One of the main arguments against drones...

Subject: One of the main arguments against drones...
Author: the Irish Samurai
Posted on: 2015-08-17 21:45:00 UTC

...particularly battle groups consisting entirely of drones, is enemy electronic warfare.

Sure, your drones are autonomous, so you don't have to worry about signal decay, but you're still going to want to be able to transmit new orders, update target priorities, change mission profiles, etc. so they do have to be capable of receiving signals. And if they can receive your signals then they can receive other people's signals too: which means there's a chance they can be suborned. Regardless of how good your encryption is, the weak link in that system is going to be the people that are supposed to keep the secrets - bribe one of them, and you could get yourself a whole bunch of free drones (well, free apart from the cost of the bribe).

Fiction also generally shows AIs to be less creative and not as able to handle unexpected situations as organics, which could be a serious downside in combat.

Groups of more expendable drone ships operating in support of manned warships would probably make a lot of sense.

- Irish

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How good was the Galaxy Class, really? by ratbrainbasher on 2015-08-16 19:47:00 UTC Reply

I mean the one from Trek, in case any other franchise happens to have a Galaxy Class.

The Galaxy Class is billed and said to be this ultra-super mega awesome starship, but it, well... Kinda seems to suck a little. To quote Tv Tropes' wallbangers page on TNG, it seems to have a glass jaw. I mean, look at how the original Enterprise fought without shields. Pretty badassly, if I do say so myself. Then, you have the Enterprise-D. (Spoilers) It got shot down by a single, outdated bird-of-prey. And, I get it, the Galaxy class likely had a lot of help from the plot when it came to sucking, like a starship version of The Worf Effect.

And this isn't just some rant. I want to know how I might portray the Galaxy Class in my fanfics (Once I recover my hard drive) and my foundry missions in STO. I don't want to be completely dismissive of the class, but I think it's a little bit past 'ideal starship' given how many they lost during the Dominion War, for instance.

I just wanna say I love this thread. by Neshomeh on 2015-08-17 22:35:00 UTC Reply

This is a delightfully fascinating, geeky conversation, and I really wish I could participate in it. Alas, though I have a Trekkie character, I have not quite managed to become one myself.

~Neshomeh

What, and I am? by Huinesoron on 2015-08-18 13:22:00 UTC Reply

I've seen four-and-a-quarter of the Star Trek movies, and... uh... maybe the same number of episodes? Everything I know, I learned by cultural assimilation and looking at the wiki. ^_^

hS

You grasp the technobabble. by Neshomeh on 2015-08-18 15:45:00 UTC Reply

My eyes tend to glaze over when that stuff comes up. Unless I happen to know something about the real science that tells me what I'm hearing is silly (lots of the biology/medicine in Trek good grief), I'm usually pretty happy to accept that it works because Future and not try to think about it. ^_^;

~Neshomeh

It's very simple by Phobos on 2015-08-18 19:03:00 UTC Reply

Just reverse the polarity of the neutron flow and bounce the graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish. That's the best way to make popcorn.

-Phobos, BS Engineer

Ah, yes, in the words of Voltaire. by JulyFlame on 2015-08-20 00:31:00 UTC Reply

"That's the way we do things lad, we're making sh** up as we wish
The Klingons and the Romulans pose no threat to us
'Cause if we find we're in a bind we just make some sh** up."

If it makes you feel any better... by JulyFlame on 2015-08-17 23:05:00 UTC Reply

That's why I sicced Artell on it; so I can have the discussion with someone without actually having to have it here. I'll leave everyone here to quibble with the scifi details. :>

-July

Re: How good was the Galaxy Class, really? by Artell on 2015-08-16 22:37:00 UTC Reply

I'm not sure where or who bills the Galaxy as mega awesome, necessarily. It's not meant to be a warship, which is in many ways the whole point of the TNG part of the franchise: compared to the old Trek with Kirk indulging in green-skinned alienesses and the second movie being a submarine thriller in space, Picard is meant to be a diplomat and an explorer.

The Galaxy class does have some design peculiarities. Its remit is to
- explore space
- conduct scientific experiments
- carry out diplomatic missions
- conduct search, rescue and humanitarian operations
- patrol the edges of Federation space, and
- transport VIPs or important cargo.

This calls for a vessel that is
- moderately combat-capable
- fast
- spacious but not as spacious as a dedicated cargo ship
- passenger-capable
- able to carry non-combatants (including family members of the crew, which is a Federation ideological choice and probably a major draw to enlist capable Starfleet personnel in an economy without financial incentive) and
- self-sufficient for long missions

The Galaxy class has an incredibly broad mission profile (even too broad - why not have separate VIP transports with military escorts? but this is more to do with Starfleet design ideology and tradition which seems to favour generalist designs), and thus the ship itself needs to be very adaptive as well. It can't be a specialized warship like the Defiant (which is too small and too Spartan) or a research vessel like the Oberth (which is also too small and has no combat ability to speak of). It's flagship material for the kind of Starfleet whose mission includes things that the United States government has several separate agencies and branches for: the Navy, the Air Force, the Army, the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard, the NOAA, NASA, the State Department... the fact that the Galaxy can do all these things successfully is impressive already.

This could be thought of as author oversight, but remember that in DS9, they went out of their way to design and build a warship for the Dominion War, and inspired by this, the Sovereign class (Enterprise-E) is built to be more of a warship than the Galaxy class. Using the Galaxy in the Dominion War was like using up-armoured cars in World War 2: it would serve a purpose in a pinch but it was not anywhere as good as a purpose-built design. The fact that the Galaxy class suffered losses in the Dominion War is not meant to signal how poor the Galaxy class was as a ship as much that the Federation was unprepared and desperate enough to throw Galaxies into the fray.

