Human input in Trek spaceship battles

[Anton Dolinsnky]

As per Moderator advice, I'm starting a new thread on this topic (originally I had posted something similar as a reply to a rather old thread on the General board).

***NOTE: TO MODS or anybody who can assist***
I would like to change my username to "Anton Dolinsky" please...
"Anton Dolinsnky" is a typo I committed when I registered. Thank you very much. Will delete this note when change is effected.
***END NOTE***


Trek starship battles, as presented, are unrealistic in several ways that have been noted elsewhere (for example, command officers not exploiting the 3-dimensionality of space; the odd inability of one shot from weapons much more powerful than nuclear warheads to destroy an unshielded ship; ships sitting still during an engagement, etc...)

The problem I've always particularly noticed when watching Trek ship battles is that the battles are too long. Precious seconds are wasted by bridge officers (usually) debating what to do, and then giving verbal orders, which are manually executed by subordinates at Helm, Tactical, Engineering, etc...

This is very exciting to watch, and quite necessary from the point of view of drama, of pulling in our interest as viewers. But realistically speaking, a starship battle with the sort of technology displayed in any of the Trek series would last a matter of seconds, not minutes. Even with shields, a battle would be over very quickly. Realistically, the ship's computer would handle everything. No matter how strategically/tactically gifted and imaginative humans may be relative to computers, a computer is simply able to handle battle situations much faster than any human being... therefore, it would make no sense for humans to be involved in any battle decision other than the primary three of 1) whether to engage, 2) what level of force to use, and 3) what level of danger should cause the ship to retreat (i.e., how much is at stake?).

I think that in real starship combat, the computers of both sides would handle everything, unless they were disabled. Computers would automatically launch volleys of *all* weapons at once (as opposed to how, in most Trek battles, energy weapons and torpedoes are fired one by one, with command officers sequentially giving orders to fire those weapons). The computer would be able to very swiftly determine what the chances of success were, and the very nanosecond that the computer determined success to be improbable, the computer would immediately withdraw the ship from danger. No sense sitting around, unless the situation is so urgent that any small probability of success must still be acted on.

I think that it would actually be possible to create interesting television with computer-handled battles, but not in Trek the way it is currently set up. I'm not saying that Trek should do battles differently... rather, as a Trek fan, I'm opening this up to discussion because this might be a fun issue to discuss.

As a side note, I found that 'William H. Keith, Jr.' 's 'Warstrider' series of novels handled futuristic starship combat as realistically as anything I've ever encountered. The books are obscure, but a few things are certainly handled right -- for example, there are no shields. The most advanced weapons are lasers and nuclear torpedoes (this is in the 2500s). Ships send out volleys of torpedoes from very long engagement ranges before closing in. One hit from any torpedo pretty much destroys a ship. And command is handled by a human captain cybernetically 'linked in' to the ship's computer, with the computer's response speeds automatically enhancing human reflexes). But this isn't a plug for 'Warstrider' -- just sort of wondering if anybody besides me has read this out-of-print and almost impossible-to-find series.

 

[Unicron]

You should speak with T'Bonz about changing your name. I think she can handle that for you. As per having fully automated systems, it would depend on the configuration. The biggest advantage of having organic crew is that the computer might make mistakes and not catch itself in time. The newer incarnation of The Outer Limits actually had an ep set up sort of along such lines.

 

[Myasishchev]

I remember that thread, I think. I had a 1000 word reply to Timo that got eaten. (Actually, I was able to save it, then didn't bother starting a thread just to tell Timo I ran the numbers about the energy of pho-torps vs. ramming and found out I was wrong. Sorry, Timo!)

Anyway,

This is very exciting to watch, and quite necessary from the point of view of drama, of pulling in our interest as viewers. But realistically speaking, a starship battle with the sort of technology displayed in any of the Trek series would last a matter of seconds, not minutes. Even with shields, a battle would be over very quickly. Realistically, the ship's computer would handle everything. No matter how strategically/tactically gifted and imaginative humans may be relative to computers, a computer is simply able to handle battle situations much faster than any human being... therefore, it would make no sense for humans to be involved in any battle decision other than the primary three of 1) whether to engage, 2) what level of force to use, and 3) what level of danger should cause the ship to retreat (i.e., how much is at stake?).

I agree with you insofar as computers should generally control engagements--heck, they basically do now, and casualty-mode operation on real warships permits even greater freedom-of-operation for the fire constrol system.

