Wolf 359 fleet vs. Endor Fleet

[Darth Tanner]

A fleet of 39 ships, all of them rather old even Fed standards (maybe even some Klingon ships thrown in for fun)
vs
1 SSD that likely masses more than the entire Fed fleet on its own and atleast 20 SD & minimum 1500 fighters

I dont see how it can be a contest!
The Fed fleet is destroyed by the first few salvos, it isn't made up of any of the modern Fed ships that have agility or heavy firepower to offer a challenge or avoid the mass tl fire that has much better range than Fed weapons.

Oh and the fighters would be useful in that they could surround the Fed fleet and stock them putting all shield power into one direction.

Also asteroids are practically solid metal! not dirt, the Ent D couldnt even go into an asteroid field that was much smaller out of fear of being hit, remember what happened when the Ent was tapped by a Miranda? BOOM!

[sonofccn]

The Fed fleet is destroyed by the first few salvos, it isn't made up of any of the modern Fed ships that have agility or heavy firepower to offer a challenge or avoid the mass tl fire that has much better range than Fed weapons.

We know from the DS9 pilot episode that the ships at wolf 359 were capable of pretty manuvering, far better then ISDs anyway. Where do you get better range? Trek ships can blast stuff thousand of Kilometers away, where the faresth I think a Wars ship has fired is around 60 kilometers. So in short Trek ships are more manuverable, pack bigger guns, alas just not as many, and outshoot imperial ships. Thus this battle is no cakewalk.

Oh and the fighters would be useful in that they could surround the Fed fleet and stock them putting all shield power into one direction.

1. based off of conudrom[TNG] the average life expetency for an imperial tie fighter pilot would be measured in a few fleeting seconds.

2.Since Tie fighers main guns are pitifuly lowpowered in comparison to deflector shield strenght you would need a god awful amount to pose a serious threat.

Except for distraction purpuses imperial fighters will not do enough damage to counter balance thier loss rate, and thus are mostly useless in the battle.

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

The TIEs might be useful if all of them attacked a single stationary UFP ship. However, chances are that all the UFP ships will be moving, and they can move orders of magnitude faster than TIEs. Also about old ships not being very maneuverable, that is just wrong, in "Relics" (TNG) Gordi states that a 70+ year old non-military transport ship could fly circles around the Ent-D at impulse. Also TL tend to go quite slowly, so at hundreds or thousands of kilometers even a lumbering oaf like the Galaxy or Ambassador would get out of its way.

[GStone]

I dont see how it can be a contest!
The Fed fleet is destroyed by the first few salvos, it isn't made up of any of the modern Fed ships that have agility or heavy firepower to offer a challenge or avoid the mass tl fire that has much better range than Fed weapons.

Oh and the fighters would be useful in that they could surround the Fed fleet and stock them putting all shield power into one direction.

Look at ships going to warp. The acceleration between 0 and lightspeed is only a couple seconds. Sublight causes a less as strong continuum distortion, but they aren't limited to not warp speeds for fighting them.

Also asteroids are practically solid metal! not dirt, the Ent D couldnt even go into an asteroid field that was much smaller out of fear of being hit, remember what happened when the Ent was tapped by a Miranda? BOOM!

Most natural asteroids are large collections of dirt. A much smaller percentage of natural ones are solid metal. I forget what they said, if anything, about the asteroids of that field when the crew de-evolved. And I think the Miranda crashed into the nacelle when they tried to deflect it.

[Darth Tanner]

Although we see plenty of scenes where the Fed use torps at extreme range in relaity projectile weapons have unlimited range in space so thats no real achievement, as far as I can remember phasers and battles in general are only fought at close range, often point blank. However I have no real memory of any long-range phaser fire so if I’m wrong I apologise.

Why are Federation weapons more powerful? Borg spheres have trouble with tin shacks!

Although Fighters would not be as good against ST as they are in SW due to phaser strips targeting abilities they still have the speed and agility to largely avoid it. Also ST ships as you said don’t have enough weapons to throw up a wall of fire to destroy them, why would SW fighters be any less useful than ST fighters? Other than their lack of shield, which to some extent is made up for by their better agility, speed and numbers.

Throughout dominion war scenes we see both sides forming static walls and moving towards each other, no real agility there, and we have no real reason that the fed would have had better tactics earlier on, if anything it should be the otherway round as the fed wasn't geared for war by wolf 359

also why are fighters seen as being weak? tie fighters maybe because they are designed for anti fighter work but bombers, gunboats and missile boats, they carry vast numbers of missiles

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

The battle scene from ST:FC shows decent combat maneuvering, I think that the bits we see of Wolf 359 in "The Emissary" (DS9) also show better combat maneuvering than is seen in the Dominion War battles.

