Is the navy in Star Wars more "realistic" than Star Trek?

[SG-17]

Well the Taur'i. The other races never went very in dept with their organization.

 

[Checkmate]

I know one thing, they need to fire whoever designs the shield system for starships. It seems like every time one gets into a fight they lose their shields after a few minutes.

Would be nice if they'd install a few fuse boxes, too. Or are bridge officers cheaper to come by even in a money-less economy?

 

[The Wormhole]

As far as "space navies" are concerned, I find BSG is probably the most realistic. With the exception of the rank structure, of course.

 

[RAMA]

Fighters would be obsolete in space battles for many diff reasons....not least of which automatic targeting computers could easily shoot them out of the sky.

RAMA

 

[Hyperspace05]

Yeah it is hard to imagine a scenario or levels of technology where a space fighter would be a serious threat to a capital warship.

Many novels use a sort of medium concept with lots of AI or remote controlled fighter drones - the drones being much more expendable than a crewed fighter would be.

As for BSG being realistic... at least not when it comes to their carrier deck landings!!! LOL
(you mean I could just slowly approach the ship, hover and dock/touch down instead of flying at breakneck speed into the deck? What a concept!)

 

[Anwar]

Fighters in future sci-fi work if they are part of a planetary or atmospheric defense, not space battles themselves. This is, of course if the planets have sufficient armaments to survive planetary bombardment in the first place.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Fighters would be obsolete in space battles for many diff reasons....not least of which automatic targeting computers could easily shoot them out of the sky.

Targeting systems can be jammed. And a fighter would be small enough to easily avoid incoming fire.

 

[Lindley]

The only thing is that they'd probably put a flag officer in charge of B5 with all of the diplomatic tensions.

They tried, remember? The Minbari vetoed every candidate until they got all the way down to Commander Sinclair. And since they were footing a sizable chunk of the bill for the station, what they said went.

Sheridan's appointment the next year was a step back up the rank ladder while simultaneously being calculated to piss off the Minbari. And while I could see Admirals starting to jockey for the job down the line......well, obviously that stopped being a possibility before the issue arose.

 

[FordSVT]

Existing Earth space activity is populated by scientists and pilots. The navy analogy isn't realistic. It's what Lindley said basically.

Right, but at this point in time space travel is still an extremely exclusive and dangerous occupation that requires years of training. There are only a handful of people in orbit at any given time. In Star Trek there are probably hundreds of thousands of people working in space for Star Fleet, and many of the occupations required don't require advanced degrees or knowing how to fly a shuttle. Look at the cross section of occupations that are staffed on a typical Naval Aircraft carrier or main line ship with a crew of 800-3000 people, that kind of makeup would be realistic on a star ship.

And yes, both of the series diverge from "real" Navies greatly, the only things they share in common are the superficial things.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

The only thing is that they'd probably put a flag officer in charge of B5 with all of the diplomatic tensions.

They tried, remember? The Minbari vetoed every candidate until they got all the way down to Commander Sinclair. And since they were footing a sizable chunk of the bill for the station, what they said went.

Sheridan's appointment the next year was a step back up the rank ladder while simultaneously being calculated to piss off the Minbari. And while I could see Admirals starting to jockey for the job down the line......well, obviously that stopped being a possibility before the issue arose.

Sheridan's appointment was also an attempt by Clark to put a jarhead that he could control in charge. As stated by General Hague, that's what Sheridan looked like "on paper". Little Clark knew at the time about what kind of man Sheridan really was.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Fighters would be obsolete in space battles for many diff reasons....not least of which automatic targeting computers could easily shoot them out of the sky.

Targeting systems can be jammed. And a fighter would be small enough to easily avoid incoming fire.

Unless you're dealing with something fast enough to hit its target nigh-instantly like a laser. Sweep through a group of hostiles with a defensive laser, and your enemy will regret ever fielding fighters.

If they're far enough away to dodge, say - 1 light minute, then I would think their onboard armaments wouldn't be terribly effective against a capital ship.

 

[broberfett]

I prefer Stargate's take on spaceship and fleet organization.

Which navy, the fleets of the System Lords, the Asgard High Command or the Tau'i?

Not to mention the Aschen, Wraith or Asurans...

This totally reminds me of Monty Pythons and the Holy Grail.

 

[JuanBolio]

Fighters would be obsolete in space battles for many diff reasons....not least of which automatic targeting computers could easily shoot them out of the sky.

Targeting systems can be jammed. And a fighter would be small enough to easily avoid incoming fire.

No, and no. You can't jam light - a small, hot starfighter against the cold vacuum of space would stand out on infrared like a neon sign. Dodging weapons - how do you dodge the sweep of a laser beam moving at the speed of light, or area-suppression nuclear blasts?

Beyond all that, starfighters are totally impractical for much more basic reasons (the important bits are quoted below): http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3x.html#fighters

The other deciding factor is this: A "fighter" needs to be recovered (ed note: Otherwise it is some kind of manned kamikaze missile).

That means you need delta v to get to the objective, then delta v to cancel out your inbound vector, then delta v to get to a rendezvous point, plus delta v for maneuvering in the thick of things.

