it won't kill a tank, and that's what phasers consistently do to metal (and they rarely do it quickly).

Actually, setting 9 could easily do that. And of course, we have Breads and Circuses.

KIRK: If I brought down a hundred of them armed with phasers
CLAUDIUS: you could probably defeat the combined armies of our entire empire, and violate your oath regarding noninterference with other societies. I believe you all swear you'll die before you'd violate that directive. Am I right?
SPOCK: Quite correct.
MCCOY: Must you always be so blasted honest?
CLAUDIUS: But on the other hand, why even bother to send your men down? From what I understand, your vessel could lay waste to the entire surface of the world. Oh, but there's that Prime Directive in the way again. Can't interfere.

According to Claudius, Kirk and his men could probably have defeated the entire combined armies of his empire. That includes things like tanks and armored transport vehicles.

HEAT warheads and other anti-tank weapons work by getting though the armor and then doing something to the interior, such as directing a spray of molten shrapnel throughout the interior to damage components and kill the crew. If you just punch a little hole through the armor that's not actually going to stop the vehicle.

We both know that phasers don't just punch little holes. In fact, the damage they tend to deal spreads out from the point of origin.

We even saw this happen in "Who mourns for Morn" when a shot penetrated a metal crate quark was hiding in and shot back out the other side, leaving him no worse for wear.

We have no idea what the crate was made out and no idea what setting the phaser was on.

No, I mean when have we seen someone just sustain a beam and sweep it around across enemy positions to suppress them?

We haven't, although we have seen them use the stun setting with widebeam to hunt for Changelings. There's no reason that this couldn't be adapted to higher settings, although we'd either see a decrease in power as the beam is spread out or an increase in power consumption.

No, infantry soldiers probably cannot handle tracking every enemy and allied unit within several klicks.

They wouldn't need to? My point is that the option is there. Those soldiers are probably going to focus more on their surrounding and objective.

Oh, certainly, it's not invincible, but it's a literally air droppable fortress the UNSC can put just about anywhere to fortify their positions, that's a considerable edge and the federation doesn't have anything even close to it for their bases.

The Federation wouldn't need to. They can beam any material they want down. And we already know that ships carry their own small industrial replicators. We saw a replicator room in TNG dedicated to it and we know that Voyager needed to replicate parts for their Delta Flyer.

Soldiers in star trek will occasionally beam down into a advantageous position, or beam down nearby and then walk/sneak to a good spot, but that's not what you're arguing, you're arguing for repositioning and beaming more troops down into combat mid-fire fight, that I don't recall ever happening (at least, not intentionally).

So you're going to argue that if Starfleet needs reinforcements, they're not going to beam reinforcement there? They're going to make them walk? And despite the fact that the transporter chief would have his pick of the litter when it comes to beaming them down, you're going to argue that he'll just drop them anywhere?

Frankly though, on second thought it's just a bad idea. Troops beaming in are highly visible given the transporter glow, and completely helpless while beaming, if the federation actually tried this they'd probably stop pretty quickly, since the first thing the reinforcing squads will see on materializing is the frag grenade someone from the UNSC tossed at them while they were beaming down.

The transporter glow is really not that obvious, save for perhaps the one that Voyager used. You can certainly see it, if you happen to be looking in that direction, but it's not going to draw attention from everyone. Nor are they entirely helpless. There's a containment beam around the officer before and after he arrives. There is a moment of danger as the troops will need to take in their new surroundings, but the transporter chief is probably not going to put them right into open space where they can be short, but rather behind some cover. And of course, troops can crouch before transport to reduce the danger of getting shot.

And keep in mind, the UNSC has to essentially know they're coming.

First off, I said "armored" vehicles. Shuttlecraft are not armored, and it's not likely hoppers are either given the construction of other UFP vehicles. They're likely fairly sturdily built, but then so should UNSC vehicles.

Those shuttles often survive crash landings. Sometimes they can get back up again and fly off. And those shuttlecraft are about as well armored as anything in Star Trek.

Secondly, it took at least a platoon sized force of klingons to threaten that hopper (as it was carrying a starfleet platoon and they likely wouldn't have had to retreat from that engagement if they significantly outnumbered the Klingons),

We actually have no idea as to the size of the Klingon forces that engaged the hopper. This is all we know about the battle:

BURKE: You didn't see a crashed hopper around here, did you?
JAKE: No.
BURKE: They made it!
JAKE: Who?
BURKE: My platoon. The Klingons had us pinned down. We couldn't beam out because they had a transport scrambler running. We called for a hopper. As soon as it set down, the Klingons came after us. CO ordered me and Brice to lay down cover so the squad could get up the ramp. By the time Brice got in, the Klingons were practically on top of us. The hopper was taking such a pounding, I didn't think it would make it off the ground.
JAKE: You stayed behind on purpose, so they could get away.