I disagree that fights would ordinarily be measured in seconds instead of minutes, hours, or days.

 

[JuanBolio]

I disagree that fights would ordinarily be measured in seconds instead of minutes, hours, or days.

Erm...why? Realistically, once shields have been beaten down, phasers and photon torpedoes become one shot, one kill weapons.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I disagree that fights would ordinarily be measured in seconds instead of minutes, hours, or days.

Erm...why? Realistically, once shields have been beaten down, phasers and photon torpedoes become one shot, one kill weapons.

No they don't. We've actually seen on a number of occasions Starships being hit by phasers and photon torpedoes with no shields to speak of. See relevant cases in:

- The Ultimate Computer
- The Wrath of Khan
- The Search for Spock
- The Undiscovered Country
- Star Trek: Generations
- The Wounded
- The Jem'hadar
- Starship Down

All cases where starships take direct hits in situations where their shields are either down or otherwise non-functioning.

This probably means trek weapons aren't anywhere near as powerful as some of us have been claiming over the years, which makes sense considering that the way most modern weapons actually work would make them relatively impotent in space.

 

[Deks]

I disagree that fights would ordinarily be measured in seconds instead of minutes, hours, or days.

Erm...why? Realistically, once shields have been beaten down, phasers and photon torpedoes become one shot, one kill weapons.

Precisely.

Though, we do have one (non-canon) nod to battles lasting weeks, or actually to be more precise, months, if not years.
It was addressed in one of the earlier Voyager pocket books to my recollection.
It dealt with shields being reconfigured in a specific capacity, with weapons doing it in the same fashion by 2 races that were apparently in a state of war for a very long time.
It was perceived as inefficient by SF and most AQ and BQ races because such defensive/offensive measures were defeated in a very easy way, which is why battles usually last seconds, if not minutes ... hardly hours or days.

 

[Anton Dolinsnky]

I remember that thread, I think. I had a 1000 word reply to Timo that got eaten. (Actually, I was able to save it, then didn't bother starting a thread just to tell Timo I ran the numbers about the energy of pho-torps vs. ramming and found out I was wrong. Sorry, Timo!)

Wow, that is fascinating. Might as well put your findings here, if you haven't already put them in some other thread.

This probably means trek weapons aren't anywhere near as powerful as some of us have been claiming over the years, which makes sense considering that the way most modern weapons actually work would make them relatively impotent in space.

I would think that some modern weapons would actually work better in space, since the absence of air resistance allows "shells" to rush to their target without bleeding their force away to friction.

Now, space torpedoes are very interesting -- I do not know what a torpedo explosion would be like in a vacuum. Let's take a torpedo with a conventional explosive warhead -- part of its destructive force comes from the shock wave propagating through air, and I don't know how it would act in a vacuum. But a torpedo that pierces the hull and explodes slightly inside it should not be affected by vacuum. I suppose that in the absence of atmosphere to propagate a shock wave, the main explosive damage would be delivered by fragments of the torpedo impacting the target, and by high-energy subatomic particles impacting the target. My attempt to research this topic online hasn't met with much so far, and I have a little voice inside me saying that I'm probably completely wrong about the way space explosions work. Let's see...

As for photon torpedoes, MemoryAlpha says that, "A photon torpedo with a 25 isoton yield can destroy an entire city within seconds."

This does not bode well for an unshielded starship being attacked by PTs. What do they put in those hulls?

As for the original thread topic...

We've seen it happen that a Federation ship computer takes over the entire ship's operations. For example, in the TNG episode "Emergence", the computer handled itself fairly capably, managing to make a nanosecond decision which saved the ship from being destroyed by a threat that the organic lifeforms on board failed to detect. The computer is also powerful enough to run Moriarty, an intelligent and self-aware being capable of great strategic prowess. And of course, one could say that Data, who has in fact successfully captained starships, is a form of computer... (though when I write that, it sounds almost denigrating for some reason... "Data a computer? No way, he's an *android*!")

It'd be interesting to have a Trek episode where the computer makes an autonomous decision to take over ship operation in order to save the ship in the middle of a battle, somehow realizing that the organic lifeforms in charge were about to make a fatal blunder... I don't think they ever did an episode quite like that. Let me know if I missed something... I haven't seen all the episodes of Voyager.

Let me see if I can try to make a list of all Trek episodes where the ship computer took over command decisions.

