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Federation Home Defense options

IIRC there's been other cases where citizens in the Federation, or at least similar, have had some form of home defense weaponry.

I seem to recall situations where people had "old plasma weapons", etc but can't pin the episode down.
 
Star Trek: Enterprise, S1E01, farmer in the midwest shoots Klingon with Plasma Long Gun.

Also in "The Survivors" which, yes we know was on a colony that was wiped out, "Kevin" had a non-functional weapon, yet obviously was most likely functional at one point
 
"The Survivors" is a good episode to bring up. There's talk about how the colonists fought back, implying weapons in non-Starfleet hands, if only makeshift ones. The Husnock seem to have glassed the world rather than invading, which complicates things for the defenders. Perhaps weaponized transporters, surface-to-space beams or projectiles, killsats, or ships (though they're said to possess no interstellar spacecraft).
 
Handguns and the like are readily available everywhere, and never surprise our heroes with their presence. Every civilian literally from day one has possessed one - I'm looking at you, Dr. Crater.

Handguns aren't home defense, though: they can't achieve shit against a Star Trek attacker. A planetful of fiercely motivated gun-waving folks is never considered a threat or an obstacle: the Sheliak would simply wipe out the clowns without a fight, the Husnock did exactly that, and Sisko didn't have any trouble eliminating a planetful of freedom fighters with the push of a button, either.

Now, shields are home defense, to a degree: at least they hinder transporter use. But weaponry that can inconvenience spacecraft is very rarely mentioned. Of course, when it is mentioned, such as in "Arena" or "Return to Grace", it is taken for granted. The heroes don't ask "are there anti-starship guns here?" but merely "what happened to the anti-starship guns here?" or "how many did they have and of which caliber, and can we borrow one?"

In "Arena", the weaponry defended a Starfleet-run outpost. In "Return to Grace", a Cardassian military installation had them. And most of the settlements that were attacked by spacecraft with impunity (from "Marauders" to "Silicon Avatar", in order of severity) were mere encampments, literally with a few tents pitched. What we're looking for is examples of true colonies or big outposts that came under spacecraft attack and either prevailed or fell. And falling to flying pancakes doesn't count, it has to be bona fide flying saucers.

Any examples? And I mean examples where we learn a bit more than "they prevailed" or "they fell". So we're probably looking at TAS and modern Trek which can afford to show rather than tell.

- Mike Burnham's parents got raided by Klingons in an observatory village that wasn't lacking in resources but may have been a bit ad hoc, to take advantage of a nearby supernova (those tend to come as surprises in Trek, or at least the more exotic ones are, which may be why they always warrant exceptional study). There, we saw that nobody shot back at the Klingons, and the Klingons didn't suppress defensive guns first. But that's basically the only raid I remember actually seeing.
- While the folks opposing the Sheliak had nothing but their handguns, the ones standing up to the Husnock might have had AS guns which simply didn't suffice.
- Also, Memory Alpha was explicated as unarmed, for plot reasons, and this perhaps already suggests that similar outposts in general would be armed.

So the evidence is all over the place and allows us to think whatever we please. Except, you know, we never ever actually saw an AS gun...

Timo Saloniemi
 
Remember when Worf went with the Klingons to raid a base by flying planetside and strafing them during the Dominion War.

They had Anti-StarShip Energy Weapons and Shields.

That's True defense =D
 
It makes perfect sense to me that frontier homes would have their shields and sensors, especially ones specific to the likely threats. Populations of colonies can be extremely small down to a couple hundred people, so any serious defense like a fighter wing might be impossible, let alone a planetary shield network like the Qowat Milat world. They can also be quite remote given how the Enterprise is always the only ship in the sector.

I figure a homestead could fend off at least a couple runabouts given a large enough fusion reactor. That would be enough to buy time against a larger threat in the range of a Maquis raider, time for a planetary defense fighter to join in, or for a ground based torpedo launcher to respond. A warp core is out of the question without specialist knowledge, but even that would be inexpensive going by the two Delta Flyers which were built in the field by Voyager, as well as the replacement shuttles they built. I could see a space port having a warp core, but going by Deep Space 9 it might just as easily have a huge fusion reactor.

Thanks to replicators I think common homestead defenses would be shields, sensors, and specialist sensors like we hear about from Riker, but also at worst a few Type 4 phaser. Given starship phaser ranges it might be possible to hit something in orbit with those weapons since that is less than 1% the starship range. Very worst case, cobble together a bunch of Type 3's on automated turrets.

What I would want is a warp core for maximum power density and output, plus a backup fusion reactor and some solar panels to keep the fixtures off the combat power system. I would want two layers of shields, one conformal shield over the living structure, the other a bubble for the whole property. The inner shield handles bleed through, and takes over if the outer shield is dropped. For sensors I want to cover the whole system, Voyager could read for human DNA out to 9 lightyears in "Work Force" so detecting a probe entering my solar system should be trivial. A few Type 8 phaser array, the same type on the Maquis fighters and Enterprise-B. A photon torpedo launcher so I can hit anything in the entire solar system and around the planet. Top it all off with a holographic crew.
 