Undoubtedly SOME of the Klingons reached the area, but we can't be sure and it's probably pretty doubtful that it was a platoon size. In fact, we can't even be sure that the hopper got away. Burke is basing their escape upon Jake's testimony. And while Jake certainly isn't blind, we have no idea if the hopper was a few hundred feet in the air, took a hit and crashed somewhere else. Indeed, given the level of shelling that took place, there may not even be any evidence of it escaping at all.

and the shuttle in "Lower Decks" was staged as if there had been a prison break and several pursuing security guards took shots at it as it fled. It requires a considerable volume of small arms fire to threaten vehicles in star trek, which argues against your claim of federation troops easily knocking out tanks with handguns.

We know that shuttles are made of duranium.

Descent
BARNABY: I can, but we have no way of knowing if the shields will hold.
TAITT: Sir, hull temperature is rising. Now at twelve thousand degrees C. Radiation level nearing ten thousand rads.

Titanium vaporizes at around 3,260 C. The Enterprise D's hull had been heated to 12,000 C and didn't suffer catastrophic damage. Phasers can only deal their damage a number of ways. That's SEM and NDF. Since we know that the SEM is not going to be sufficient to damage a shuttlecraft, then the damage must come from the NDF. And by all measure, duranium is far more resilient than titanium.

It's difficult to rationalize, yes. It is even more difficult to rationalize them being anti-personal weapons though, since those would have been very, very useful at numerous times in the series and they were never once used.

Yes, but 80% of Star Trek's combat takes place with either armed personnel or security forces, not troops. We do in fact, see the occasional use of explosives, but most of these are set timers as part of a raid. The two times we see photon grenades used by other races, they were explosives. Geordie treated them like they were explosives in Legacy and they were deemed to be troop level equipment by a high level Starfleet Admiral. Certainly, they may be anti-material, but you have no proof that is the case and all evidence implies they're anti-personnel.

That doesn't really work though, if they were out, the troops on 558 would have complained about it, they spent a great deal of the episode complaining about the conditions on the planet, the lack of reinforcements, that they'd been there too long, etc. If after months of over-deployment they finally got resupplied and a bunch of the stuff they were out of wasn't there, they certainly would have added that to their list of grievances with starfleet HQ.

That'd be a fair assessment, were it not for the fact that Lyton implied that this was gear being put together for troops. Enough to equip an entire army. If the AR-558 group were indicated to be fully stocked, then there would be a difficult contradiction as to why they didn't have the grenades. Or any explosives, for that matter. Yet we know that Starfleet does have explosives (Insurrection) and we know that they do stockpile grenades (Paradise Lost). Since we know that Starfleet was having logistics issues and we know that the area was highly contested, it is not unreasonable to conclude that they simply weren't available.

Ok, but all that information is so vague as to mean nothing, it's just technobabble. What does "fully autonomous recharge" mean, are phaser perpetual motion machines now?

How do you think taking one part of the sentence, which is somewhat vague due to lack of context somehow invalidates the part that we can clearly understand? If we MUST delve into that aspect of the line, we know that Kira was comparing it to the Cardassian rifle, which might imply that either the Cardassian rifle or other energy rifles require some kind of recharge procedure on part of the user. The implication may be that the Federation rifle recharges itself, regardless of the situation (assuming it has a power source to draw upon).

It doesn't matter that someone somewhere in starfleet has a backpack, because if it's not part of the issued gear for ground troops, which it visibly is not, then they won't have them, because that's what standard issue means.

What does it matter? If Starfleet troops need a backpack, then they'll just replicate a backpack. If they don't need a backpack, then they don't take one. And since I know you're such a fan of AR-558, we see the backpack there too.

They also had binoculars.

AR-558 again reinforces this, where Reese was running from position to position putting spare power packs down at easy grabbing distance for the federation troops, which he did instead of giving them the packs and then the troops put them in their pockets or pouches because the guys on 558 didn't have any pouches or pockets on their uniforms.

We see very little of what they do with the power packs after he dolled them out. I certainly don't see them in later scenes, although admittedly, it would be difficult to see them given the cover they have and the lighting. Most probably, when it was filmed, they were removed because they were props. But in-universe, they could have very easily gone in somebody's pocket. And we know they have pockets and pouches, because in Nor the Battle to the Strong, Burke pulled out a small pack of water for Jake to drink from. It probably came from a pocket. Unless you're suggesting Burke decided to carry it in his waistband.

That's not really a good excuse, there are ways to do world building other than having everything happen onscreen (and DS9 spends enough time on the ground or discussing ground combat that some things should logically have come up). Most cop shows don't have the budget to rent or use a helicopter very often or at all, but they mention them enough that even if you're only basing your knowledge on what the show says, you will still get a rough impression of what a helicopter is and what it can do.