A rough estimate was that you needed delta v equal to about four times that of a comparable mass missile that just needs to do a drive-by shooting.

Four times the delta v means that your fuel fraction just went up by a factor of something around four (depends on your Isp).

Now put in the life support compartment, and the payload mass, and it gets even worse; rocket performance is the red queen's race, and you rapidly hit declining efficiencies.

The basic argument for fighters is that people think they're fun and cool.

The basic argument against fighters is horizon distance.

Fighters make sense in surface naval operations because a fighter can go to places where the carrier or cruiser can't. The fighter can also go to places where the big ships can't see, because of the curvature of the earth.

Unfortunately, there's no horizon for targets to hide behind in space. Even if you have something short of everyone sees everyone, it's hard(er) to justify fighters seeing things their carriers can't, just because carriers can carry bigger sensors, and space is a very sensor friendly environment.

Fighters do make sense in an orbital reference frame context, where, well, curvature of the earth matters, and where going into atmosphere matters. But this turns fighter carriers into "brown water" vessels that work in the tide pools of planetary gravity wells, which isn't the role you see them doing in fiction, which tends to take WWII carrier ops or modern USN carrier ops and apply an SFnal veneer.

Note that that's all mission specific, and only mildly tech related.

What do fighters do better than, or exclusively related to, larger ships? Answer this, and you get a reason for fighters in a setting.

In terms of pure offensive firepower, there's very little you can do with a fighter that a cruise missile can't do better in a space game context.

Of course, the best reason to have fighters is because they make your game more funnerer. But it does kind of help to figure out what mission they're doing.

 

[Lindley]

As I see it, fighters make sense so long as dodging weapons is a possibility----when missiles and railguns are the weapons of choice. Once you get to energy weapons, they stop making sense for two reasons: First, the aforementioned undodgability issue. Second, power requirements. Energy weapons will be more effective if you can put more energy behind them, and larger craft will always be able to do that.

 

[JuanBolio]

As I see it, fighters make sense so long as dodging weapons is a possibility----when missiles and railguns are the weapons of choice. Once you get to energy weapons, they stop making sense for two reasons: First, the aforementioned undodgability issue. Second, power requirements. Energy weapons will be more effective if you can put more energy behind them, and larger craft will always be able to do that.

How is the carrier going to dodge the incoming fire of the ship it sent its fighters out to kill? There is no horizon in space - you can see and probably kill ships out to a very, very great distance.

 

[Lindley]

Even the Honorverse eventually began favoring carriers. The idea there was that while missiles could fly indefinitely, they have a limited maneuvering envelope after which they can be easily dodged. That seems reasonable to me---the carrier just stays back far enough that missiles/railguns pose less of a threat.

 

[Star Wolf]

Even the Honorverse eventually began favoring carriers. The idea there was that while missiles could fly indefinitely, they have a limited maneuvering envelope after which they can be easily dodged. That seems reasonable to me---the carrier just stays back far enough that missiles/railguns pose less of a threat.

I gave up on the series when did this happen. I remember the FACs which seemed more torpedo, PT/MGB, boats then fighters to me. Any aircraft equivalents would have been General Billy Mitchell or before era where a stunt could sink an empty ship rather then the WWII Task Force 58 era which most SF verses play in.

 

[Deckerd]

Existing Earth space activity is populated by scientists and pilots. The navy analogy isn't realistic. It's what Lindley said basically.

Right, but at this point in time space travel is still an extremely exclusive and dangerous occupation that requires years of training. There are only a handful of people in orbit at any given time. In Star Trek there are probably hundreds of thousands of people working in space for Star Fleet, and many of the occupations required don't require advanced degrees or knowing how to fly a shuttle. Look at the cross section of occupations that are staffed on a typical Naval Aircraft carrier or main line ship with a crew of 800-3000 people, that kind of makeup would be realistic on a star ship.

And yes, both of the series diverge from "real" Navies greatly, the only things they share in common are the superficial things.

Well the "realistic" in the OP is in quotes but how many real situations can we have? Only the existing reality I think. If there is a lot of travelling around in space in the future it will be mostly scientists and pilots for a long time to come. A military model of any kind is unrealistic since there isn't anything to shoot at.

 

[SilentP]

Even the Honorverse eventually began favoring carriers. The idea there was that while missiles could fly indefinitely, they have a limited maneuvering envelope after which they can be easily dodged. That seems reasonable to me---the carrier just stays back far enough that missiles/railguns pose less of a threat.

I'm not sure I can really see that so much being an issue, a missile can pack enough thrusters to pull of some harsh turns, so the only real chance a ship has to dodge is to have a tighter turning circle (which could squish the crew) to keep out the way or keep the missile turning enough till it uses up turning fuel, and in either case the ship would probably have to wait till the last second to dodge.

 

[Caliburn24]

I've always thought that space combat, if we ever get there, will be much more like submarine warfare than the surface ship/aircraft analogy used most commonly in science fiction.

It will not be wildly flying spacecraft dodging missiles and beam weapons, it will be stealthy slow moving(relatively speaking) weapon platforms looking to be the first to get a lock on the enemy and then get into kill range. Whoever gets the first shot will in all likelihood be the victor.

Much like what aerial combat is becoming with 5th Generation aircraft.