And of course the Bird of Prey was able to take down the Enterprise-D in Generations: they had an inside man and they exploited a flaw in the shield systems that would have been present in ANY Federation class of ship using the same shield system (probably all of them) allowing them to score a surprise hit on the most critical of the ship (the warp core).

I'm more appalled by the tremendous design white elephant that is the saucer separation system.

Few details wrong, but it makes no difference. by ratbrainbasher on 2015-08-17 08:47:00 UTC Reply

Just letting you know, the Defiant was made to fight the Borg, not the Dominion. Though, it certainly proved it could handle both. And as for the Generations thing, Khan disabled the Enterprise's shields, as well. I get that it's even less of a warship than the Constitution class, but I still find it... odd that the much larger Galaxy class would be outclassed in both armour and hull integrity by a design over a century old. Again, this really makes no difference.

I am curious about what you mean by 'white elephant' when talking about the separation system. As in, there are so many different ways that it's a white elephant, I'm not really sure which one you meant to draw attention towards. Maintenance? Fragility? Hell, maybe the system itself was responsible for it getting shot down in the first place! More redundant systems, bigger warp core. Bigger warp core, bigger target.

I always thought that maybe the Galaxy class was made like the Titanic: Grand, comfortable, great on paper, perfectly sinkable in reality. More made to showcase the Federation's starship building talents than anything.

Re: Few details wrong, but it makes no difference. by Artell on 2015-08-17 20:51:00 UTC Reply

Now that you mention it, it's funny how Khan used the exact same trick (use an inside source on the ship to find the magic number to kill their shields) against the original Enterprise. It's almost as if it's a massive operational security issue to make something like that possible. Doesn't the keycode actually give you control over ALL of the victim ship's systems, to boot? Why would you ever design something like that?

(My bad on the Defiant raison d'etre.)

As for the separation system, imagine the discussion at Utopia Planitia Shipyards.

ENGINEER: "The saucer section will be detachable and capable of autonomous operation and thus all critical systems need to be redundant on both vessels per existing specs. If separation is deemed necessary in an emergency, all non-combat personnel will be evacuated into the saucer section and the saucer and neck prepared for detachment by engineering crews. We estimate that this procedure will take 50 minutes if done properly and as low as 20 minutes if done as a crash procedure."

ADMIRAL: "So you would say this would be a way to react to the slowest emergency in the universe while also increasing the complexity and cost of building the ship?"

ENGINEER: "Well, the alternative was just throwing all the civilians into lifepods or equipping the Galaxy class with enough shuttle capacity to carry all non-essentials and that would be incredibly boring."

ADMIRAL: "This sounds like it's prohibitively expensive, makes the ship more vulnerable to malfunction, and is something any reasonable Starfleet Captain would never commit to, because his ship will be vulnerable for at least 20 minutes in an emergency."

ENGINEER: "Oh, also, despite the fact that the saucer separation system is only to be used in a dire emergency, the saucer and battle sections are also able to re-dock in situ, meaning instead of a system to shear the connections between the saucer and the battle section in a controlled manner, and reattaching the sections back at Utopia Planitia, it's actually an extremely complicated undocking-docking procedure."

ADMIRAL: "I bet next up you'll tell me the saucer section has been designed sturdy enough to endure atmospheric re-entry and unpowered descent on a class M planet in the extremely remote - nay, astronomic - chance that the ship happens to run into its slow-motion emergency near such a planet, and all this without turning the crew into mush."

It's a space battleship. by Scapegrace on 2015-08-16 22:08:00 UTC Reply

As such, it gets rekt by torpedo bombers, massed fighters, and FTL-capable missiles. That's always struck me as weird; why aren't there ever fighters in Star Trek? I mean, classic-style beam phasers are bloody awful as point defence, so you'd think an enterprising group (if you'll pardon the pun) would scrape together a cargo vessel and a load of shuttlecraft, glue some photon torpedo tubes on the outside, and have a ball. Seen from above, the Galaxy-class is literally a bloody bullseye. So, er, yeah. Star Trek ships conform to very outmoded concepts of naval engagement, but without it we wouldn't have much of a story, now would we? =]

Not even that... by Techno-Dann on 2015-08-17 01:15:00 UTC Reply

As Artell mentioned at some length, she's a long-range exploration spaceship - think of her as a Coast Guard cutter rather than a warship at all. Sure, she's got enough teeth to put up a fight, but that's definitely not her primary mission.

Also, there's an easy handwave to get rid of fighters - all you need to do is say that small craft can't carry shields capable of taking a direct shot from a capital ship's phaser banks, and give said capital ships a lower-power, faster-firing mode, and suddenly fighters start to look a lot more like skeet than a viable strategy. Space fighters in general are conforming to very outmoded (relative to the 24th century) concepts of naval combat as well.

But that's true in any setting. by Huinesoron on 2015-08-17 10:20:00 UTC Reply

No small craft will stand up to a shot from a much bigger one, whether it's X-Wings against Star Destroyers, jets against ships, or infantry against tanks.

The difficult part is getting your large craft to hit the small one. 'Fighters' (in the broadest sense) use maneuverability, speed, and size to counter 'capital ship' power.

To kill off fighters, you need a setting where weapon flight-time is low compared to fighter speed: fast shots, low distances, not-too-fast fighters. Star Trek has the latter two, but I don't know how fast a phaser beam-bolt-whatever travels.

