Federation Battlestar

[BigJKU316]

So the fighters would NEED warp drive, if only for manuvering. That is going to increase their size.

How much could it increase their size? All the smaller shuttles have warp drive IIRC. So it can't be too huge to do so...

I have to ask again though, what is the point of carrying around fighters slower than the ship that is carrying them. I see a number of problems.

1. Your range for the fighters is limited by the endurace of the pilot. Sure you can make it larger and have two pilots, and even a rest area, but then you get less on each carrier and less bang for your buck. So a single person fighter is basically limited to 24 hours so at warp 5 that won't even get you between Earth and the nearest star system. Hell, even a warp 9 fighter would take a day and change to get 5 LY's behind it. So really you are not covering useful ground considering an Intrepid can make that round trip 3 times in a day.

2. Even if you have a bunch of fighters you can't exactly cover a ton of space and dominate it. Lets say we have 4 squadrons of 12, so like 48 fighters that can do warp 9, which I think is way high for a fighter. So if I spread them on a line to cover a front I can cover 4.1 LY's in either direction from any squadron during a day assuming my pilots can physically hold up for 24 hours of operation. So my total line is like 32.8 LY's at its max. But it is not that simple. Assuming my carrier is in the middle my furthest station on each flank is like 12.3 LY's away. So I need to drop off my fighters along the way because it will take them 3 days just to get to their station and spread out so we can cover this frontage.

So my mother ship needs to cover a 24 LY track (from the leftmost fighter squadron's midpoint to the right most squadrons mid-point and back) assuming I have an Intrepid speed ship, which is very fast, I still can't cover that space in less than a day. So I am going to have pissed off fighter pilots sitting in their craft for the three days plus it takes me to get from one end of this line to the other. That clearly won't work. So not only are we limited by the slow speed of the fighters, their short duration (ie as long as one guy can fly the thing) limits how far we can get away from the mother ship. Since I have to be back in a day I can't let my Intrepid speed ship get more than 7.5 LY's away from any group at any one time.

And even if I do that all I am going to do is run from one end of the line to the other picking up and droping off fighters. And my line will cover at most 11.5 LY's (the amount of space my mother ship can cover and still get back to pickup in a day plus the amount of space my fighters can cover and still get back to the recovery point to meet the mother ship at the same time).

The problem with this is if I just plucked down a single Intrepid at the center of our hypothetical line and let it sit there I can cover 30.4 LY's (15.2 in either direction in 24 hours) without all the nonsense of a fighter. I could be anywhere on that 11.5 LY line from above in about 9 hours (where with the fighters I could be over 18 hours away if I get caught on the wrong end). What am I gaining from all the fighters because it is sure not dominance of a larger area.



The point is fighters only make sense if they are faster than the thing carrying them. They make sense in Starwars (kind of) because in sublight battles they move faster than the large ships and ships can't use their jump drives in battle (or at least they don't). So in theory they can extend the range of your ships striking ability and do useful things.

But in Star Trek nothing really stops the fleet you are going after with your fighters from just jumping back a few LY's. Plus we are not even sure the fighter would be faster in sublight anyway. Even if the fighters are the same speed as the mother ship you still get little to no net gain as the mother ship will always be teathered to the fighter based on how long the pilots can last in a high strees environment (which is a damn sight less than a day like I used above).

[Graham Kennedy]

So make the fighters faster than the capital ships.

[Captain Seafort]

So make the fighters faster than the capital ships.

At warp or impulse? The latter's not going to happen, simply because a big ship can devote more of it's mass, proportionally, to it's engines, and the former is contradicted by the clear proportional relationship between size and maximum warp shown throughout Trek.

[Graham Kennedy]

So make the fighters faster than the capital ships.

At warp or impulse? The latter's not going to happen, simply because a big ship can devote more of it's mass, proportionally, to it's engines,

I'd have thought the opposite. Impulse engines take up a tiny fraction of any given starship that we've seen. Whilst they no doubt could devote more to them, nobody ever does or ever has. The impulse engines on the Peregrine are far larger in comparison.

Of course "faster" is a somewhat sticky issue anyway, given that the big ships can already get up close to c, so no matter what you'll only have a fractional advantage from bigger impulse engines. But I see no reason why fighters couldn't have far greater acceleration than capital ships, which would at least count for something.

Of course in show they generally act as if the ships have a designed "top speed" much as naval ships do, without any silly space physics let alone relativity in the way.

and the former is contradicted by the clear proportional relationship between size and maximum warp shown throughout Trek.

Actually TOS shuttles were as fast at Warp as the Enterprise was, so it's not that big a leap. Most shuttles are said to be slow at warp, but we only have canon figures for the Type 9 (Warp 4), and the Runabouts (Warp 5). But that doesn't at all mean that a high warp fighter is impossible, surely?

And hey, in ST XI the rather small "Jellyfish" was referred to as "our fastest ship". I think a small, fast warp ship could easily be produced.

[BigJKU316]

But Spock's ships is huge for a fighter. Anything carrying a bunch of those would have to be gigantic.

Even granting you could match the warp speed of a bigger ship you still have the same problem. You likely can't recover the things at Warp and you are limited by the pilots endurance.

Fighters in Trek seem useful in a very limited sense, basically for planetary defense and assaults on forces that are for some reason pinned down in one area. Otherwise, space is just too large.

