Original Battle Tactic 1

[Uptightgirl]

When fed ships are chased at warp by hostiles,instead of pushing to full warp and crossing fingers that the hostile cant catch up all they had to do was let the hostile approch to just outside of their weapons range then drop out of warp letting the hostile overshoot while you re-engage warp in a different direction.By the time the hostiles find you again you will be ahead or unfindable.

In one episode of ds9 the defiant was chased by the klingon ship with a giant fork at the front and instead of using my original battle tactic all they did was try to keep pushing engines to maximum warp and received many hits from said klingon fork ship.All they had to do was drop out of warp let them overshoot.

Same with car chases when they are level pegging you just brake let the hostile overshoot then ram his ass from behind or veer off.

If you are ever pursued by hostels remember my tactic.

 

[Vertex]

Couldn't the pursuing ship just alter course to still be in pursuit? If they are close enough to be a problem, one would think that they would be able to maintain a sensor lock despite the rapid changes in speed. So they would just turn around, they might not even have to drop out of warp...and if they did they could perform a quick turn and engage. It may have worked with the Defiant because they could cloak after dropping out of warp, giving the pursuing ship not much data on their position.

 

[Uptightgirl]

Vertex said:
Couldn't the pursuing ship just alter course to still be in pursuit? If they are close enough to be a problem, one would think that they would be able to maintain a sensor lock despite the rapid changes in speed. So they would just turn around, they might not even have to drop out of warp...and if they did they could perform a quick turn and engage. It may have worked with the Defiant because they could cloak after dropping out of warp, giving the pursuing ship not much data on their position.

They would overshoot the ship that had just dropped to impulse and would be hard to lock on due to sensor limit.

Like a F22 mach 2 chasing f14 mach 1.7 with the f14 suddenly braking and disppearing from sensors

 

[Vertex]

It is a good tactic, but sensors on starships are definitely more advanced than those of modern jets. And warp travel would leave some residual evidence. In Trek they always seem to be following some ion trail or another...

 

[greenmystik]

I kinda agree with this tactic. If you were to drop out of warp, and they were to over shoot you then you would have to be ready to instantly reengage warp.

Vertex said:
Couldn't the pursuing ship just alter course to still be in pursuit? If they are close enough to be a problem, one would think that they would be able to maintain a sensor lock despite the rapid changes in speed. So they would just turn around, they might not even have to drop out of warp...and if they did they could perform a quick turn and engage.

I also agree with that, but even with the sensor lock if you just dropped outta warp then they would still overshoot you.

If you are quick enough to jump back into warp then the other ship wouldn't have time to turn and reengage you. Even if they did you are now behind them so you could follow them move for move.

Of course if they dropped outta warp and you jumped to warp then you'd be in the same situation you just tried to get out of. And you can't wait to see if they were going to drop out of warp because then you'd just be given them time to turn around.

I could possibly see this working, but I think you would have to have some knowledge of the captain/commander you are engaged with to be able to pull off that kinda manuever.

 

[Dayton3]

No F-14 is going to deaccelerate fast enough to shake an F-22.

 

[Vanyel]

Ships at warp are using long range sensors, due to the speeds involved the range of those sensors should be several light years. So if the pursued ships jumps out of warp and jumps back into warp in a different direction, the pursuing ships sensors should have the range to keep its prey insight long enough for it to stop, turn and jump (assuming it needs to) and continue the chase.

It may be possible that if you do enough stopping and jumping you could eventually lose your pursuers. This would work best by going through many star systems where planets, moons, magnetic fields and a star would help hide the pursued. Like Cpt. Varley of the Yamato did to evade the Romulans during TNG's Contagion.

If the pursued stops so it can get in behind its pursuer to fire on the rear. It would have a limited time to lock and fire at that ship. The pursuers would be in weapons range for a very small window of time (maybe a peephole of time) before its out of weapons range. Then the pursued would have to decide to fight, or run again. I guess the pursued could fire blindly into the path of the pursuer. Still it would be a lucky shot if you hit the pursuing ship.