Additional:

Hmm.... I just realized something. In a sense, the entire Borg Collective is a computer. And sure enough, the Borg have been shown to have very quick tactical responses in battle, yet to lack a certain imagination when it comes to strategy. Fascinating. In a way, The Borg Collective, as a 'computer', must not be as intelligent as the Enterprise computer! I get the feeling the Moriarty was more imaginative than the Borg Collective. Of course, that's part of what being the Collective means -- orthodoxy, conformity, lack of imagination

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I would think that some modern weapons would actually work better in space, since the absence of air resistance allows "shells" to rush to their target without bleeding their force away to friction.

Shells don't loose much velocity in an atmosphere... but the most powerful ones depend on the force of air pressure and temperature to do most of their damage. Anti-tank weapons, for example, would not be particularly effective in a vacuum.

OTOH, some specifically space-based weapons like kinetic-kill vehicles pack a hell of a punch, and can basically only be used IN space (they would be next to useless anywhere else). These would be pretty damned effective in space, but not in the same way or for the same reason as a similar-sized cruise missile.

And there are reasons why--especially in the trekiverse--nuclear weapons wouldn't work very well at all, and for that matter neither would antimatter weapons.

Now, space torpedoes are very interesting -- I do not know what a torpedo explosion would be like in a vacuum. Let's take a torpedo with a conventional explosive warhead
-- part of its destructive force comes from the shock wave propagating through air, and I don't know how it would act in a vacuum.

It would be like a man trying to destroy an armored personnel carrier by farting on it. In other words, it would not work at all.

But a torpedo that pierces the hull and explodes slightly inside it should not be affected by vacuum.

Anything moving fast enough to be useful as a weapon in space is moving too fast for chemical explosives to be any factor. The weapon would actually do more damage if you packed it with lead weights. If your weapons are traveling slow enough that the explosive force of chemicals is superior to the weapon's own kinetic energy, chances are you're shooting at something that is incapable of evasive maneuvers and you're better off using the transporter to BEAM some explosives directly into the enemy command center.

A nuclear weapon going off inside your ship will create a massive fireball that will gut a huge part of your hull and irradiate most of the crew. Unfortunately it has the same problem, since the fuse has to be timed perfectly to detonate just inside the hull, not on impact, and not seconds later after it punches out the other side. Assuming the warhead even survives the impact at orbital velocities, this timing can be extremely tricky.

This does not bode well for an unshielded starship being attacked by PTs. What do they put in those hulls?

The better question is, what do they put in those photon torpedoes? Obviously, something that can cause devastating damage in an atmosphere, not so much in space. An antimatter warhead might fit the bill, but matter/antimatter reactions don't produce anything that a starship couldn't easily shrug off even with minimal shielding.

We've seen it happen that a Federation ship computer takes over the entire ship's operations.

You needn't look any further than the M5's performance in "The Ultimate Computer." That one computer running the entire ship was able to outmaneuver four other starships, and is without a doubt much faster and more intelligent than any starfleet command officer. The only downside is that the computer was programmed by a gifted but dangerously psychotic weirdo with a seething inferiority complex; I've always felt that M5 got a raw deal and probably would have worked perfectly if its memory engrams were patterned after someone like, say, Spock or Saavik.

 

[Longinus]

The better question is, what do they put in those photon torpedoes? Obviously, something that can cause devastating damage in an atmosphere, not so much in space. An antimatter warhead might fit the bill, but matter/antimatter reactions don't produce anything that a starship couldn't easily shrug off even with minimal shielding.

Why?

 

[EmperorTiberius]

I don't understand the advocates of the theory that the weapons in Trek are weak based on some ships not getting destroyed immediately once their shields are down.

I would be happy for you to teach me about the exact nature and properties of Duranium, Tritanium, high density armor, ablative armor, the transparent aluminum in 24th century, and the structural integrity fields.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The better question is, what do they put in those photon torpedoes? Obviously, something that can cause devastating damage in an atmosphere, not so much in space. An antimatter warhead might fit the bill, but matter/antimatter reactions don't produce anything that a starship couldn't easily shrug off even with minimal shielding.

Why?

Because the primary output of a matter-antimatter reaction is hard x-rays and neutrinos. Starfleet shields don't seem to have any problem deflecting x-rays even in high concentrations; moreover, a lack of atmosphere around the blast site means no fireball, no shockwave, no over-pressure, none of the things that would actually do damage to a city.