The longest example I can think off for phaser fire hits is 300,000 km from "The Wounded" (TNG), though the TOS Enterprise is constantly engaging enemies with both phasers and torpedos at 40,000-100,000 km.

About firepower, there is already a topic about that, so that would be the place to discuss such matters.

As for TIE bombers, in TESB asteroid scene we get a good look at the firepower of those "mighty" bombs. They appear to be about on par with modern conventional bombs.

[Darth Tanner]

Those bombs they were dropping were doing absolutly no damage to the asteroid what so ever, so they must be either EM or sensor related.

300,000km ?!! impressive
Why do we never see ships engaging target at this range in either DS9 fleet battles?

Kirk Trek does crazy things, I'll defer to you on that

Both times they engaged the borg ships didnt appear to be going at the speeds to suggest, although we only see flashes of Worf they are just going a few hundred miles an hour doing runs on the cube. Same at the battle for earth, the Akira that goes past the cube takes almost a full second to cross it.

Better than DS9 but still not the insane speeds needed.

[Jedi Master Spock]

300,000km ?!! impressive
Why do we never see ships engaging target at this range in either DS9 fleet battles?

This is a running question of great interest to many fans, although stated ranges in DS9 dialogue indicate the capability was not lost. Producers got too fond of the visual "knife-fight" range.

We could say that what we see is a dramatic re-creation, with icons rescaled to sizes that the battle makes sense with, but that doesn't fit well either. We could also blame increased EW, or the fact that it only takes a few seconds to go from 300,000 km away to point-blank. "Insane" accelerations are seen regularly in travel, simply not combat.

[Darth Tanner]

makes sence to me

energy weapons can't have good efficieny ratings for keeping the energy over distance anyway.

[sonofccn]

Although Fighters would not be as good against ST as they are in SW due to phaser strips targeting abilities they still have the speed and agility to largely avoid it.

I wouldn't bet on that. Even if the fighters had the mechanical ability to dodge the beams, which is dubious, the pilots wouldn't have enough time to dodge. At best a few would survive by dumb luck or sheer numbers. I wouldn't call that "largely avoiding it".

Also ST ships as you said don’t have enough weapons to throw up a wall of fire to destroy them, why would SW fighters be any less useful than ST fighters? Other than their lack of shield, which to some extent is made up for by their better agility, speed and numbers.

I said they lack as many weapons as an ISD which packs like 60 turbolasers IIRC. Everyship should have enough emitters to throw up quite an effective anti-fighterscreen. As to thier ineffectiveness I would saw that falls squarely with cost-effectiveness. The fighters will not make a huge dent in the shield grid, and will be wipped of the face of space.

also why are fighters seen as being weak? tie fighters maybe because they are designed for anti fighter work but bombers, gunboats and missile boats, they carry vast numbers of missiles

Tie fighters appear to make up the bulk of the Imperial "airforce". Tie Bombers would be more effective, but would be slower I believe and be fewer in number.. Also didn't Tie fighters attack a medical frigate in ROTJ?

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

I don't think that there is a good in-universe way to rectify the difference between DS9 combat and the rest of Trek. I think it is because fleet battles would look really lame if you can only see only fleet at a time. Also, I think they based it on the ST:tWoK duel between to crippled ships.

[Darth Tanner]

ST ships often have difficulty hitting big ships at point blank range, I can imagine them having much more trouble hitting tiny one man fighters.

Also your forgetting jamming, the Empire has demonstrated the ability to block communication and targeting (Death Star run) The Fed as far as i can tell has no experience with this.

We have not seen such fleet engagements where a ship rapid fires in the way you describe. In Sacrifice of Angels the fleets were barely shooting at each other. The Fed fighters were taking almost no fire, despite being much larger and inferior in numbers.

The Empire is used to dealing with fighter armed opponents so out of the 72 fighters a SD carries, 60 of them are fighters for that purpose. Ties are not a real threat to SW ships, but to ST ships they could do a lot of damage is the shields were knocked out by the Star Deestroyers first.

[Mike DiCenso]

Darth Tanner wrote:
Although we see plenty of scenes where the Fed use torps at extreme range in relaity projectile weapons have unlimited range in space so thats no real achievement, as far as I can remember phasers and battles in general are only fought at close range, often point blank. However I have no real memory of any long-range phaser fire so if I’m wrong I apologise.