So while I think it would make a good way of losing a pursuing ship, provided you have plenty of nearby star systems; it would not be a very effective battle tactic. The pursued ship wouldn't have enough time to lock weapons and fire.

 

[Timo]

We've seen several times that a warp chase can end in the following manner: 1) Pursuer fires repeatedly at the pursued 2) At some unpredictable point, the fire causes the pursued to lose warp drive 3) Both ships then drop to sublight, without significant overshoot.

So this would suggest that in warp pursuit, the pursuing vessel is quite capable of split-second responses, no doubt thanks to sensors and computers rather than the quick wit of the helmsbeing.

However, in "The Wounded", we see a successful breakaway maneuver: the Phoenix plays it nice, flying in front of the E-D, until suddenly swerwing to starboard and apparently also accelerating. Data then claims that even 0.12 lightyears isn't enough to catch up with her again, despite the E-D apparently being the faster vessel.

Does this mean that overshoot would be theoretically possible? Did we actually see such an overshoot there? Why was the conn officer asleep at the console?

Generally speaking, it's not the failure to surprise the opponent by warp speed changes that annoys me the most. It's the fact that warp pursuit exists in the first place. Surely the various ships of the Trek universe cannot have equal propulsive capabilities? Surely some 95% of the "chases" would end with the prey escaping right away, or the hunter closing in, flying in circles around the prey, and hammering in the hopelessness of the situation for her.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vanyel]

Timo said:
We've seen several times that a warp chase can end in the following manner: 1) Pursuer fires repeatedly at the pursued 2) At some unpredictable point, the fire causes the pursued to lose warp drive 3) Both ships then drop to sublight, without significant overshoot.

So this would suggest that in warp pursuit, the pursuing vessel is quite capable of split-second responses, no doubt thanks to sensors and computers rather than the quick wit of the helmsbeing.

It could also mean that the pursuing ship is expecting its fire to force the pursued ship out of warp and are ready for it.

Timo said:
However, in "The Wounded", we see a successful breakaway maneuver: the Phoenix plays it nice, flying in front of the E-D, until suddenly swerwing to starboard and apparently also accelerating. Data then claims that even 0.12 lightyears isn't enough to catch up with her again, despite the E-D apparently being the faster vessel.

Does this mean that overshoot would be theoretically possible? Did we actually see such an overshoot there? Why was the conn officer asleep at the console?

They caught the Enterprise off guard, and made a quick jump to maximum warp. Picard might have allued to the possibility when he told Cpt. Maxwell that he'd allow him to command his ship back to a Starbase, rather than towed in disgrace. Maxwell gambled and got away.

Timo said:
Generally speaking, it's not the failure to surprise the opponent by warp speed changes that annoys me the most. It's the fact that warp pursuit exists in the first place. Surely the various ships of the Trek universe cannot have equal propulsive capabilities? Surely some 95% of the "chases" would end with the prey escaping right away, or the hunter closing in, flying in circles around the prey, and hammering in the hopelessness of the situation for her.

Timo Saloniemi

That's true. I would guess that the distances involved, and just how fast a ship can jump into maximum warp would factor heavily into it. As in the scenario I mentioned, if the slower ship can make it into a star system before its pursuer, it can play hide-and-seek and when it has enough distance from its pursuer jump into maximum warp again and go into the next closest system. As long as it can reach a place where it can play hide-and-seek, it has a good chance of getting away.

 

[captcalhoun]

i'd be worried about being chased by Hostels. buildings ripping themselves out of the ground to chase me?!?!

or am i being pursued by crappy gorno horror movie DVDs?

 

[votd]

The distances involved are huge - so if ship A sets off at warp, then two seconds later ship B sets off at warp there's a massive distance between them - as soon as ship B detects ship A has dropped out of warp all it has to do is drop the warp field and it will still be well behind ship A and able to set course to intercept ship A quite easily.

The ships always look close together when at warp - but this could just be the effect of subspace, a ship that looks only a few kilometers away in subspace may be millions of kilometers away if they both dropped into real space at exactly the same time.