So, yeah, 25 isotons is enough to flatten a city... as long as it's not a city on the moon.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I don't understand the advocates of the theory that the weapons in Trek are weak based on some ships not getting destroyed immediately once their shields are down.

I would be happy for you to teach me about the exact nature and properties of Duranium, Tritanium, high density armor, ablative armor, the transparent aluminum in 24th century, and the structural integrity fields.

What difference does some super-strong uber material make if its only effect is to mitigate the effects of super strong uber-weapons that are, in any case, never used against non-uber materials in the first place?

You can have high-velocity super-energy subspace railguns punching holes in polyduranium hyper-alloy, but if the two cancel out to behave exactly like an AK-47 and a steel plate, what really is the point?

 

[Longinus]

What difference does some super-strong uber material make if its only effect is to mitigate the effects of super strong uber-weapons that are, in any case, never used against non-uber materials in the first place?

You can have high-velocity super-energy subspace railguns punching holes in polyduranium hyper-alloy, but if the two cancel out to behave exactly like an AK-47 and a steel plate, what really is the point?

Well, by your logic we could build tanks out of cardboard, armed with soft air guns. But we don't.

 

[EmperorTiberius]

What difference does some super-strong uber material make if its only effect is to mitigate the effects of super strong uber-weapons that are, in any case, never used against non-uber materials in the first place?

You can have high-velocity super-energy subspace railguns punching holes in polyduranium hyper-alloy, but if the two cancel out to behave exactly like an AK-47 and a steel plate, what really is the point?

Well, by your logic we could build tanks out of cardboard, armed with soft air guns. But we don't.

exactly. it's all about the constant race between armor and weapons, they keep overtaking each other over and over again.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

What difference does some super-strong uber material make if its only effect is to mitigate the effects of super strong uber-weapons that are, in any case, never used against non-uber materials in the first place?

You can have high-velocity super-energy subspace railguns punching holes in polyduranium hyper-alloy, but if the two cancel out to behave exactly like an AK-47 and a steel plate, what really is the point?

Well, by your logic we could build tanks out of cardboard, armed with soft air guns. But we don't.

Well, yes and no. In Case A:
1) I shoot at a tank with an assault rifle and watch my bullets bounce off
2) I shoot at a cardboard box with that same assault rifle and watch my bullets bounce off
Conclusion: The rifle is firing airsoft pellets

While in Case B:
1) I shoot at a tank with an assault rifle and watch my bullets bounce off
2) I shoot at a cardoard box with that same assault rifle and watch my bullets rip it to shreds.
Conclusion: the assault rifle is firing live ammunition

We have a few examples of Case-A demonstrations of Starfleet weapons, where Case-A is use of weapons against a target whose composition and strength are known but whose effect is not dramatically greater than against futuristic uber-materials. Such examples are numerous and can be found in various instances of TOS and Enterprise.

What we do not have is an example of Case-B; that is to say, we lack an example of a 23rd century weapon being used against a traditional 20th century target whose effect is appreciably "uber" as to have the effects implied.

The closest thing we have is the plasma weapon the alien time travelers tried to give to the Nazis in "Stormfront," a type of plasma cannon whose firepower is stated as being equivalent to about three 88mm cannons (enough to destroy a panzer tank). We later see these weapons being used against NX-01 as it makes its low-altitude strafing run against the Nazi's San Francisco compound; conveniently, NX-01 is unshielded in this encounter, so this gives us the perfect test of premise (especially since the hull is supposed to be made of duranium alloy). Basically, if NX-01's hull materials are vastly superior to traditional materials, Vosks' plasma weapons should bounce off the hull like airsoft bullets on the skin of a tank.


Vosks' Stukas do not have this effect when they attack NX-01; they cause significant damage to the hull with each landed shot. This would make a single blast from one of those plasma cannons approximately equivalent to, say, a direct hit from a 5-inch naval rifle.

And then there's this image:

Which shows a photon torpedo doing about as much damage to a brick building as a Tomahawk cruise missile. If this IS the result of a matter-antimatter reaction, there is the duplicate problem that 1) Enterprise uses TWO photon torpedoes to destroy the building instead of simply dialing up a single torpedo to the appropriate yield and 2) since both torpedoes detonate on target and in an atmosphere, there should still be about a kilogram of un-used antimatter in the torpedo debris; far from floating off into space as might happen in a normal battle, this antimatter should immediately react with the surrounding air and the building's debris to the tune of a 90 megaton thermonuclear blast.