[Mark]

You all are forgetting the high speed probe in TNG. If a probe can maintain warp 9+ for that amount of time, it CERTAINLY stands to reason that a small, one or two man ship could.

Addressing the problem of fighter fatiuge, that as simple a matter of installing a short term stasis unit in the cockpit.

Now, the fighter will NEVER be a long range recon ship how they are used in oBSG or even Star Wars. In the Trek universe it just makes no sense since as was stated, an Intrepid was DESIGNED to fill that role. In its role as a carrier, its mission is to deliver massive firepower at the enemy in multiple ways.

[McAvoy]

Even if Star Trek were to have dedicated fighters then they would at leats need a carrier. The fighters we have seen are much larger than your average modern fighter. Almost between a typical fighter and bomber in size. Such a ship to carry them, would need to be extremely large at least to carry them in large numbers. Numerous smaller carriers is much more manpower and resource expensive than a smaller number of larger carriers. On the other hand, larger number of carriers can be deployed in more numerous areas as opposed to smaller numbers of larger ones. Classic case between large and small ships even in modern times.

Given that we have seen that numerous fighters can destroy or severely damage Cardassian ships, but even the number of fighters was still small. I'd imagine if we seen even two to three times that number would have a much greater threat. But that's just me.

The biggest problem I see is that fighters cannot absorb damage. Given with the relative accuracy of energy weapons in Star Trek, it would be very dangerous for fighter pilots.

[Mark]

Even if Star Trek were to have dedicated fighters then they would at leats need a carrier

Ahem...points to thread name


A fighters survivability would no doubt be the greatest danger. But that is no different than in any number of Sci Fi franchises. Star Wars, Bab 5, and BSG (old and new) have fighters easily dying in battle. So, the greatest question would be how to keep them alive.

Now, lets review the following scenario.


Our Federation Battlestar comes up against a standard issue Borg cube. Would several squadrans of ships be useful and worth the risk? Maybe. They can harry the enemies flank, capatilize on any weakness caused in the Borg defenses, and draw enemy fire from the Battlestar. Is there risk to the fighters? Hell yes. But we've seen the stardrive of a GCS dodge incoming Borg fire, which leads me to believe a agile and nible fighter can easily dodge incoming attacks with a greater degree of success.


Here's another one

Our Federation Battlestar is dispatched to DS9 where a Dominion Dreadnaught (that BIG MOFO) has taken up position in the system. Diplomacy breaks down and weapons are activated. Launch fighters? I wouldn't. What could be gained? You'd be roughly equel in strength, speed, and firepower with both ships. Unless the shields went down, the fighters really couldn't do any damage. The fact that the enemy ships tac officer would only have one other ship to focus on would indicate to me they could indeed take the time to shoot down fighters with the ships multiple hard points. Unless the fighters were launched early enough in the engagement, and basically did an arrowhead, and co-ordinated their fire with the Battlestar, they'd be useless.

Finally

Imagine a Battlestar was available during some of the fleet actions during DS9. Would fighters have been useful? Hell yes. They draw fire, can engage and kill smaller ships, and dance around incoming weapons fire while tac officers are tied up with other ships. A perfect battlefield to deploy a fighter.

[Praeothmin]

Wasn't the Akira built to become ST's nBSG equivalent?
In the (non-canon) Last Unicorn books, it shows the Akira having a hangar from aft to fore (in fact taking up almost 30% internal space if memory serves), and at the same time it is supposed to have 15 PT launchers.
If you have that kind of ship, would you need an nBSG, except for coolness factor?

[Mark]

Aside from the fact that you could put 15 torp launchers down the port side of a battlestar alone?

[Praeothmin]

Aside from the fact that you could put 15 torp launchers down the port side of a battlestar alone?

Perhaps, but with all the space required by the Vipers, where'd you put the torpedoes?

"Fire all Torpedoes. Let's see how these new launchers work!"
"Captain, all launchers fired their 2 torpedoes, we're now all out of Torps..."
"Damn, now I now how Picard felt in Nemesis"

[Mark]

Well, a Battlestar has a crew between 1000-2000. With SF automation, that number could be easily reduced. Plus, you'd have all the ordenence space where they are now storing missles and nukes. Factor in a PT replicator, and the ship could easily reload itself somewhat given enough time.

[Sionnach Glic]

Well, a Battlestar has a crew between 1000-2000

3500 for the understaffed Galactica.
1750 for the Pegasus, which had taken rather heavy casualties at that point.

[Mark]

Where did we get those numbers from? I remember it being stated that Galactica had a crew of about 2000.....or was that because that she was about to be decomissioned?

[Sionnach Glic]

Whoops, that should be 2500 for Galactica. To steal from Battlestar Wiki:

In "Water", Baltar says there are 45,265 civilians in the Fleet. Given the total fleet population of 47,958 visible on Roslin's whiteboard in that episode, this means there were 2,693 military personnel in the Fleet at the time.

In the Miniseries Adama does say he had about 2000 people on board. Presumably the extra few hundred were made up from whatever survivors of the military were left (Crashdown, for example, was from the Triton) or people in the fleet volunteering to join up as marines or low-level crewmen.

For Pegasus the survivor count jumps up by about that much when the ship first joins the fleet.