Do not think warp cores are placed on a planet.
Every time a ship or shuttle lands on a planet there's a warp core. Though there is the planet which used antimatter reactors on their planet which all blew up, and they blame humanity for giving them the technology.
 
Every ship and shuttle is not warp capable. Also they usually do not stay on the ground for
Long periods of time, their warp cores are likely to be shut down.
 
Do not think warp cores are placed on a planet.

I'm pretty sure Earth with all it's Replicators / Holo Decks / Force Fields and advanced tech will need Warp Cores powering it, just far away from the main cities.

As for which type of power source, probably a mix of:

Fusion
Matter / Anti-Matter Reactor.
 
it is taken for granted. The heroes don't ask "are there anti-starship guns here?" but merely "what happened to the anti-starship guns here?" or "how many did they have and of which caliber, and can we borrow one?"

Funny, in the series "Crest of the Stars", the Planetary leader of the planet "Martine" in the 'Hyde System' the Abh (Who primarily lives in Space), surrendered control of his planet to the Abh by trading dominion/control of his planet to become a member of Nobility within the Abh Empire. All the Anti-StarShip weapons and Planetary Defense Energy Shields control codes were surrendered over in peace to the abh in a private negotiation for his family to become permanent Nobility within the Abh Empire and the rest of the citizens of the planet become subjects of the Abh empire.

NOTE: The Abh species operate on a Monarchy based system and generally don't live on Planets, but within space, affairs of Planets will fall on the Nobility who run each local Planet / System. The story of "Crest of the Stars" follows the young Son of the Count who traded independent sovereignty over to the Abh without consent from the people.
 
It makes perfect sense to me that frontier homes would have their shields and sensors, especially ones specific to the likely threats. Populations of colonies can be extremely small down to a couple hundred people, so any serious defense like a fighter wing might be impossible, let alone a planetary shield network like the Qowat Milat world. They can also be quite remote given how the Enterprise is always the only ship in the sector.

I figure a homestead could fend off at least a couple runabouts given a large enough fusion reactor. That would be enough to buy time against a larger threat in the range of a Maquis raider, time for a planetary defense fighter to join in, or for a ground based torpedo launcher to respond. A warp core is out of the question without specialist knowledge, but even that would be inexpensive going by the two Delta Flyers which were built in the field by Voyager, as well as the replacement shuttles they built. I could see a space port having a warp core, but going by Deep Space 9 it might just as easily have a huge fusion reactor.

Thanks to replicators I think common homestead defenses would be shields, sensors, and specialist sensors like we hear about from Riker, but also at worst a few Type 4 phaser. Given starship phaser ranges it might be possible to hit something in orbit with those weapons since that is less than 1% the starship range. Very worst case, cobble together a bunch of Type 3's on automated turrets.

What I would want is a warp core for maximum power density and output, plus a backup fusion reactor and some solar panels to keep the fixtures off the combat power system. I would want two layers of shields, one conformal shield over the living structure, the other a bubble for the whole property. The inner shield handles bleed through, and takes over if the outer shield is dropped. For sensors I want to cover the whole system, Voyager could read for human DNA out to 9 lightyears in "Work Force" so detecting a probe entering my solar system should be trivial. A few Type 8 phaser array, the same type on the Maquis fighters and Enterprise-B. A photon torpedo launcher so I can hit anything in the entire solar system and around the planet. Top it all off with a holographic crew.

Multiple layers of Shields make sense, but any Anti-StarShip Sensors would only have a finite FoV "Field of View" of about a Hemisphere from their position. The planet itself would be a huge barrier to the sensors and present a huge blind spot.

They would still need Stealthy Sensor Satellites (Cloaked if possible) that pass info back to the ground station if they want to be covered.

At the very minimum, they would need 3x Stealthy Sensor Satellites at Lagrange 1, Lagrange 2, and Lagrange 3.

Each Stealthy Sensor Satellite needs 360° Spherical Sensor Coverage of multiple Light Years.

Optimally, they would have 2x more Stealthy Sensor Satellites placed at Lagrange 4 & Lagrange 5 for a total of 5 Stealthy Sensor Satellites.
 
EWH Emergency Worf Holograms
The technology is there in the 24th century. The EMH tech can be easily repurposed as seen in ST:Picard. Worf's likeness can be used easily as a template. Michael Dorn is reasonably healthy and always happy to play the role of Worf.

Imagine if the standard security Hologram is the EWH, where hundreds of EWH's appear to take down intruders the moment they illegally enter a StarFleet vessel / Premise.
 
I believe fusion plants power Planets, along with solar,wind, geothermal.

We can also add in M/A-M, Artificial Singularity Cores, and if we're advanced enough, Tetryon Reactors.

There are all sorts of posibilities out there.

Especially if Transporters / Replicators consume the amount of energy I think they do.
 
I was almost expecting Riker and Troi's house to end up being the ship they kept talking about Picard and Soji needing. With the rest of the equipment it had, why not an SIF and impulse and warp engines, too?
 
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