(Which still doesn't make fighters a good idea. Fighter-size energy weapons won't go through shields unless something is seriously wrong, so you either need overwhelming numbers, or torpedo boats. That's probably your best strategy in Star Trek, honestly: slap a few hundred proton torpedoes onto your disposable ships. So they only get two shots off each - so what? Every shot is a shipkiller. Though honestly, why not just slap comms and a better engine on the torps and use them as a remote-control minefield? Star Trek runs close-range and with superluminal communications anyway. ^_^)

hS

Re: But that's true in any setting. by Artell on 2015-08-17 20:35:00 UTC Reply

There actually are fighters in Starfleet in the TNG era onwards in the canon, but they don't really feature until the Dominion War because they are meant for war, not peaceful things. Doesn't Wesley fly in a trainer fighter squadron when he's in the Academy and he gets in trouble over that thing?

But if you really want to break the Star Trek universe (especially TNG onwards), consider why drones are not more of a thing. Why send a trillion tons of battleship and risk a thousand crew when you can just hurl a fleet of USVs at your enemy instead? Signal delay is not a valid excuse since you have advanced computers and subspace communications.

One of the main arguments against drones... by the Irish Samurai on 2015-08-17 21:45:00 UTC Reply

...particularly battle groups consisting entirely of drones, is enemy electronic warfare.

Sure, your drones are autonomous, so you don't have to worry about signal decay, but you're still going to want to be able to transmit new orders, update target priorities, change mission profiles, etc. so they do have to be capable of receiving signals. And if they can receive your signals then they can receive other people's signals too: which means there's a chance they can be suborned. Regardless of how good your encryption is, the weak link in that system is going to be the people that are supposed to keep the secrets - bribe one of them, and you could get yourself a whole bunch of free drones (well, free apart from the cost of the bribe).

Fiction also generally shows AIs to be less creative and not as able to handle unexpected situations as organics, which could be a serious downside in combat.

Groups of more expendable drone ships operating in support of manned warships would probably make a lot of sense.

- Irish

There are fighters, they're just rarely seen. by Mister Shoebox on 2015-08-17 00:07:00 UTC Reply

They're mentioned in the Dominion War. "Fighter Shuttles." But you do have an excellent point as to why the FLAGSHIP OF THE FEDERATION doesn't have a wing of space-ready "Get Rekt" little ships at the ready just in case stuff gets real.

Those are converted shuttlecraft. by Scapegrace on 2015-08-17 00:28:00 UTC Reply

As in, "looks like the misshapen offspring of a bargain-basement Thunderbird 2 knockoff and a Soviet ice cream van" shuttlecraft. A carrier squadron with dedicated fighter-bomber aspects up against a load of Galaxies would make Wolf 359 look like a seam coming loose on a teddy bear. However, I do admit they're a step in the right direction.

Actually, that's a point. How many Galaxies does it take to kill a Colonial Battlestar with full Viper assets?

That's a tricky one. by Huinesoron on 2015-08-17 10:09:00 UTC Reply

It seems from the Battlestar wiki that Colonial ships use physical weapons exclusively, which means all that frequency-matching going on in Star Trek is entirely pointless. Memory Alpha claims that a Constitution-class could take 90 simultaneous photon torpedoes to its shields. How many high-explosive bullets is that? Should we assume equivalence to Galactica's high-energy shells? Colonial weapons are optimised for use against superconducting armour, and are designed to cause physical damage, which makes me think they won't be too effecting against deflector shields.

So how about going the other way? A phaser strike on a Battlestar's hull should be dissipated by that armour, since phasers are energy weapons. Destroying a Battlestar with phasers will involve heating the entire hull until... well, probably until you cook the crew. That's going to take a while.

Torpedoes? Uh... Memory Alpha thinks that a single photon torpedo detonation could destroy an unshielded Galaxy-class. And that's a physical matter/antimatter detonation. Star Trek ships don't appear to be armoured, so that's not a terribly impressive achievement... but it still speaks to the power of the weapon.

How well can a Galaxy aim? If it can hit a Viper accurately with a phaser, the Viper is probably dead (due to hull heating if nothing else) - but that's true of any fighter up against main guns. Energy weapons probably make hitting your target easier, though. On the flip side, phasers are probably useless against a Battlestar - but photon torpedoes are orders of magnitude more powerful than anything the Twelve Colonies have. Unless Federation shields are highly ineffective against Colonial weapons (Memory Alpha doesn't really talk about how well they work against physical objects), I think the Galaxy takes this one.

(A Galaxy is somewhat under half the length of the Galactica, for the record. If the record cares. Which I'm not sure why it would. ^^)

hS

PS: Best weapon to use is ultra long-range AI-driven drones consisting of an engine, a warhead, and a computer (for instance, take any fighter, replace the pilot with an AI, and replace the life support, weapons, and everything else unnecessary with bombs). Stick a few hundred of them out there on long-range ballistic courses, ramp them up to a few thousand times the acceleration human-crewed ships can handle, and watch your enemy burn from across the solar system. ^^ Doesn't make for gripping TV, though. ~hS

Hmm... by the Irish Samurai on 2015-08-18 14:05:00 UTC Reply

I call shenanigans on a Constitution class's shields being able to take that much punishment. According to the episode quotes the Enterprise takes a hit equivalent to 90 photon torpedoes with little effect: it dropped the shield's integrity by 20%, but that was about it. Apparently it wasn't until it had taken a further 3 of those hits that the shields dropped.

But I can't remember any fight ever using hundreds of photon torpedoes, and I sure can remember the ships taking damage.

