Why aren't they firing?

[F. King Daniel]

In DS9's huge fleet battles, why are only the foreground ships firing? And even then not to their fullest ability? It's not something I noticed way back when I first watched, but now I've seen stuff like Babylon 5 (I was late to that party!), Stargate and even the awesome Star Trek vs. Babylon 5 space battles in Star Wreck, I can't help bit see dozens of huge ships doing a whole lot of nothing.

"Do we open fire, sir?"

"Nah, Sisko and the Defiant will deal with this. We'll just cruise around taking the occasional minor potshot at the enemy."

 

[Jono]

Well, we do see ships in the background firing in DS9 fleet battles. Why we don't see all of them firing would be down to the fact that more SFX mean higher cost and more time to get it done.

 

[SomniumRabidum]

Well, we do see ships in the background firing in DS9 fleet battles. Why we don't see all of them firing would be down to the fact that more SFX mean higher cost and more time to get it done.

Yup, it's as simple as that really. Money, money, money.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Considering all they've got going on in those scenes, I can't see how adding a few more orange CG lines would make any difference. Some of the background ships make close passes of each other, but do nothing.

 

[Jono]

Considering all they've got going on in those scenes, I can't see how adding a few more orange CG lines would make any difference. Some of the background ships make close passes of each other, but do nothing.

Exactly, if they don't make any difference why bother?

 

[Timo]

It's more general than that, really: even in one-on-one fights, the ships only occasionally fire their weapons. Why give the enemy even half a second of a break? Why not maintain constant fire? It isn't a matter of overloading a weapons emitter, because those TOS movie era ships always have half a dozen emitters pointed at the enemy at the very least, and TNG ships supposedly have their strips exactly because they match or outperform the multiple emitters. Or if a single strip really is prone to overheating as a single entity, typical designs still have half a dozen strips that could be brought to bear.

Might be that in the military rat race, shields are way ahead of offensive weapons, and no amount of fire will bring them down - unless the attacker chooses his moment and target exactly right and exploits a local, temporary weakness. And those don't offer themselves all that often.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

Considering all they've got going on in those scenes, I can't see how adding a few more orange CG lines would make any difference. Some of the background ships make close passes of each other, but do nothing.

Exactly, if they don't make any difference why bother?

I meant wouldn't make much difference to the budget. It would have greatly improved the space battles. See the stuff I cited in the OP for proof.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

You all should read about the battle at the Omarian Nebula in the "Die is Cast". It was the first fleet battle on Star Trek, and the most noticeable occasion where the ships in the background do not fire. But what is interesting is that this was because the ships - as well as the stars themselves - were part of the background plate. This was an ambitious episode, but they still kept it on budget using the technique of photographing ships as part of the background. But they weren't lazy. They spent days on the shot of the Defiant ripping through a Jem Hadar ship.

 

[Salvek]

The "battle" of the Omarion Nebula was a let down after a great build up -just watching the cardassian or romulan ships do nothing was just cheap. Yes It was a surprise, having those ships not even firing back? I know its about 20 seconds of footage -but just have some firing back and show some jem hadar fighters being destroyed would have made it more interesting and given a sense of a battle.

Surpise or not I belive some of the Tal Shiar /Obsidian Order vessels would have cloaked.

 

[Tomalak]

The "battle" of the Omarion Nebula was a let down after a great build up

It was the best battle ever seen on a Star Trek TV show up to that point! I thought it was amazing when I first saw it, and it still has a lot of tension and pace.

You're spoiled by CGI I think!

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

The "battle" of the Omarion Nebula was a let down after a great build up -just watching the cardassian or romulan ships do nothing was just cheap. Yes It was a surprise, having those ships not even firing back? I know its about 20 seconds of footage -but just have some firing back and show some jem hadar fighters being destroyed would have made it more interesting and given a sense of a battle.

Surpise or not I belive some of the Tal Shiar /Obsidian Order vessels would have cloaked.

Did you even read my post?

 

[2 of 10]

This question can be answered by 20th century naval warfare. Shells fired from behind the first line of Capitol Ships only when the cap ships needed time to rearm and reload. It was as this time that the minor warships Cruisers, Destroyers...ect would take their place in the firing line. This method of laying down continious fire, could possible have had a very long longevity, all the way to the 23rd Century.

The difference would have been fighting in a true 3-D enviorment and battlefield. These deep space battlefields have very little in common with earth's 20th cent conflicts. Still they may have been being help back incase of...

Good Question, Keep them coming!!!

Resistance is Futile...

 

[Guartho]

I meant wouldn't make much difference to the budget.

And you would be wrong. I don't know in detail how it was done then, but what you're talking about would easily add thousands to the budget using today's more-economical techniques and tricks.

 

[Neoshade]

OP is right, most battles where a let down. budgets ftl. theres no super intense startrek battle. the best battle is DS9 firring like crazy. oh how i loved it. finally! some ones goin ape! i believe 12 Klingon ships where destroyed in 10 seconds.

hopefully any new trek will have more stuff going on, because ive seen $500 CGI Space battle reals that where phenomenal and well over 3 mins of intense action.

