To survive a space battle, what is more important

[Luckyflux]

Shields, Weapons or Speed/Maneuverability?

All seem important, but the lack of gravity suggests that two ships can just sit there and pound away at each other. We've seen ships use evasive maneuvers to dodge enemy fire, but they don't need to 'swoop' in and out to get into position. The enemy vessel could just hover and rotate to get into firing position.

I'd say shields and armor. I'd like to be able to take some serious punishment and try to outlast the enemy, even one with superior firepower. But if a ship was manufactered with a one shot, one kill type of weapon I'd be screwed...Maybe I'd need to speed to dodge fire, but would I be able to keep dodging until I got a shot in?

Don't mind me, just thinking out loud...

 

[Lindley]

As Honor Harrington would tell you, a bit of cleverness is the best weapon.

But having lots of really big guns is neat too.

 

[Patrickivan]

Assuming the ships have equal overall power- but one with exceptional shields and speed, and the other with the greater weapons and manuverability. Then it has to boil down to who has the better Captain and crew.

Even a lesser ship with a fantastic crew will have a good chance against a better ship with an inferior crew.

Unless of course the superior vessel is so strong that it can take the pounding- but that's not what you're talking about...

 

[Luckyflux]

Patrickivan said:
Assuming the ships have equal overall power- but one with exceptional shields and speed, and the other with the greater weapons and manuverability. Then it has to boil down to who has the better Captain and crew.

Even a lesser ship with a fantastic crew will have a good chance against a better ship with an inferior crew.

Unless of course the superior vessel is so strong that it can take the pounding- but that's not what you're talking about...

What are some instances where the better crew would matter in space? I guess some kind of evasive patterns would help dodge attacks, but as soon as the patterns were over, couldn't the enemy ship just shoot again? I guess the Picard Maneuver is one example that I didn't think of before. Or maybe using non-weaponry with ingenuity, such as a shuttlepod diversion, or tractor beam. OK I can see your point. I guess I was just wondering what is most important between those three things.

 

[Mister_Atoz]

well, if only because it's only our heroes in combat we've seen that crew/command quality is vitally important. We've seen pretty much every ship named Enterprise battle a superior foe or an enemy with a clear advantage and defeat it.

 

[Christopher]

It depends on whether you're talking about realistic space battles (which often show up in hard-SF novels) or the fantasy kind (which routinely show up in TV and movies). In reality, there would be no energy shields, and armor would have definite physical limits. (Well, maybe a magnetic shield could deflect plasma weapons or ion beams, but would be useless against lasers or missiles/projectiles.) You'd be far more likely to survive if you could avoid getting hit at all.

Conversely, if your enemy is maneuverable enough to avoid getting hit, then the power of your weapons wouldn't matter much. So I'd say maneuverability is tops.

One can also fold "speed" in with "weaponry." TV/movie sci-fi almost invariably ignores Jon's Law: "Any propulsion system powerful enough to be interesting is potentially a weapon of mass destruction." This is also known as the Kzinti Lesson, after Larry Niven's story "The Warriors," in which a Kzinti attack on an "unarmed" human starship was foiled when the ship turned to sweep its drive laser across the Kzinti ship, destroying it utterly. Any kind of reaction drive powerful enough to propel a large vessel fast enough to cover interplanetary distances in a short amount of time (the definition of "interesting" for story purposes) is going to have an exhaust so fiercely hot and dangerous that the ship's own crew will need to be well-shielded against it. Point that exhaust directly at another ship, a space station, anything, and it's toast. Similarly, any kind of reactionless or space-warp drive would be dealing with intense energies and gravitational forces. The edge of a "realistic" warp bubble would have an immense tidal gradient that could rip apart anything it touched.

So the faster your ship can go, the more powerful a weapon it is, and the better it is at evading enemy fire (assuming that speed translates to maneuverability, which isn't necessarily so). So in a realistic situation, I'd put speed/maneuverability on top.

In a Trek/Wars/Galactica/whatever kind of battle, I don't think the question can be answered, since it's all arbitrary anyway and the weapon power, speed, and shield strength of a ship varies wildly depending on the needs of the episode.

EDIT: And I just realized this thread is in Trek Tech and not Science and Technology, so I guess everything I just said is kind of irrelevant. In Trek terms, based on the way battles usually unfold onscreen, I'd say that if your shields (and inertial dampers) are stronger than the other guy's weapons, or vice-versa, that's probably going to be the most important factor. Although then we fall prey to the fact that "hero" ships are almost invariably able to survive far greater damage than "villain" ships (or sacrificial allied guest-star ships) can.

 

[Timo]

Agreed with the edit, although overall, I think the "rules" governing Trek combat can be seen as fairly consistent and logical.