Also, I believe that your statement that 'photon torpedoes are orders of magnitude more powerful than anything the Twelve Colonies have' is inaccurate. According to my favourite page on the internet the destructive power of a photon torpedo is 2.7 x 10^17 Joules (equivalent to 64.3 million tonnes of TNT). Which makes it just a bit more powerful than the Tsar Bomba at 2.1 x 10^17 J (a 50 Mt yield nuclear device), and the largest mankind has ever detonated. I think that a society far enough in advance of our own to have easy FTL transport will also have continued to build bigger and more powerful weapons, so assuming that our current largest has become their standard seems reasonable to me. Having said that, phasors are almost certainly significantly more powerful than the main cannons carried by Battlestars.

We also know that the Galactica can survive nuclear strikes, and with fairly minimal damage (you know, considering they got nuked), so they could probably survive several photon torpedo hits.

Having said that, I suspect that a Constitution carries more photon torpedoes than a Battlestar carries nukes. So it's still not looking great for the Galactica.

As for how may bullets it would take to punch through a Constitution's shields... well, I don't think that anything which can take a high yield nuclear detonation is going to be bothered by any number of bullets.

- Irish

Hmm. by Huinesoron on 2015-08-18 14:57:00 UTC Reply

The question, really, is whether we go by the numbers or by the observed effects. Memory Alpha claims a close-range phot.torp. detonation can destroy two ships simultaneously; Battlestar never shows even large-scale damage following nukes.

Either this means that Star Trek ships are even less well-built than I already thought they were - or the production team didn't bother to calculate the actual energy yield of a 1.5 kg antimatter explosion.

In my tournament ficlet, I've made photon torpedoes probably too-powerful (the first strike takes out half of a flight pod, which probably does need reducing), but have left everything after that delightfully vague. That was probably a good plan. ^_^

hS

Interesting. by Scapegrace on 2015-08-17 13:46:00 UTC Reply

Something possibly of note is that (in the reimagined series at least) the Colonial Battlestars appear to use some manner of chemical propellant for their main weapons. Now, space combat, as any fule kno, occurs over very large distances. This implies that the projectiles are moving very, very fast indeed, which in turn means that high explosives are going to be vastly less effective than simply using a more massive bullet. I wonder how Trek shields stand up to high-speed kinetic bombardment; after all, it's not like they're kinetic barriers. =]

No kinetic barriers? by Hieronymus Graubart on 2015-08-17 14:35:00 UTC Reply

How fast can Star Trek space ships move when they don’t travel FTL? There’s probably some hand-wavy hyperspace explanation for FTL travel, but at very high STL velocity, every particle of cosmic dust should punch a micro-hole through a space ship that is neither heavily armored nor equipped with some sort of shield against fast-moving objects.

HG

Apparently... by Huinesoron on 2015-08-17 14:55:00 UTC Reply

... sublight ('impulse') engines have been seen to drive a ship at up to 0.5c. But given that Trek ships routinely warp space to travel, that doesn't necessarily mean it's travelling at half light-speed relative to stuff just outside the window. It's all a bit handwavy, to be honest.

hS
Inertial dampers, apparently. by Scapegrace on 2015-08-17 14:44:00 UTC Reply

Though precisely what they do is anyone's guess. =]

Dampen inertia? (nm) by Huinesoron on 2015-08-17 14:51:00 UTC Reply

Thanks for the hSass. =] by Scapegrace on 2015-08-17 14:57:00 UTC Reply

It's more that we don't know how it does it or why; is it some kind of space handbrake or minor shield? We just don't know.

However, that said, I do recall mention of navigational deflectors, so maybe that's what makes a tin frisbee dustproof. =]

Normally... by Huinesoron on 2015-08-17 15:13:00 UTC Reply

... inertial damp(en)ers are there to stop the fact that you're accelerating at thousands of gravities from making your crew into jam. They damp(en) the effect of inertia while the ship accelerates (inertia being basically the resistance of all objects to changing their velocity).

And you're welcome. ^_^

hS
Correct! by SeaTurtle on 2015-08-17 15:06:00 UTC Reply

The magic blue circle protects from dust, little pieces of rock, and more.

You sure? by Huinesoron on 2015-08-17 14:19:00 UTC Reply

Actually, I'm not entirely sure which of two points you're making:

1/ The guns use space!gunpowder, which means the weapons aren't internally propelled, which means they have to fire fast to get there in any reasonable time. If this is the case, then yes, they're going at a fair clip, and the wiki actually specifically calls the Vipers' main weapons Kinetic Energy Weapons.

2/ The projectiles are internally propelled, with chemical fuel, which means they must be moving fast because they continually accelerate. This only works if they have a high rate of acceleration, of course.

To either point: the range of Battlestar combat is roughly planet-scale, I think - I'm sure I remember Galactica firing on base-stars as they came over the horizon. The scale of Federation combat is... uh... a lot less. I remember seeing a figure of 40km for something on Memory Alpha, which is frankly ridiculous.

Which means that Captain Kircardway will try to close on the Battlestar, while the Battlestar uses its Vipers to try and stand her off. Hmm... are short-range warp trips possible? If so, that's a major advantage to the Galaxy, because it gets to choose the range.

I still can't find any information on the matter-deflecting properties of Trek shields. I know they do block matter - they have to be lowered to let shuttles fly through - but how well... no idea. It doesn't matter how fast the Colonials are shooting their bullets if Kircardway's shields can stop an asteroid, for instance. (Well, it does... but you said chemical propellants, and they aren't going to give significant fractional-c speeds).

(All of this assumes Kicardway doesn't use the traditional Star Trek 'get out of combat free card': transporting a photon torpedo into the Battlestar's interior.)

hS

'Are short-range warp trips possible'? by the Irish Samurai on 2015-08-17 15:43:00 UTC Reply

Yup. In fact, tactical short-range hops similar to what you're talking about are known as the Picard Maneuver.

Although the intent in this case is different, the distances involved are probably on the same sort of scale to what you're talking about.