 

[Salvek]

The "battle" of the Omarion Nebula was a let down after a great build up -just watching the cardassian or romulan ships do nothing was just cheap. Yes It was a surprise, having those ships not even firing back? I know its about 20 seconds of footage -but just have some firing back and show some jem hadar fighters being destroyed would have made it more interesting and given a sense of a battle.

Surpise or not I belive some of the Tal Shiar /Obsidian Order vessels would have cloaked.

Did you even read my post?

Yes I did and you explained the techincal reasons at the time that limited what could be done. Fine Perhaps less glory shots of the Defiant and some of the Warbirds/Keldons would have been prudent. Im not how costly the cloaking effect is buy I know at that point that had it done well.

 

[reversepolarity]

I suspect it's to actually enhance the visuals for the viewer, can you imagine photon torpedos wizzing round everywhere, explosions covering the whole screen, there'd be no suspense and it'd be impossible to see what was going on - I suspect they were rendered and then removed to help clarify what the viewer is seeing. Interesting thread though, and some nice suggestions so far.

 

[F. King Daniel]

^Watch the space battles in Star Wreck, which I linked to in the OP - it's more than possible to have a Federation fleet firing at full-tilt against an enemy doing the same and keep the on-screen happenings more than clear.

But I must admit I could imagine someone higher up underestimating the intelligence of the viewers. That's probably the reason that the only times we've ever seen the Enterprise firing all her guns at once was "Best of Both Worlds" and STXI. I remember watching Wrath of Khan and being annoyed at the little potshots Enterprise took at Reliant and vice-versa when both ships had several more weapon ports facing the enemy.

 

[Tomalak]

The "battle" of the Omarion Nebula was a let down after a great build up -just watching the cardassian or romulan ships do nothing was just cheap. Yes It was a surprise, having those ships not even firing back? I know its about 20 seconds of footage -but just have some firing back and show some jem hadar fighters being destroyed would have made it more interesting and given a sense of a battle.

Surpise or not I belive some of the Tal Shiar /Obsidian Order vessels would have cloaked.

Did you even read my post?

Yes I did and you explained the techincal reasons at the time that limited what could be done. Fine Perhaps less glory shots of the Defiant and some of the Warbirds/Keldons would have been prudent. Im not how costly the cloaking effect is buy I know at that point that had it done well.

Why would they cloak? They'd have to drop their shields. The Jem'Hadar have the ability to see through cloaks anyway, so if a ship just disappeared, they'd blast that area and turn the Romulan ship to dust in seconds.

 

[Timo]

Having the ships fire all their weapons at the same time would go against all Trek precedent. The TOS ship never fired more than two guns at the same time, despite the dialogue specifying plenty of separate weapons. Why call it a bug when it's such a prominent feature?

Failing to fire more than one bank of weapons would make perfect sense if all of the ship's power could be channeled through a single bank. Is there any reason to think it could not? All dialogue treats the total phaser armament of a ship as one integrated entity: if individual emplacements are mentioned at all, it's because they have been knocked out without depriving the ship of overall phaser capacity, or because they are advantageously positioned for firing. Firepower as such never depends on the number of emplacements - it depends on power supply and its possible hiccups.

This doesn't explain why only one ship out of ten in a formation is firing, of course. We could argue that ships share power and channel everything through the lead ship, but dialogue support for the idea is nonexistent. OTOH, dialogue opposition to it is absent, too...

Firing both one phaser and all the bearing torpedo tubes at the same time makes sense, because torpedoes cannot be "channeled". Firing multiple beams at the same target only happens twice: "BoBW" (where two of the three beams come out of nowhere, from places that don't have phaser emitters!) and "Sacrifice of Angels" (where one strip spits out two beams into the enemy).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Salvek]

Did you even read my post?

Yes I did and you explained the techincal reasons at the time that limited what could be done. Fine Perhaps less glory shots of the Defiant and some of the Warbirds/Keldons would have been prudent. Im not how costly the cloaking effect is buy I know at that point that had it done well.

Why would they cloak? They'd have to drop their shields. The Jem'Hadar have the ability to see through cloaks anyway, so if a ship just disappeared, they'd blast that area and turn the Romulan ship to dust in seconds.

Even with the information Lovok and Tain had at that stage did they know that about the Dominion had the ability to detect cloak? When was that revealed in Ds9? I i know later on it was -if they knew about it fair point-otherwise I would expect someships to cloak given they are intelligence forces (Tal Shiar /Obsidian Order) not Military.

I would think the Cardassians would do it just because they never had that option on their vessels Hold on Why Lovok go to the bother of giving them Cloaks if the Dominion could detect? I mean going through the wormhole gives the fleet away in Alpha-why would they assume they could pull it off in Gamma?