DS9 actually did a great deal to expand our knowledge of ground combat, it's just not so easy to find and most of them don't involve Starfleet directly, but helps build a picture of how these powers engage each other.

The Circle
KRIM: Have them withdraw from the Northeast quadrant. Move them to join the fourteenth column south of the city.
SISKO: General Krim. I'm Benjamin Sisko. We met during a session of the executive committee last year.
KRIM: I remember, Commander. I was impressed by your talk.
SISKO: As I recall, you disagreed with all of it.
KRIM: Yes, but you presented your arguments well. What can I do for you?
SISKO: I understand you're in command of the forces defending the city.
KRIM: I'd hardly call it defending the city.
SISKO: There is concern in some quarters that the military is unwilling to confront the forces of the Circle.
KRIM: I don't know with whom you've been speaking, Commander.
SISKO: I've been observing troop movements. Every time there is a potential confrontation, the military withdraws to a safer position.
KRIM: You can't possibly appreciate that this is Bajoran against Bajoran.
SISKO: I can appreciate that the provisional government will stand only if the military supports it.
KRIM: We are all patriots, Commander.

The Darkness and the Light
KIRA: I was thirteen when I joined the resistance. I'd been hanging around the Shakaar base camp for a couple of weeks, running errands, cleaning weapons, that kind of thing. Then one night they had an ambush planned and they were a man short, so I volunteered. But everyone thought I was too young, too small. Lupaza stuck up for me. She said I had the heart of a sinoraptor and they didn't have much choose. Furel made some kind of joke. I don't remember what it was, but I do remember that Lupaza hit him. She was always doing that. They loved each other in some way. But it was up to Shakaar and he stared at me for a long time before he decided I was big enough to carry a phaser rifle after all. So we set up the ambush up along a ridgeline that night and waited. It was so cold my hands were shaking. I was so afraid that one of them would look at me and think that I was nervous, that I kept biting my fingers to keep the blood flowing. We must have waited there three or four hours before the skimmer appeared and set down right where Furel said it would. And when that hatch opened and that first Cardassian stepped out, I just started firing. And I didn't stop till I'd discharged the entire power cell. When it was all over, I was so relieved that I didn't let anyone down that I was almost giddy. Furel kept telling me to stop grinning, that it made me look younger, but I couldn't help it. I was one of them. I was in the Resistance. Lupaza made me this (her earring) out of some of the metal from that skimmer. How were they killed?

Ties of Blood and Water
FUREL: All four mortar rounds right in the central compound. And the way they ran, it was like kicking over a mound of barrowbugs.
KIRA: What was the count?
FUREL: Five skimmers, and at least, at least fifteen Cardassian dead. Now that's not a bad day's work. We should celebrate.

Business as Usual
QUARK: He purchased seven thousand tritanium plated assault skimmers.
HAGATH: Good. And he'll be back for more. The Proxcinian war is just heating up.
QUARK: Lucky us.
...
QUARK: The Breen CRM one-fourteen works equally well against moving vessels or surface emplacements. It's guaranteed to cut through reactive armour in the six to fifteen centimetre range, and shields to four point six gigajoules.
CUSTOMER: It's light.
(He blows up a Dopterian interceptor)
CUSTOMER: Nice.
(He disintegrates a big robot.)
QUARK: The quick recharge is one of its most popular features.
CUSTOMER: I'll take two thousand.
QUARK: It's a pleasure doing business with someone who appreciates a fine weapon.

Nor the Battle to the Strong
KIRBY: Don't worry about it. Same thing happened to me my first day. You know what I heard? That ship Starfleet sent, the Farragut? The Klingons intercepted it.
JAKE: Starfleet'll send another one, won't they?
KIRBY: It won't be here for days, and in the meantime we're looking at a ground war which is just what the Klingons want. According to a lieutenant I talked to, they've got so many transport scramblers online that we can't beam troops anywhere.
JAKE: What about using hoppers?
KIRBY: He says the Klingons have been shooting them out of the sky left and right. Unless something changes, he figures the Klingons'll take the settlement the day after tomorrow. Did you see all the bat'leth wounds today? Klingons get mad, they forget about their disruptors, go hand to hand. If you ask me, they're looking to get even for what happened on Ganalda Four.
...
KALANDRA: They're using them to keep the shields up around the settlement.
BASHIR: The runabout. There's a portable generator on the runabout.
KALANDRA: Where is it?
BASHIR: About a kilometre south of here. I'll need help carrying it though.
KALANDRA: You won't be able to beam through the shields. You'll have to take the east tunnel.
KIRBY: It lets out beyond the perimeter. I'll show you.
...
BURKE: You didn't see a crashed hopper around here, did you?
JAKE: No.
BURKE: They made it!
JAKE: Who?
BURKE: My platoon. The Klingons had us pinned down. We couldn't beam out because they had a transport scrambler running. We called for a hopper. As soon as it set down, the Klingons came after us. CO ordered me and Brice to lay down cover so the squad could get up the ramp. By the time Brice got in, the Klingons were practically on top of us. The hopper was taking such a pounding, I didn't think it would make it off the ground.
JAKE: You stayed behind on purpose, so they could get away.
...
JAKE: I got knocked out when we were trying to get to the runabout. Did Doctor Bashir make it back all right?
KIRBY: He's in IC for the night. He's got plasma burns on his arm and shoulder. I don't know how he managed, but he carried the generator back here by himself. We went looking for you right after the shelling stopped. There was hardly anything left of the runabout. The whole place was nothing but bomb craters and smoke. We had pretty much given up hope.