For whatever reason, all Trek battles take place at such close ranges that every shot hits its intended target. This is true of TNG era sublight battles where the camera shows the ships practically touching each other, as well as of TOS warp battles where the makers could not afford to show two ships in the same shot and the writers spoke of engagement distances of hundreds of thousands of kilometers, yet hit rate still remained at 100%.

In-universe, this is probably a doctrinal choice stemming from the technological reality: nobody bothers to fire weapons at such ranges that they might miss, because there is no harm in closing in and taking a sure-to-hit shot. It doesn't matter if the enemy fires back and hits you a few times, because starships can take dozens of hits before anything fatal happens. The side that withstands constant pounding the longest, and hits the opponent the hardest, will triumph.

So I'd place zero value on maneuverability as such. Speed would be of interest only in that you need to catch your prey, or escape your hunter; if you are too slow, you will always be where the enemy wants you to be, which is a very bad idea. You also wish to close in to your optimal weapons range as swiftly as possible, not lingering at the distance where hits are less than certain and where the enemy's optimal range might lie, but this probably doesn't place overtly harsh demands on speed.

Like in naval battles of the gun era (after the introduction of gunpowder but before WWII), the most important thing would be the balance of firepower and protection. Nobody probably wants to emphasize firepower to such a degree that protection is neglected: the ability to withstand at least a dozen enemy hits is vital to the Trek way of doing battle. And sometimes you can win battles even when you concentrate on protection and neglect firepower: at Hampton Roads, the Virginia and Monitor both lacked the firepower to cause any true harm to each other, but the essentially damage-free battle was still a decisive victory for the Monitor.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Without shields you're completely screwed because their weapons would take out every system on your ship or just blast through the hull of your ship and strike your warp reactor, therefore the most important thing on your ship is shields, weapons are secondary in importance and maneuvarability is last since no matter how good you can maneuver particle beam weapons can move faster.

 

[Timo]

.. no matter how good you can maneuver particle beam weapons can move faster.

I wouldn't say quite that much. After all, both your ship and the particle beam are made to move FTL by some sort of warp/subspace magic. There is no good reason why the ship couldn't have better magic than the beam.

Also, just try illuminating a fly with your laser pointer to see how much it helps that the beam goes at lightspeed and the fly moves mere decimeters in second.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Forbin]

Decimeters?
That may be the first time anybody's used that particular measurement here.

 

[Timo]

Well, it beats "dozens of centimeters"! And "meters" would be exaggeration.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

Actually impulse velocities are SLOWER than directed energy weapons.
Phasers have a range of 300 000 km.
They cover that distance in 1 second.
Aside from maybe shuttles and fighters I doubt any larger ship would be able to avoid weapons that can reach them in 1 second evasive maneuvers or not if they are in 300 000 km radius of a starship.
The only case in which 'hit and miss' would possibly happen is when computer targeting is off line and manual targeting is needed.

In universe wise, phasers should never miss their targets unless something is very off with the targeting sensors.
Torpedoes are supposed to have FTL capability.
If they are fired at FTL speeds, no ship at sub light velocities could hope to outmaneuver them.

 

[Christopher]

Deks said:
In universe wise, phasers should never miss their targets unless something is very off with the targeting sensors.

Or unless the vessel being targeted is several light-seconds away. Trek assumes the existence of FTL sensors, so you could always tell where an enemy ship was at the moment you fired, but the phaser beam would travel at just under the speed of light (since it's a particle beam, not a laser) and there would be a lag before it reached its target. Since the enemy's FTL sensors would let them know when and in which direction you fired the beam, they could dodge before it reached them.

 

[Deks]

No they couldn't.
At least of course not if they are within weapons range.
Even if the speed of a phaser beam is 290 000 km/second (and it should effectively be 300 000 km/s despite the fact it's not a laser), a starship cannot move anywhere as under sublight.

Mainly, I am talking about sublight velocities and when ships are in range, plus visual depiction on screen is of course not withstanding because visual evidence contradicted Trek technology on numerous accounts for the sake of drama.

And even if ships are out of phaser range, torpedoes can easily home into any ship and reach them at FTL speeds.
Of course ... point defense phasers would be welcome in such instances, but again, if a target is at sublight and withing main phaser range of the opposing ship, torpedoes would cover that distance in less of a second if fired above Warp 1.

 

[Christopher]

Deks said:
No they couldn't.
At least of course not if they are within weapons range.

Define "weapons range." A beam weapon can theoretically travel an indefinite distance through space. If a ship is 10 light-seconds away from you when you fire a laser at it, your laser will still hit it, if it stands still. But if it has FTL sensors that alert it the instant you fire your weapon, that gives it 10 seconds to dodge before your beam hits it. Once the beam is fired, it's stuck going in that direction, so the ship only has to move a small distance, its own width at most, in order to avoid the beam. And a ship doesn't need to move very fast at all to cover its own width in 10 seconds.

