Fleet Engagements and the 3D Nature of Space

[Sisko4Life]

Random probably insignificant question, but watching the many series, I often wonder about how fleets engage each other in space. Specifically, here are a few examples:

Wolf 359 / Battle of Sector 001:
The Federation Fleet is supposed to make their stand at Wolf 359 and the Typhon sector respectively. The Borg Cube is spotted traveling in excess of warp 9. Is that vessel required to drop out of warp in order to avoid running into the fleet? Can navigation jus simply "fly over" the fleet since space is three dimensional? It is never stated how this is done or shown on screen. From careful analysis in First Contact we know that the Typhon Sector. Although we can't be sure of this exact location or the length of time of the battle (though Data states earlier it will take some 3+ hours for the Ent-E to arrive, but that was before they headed to the neutral zone), for Starfleet to fight a running impulse battle with the Cube it would take YEARS for the battle to progress to Sector 001. Which means that it either A) went right through the fleet's "blockade" and just simply resumed warp and the Starfleet ships followed to earth, or B) the battle was performed at warp speed. Option A seems far more likely, but this means that anything traveling at warp speed should theoretically have to drop out of warp near a cluster of ships...

Operation Return / Valley of Death
This one was even more puzzling to me. The fleet leaves Starbase 375 in the Kalandra Sector, which is adjacent to the Bajor sector. Therefore we can estimate its somewhere between 10-30 light years from Bajor if we estimate it in the center of the sector. It is stated on screen that the fleet has 3 days to arrive at DS9, which means obviously the 600 some ships were traveling at warp (most likely a high warp to actually make that trek in that time). Heres the catch, they are randomly traveling at impulse when they first "spot" the Dominion fleet. So again, did they see it on long range scanners and have to drop out of war to engage the fleet for fear of collision purposes? Again, space is 3D, you could just warp OVER or under the fleet in theory. Also, the Klingon fleet decloaks from the starboard flank angle and simply wails away into the blockade. But if they did that, why wouldnt they just keep going to DS9 they were already outside of the "lines"? Are battles fought just for the hell of it?

Redemption:
Again, tachyon net blockade is set up. Just go under / over the net? Plot a course around the blockade? Clearly a wall of 20 ships isn't wide enough for that not to be possible...


Maybe I'm thinking too much into it, but the whole thing seems like a fundamental of space fiction that I can't understand. In other shows, "hyperspace" actually exists outside of normal space so these points become pretty moot... But since Star Trek uses more of a linear form of interstellar travel, this kind of stuff was never really discussed / implied on screen.

 

[Rojixus]

First reply! Anyway, since humans have never fought a space-war, the writers have to rely on a more familiar analogue: naval combat. Since there are only two-dimensions for warships to go at sea, there are only two dimensions for starships.

 

[MacLeod]

Well in "Operation Return" when the Klingons arrived they appeared to come in from above.

 

[Timo]

A few ideas for rationalizing away this thing, for making it a feature of the Trek universe rather than a bug:

We have seen time and again that it is possible and indeed relatively simple to force another starship out of warp by firing at it with standard weapons. Either the starboard power coupling fails, or then the targeted ship decides that it will gain an advantage in battle if dropping to sublight. Warp is among the first things to fail, and it's "no shame" to be forced out of warp, as the targeted ship remains generally battleworthy at the conclusion of this.

If all parties to the battle are aware of this fact, it would be doctrinally logical to arrange blockading fleets so that the bulk of ships lies in the assumed path of the intruder, and pickets are deployed on the fringes, ready to challenge the warp speed arrival into a sublight battle. Since the intruder knows that even the weak fire from the pickets will force some of his units down to sublight, his best strategy is to confront the blockading enemy with his full force. If he attempted a warp flanking, he'd first have a disproportionately large part of his formation forced to sublight (even if not otherwise damaged), and he would then be warp-chased by the main blockading force which would now have gained a numerical advantage.

Since Trek combat takes place at point blank ranges (apparently due to the nature of the weapons used, just like sailing ships fought within mere meters because their cannon weren't effective across distance), it's by nature similar to pre-WWI, pre-dreadnought fighting where the side with the superior number of guns (regardless of gun size or the type of ship that mounts the gun) and halfway decent fire coordination will automatically triumph. It's thus a good idea to commit one's whole fleet to defeating a blockade, especially because one has to deal with the blockade sooner or later anyway. If one does not fight it where it stands, one has to proceed to the target and then fight both the target and the blockading force that has followed the intruder.

Of course, the Borg at Wolf 359 wanted a fight rather than a clean warp flanking, but whether Admiral Hanson knew that or not is uncertain... The Borg at Typhon apparently didn't want such a fight, so they used their superior technology to stay at warp. Not very high warp, though, because otherwise the slower-than-average Defiant couldn't have kept up with them, and clearly not the famed Borg transwarp. So apparently the defenders' fire was having some effect!

Heres the catch, they are randomly traveling at impulse when they first "spot" the Dominion fleet. So again, did they see it on long range scanners and have to drop out of war to engage the fleet for fear of collision purposes? Again, space is 3D, you could just warp OVER or under the fleet in theory. Also, the Klingon fleet decloaks from the starboard flank angle and simply wails away into the blockade. But if they did that, why wouldnt they just keep going to DS9 they were already outside of the "lines"? Are battles fought just for the hell of it?

You are assuming that the blockading force sat between Starfleet and DS9. But it's more reasonable tactically that the blockading force would sit right next to the station they were defending. No matter which direction the invader came from, a minor warp jump (such as the one performed by the Defiant once she got rid of the Dominion force) would place the defenders on their path, and again any forces attempting flanking would relatively easily be thinned down, by forcing them to sublight with a few shots.

Add to this that the Bajoran star system is one of the few where warping has been considered unwise - and probably rightly so, considering the abysmal "weather" that is said to plague the system and plays a crucial plot role in at least "Invasive Procedures" and "Things Past". It may have been in fear of these storms that the fleet action did not consist of any fancy warp feints and thrusts, just like a wise man doesn't get overtly acrobatic when fighting on a high scaffolding or in a burning house...

Again, tachyon net blockade is set up. Just go under / over the net? Plot a course around the blockade? Clearly a wall of 20 ships isn't wide enough for that not to be possible...

Is it not? We don't know its width. Might well be several warp-hours, because that's the only known limit for deploying the formation in the first place. And if the Romulans moved at practical warp towards the edge, the warp trail might well be visible; they'd have to crawl, and that would already justify the blockade by significantly slowing down the arrival of the Romulan supplies.

This regardless of whether space is treated as 2D or 3D, of course.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[cwl]

Question: why wasn't the cube travelling at transwarp? Starfleet couldn't catch her that way.