Arena
SPOCK: Very ingenious. They fed back my own impulses and built up an overload.
KIRK: We'll see how ingenious they are. Here, give me a hand with this grenade launcher. Lang!
SPOCK: Any word from the Enterprise?
KIRK: Sulu's taken her out of orbit.
KELOWITZ: They got Lang, sir.
KIRK: Did you see them?
KELOWITZ: No, sir.
KIRK: An evaluation, Mister Kelowitz. Where do you think they are?
KELOWITZ: If I were them, I'd go to the high ground on the right. I make it twelve hundred yards, azimuth eighty seven. It's pretty close for one of these little jewels, Captain.
KIRK: It'll be a lot closer to them. Stand clear.

Gravity
TUVOK: The forcefield is holding.
PARIS: Not for long if they keep pelting us with these photon grenades.
EMH: How are we supposed to hold them off for two more days?

Living Witness
VASKAN VISITOR: We've listened long enough!
QUARREN: They're using photon grenades. We've got to take cover. This way.

Legacy
SHARA: Access tunnels are here and here.
RIKER: We could transfer the away team right into this intersection.
ISHARA: Don't underestimate them, Commander. They'll be ready for that. I've seen them use this kind of strategy before. I know it looks isolated and easily accessible, but my guess is they have hundreds of men on the levels above and below just waiting for you to make your move.
WORF: We will need a diversion.
LAFORGE: Transport a couple of photon grenades into the adjoining chamber. At minimum intensity it wouldn't kill anybody, but it would shake them up a bit.
RIKER: That won't give us enough time. We need to occupy them long enough for you to install the relay.
ISHARA: Transport me into this corridor. My magnetic implant will set off the defence alarms. They'll think it's a raid by the Coalition.
RIKER: Too dangerous. We've seen what those tunnels look like. You could easily be cut off from the rest of us. Worf, if we
ISHARA: Commander Riker. I was ordered to assist you in any way possible. That doesn't mean as long as it's safe or convenient. If you had the time, we could come up with another plan, but you don't. Right now, I'm your best option.
DATA: She would have to be armed, sir.

Homefront
ODO: The only way to correct the problem is to shut down the entire grid, purge all the operating systems, and restart the relays.
LEYTON: And that could take days.
SISKO: Which is why it is imperative that you declare a State of Emergency.
JARESH-INYO: What good will that do when we have no way to defend ourselves?
LEYTON: Mister President, we can use the Lakota's transporters and communications system to mobilise every Starfleet officer on Earth in less than twelve hours. We've been preparing for something like this for a long time. We have stockpiles of phaser rifles, personal forcefields, photon grenades, enough to equip an entire army. I can start getting men on the streets immediately.
JARESH-INYO: What you're asking me to do is declare martial law.
LEYTON: What I'm asking you to do is let us defend this planet. We don't know what the changelings will do next, but we have to be ready for them. Ben, tell him.
SISKO: Sir, the thought of filling the streets with armed troops is as disturbing to me as it is to you, but not as disturbing as the thought of a Jem'Hadar army landing on Earth without opposition. The Jem'Hadar are the most brutal and efficient soldiers I've ever encountered. They don't care about the conventions of war or protecting civilians. They will not limit themselves to military targets. They'll be waging the kind of war that Earth hasn't seen since the founding of the Federation.

Chain of Command
PICARD: Computer, freeze programme. You were five seconds slower that time.
WORF: You increased the difficulty level, sir.
PICARD: Mister Worf, it's going to be far more difficult where we're going.
CRUSHER: Which is where exactly?
PICARD: I'm sorry, I can't tell you that yet.
WORF: It would be helpful to know something about our mission.
PICARD: Mister Worf, I have my orders. I'm sure you understand that. Now Doctor, this deflector wasn't set properly. It must be positioned so that the emitter array blocks the entire passageway, or it's useless.