All in all, this is an example that would seem to suggest Trek weapons aren't city-blasting one shot killers, actually they have effects slightly superior to modern weapons; their advantage is that they deliver tis firepower at less than a tenth the size.

it's all about the constant race between armor and weapons, they keep overtaking each other over and over again.

And the "armor" of the trekiverse is DEFLECTOR SHIELDS, not physical armor. Actually, it's probably the same reason fixed fortifications are no longer particularly useful: armor is fairly easy to circumvent, while more active defenses--counter attacks, anti-missile/anti-aircraft weapons--are far more effective. Even in the race between infantry weapons and personal body armor, most armor systems will at best turn a fatal injury into a debilitating one.

Hell, even tanks are taking this route now. Most MBTs are being equipped with automatic defense systems that can shoot down anti-tank missiles before they actually impact; this, mainly, because no matter how much armor you put on a tank, someone out there will eventually develop a weapon to defeat it and it's best just not to get hit in the first place. In the same vein, newer weapons aren't necessarily (or even usually) more powerful than older ones, actually the increase is usually in some specific desired effect, like accuracy, armor penetration, or said weapon's ability to circumvent specific defensive tactics; in this context one might imagine that the main difference between phasers and photon torpedoes from mundane weapons like lasers and kinetic kill vehicles is that the trek weapons are designed to circumvent advanced defense systems like shields and deflectors (sort of like how the earliest firearms weren't much more lethal or accurate than crossbows, but were very good at penetrating steel armor).

 

[JuanBolio]

All in all, this is an example that would seem to suggest Trek weapons aren't city-blasting one shot killers, actually they have effects slightly superior to modern weapons; their advantage is that they deliver tis firepower at less than a tenth the size.

Yet this goes against clearly stated dialogue on-screen which indicated photonic torpedoes at maximum yield "could put a three-kilometer crater into an asteroid", not to mention what we know a matter/antimatter warhead can do, even with a tiny amount of reactants loaded. Granted, in space the output is all shortwave EM radiation, but that's more than enough at even a kilometer or two away to severely mangle and irradiate a starship.

The blame lies solely with the VFX guys, who don't seem to have any real grasp of what these weapons are supposed to do, or if they do are bound by some unwritten Hollywood law that states that screen explosions and space battles MUST look a certain way.

 

[Longinus]

NX-01 is not a good comparison. The ship is much more primitive than later trek vessels. I remember you using NX-01 as example in a similar discussion earlier. Besides, the show was just stupid anyway.

In TNG photon torpedoes annihilated an asteroid. But in any case, instead of looking some isolated examples, we should look at the big picture, which is that in dialogue photon torpedoes are consistently referred as massively powerful weapons.

 

[Myasishchev]

I disagree that fights would ordinarily be measured in seconds instead of minutes, hours, or days.

Erm...why? Realistically, once shields have been beaten down, phasers and photon torpedoes become one shot, one kill weapons.

I thought we were talking about with shields up...

 

[Deks]

The simple reason why weapons in Trek don't have the exact effect they should according to the science they operate on is imply because the VFX guys messed it up royally.
JuanBolio summed it up earlier.

If we were witnessing actual capabilities of Trek weapons, ships would be fighting with each other over distances measured in hundreds of thousands of km's for one thing.

Torpeodes do not become one shot kill weapons when shields are down.
SIF on SF ships increases hull durability/resistance.
To that effect, hull materials will likely be constructed in such a fashion so they can survive pounding from these weapons a few times around.

Enterprise was actually not a poor example ... the dialogue clearly suggests that photonic torpedoes are capable of high destructive power.
The VFX guys on the other hand, and proper application of specific science here is the problem.
VFX departments use what the audience is familiar with and aim for the 'cool' factor, not the 'accuracy' factor.
That's the major fault behind it.

 

[JuanBolio]

Its a shame - I think displaying what advanced high-energy weapons could really do would in fact be pretty damn cool in itself.

As for structural integrity fields preventing a torpedo from destroying and unshielded ship - maybe, maybe not. I think it would depend largely on how close the torpedo was when detonated. A near proximity blast may be survivable (though you'd still have to deal with a shit-ton of radiation), but a direct hit against or possibly even inside the hull? I really don't see how that could be taken in stride, even by an advanced starship.