- Irish

That's... why didn't that change the nature of warfare? by Huinesoron on 2015-08-17 16:00:00 UTC Reply

By a very simple trick, you gain a 50% chance that your enemy will miss you entirely. You get to move to the exact position you want. You can open fire immediately. Even if half the time it doesn't work (ie, they target the new version), that's still a massive advantage. Why don't all Trek battles devolve into ships streaking back and forth in warp hops, hoping to land the lucky shot?

(Other than 'because that doesn't make good telly'.)

hS

Well... by the Irish Samurai on 2015-08-18 13:13:00 UTC Reply

As for why the Picard Maneuver didn't revolutionise space warfare, Data supposedly came up with a counter for it. I've read the brief explanation, and it doesn't make any sense to me, but apparently there is a countermeasure.

More realistically (I love using that word in these kind of discussions), it may be that while the short hops are possible, they aren't advisable for some reason - such a short jump could place undue strain on the FTL system, risking burning it out or something.

- Irish

Which is good for Data and the Federation. by Huinesoron on 2015-08-18 13:19:00 UTC Reply

But Data's, uh, basically the most advanced computer in existence, right? So the other guys - whoever the Federation happens to be fighting right now - won't come up with the same idea, and won't (once they adopt the Picard Maneuver themselves) know how the Federation is seeing past it.

I would've assumed that it put immense strain on the warp engines myself - but Memory Alpha doesn't make a whisper about that. So maybe it just never got said on the TV show?

(As to Data's counter: it only counters the least-useful aspect of the maneuver, to my mind. Given that flesh-and-blood captains give the order to fire on Star Trek ships, jumping into sudden, unexpected close-quarters is going to give you an advantage even without the 'see the ship in two places at once' effect.)

hS

Re: That's... why didn't that change the nature of warfare? by Artell on 2015-08-17 20:39:00 UTC Reply

It's a mystery on the level of "how is it that when two spaceships rendezvous on Star Trek, they are always oriented to the same plane?"

The former category. by Scapegrace on 2015-08-17 14:37:00 UTC Reply

In the reimagined series, the main guns have massive muzzle flashes consistent with extremely scaled-up conventional weapons. As for the second point, well, it rather depends on the field of battle. I dimly recall planetary and stellar gravity playing hob with entering and exiting warp, buti might be wrong. In deep space, however, this is obviously not an issue. Galaxies also seem a bit more nimble than battlestars at sublight speeds, so that might be to it's advantage at longer ranges, dodging the Mercury-class's long guns as it closes range at impulse.

Whatever happens, it's a cool as hell image. =]

Having just... by Huinesoron on 2015-08-17 15:14:00 UTC Reply

... scribbled a quick picture of two Galaxies mobbing a Battlestar... yeah, it is.

hS

This: by Huinesoron on 2015-08-17 15:39:00 UTC Reply

(The Galaxies are to approximate scale with the Battlestar. Ish.)

hS

I want this fanfic. Immediately. =] (nm) by Scapegrace on 2015-08-17 17:39:00 UTC Reply

Only ONE fanfic? by Huinesoron on 2015-08-17 20:16:00 UTC Reply

I think it sounds more like a tournament bracket for me. With all battles to be resolved in ficlets, of course.

Let's see... we've got a Battlestar (1.4 km) and a Galaxy (or two ^^) at 600m. We obviously add an Imperial Star Destroyer (1.6 km), and then... hrm.

We'll have an <a href="http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/EmperorClassBattleship">Emperor-class Battleship from 40K; apparently it's about 6km in length, so may have an advantage. Then we can have a <a href="http://honorverse.wikia.com/wiki/Medusaclass">Medusa-class Superdreadnaught (Honorverse) at... the same length as Galactica, actually. And then, um... well, on the principle of 'space + fightin'', let's add Thor, at slightly under 2m. He... might face some difficulty.

Okay, and then I'm stuck for canons I can name space-battleships from off the top of my head. Um. Okay, we'll put in a Dalek saucer, though frankly I don't think it'll be a top contender. And... ah, there we go, a Firefly Victoria-class corvette. It's small, but, er, the only Firefly large ship I've heard of is apparently unarmed. ^_^

So that's eight; it's a small tournament, but it's a tournament! I might let them play on points, and run two battles each; we'll see.

hS

Did someone start listing space battleships? by the Irish Samurai on 2015-08-17 22:00:00 UTC Reply

Nah, I guess not, otherwise surely they would have mentioned Space Battleship Yamato :P

If you wanted a bigger tournament, I could probably name some more, although I might have to go to some pretty obscure series - you've certainly covered most of stuff that immediately sprang to mind.

- Irish

Ooh, ooh! by Neshomeh on 2015-08-17 22:16:00 UTC Reply

You gotta have a Peacekeeper command carrier and a Scarran dreadnought from the Farscape universe. {= D

By the way, have I plugged Farscape recently? No? Then please allow me to take this opportunity to do so! If you like space operas and you have not seen Farscape, you should go watch it right now. Drop everything you're doing and go.

~Neshomeh

Re: Ooh, ooh! by the Irish Samurai on 2015-08-17 23:37:00 UTC Reply

D'you know, I don't think you have plugged it recently :)

Farscape is one of those shows that I know of, but don't actually know, so my suggestion would've just been 'something from that 'verse'. However, so far hS has only been picking one contender from each different continuum. So, out of the two you've suggested, which would be your top choice?

I do like space operas, and I haven't seen Farscape - unfortunately I can't watch it right now because I need sleep. Also, I don't have the DVDs :( However, it is on my list of things to acquire, because everything I know about it makes it sound very interesting.