(Note the backpack and belts for this raid)

Insurrection
TROI: Taking the Captain's yacht out for a spin?
WORF: Seven metric tons of ultritium explosives, eight tetryon pulse launchers, ten isomagnetic disintegrators.
...
DATA: It is a transport inhibitor. ...It will help prevent spaceships from beaming anyone off the surface.
PICARD: These veins of kelbonite running through the hills will interfere with their transporters, and when the terrain forces us away from the deposits, then we'll use transport inhibitors as a compensation. The mountains have the heaviest concentration of kelbonite. Once there it will make transport virtually impossible.
...
RU'AFO: Talk! We should send down an assault team and take them by force.
DOUGHERTY: That is not an acceptable option. If people get hurt, all the support we have in the Federation...
RU'AFO: Federation support, Federation procedures, Federation rules. ...Look in the mirror, Admiral. The Federation is old. In the past twenty-four months, they've been challenged by every major power in the Quadrant. The Borg, the Cardassians, the Dominion. They all smell the scent of death on the Federation. That's why you've embraced our offer, because it will give your dear Federation new life. Well, how badly do you want it, Admiral? Because there are hard choices to be made. Now! If the Enterprise gets through with news about their brave Captain's valiant struggle on behalf of the defenceless Ba'ku, your Federation politicians will waver, your Federation opinion polls will open a public debate, your Federation allies will want their say. ...Need I go on?
GALLATIN: There is an alternative to an all-out assault. Isolinear tags would allow our transporters to lock on to them.
RU'AFO: We'd have to tag every one of them. That would take time and we don't have it. The Enterprise is only nineteen hours from communications range with the Federation.
...
WORF: Captain, they're trying to drive us out so their drones can tag us.
DATA: With all the hydrothermal vents in the substrata, the structural integrity of this cavern is not going to hold for long.
PICARD: Is there any other way out of here?
ANIJ: I don't know.
DATA: Captain, tracking the watercourse may reveal another exit.
PICARD (OC): Mister Worf, come with us.
DATA: I'm reading an oxygen-nitrogen flow behind that calcite formation, Captain.
PICARD: Will this structure hold if we were to blast through?
DATA: I believe it is safe, sir.
PICARD: Fire!
(the three of them blast the calcite formation)
PICARD: Get everybody into those caves ...and set up forcefields once they're inside.
WORF: Aye sir.

The Ship
O'BRIEN: So my young friend, what do you think we're looking at?
MUNIZ: An upside down ship.
O'BRIEN: An airlock? A maintenance hatch?
MUNIZ: Maybe, but this is a warship, and on a warship you want a big access point on the belly to land troops.
O'BRIEN: There's hope for you yet, Muniz.

Looking at all of these (there's more, I just don't have the time to locate all of them), we can get an idea of the sort of conflicts that Starfleet and other regional powers engage in.

Gear

• Small, portable deflectors (Homefront, Chain of Command)
• Portable Shields (Generations, Insurrection)
• Area Shields (Nor the Battle for the Strong)
• Phasers
• Tricorders
• Backpacks (Siege of AR-558, Chain of Command)
• Binoculars (Siege of AR-558)
• Transport Inhibitors (Insurrection)
• Ultritium Explosives (Insurrection)
• Photon Grenades (Homefront, Legacy, Arena?)
• Grenades (Arena)
• Rations (Nor the Battle for the Strong)
• Artillery (Arena, Nor the Battle for the Strong, Ties of Blood and Water)

Vehicles

• Hoppers (Nor the Battle to the Strong)
• Skimmers (Ties of Blood and Water, the Darkness and the Light, Business as Usual)
• Jem'Hadar Fighters (The Ship)

The picture we see painted is that when it comes to ground combat, it's limited to mostly infantry. Said infantry is moved around by transporters, save when an enemy or freak geography stands in the way. In which case, hoppers are used. Said vehicles can be shot down, either by weapon emplacements, other vehicles, an orbital ship, or ground units. And there is proof that infantry can do this. The Breen weapon sold by Quark was stated to be able to take out moving vessels (presumably smaller ones) and cut through force fields (and reactive armor). The Klingons destroyed the Runabout that Jake and Bashir used with their shelling. And Kirk's grenade in Arena would have easily of accomplished the same thing. We also have evidence from Lower Decks that phaser fire can damage a shuttle made of duranium, which we know to be at least four times more resistant to heat than titanium.

We see an absence of vehicles, save for hoppers, fighters, and skimmers. All of which are very mobile and seem mostly geared around moving troops or are heavily armed craft in their own right. We know that a Federation army is planned to be armed with grenades and personal deflectors.