So when we talk about "weapons range" for a beam weapon, it's not realistically a question of the beam fizzling out or ceasing to exist or something -- it's a question of whether the ship is close enough that it can't easily dodge a weapon limited to the speed of light or below. So what I'm talking about would be what defines weapons range in the first place.

 

[ancient]

"He who shoots first wins"

 

[Deks]

Christopher said:

Deks said:
No they couldn't.
At least of course not if they are within weapons range.

Define "weapons range." A beam weapon can theoretically travel an indefinite distance through space. If a ship is 10 light-seconds away from you when you fire a laser at it, your laser will still hit it, if it stands still. But if it has FTL sensors that alert it the instant you fire your weapon, that gives it 10 seconds to dodge before your beam hits it. Once the beam is fired, it's stuck going in that direction, so the ship only has to move a small distance, its own width at most, in order to avoid the beam. And a ship doesn't need to move very fast at all to cover its own width in 10 seconds.

So when we talk about "weapons range" for a beam weapon, it's not realistically a question of the beam fizzling out or ceasing to exist or something -- it's a question of whether the ship is close enough that it can't easily dodge a weapon limited to the speed of light or below. So what I'm talking about would be what defines weapons range in the first place.

Maximum effective phaser range is 300 000 km.
While phasers are not lasers, they still have photon particles, and photons move at the speed of light.
Beyond the range of 300 000 km, phasers are inefficient when it comes to affecting damage.

If full impulse velocity is 1/4 lightspeed (possibly faster for some alien ships, but still below the speed of light), then a starship at maximum impulse speed cannot hope to avoid a phaser shot if it's in the range of 300 000 km.

FTL sensors have nothing to do with this equation.
They will tell you that the enemy is about to fire it's weapons, and in-universe wise, the reaction time for the crew to actually move the ship is way too slow (not to mention the velocity at which the ships move is far slower than a phaser).
Even if the computer was moving the ship and the crew was on a vacation, it would still get hit because it would take too much time to move it.

The only way a vessel (if in a radius of 300 000 km) would avoid getting shot in-universe wise with a phaser was if the targeting sensors are messed up, or manual targeting is required.

 

[kNkg]

^Sorry but you just failed completely to understand a single word Christopher wrote.

 

[Mister_Atoz]

Deks said:
Maximum effective phaser range is 300 000 km.

is it?

While phasers are not lasers, they still have photon particles, and photons move at the speed of light.

are they?

We've seen numerous examples of ships firing phasers at warp speed. The entire battle with the M5 is fought at speeds approaching warp 4. Kirk apparently thought he could hit the Orion vessel speeding around at warp 9. There is an episode of DS9 where Odo drops his runabout to a lower warp speed and fires phasers at a jem hadar fighter that flies past him. I know i've seen other examples in Voyager and Enterprise. Wouldn't the phasers in these cases need to be traveling faster than the ships that are firing them, and certainly as fast or faster than the target they are firing at. Also, 300,000 kilometers is a MIGHTY small firing window for a weapon that is apparently designed to be used at warp speeds.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Mister_Atoz said:

Deks said:
Maximum effective phaser range is 300 000 km.

is it?

While phasers are not lasers, they still have photon particles, and photons move at the speed of light.

are they?

We've seen numerous examples of ships firing phasers at warp speed. The entire battle with the M5 is fought at speeds approaching warp 4. Kirk apparently thought he could hit the Orion vessel speeding around at warp 9. There is an episode of DS9 where Odo drops his runabout to a lower warp speed and fires phasers at a jem hadar fighter that flies past him. I know i've seen other examples in Voyager and Enterprise. Wouldn't the phasers in these cases need to be traveling faster than the ships that are firing them, and certainly as fast or faster than the target they are firing at. Also, 300,000 kilometers is a MIGHTY small firing window for a weapon that is apparently designed to be used at warp speeds.

You completely fail to understand the concept of the warp field or as others put it 'the warp bubble'. The ship itself is not travelling at faster than light speeds it is infact stationary, its merely the warping of space that causes the vessel to move this is why the ship does not suffer from time dilation (time does not slow down), any weapon fired within the warp field is infact being fired from a stationary ship not a ship moving faster than light, should the particle weapon pass beyond the warp field then that part of the beam weapon would 'drop out of warp' and the same goes for torpedoes unless the torpedo has device on board which alows it to sustain warp velocity, the only time two vessels can fire particle beam weapons at each other at warp is when the warp fields of both ships 'collide' or 'merge' together.