- Irish

The command carrier, then. by Neshomeh on 2015-08-18 15:51:00 UTC Reply

According to the Farscape Encyclopedia Project, a command carrier can take a dreadnought in a one-on-one fight. The carriers have superior firepower and may be more maneuverable, since they're smaller. (The PKs were horribly outnumbered in canon.)

But, it may be a moot point if hS isn't gonna use it anyway. Technobabble hurts my brain, so I can't help.

Do you have Netflix? I'm pretty sure Farscape is on Netflix. {= )

~Neshomeh

Farscape by the Irish Samurai on 2015-08-19 15:59:00 UTC Reply

No, I don't have Netflix, although I have been wondering getting an account, or one of the equivalents like Amazon Prime. My annual DVD budget is probably higher than the subscription costs would be, but I do like actually having the physical copies sitting on my shelves.

Having said that, the boxset of all the series seems to be a reasonable price at the minute, so I probably will pick it up. I've been reading a lot of new sci-fi recently, so it'd be good to have some new stuff to watch too.

- Irish
Also, whoaheck. by Huinesoron on 2015-08-18 16:20:00 UTC Reply

I was looking all over the chart'o'spaceships for the Farscape pair, because I was sure I'd seen the name, but I just couldn't find them. I was looking harder and harder at all the fiddly little ships, desperate to locate them. The ship from Galaxy Quest is on there, how come-?

And that's when I realised that the huge thing propping up the bottom-right corner is the Scarran dreadnought. That's... that's a big ship.

hS

They both are, aren't they? by Neshomeh on 2015-08-18 16:29:00 UTC Reply

I didn't think they'd be THAT much bigger... I didn't imagine that Moya would outweigh Trek's Galaxy class, either. I could swear I remember her being described in terms of football fields. O.o

~Neshomeh

Mutter, mutter, grumble, grumble. OKAY SO: by Huinesoron on 2015-08-18 16:17:00 UTC Reply

The inaugral All-Multiverse Warship Rally is already underway; the eight competitors have had their first round each, so a third of the battles have been played.

Obviously, news of this has spread across the rest of the Multiverse, and new challengers are lining up to enter. The Organisers Who Shall Remain Nameless (OWSReNs) have been forced to lay down some rules:

-Only one ship class may be entered from each civilisation or faction.
-This ship may have docked smaller ships (ie, a carrier), but may not receive assistance from outside forces.
-The ship must be a production ship, ie, representative of the larger members of its armed forces. Unique, one-or-a-few-of-a-kind vessels will not be permitted. (So the Imperial contender is a standard Star Destroyer, not a Death Star or a Super Star Destroyer).
-Entries will be accepted or rejected at the discretion of the OWSReNs.

Submit your entries now.

~

So both the command carrier and the dreadnought can enter, since they seem to be from opposing sides. So can Space Battleship Yamato, providing I can find some stats on it. And if you - any you - have any other requests, drop 'em here and I'll see if I can work them into Round Two.

hS, apparently either a sucker for punishment or eager to please

I would love to see... by Huinesoron on 2015-08-18 12:00:00 UTC Reply

... someone do a full-scale bracket, with all the iconic ships we can come up with. There's even a glorious size-comparison chart to work from.

For the first run, though, I'm only using ships I'm familiar(ish) with, because I'm writing ficlets to represent the fights. If people are willing to volunteer to write the matches I can't, I'm perfectly happy to expand-and-redo... might get complicated, though.

(And yes, I was sticking with one ship per 'verse, otherwise some of them would be massively over-represented. But, again, that can be tweaked for Version Two.)

hS

In addition to that nifty poster... by the Irish Samurai on 2015-08-20 12:25:00 UTC Reply

There is also this rather cool website. Just click on the '10X', '100X' etc. tabs to see comparisons of various ships, drones and creatures. Thought it might interest you.

- Irish

^_^ I love that website. by Huinesoron on 2015-08-20 12:55:00 UTC Reply

If someone comes up with something that's too big or small to appear on the poster, I'll probably be cribbing it from there.

Actually, I'll probably get the next image for the Retribution-class from there anyway; it's in colour!

hS
First Multiversal All-Out Space Battleship Tournament by Huinesoron on 2015-08-20 12:50:00 UTC Reply

Report on Proceedings Here

In which we see that size, power, armour, speed, range, and small craft all matter - though some more than others.

We are now taking candidates for the Second Etc Tournament. Multiple ships per continuum will be accepted, but only one per side.

hS

My (spoilery) thoughts. by the Irish Samurai on 2015-08-20 15:18:00 UTC Reply

You make a compelling case for the Champion (and I'm not just saying that because the Honorverse is one of my favourite settings).

Round 1
I'm glad to see the Battlestar got through her first round encounter (even if she did take a bit of a kicking).

Round 2
Thor hefted his hammer. "Right," he said. "This could take a while." - loved that line :)

Although not surprised that it didn't go well for him.

Round 3
The Star Destroyer Vanquisher moved through space like a shark - what, you mean it had to keep moving forward to stop itself from sinking? (Sorry, but that was my first thought on reading that line)

Round 4
...every single one wasted itself against the roof of [Insert ship name here]'s wedge. - a line taken straight out of so many of the books.

I also thought, at first, that a salvo of 200 warheads seemed low for an SD(P). Then I wondered if that was just because I'm used to seeing the thousands and tens of thousands that battlegroups throw, rather than just a single ship.

I'm still not sure though. According to the technical specs, a Medusa-class has enough fire control links to handle salvos of 200 pods, but each pod will be carrying somewhere between (I think) 6 - 12 missiles depending on which generation they are.

Just thought I'd mention it, because the fact that HMS Masquerade fires off 200 missiles in each encounter makes it seem like you think 200 missiles is her maximum throw weight, when actually it's much higher than that.