Ok, well first off you don't just toss a guy into a simulator for a few weeks and boom, out comes a trained combat pilot, it's a slow process. It takes years to become a combat pilot IRL, and Starfleet training times seem fairly consistent with modern day militaries.

They have plenty of accomplished pilots. Why can't they take them and give them a few weeks training on a specific form of warfare?

Secondly, since starfleet is not established as having pilots that are trained for this sort of thing be part of the standard complement of their ships (unlike the UNSC), it does actually need to be proven that they are part of the standard complement.

This seems unlikely. We know that Hoppers are used in ground battles. Assuming they're at least as well armed as something like a standard shuttle, they're going to have at least two phasers. There's no reason to believe that people trained on hoppers aren't going to be trained to operate in situations they're expected to be in.

Third, the fact that this is happening during the war makes it less likely they'd be able to send combat pilots along on this, not more. Because sending a sqaudron of fighters here means someone else who also wanted them doesn't get them, vs peacetime where you probably had the idle capacity to send whatever you wanted wherever.

Do you have proof that Starfleet has a shortage of pilots? That's a rathe rodd claim, considering everyone and their cousin seems to be qualified to fly a shuttle.

 

[Battlegrinder]

What reason do you have to assume they wouldn't have it?

It is completely illogical to assume the existence of everything until it's proven otherwise,the correct logic is the other way around.

Why should we assume a bunch of people that signed for stargellet to explore the galaxy and go where no man has gone before would also go "and also, let's have a kickass space army, just in case". Picard and Riker loudly and regularly denied that Starfleet was a military force, and while that was clearly wrong, it was a clearly wrong opinion, one that was not meant to the product of tgier ideals and no thier self delusion. Are we supposed to assume that while Picard was at the academy with classmates training for positions in air combat and artillery support, he was lying to himself about how that must be a non military, peaceful cluster bomb his roommate was bragging about hitting right on target? Come on.

Why would we doubt the TM?

We should have some doubt about everything, because otherwise you get bogged down in giant mess of contradictory details as you try to harmonize every single bit of trivia, which is a pointless effort.

So it must be a writing goof and not a production mistake because...?

Fine. Whatever is root issue was, the scene doesn't fit in with the other materials you're trying to cite.

What is the conflict with the TM?

TM: This setting will immediately kill someone
Show: This will do something that will in no way immediately kill someone.

And we have, by the way, seen what happens when a human is hit by a phaser on setting 6 or 7.

Yeah, no. I've sat through safety training for welding equipment before, and seen the injuries it causes. "Half incinerated corpse" is not one of them.

According to Claudius, Kirk and his men could probably have defeated the entire combined armies of his empire. That includes things like tanks and armored transport vehicles.

Claudius cannot be taken as a valid source of evidence, both because he doesn't actually know what federation weapons are truly capable of, and much more pointedly, because his judgement on how 22nd century weapons would fair against 20th century tanks has no connection to how well 24th century weapons would match up against 26tb century tanks.

We both know that phasers don't just punch little holes. In fact, the damage they tend to deal spreads out from the point of origin.

For people and rocks, yes. For metal?

Generally not.

We have no idea what the crate was made out and no idea what setting the phaser was on.

So let's just assume it's completely irrelevant and provides no useful evidence against star trek, because that's totally fair.

We haven't, although we have seen them use the stun setting with widebeam to hunt for Changelings. There's no reason that this couldn't be adapted to higher settings, although we'd either see a decrease in power as the beam is spread out or an increase in power consumption.

Actually, there is, because if that was possible and you could just use a phaser as a corridor wide kill everything beam, everyone would do it all the time, even if they can to hook the phaser up to backpack worn power or cell or something, because if they didn't exploit such an obvious capability they'd be morons.

And "what if we just assume everyone on this side is a moron" isn't a good mindset to have.

wouldn't need to? My point is that the option is there. Those soldiers are probably going to focus more on their surrounding and objective.

If they're not going to use and a d instead going to use tricorders just for scanning thier surroundings, then they have no real edge over the UNSC, and arguably a downside as the UNSC's equipment is better designed for this role, being a HUD display rather than a separate device they have to take thir attention away from their surrounding to examine.

The Federation wouldn't need to. They can beam any material they want down. And we already know that ships carry their own small industrial replicators. We saw a replicator room in TNG dedicated to it and we know that Voyager needed to replicate parts for their Delta Flyer.

You're missing the point. The Federation's mission is to hold territory on the surface, for that they need troops on the surface,and facilities for those troops on the surface.

So you're going to argue that if Starfleet needs reinforcements, they're not going to beam reinforcement there? They're going to make them walk? And despite the fact that the transporter chief would have his pick of the litter when it comes to beaming them down, you're going to argue that he'll just drop them anywhere?