You are right to ask of the existance of such battles. Examples of long-range Trek combat was found mostly in TOS. Episodes like "Elaan of Troyius" with quoted ranges in excess of 80,000 km. Even in the TNG era, we have examples of long-range use of weapons. In "The Wounded" [TNG4], the U.S.S. Phoenix engages a Cardassian warship at 300,000 km. In DS9's "Return to Grace", even a relatively weak freighter was able to destroy a 5 meter wide asteroid from 400,000 km.

Darth Tanner wrote:
Why are Federation weapons more powerful? Borg spheres have trouble with tin shacks!

You're forgetting a few things:

1.) The Borg wanted to assimilate 21st century Earth, not obliterate it. So the weapons' yeilds are likely dialed down.

2.) The Borg weapons did quite well against their intended target, causing significant internal damage to a reinforced Titan II missle silo (killing everyone inside it).

3.) As has been discussed in other threads, episodes like TDIC argue for Federation firepower in the teraton range.

Darth Tanner wrote:
Although Fighters would not be as good against ST as they are in SW due to phaser strips targeting abilities they still have the speed and agility to largely avoid it. Also ST ships as you said don’t have enough weapons to throw up a wall of fire to destroy them, why would SW fighters be any less useful than ST fighters? Other than their lack of shield, which to some extent is made up for by their better agility, speed and numbers.

You said it yourself here, Federation fighters are larger than most SW ones, and appear to possess greater relative firepower, too. There are at least a few other tactics the Fed fleet can use, firing photon torpedoes with proximity warheads, for instance. The E-D in "Preemptive Strike" [TNG7] fired torpedoes in a "warning shot" by firing them between Maquis ships that were attacking a Cardassian Galor class starship. Those ships had shields, and the torpedo explosions only knocked them around. But against unshielded TIEs, the effects would likely be very devastating.

Darth Tanner wrote:Throughout dominion war scenes we see both sides forming static walls and moving towards each other, no real agility there, and we have no real reason that the fed would have had better tactics earlier on, if anything it should be the otherway round as the fed wasn't geared for war by wolf 359

Except that we have seen the way in which Wolf-359 was fought ("Emissary" [DS91]). The Fed fleet did not "form a static wall" as you suggest, but maneuvered about quite a bit. Also in "Sacrifce of Angels" [DS96], once the respective fleets closed in with each other, ships like the Defiant were seen maneuvering about. Even the large Galaxy class did not just simply sit and shoot. The incoming Klingon fleet came from out a completely different one the Dominion and Fed fleets were fighting on.
-Mike

[Darth Tanner]

So the Borg set their weapons to tin shack mode to save the live of the humans on the planet? Indeed.

The Dominion war scenes were against fleets, the defiant was simly part of a wall that was moving through the Dominion wall to get to DS9, the klingons were not part of the wall but came at them from a flank.

Also both Borg battles were against single ships, forming a wall would not do them much good, also we don't see much of either , only the debris of the first and a brief glance of the second after the Fed fleet has been shattered.

[Mike DiCenso]

Darth Tanner wrote:
ST ships often have difficulty hitting big ships at point blank range, I can imagine them having much more trouble hitting tiny one man fighters.

Would you care to back up your statement? We have seen over 90% of the time where ST ships (most particularly Federation starships) were able to hit other ships, regardless of size.

Darth Tanner wrote:
Also your forgetting jamming, the Empire has demonstrated the ability to block communication and targeting (Death Star run) The Fed as far as i can tell has no experience with this.

You are forgetting that Khan and his followers in ST2 were able to use the U.S.S. Reliant to jam the Enterprise's subspace communications. The Enterprise in "The Doomsday Machine" [TOS2], had it's communications jammed by the planet killer.

Darth Tanner wrote:We have not seen such fleet engagements where a ship rapid fires in the way you describe. In Sacrifice of Angels the fleets were barely shooting at each other. The Fed fighters were taking almost no fire, despite being much larger and inferior in numbers.

You are seriously trying to compare the larger, more heavily armed and shields Federation fighters to the weak, unshielded TIEs? Perhaps it's been a while since you last watched some the episodes you cite:

http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... =63&pos=91

A GCS pouncing on a Galor using rapid-fire phaser shots.

Darth Tanner wrote:
The Empire is used to dealing with fighter armed opponents so out of the 72 fighters a SD carries, 60 of them are fighters for that purpose. Ties are not a real threat to SW ships, but to ST ships they could do a lot of damage is the shields were knocked out by the Star Deestroyers first.

Could you back up that statement, please? Standard TIE firepower appears extremely low, as does the firepower of the TIE bombers [TESB].
-Mike