Round 5
Nothing much to say here. Shame the Battlestar got taken out, but I agree with your reasoning.

Round 6
Masquerade's missile pods gave her a heavier weight of fire, but once rolled they were critically vulnerable to proximity kills. - not so much. See, the thing is, the early pod designs towed their (completely unshielded) missile pods outside the ship's wedge, which meant that they were exposed, and that the ship's max acceleration and turn speed was reduced - if the ship was fired on before they'd turned to present their broadside for firing, then the pods would simply be lost as collateral damage to all the bomb-pumped x-rays flying around. Heck, one decent ship-killer could probably take out dozens of pods if it went off in the right place.

But with the design of the podnaughts, the missile pods are only exposed to potential enemy fire when they are about to be fired themselves. Yes, they could still be taken out, but the Star Destroyer's primary armaments are its turbolaser batteries - and these weapons don't have blast radiuses to worry about. Sure, a hit from one will definitely destroy a pod (for the same reason that it'd shred any starfighter), but I doubt they'd be able to aim for them. Also, once your pods are rolled, you don't have to worry about them too much - if you see incoming fire that might take them out, just launch. You may not have the best firing solution at that point, but you don't have to lose the missiles.

Round 7
Nice tactic from the Masquerade there. Also, as a comment about the tournament in general, I like how the outcome of some of the fights is due to differences in the science of the settings, and how some tactics just don't work against ships that use different rules - such as the Honorverse's 'only vulnerable from the sides' quirk.

I'm not sure about the damage that Masquerade sustained though. The only comparable instance I can think of is in On Basilisk Station, when Fearless disables a Havenite courier ship with a close pass, but the courier ship has significantly less powerful nodes, and it's the nodes that get damaged - not the hull. Which to me implies that it suffers some kind of energy feedback thing on its nodes, which caused the damage. If Fearless had passed closer, then the hull would have been damaged by the gravitational stresses, just as happened to the Cataclysm, but I don't see why Masquerade's nodes would have suffered damage in this case - there was no conflicting gravity wave present to cause the kind of feedback that I think is necessary for this damage.

Of course, this is all just conjecture on my part, as I don't believe the question of what happens when wedge strikes a significant mass has ever been answered in canon.

The only incident I can think of is at the end of In Enemy Hands, when a pinnace brings it's wedge up um... very close... to the much larger mass of a battlecrusier, and the nodes certainly last a little while: it's possible that they burned out, but equally possible that they didn't - and I don't think we'll be getting any witness statements. While the pinnace is certainly destroyed, that destruction could have come from any number of sources.

But, it's your story, and I can't think of any reason why it couldn't happen like that - it just isn't what I would expect.

I have some candidates in mind for the Second Tournament, but they are mostly from more obscure series, or from canons that I know of, but don't really know that well myself, so I'm going to have to have a look around and see if there are decent reference sites for them. One thing that did occur to me about this first tournament is that the computer games were severely underrepresented.

- Irish

Oh, wait, one other incident: by Huinesoron on 2015-08-21 11:46:00 UTC Reply

During Oyster Bay, we see a tug catching chunks of space station on its wedge with no negative effects. And it's entirely possible some of those were Retribution-sized.

But, they weren't using space-time warps as shielding, which seems to be what void shields are. So the effect still makes a certain sense. ^_^

hS
Responses. by Huinesoron on 2015-08-20 15:51:00 UTC Reply

3: Hilariously, the Wookieepedia entry for 'shark' currently says that it's 'a creature that bore a superficial resemblance to an Imperial-class Star Destroyer'. And I thought I was being original... :D

#4: I had it at 200 because I thought that was what the Wiki said... oops. You're right, and I did think it was low. I'll edit that (since it's only really coming up as 'overwhelming numbers').

#6: I was thinking they could still get destroyed while they were being laid. I remember at one point that pods were being rolled on timers, so a salvo consisted of coordinated launches solely because they were carefully timed. But that may have been when they were still mucking about with... ugh, was it Wayfarer? Whatever the merchant ship was.

On reflection, yes, I remember ships launching all their rolled pods to protect them, so you're right; I'll edit that.

#7: I was thinking of the In Enemy Hands maneuver, yep. ^_^ That goes down as one of my favourite/most shocking moments in the Honorverse, and in an environment where the enemy doesn't have its own wedge to inflict the same damage on you - yeah, it's pretty lethal.

I've gone with 'causes massive damage' on the principle that, uh, suddenly inflicting the wedge with something weighing on the order of billions of tonnes is probably not a good idea. You don't see Honorverse ships pulverising asteroids by wandering past, and there's probably a good reason for that. I don't know what the effect of hitting a wedge with ludicrous amounts of mass would be, but this seems a decent bet.

I'll eagerly welcome candidates for Round 2; Masquerade shouldn't really be Grand Champion, given that she won twice based on 'you don't know how my tech works'.

hS

If you'll accept a few: by Scapegrace on 2015-08-20 16:44:00 UTC Reply

1: Terran Dominion Fleet TDF Bucephalus (StarCraft II: Wings Of Liberty)
Another slab-looking bruiser, though unfortunately rather smaller than a Mercury-class. However, it's also rather better-armed than a Merc, complete with the totally-not-a-reference "Yamato Cannon" stowed away.