 

[Star Wolf]

votd said:
The distances involved are huge - so if ship A sets off at warp, then two seconds later ship B sets off at warp there's a massive distance between them - as soon as ship B detects ship A has dropped out of warp all it has to do is drop the warp field and it will still be well behind ship A and able to set course to intercept ship A quite easily.

The ships always look close together when at warp - but this could just be the effect of subspace, a ship that looks only a few kilometers away in subspace may be millions of kilometers away if they both dropped into real space at exactly the same time.

Word!

Again my pet peave the fan base trying to treat ships of the line like fighter planes. So battle tactic 1 is the scene which shows up in every fighter pilot movie. Drop speed brakes, flaps and landing gear to get the enemy to overshoot.

Its Star Trek aka Horatio Hornblower + Wagon Train to the Stars. Starships or starfighters don't have the velocity differences to make such tactics effective. It would be like a sailing ship dropping its sail and thinking the enemy would sail so far out of range so fast that the gunners can't get off a shot. Just not gonna happen.

Starships warp around at X times the speed of light. They track each other moving at such high speeds that the distances are unimmaginable to us. And also they stay out of the way of hazards which are relatively motionless. Unless you have a cloking device you can't hide.

 

[Timo]

Starships or starfighters don't have the velocity differences to make such tactics effective.

I'd actually argue that the difference between warp 7 and warp 9 is quite a bit more extreme than the difference between walking pace and mach 3... The "speedbrake" maneuver should be extremely effective even if the chasing ship has an inhuman reaction time of a hundredth of a second.

It would be like a sailing ship dropping its sail and thinking the enemy would sail so far out of range so fast that the gunners can't get off a shot. Just not gonna happen.

But it already did. Or didn't you see Pirates of the Caribbean?

Seriously, "speedbrake turn" was a common maneuver for the French in the heyday of sailing-ship wars: they'd make sure to stay on the lee side, and break off whenever the British tried to engage. It would be extremely difficult not to conduct that maneuver so that it wouldn't take the fleeing party outside gun range quickly enough. That's really where the questionable reputation of the French as military cowards comes from, not WWI or WWII... (Although the Dutch and the Spanish adopted the leeside doctrine, too, valuing the strategic victory of surviving fleets more than the tactical victory of sunken enemy ships.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[votd]

If the pursuing ship can achieve a much higher warp speed than the ship they're chasing - they're more likely to select a speed that brings them up on their prey gradually, so they can detect any changes in direction/speed and match them rather than risk being suckered into the sudden stop maneuver; all the while running the pursued ship's engine hot and causing potentially more damage through overloading.

 

[Luckyflux]

Some ships have rear firing weapons too. So if the enemy does overshoot the target, it can still fire the rear facing weapons.

I wonder if a collision could occur. Maybe the enemy vessel has its collision detecters off line and then the vessel it is chasing tries the tactic and drops out of warp. What woul happen if the enemy vessel slams into the target vessel at warp?

 

[captcalhoun]

a big mess.

 

[Uptightgirl]

Luckyflux said:
Some ships have rear firing weapons too. So if the enemy does overshoot the target, it can still fire the rear facing weapons.

I wonder if a collision could occur. Maybe the enemy vessel has its collision detecters off line and then the vessel it is chasing tries the tactic and drops out of warp. What woul happen if the enemy vessel slams into the target vessel at warp?

You forget space is big.

I mean really,really big.

 

[Sisu]

Yes, you might think it is a long way down to the street to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.

 

[Uptightgirl]

Also a chased vessall could eject debris to hit a pursuer.

Water fired from behind would turn into undectable lumps of ice
traveling at millions of miles a hour and hitting a vessall would ruin it.

In TOS BOT the Roms ejected trash cans.

But by simply dropping from warp the bad guy would overshoot by a billion miles as warp speed is a billion miles a second.

Pluto is a billion miles from Earth.

When overshooting the bad vessal be vulnerable to attacks from hehind.

Excuse spelling as my fingers broken by my boyfriend when he was drunk.He also broke my collar bone.Hurts really bad.

 

[captcalhoun]

right. sure.