I was unaware that all starfleet transporter chiefs are highly trained tactician and can immediately pick out just the right spot to beam people as part of an ongoing engagement, and under pressure to drop them in fast enough to actual save whoever they're trying to help no less. Where exactly was that established?

The transporter glow is really not that obvious, save for perhaps the one that Voyager used. You can certainly see it, if you happen to be looking in that direction, but it's not going to draw attention from everyone. Nor are they entirely helpless. There's a containment beam around the officer before and after he arrives. There is a moment of danger as the troops will need to take in their new surroundings, but the transporter chief is probably not going to put them right into open space where they can be short, but rather behind some cover. And of course, troops can crouch before transport to reduce the danger of getting shot.

I like how the federation is not only capable of beaming troops down anywhere onto an entire planet at a moments notice, but has that lightning fast response time and also the time carefully scrutinize the surround terrain where a bunch of thier guys are getting shot to bits and carefully pick out exactly the right spot to beam people.

Those shuttles often survive crash landings. Sometimes they can get back up again and fly off. And those shuttlecraft are about as well armored as anything in Star Trek.

Vehicles regularly survive crash landings mostly intact, or even in flyable condition after some repairs, both in real life and in Halo.

We actually have no idea as to the size of the Klingon forces that engaged the hopper.

Actually, we do, it was at least as large if not larger than then starfleet force, because if was much smaller than a platoon, the platoon commander could have ordered a more orderly, covered withdraw, rather than having to sacrifice two of his own mean to cover the retreat.

We know that shuttles are made of duranium.

And scorpion tanks are made of a 26th century ceramic-titanium alloy, but for some totally fair reason your vaguely defined future materials are impervious to phasers but the UNSC's vaguely defined future materials might as well be tissue paper.

Yes, but 80% of Star Trek's combat takes place with either armed personnel or security forces, not troops. We do in fact, see the occasional use of explosives, but most of these are set timers as part of a raid. The two times we see photon grenades used by other races, they were explosives. Geordie treated them like they were explosives in Legacy and they were deemed to be troop level equipment by a high level Starfleet Admiral. Certainly, they may be anti-material, but you have no proof that is the case and all evidence implies they're anti-personnel.

Given that the 20% of the time we do see starfleet troops (and the 99.9% of the time we see alien troops), they also don't have these alleged anti-personal weapons one hand, for no apparent reason, it's baffling how you can claim that all evidence implies that the federation does in fact have tons of anti-personal grenades (and presumably everyone else also does, and also just refuses to use them, despite often lacking the moral or technological constraints of the federation?).

What is more likely:
1. Everyone in the setting does in fact have tons of anti-personnel grenades, which they are totally willing to issue to troops and use in battle, but due to some totally unexplained contrivance, whenever we see them in action that was one of the vanishingly rare times that no one had any.
2. The writers created a setting devoid of any such weapon, but over the close of hundreds of episodes got a bit sloppy once or twice?

If the AR-558 group were indicated to be fully stocked, then there would be a difficult contradiction as to why they didn't have the grenades. Or any explosives, for that matter.

It's only difficult to explain if you have a preexisting assumption that it's totally normal for the federation to have anti-personal grenades in the first place.

Explosive charges are even easier, as far as I can tell they're not standard issue in real life, so there's no reason the federation should have decided otherwise.

Since we know that Starfleet was having logistics issues and we know that the area was highly contested, it is not unreasonable to conclude that they simply weren't available.

So, again, why didn't anyinecin the show complain about that, despite complaining about everything else?

How do you think taking one part of the sentence, which is somewhat vague due to lack of context somehow invalidates the part that we can clearly understand?

I don't think we can understand what any one it means, beyond the fact that the writing staff were aping pop culture characterization of the M-16 and the AK.

What does it matter? If Starfleet troops need a backpack, then they'll just replicate a backpack.

You take additional supplies and equipment with you because you don't know if you'll need them before you deploy.

They have plenty of accomplished pilots. Why can't they take them and give them a few weeks training on a specific form of warfare?

They do not actually have plenty of accomplished pilots, as Chain of Command pointed out most of the Enterprise's shuttle pilots were not very skilled or capable of manual control. Most federation pilots can punch in a course and let the auto pilot handle it, which is fine for the regular duties of a shuttle pilot but not good enough for combat.

This seems unlikely. We know that Hoppers are used in ground battles. Assuming they're at least as well armed as something like a standard shuttle, they're going to have at least two phasers. There's no reason to believe that people trained on hoppers aren't going to be trained to operate in situations they're expected to be in.

If hopper were armed, then that guy in nor the battle wouldn't have needed to sacrifice himself to ensure it could take off, it could have used it's own, much stronger weaponry to cover itself.