#2: Asgard O'Neill-class (Stargate: SG1)
We've seen how well Thor did in the last round. Let's see what his little grey counterpart's biggest, shootiest ship can do instead. My money's on "better". Because it'd be difficult to do worse. =]

#3: United Federation of Planets Starfleet USS Enterprise-J (Star Trek)
This time, the Federation wants to put up a liiiiiiitle bit more of a fight than previously. The largest and most technologically advanced ship seen on the Star Trek TV show. If you haven't heard of it, that's because it was featured on Enterprise. Yyyyyeah. =]

#4: UN Spacy SDF-1 Macross (Robotech/Macross, depending on localization)
Is it a ship? Is it a robot? Who cares? The question is: can anything stop the rampant Honorverse ships, and is that thing a giant transforming mecha from space?

---

More on the second bracket as it develops. =]

Accepted. by Huinesoron on 2015-08-21 10:20:00 UTC Reply

And the bracket is now full, with 16 entrants. Some of whom are... um... quite silly. Yes.

hS

And can I just say: by Huinesoron on 2015-08-21 11:12:00 UTC Reply

The Enterprise-J is a gorgeous ship. Can I get that TV show instead of the films?

hS

Er, possibly? by Scapegrace on 2015-08-21 13:50:00 UTC Reply

I mean, it was only featured fairly briefly, according to Memory Alpha, because Enterprise-J (for Jesus, That's A Big Tin Frisbee) is from the 26th Century... aaaaaaand Enterprise the TV show was a prequel to the main series, primarily taking place in the 22nd Century. Until the later seasons started mucking around with the spacetime continuum. =]

But yeah, I like the J. It can am frisbee gud. =]

Replies by the Irish Samurai on 2015-08-20 16:41:00 UTC Reply

6: Yes, they certainly can be destroyed once they been rolled (hell, if a hit gets through the sidewall and hull armour they can be destroyed before), but it seems like a much lower risk in this situation. The Star Destroyer's weapons, being non-explosive, probably aren't going to do much to the pods, simply because they'll likely be targeted against the ship laying them.

I think the main problem Wayfarer (yes, I'm pretty sure you got that right) had was that she was the trial for this type of weapon design, and had been made by retro-fitting an existing merchant hull. That meant that she was quite slow to roll her pods, and her mission profile meant that she didn't have the back-up from a full task group while she did so. She also ended up going up against opponents with significant defences (if I remember rightly she went up against battlecruisers, when she was meant to be on anti-piracy patrols), which meant that the only way she could beat them was to roll several salvos of pods, then launch them all at once for one massive salve that completely overwhelmed her target's point defence. So while she was assembling her heavy salvo, it was very vulnerable.

The proper pod-layers can lay more pods at once than she could, and of course they tend to operate in large groups, so they can get their overwhelming salvos by having a dozen ships roll two sets of pods, instead of one ship roll two dozen sets. This means that modern pod-layers are much less vulnerable to having their pods killed, as they are more spread out, and the salvo takes less time to assemble.

#7: Obviously my personal head canon is different from yours, but I see the nodes and their gravity bands like a cutting torch - put an object in the way, and that object is going to get wrecked, but the torch (or impellar nodes) are going to be unaffected by the object. Point two of them at each other, and they could both take damage, but if one is significantly more powerful than the other then it will 'win' in short order, and no longer have to worry about taking damage.

The thing is, the gravity bands are intangible objects that are being projected remotely. I don't see why disruption of those bands by physical would cause anything to happen to the actual projectors - but I can see conflicting energy fields setting up some sort of destructive harmonic/oscillation in the emitters. I dunno why, it just seems different to me.

As for Masquerade's 'easy win', it seems quite sensible so far, and I'm struggling to think of a non-Honorverse ship that would be able to overcome that. Even in settings which have powerful defence shields, like Star Trek and Star Wars, generally speaking hammering on those shields will cause them to break. But nothing can get through a military grade wedge - if Masquerade just approaches 'belly up', then rolls when she's good and ready to fire, she'll be able to soak up all the initial incoming fire.

Even a surprise attack from a stealth ship wouldn't necessarily do that much, as they'd have to get lucky and fire down the throat or kilt for it to do any good (which they might not want to do anyway - after all, ships present a much bigger target from the side, so hitting them amidships has got be easier, right?). And if the Masquerade survives the first blow then she'll be able to fight back.

The only thing I can think of off the top of my head that would stand a reasonable chance is something much more massive, that could soak up the kind of punishment a Medusa can dish out, and would actually have a chance to learn about her peculiarities while still being combat effective. Maybe some of the Titans from EVE Online? I dunno, I tend to lose interest in the supermassive stuff.

- Irish

Obviously, I still disagree. ^_^ by Huinesoron on 2015-08-20 17:02:00 UTC Reply

The gravity bands are... well... gravity! That's gonna have some kind of impact when they hit something massive, even if it's only the object's own gravity (and a 7-km ship will definitely have that, even without gravity generation) distorting the field.

Also: I wasn't joking about the Masquerade and the ISD being evenly-matched. A Medusa has no shielding at her bow and stern, and a Star Destroyer has bombers. Can you imagine the damage a proton torpedo could do if it got inside the inner hull? Yikes!

I'm pretty sure an ISD's turbolasers could burn through her sidewalls, too: they're basically just shields. The problem for the Imperials was simply that they use a mode of combat that has become outdated in the Honorverse.

hS

You have NO IDEA how hard it was... by Scapegrace on 2015-08-17 22:21:00 UTC Reply

To refrain from putting an 1812 expy in my missions with Doktor Trollenfisch and Gabrielle. I think him and our resident Cutest Flareon Ever would get along well. =]

HTML is for weaklings. (nm) by Huinesoron on 2015-08-17 20:17:00 UTC Reply

Or, more importantly... by ratbrainbasher on 2015-08-17 08:49:00 UTC Reply

How long will the Vipers last against a Galaxy, with Battlestar support? Loved that description of the 'fighters' by the way.