Do you have proof that Starfleet has a shortage of pilots? That's a rathe rodd claim, considering everyone and their cousin seems to be qualified to fly a shuttle.

Everyone and thier cousin is qualified to drive a car, so I guess we can all be formula one drivers.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Actually, to avoid getting bogged down in a million little details, I want to condense my post above into a shorter form.

The concluding argument of a vs like this should be two goals: to match the results of what would have really happened had the owners of the settings done so, and to do so without creating any more TR-116s.

Anyone reading that didn't watch a lot of DS9 probably didn't get that last referance, so let me explain. The TR-116 was a gizmo of the week in late DS9, where a guy was running around killing people with the titular weapon, which was a sniper rifle combined with a scanner and transporter that let the user see and shoot through walls anywhere on DS9. It's something that comes up a lot in ST discussion, because as you can imagine a gun that can shoot through anything is outrageously overpowered and would have let whoever had it singled handled win any firefight ever, unless someone else also has one or you manage to sneak up to the shooter and ambush them (anyone that's played Perfect Dark multiplayer knows exactly what I'm talking about). Which is why the gun in question vanished after the episode was over, but is also why it should never have been created at all, because from then on there's always that point in the back of your mind "man, I bet a guy with a gun that can shoot through anything would be really handy here". It would have invalidated every single firefight ever seen in the rest of the series, or required everyone to develop an anti-gun-that-shoots-through-everything technology, which everyone else would have had to try and develop and workaround for, and so on. The TR-116 would warp everything in the series if it was allowed to stick around.

That's why I object to things like grenades, wide beam kill, anti-tank phasers, instantly beaming backup in to support people once a firefight breaks out, etc. Once you introduce those ideas, they warp everything else around them, and huge numbers of engagements fought prior to then would never have happened or could have been won in moments, and when those things don't happen again, it raises the question of why they're not doing it all the time, and if they do, it will no longer look like star trek (STO, which does bring in every single device or gadget ever seen in the series plus some new ones, has this problem is spades).

This goes double for things like grenades, which 6th claims have been present the whole time and just always offscreen for some reason. Because that doesn't just raise questions about every firefight in the future, it undermines all the ones that happened before, because there are loads of times when one thrown grenade would have blown the entire main cast to kingdom come. Under that framework, the only reasons this could happen is if everyone involved is a moron (the heroes for assuming the enemy wouldn't have a very common weapon, the bad guys for actually not having them or using them), or, as I've seen argued in the past, that what we're seeing on screen is merely a portrayal of the "real" story that the script is attempted to convey.

I don't accept the former, and have only limited sympathy for the latter. Certainly, not everything that makes it to the final cut should be taken as gospel. There's always production mistakes, dialogue that was intended to be correct but actually wasn't (for a non-ST example, in the wizard of Oz the scarecrow, to demonstrated his intelligence, recites the Pythagorean Theorem, impressing everyone. However, he actually states the theorem incorrectly), etc. I have no issue with thier being some wiggle room on that sort of thing, and even beyond that as consistency in capabilities, characterization, plot, etc can sometimes be a bit shaky as a series goes on and more and more people are involved. However, there's a big jump between "Kirk probably actually knows how to fight, and so doesn't break out the infamous Double Fisted Hammer Punch" and "this entire firefight never happened, because someone would have just tossed a grenade around the corner and exploded all the bad guys". That takes things a step to far, because that level of "just a portrayal" turns the show from an actual show, with real events and moments we all love and remember, into a sterile set of plot points (this is one of the reasons I loath how SB intercepted the "Mass effect codex is primary canon" thing, because it actively encouraged that mindset).

It's also very difficult for the portrayal argument to actually argue in favor of anything, because once you go "well, this whole scene never happened" it's no longer possible to argue that any given scene did actually happen, and so now you have no actual evidence left to argue. For example, 6th cites a scene from Night Terrors as proof of what a level 7 phaser shot does, but the actual plot relevance of the scene is "there is a guy here, and he is dead". It could be anything from the sort of injury a 2,300 burn would actually cause, to less than that, to a charred skeleton, and the "there is a guy here, and he is dead" part wouldn't care, and so you can't argue anything about what actually happened to him or use that for evidence of anything more than "a phaser can kill people".


In fairness, I will admit it does not make sense that ST never has anyone use grenades, there's no logical reason they would be entirely absent from the setting, either in universe or out. But, the correct response to "this doesn't make sense" is "yes, it's a work of fiction, sometimes people write things that don't make sense", not "yes, it doesn't make sense, let's rewrite the entire series to fix it". "It doesn't make sense" is an issue of writing quality when it comes worldbuilding, once you start pitting the results of that worldbuilding up against someone else's worldbuilding you are outside the realm of writing critism.


EDIT: Ok, so in hindsight "shorter form" was somewhat optimistic.