B5 Starfury looks good with it multiple and multi-directional thruster, except where do they put the fuel... It is easy to have high thrust/weight ratio in a fighter(because well, they are small) but in order to zipping around like they do in the air you need alot of fuel. As for jamming/sensor tech related stuff, wouldn't fighters low Power output make it impossible for them to use any powerful jammer or radar/lidar/sensor?
Fighter in atmosphere also have range advantage because Earth and the horizon and gravity affect radar range and weapon falls down eventually .In space however, weapons and sensors will have much longer ranges, there is no horizon and no gravity, the warships and it powerfull radar/lidar/sensor can easily target fighter Before the fighters can lock on them
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There is also the fact that it takes less energy to move a smaller craft than it does a bigger one due to mass. Yes weight is meaningless in space, but there's still mass. Stick a fighter sized engine on something the size of a Star Destroyer... it ain't gonna budge very much, if at all.
Well, at sea this didn't mean much. If you could make the bigger ship, you could give it a bigger engine - often much bigger even, so you end up being faster than the small ship.
Not sure how much that has to do with "hydrodynamics", however, which wouldn't matter in space.
Same engine but different mass gives the advantage to the lower mass ship, of course, but if you got a heavier ship, chances are you can also devote more mass to your engine.
In the comments of the post quoted by the OP, someone mentions that the advantage of smaller ships would be that they would have a better surface area to volume ratio. Since thrusters will probably occupy surface but can't be build in the middle of your ship, that will mean you have more "space" you can devote to propulsion. But - thrusters aren't 2-dimensional, and the fuel you need will still be proportional to volume and mass of the ship. Also, it's highly shape-dependent. For example, if surface area for your main thrusters is your concern, you could build a thin plate-llike ship, but if your ship gets too small, it would be too thin for the crew/pilot.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,708Community Moderator
edited May 2015
Modern figters are able to use Radar, and its not as powerful as a ship based or land based system, so its concievable that starfighters would be equipped with some equivelent system.
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Modern figters are able to use Radar, and its not as powerful as a ship based or land based system, so its concievable that starfighters would be equipped with some equivelent system.
Certainly. But specifically for jamming stuff - your output strength is pretty important, otherwise the other side will simply send out a much stronger signal and your jammer does little. Your Fighters may only end up jamming each other.
Which can still be useful - for example, when there are only fighters around. The role of Corvettes as the author mentions - it wasn't there to deal with bigger ships, but it was at least a presence in the area. That's basically always how shuttles in Star Trek were used. We can't send the ship, but we want to have a presence there. So we send a shuttle. It's not there to deal with bigger fish, but for what we expect to be there, it should suffice. (And often in TNG at least, what they expected to be there were conferences. Something a Shuttle can deal with quite well. )
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Certainly. But specifically for jamming stuff - your output strength is pretty important, otherwise the other side will simply send out a much stronger signal and your jammer does little. Your Fighters may only end up jamming each other.
Which can still be useful - for example, when there are only fighters around. The role of Corvettes as the author mentions - it wasn't there to deal with bigger ships, but it was at least a presence in the area. That's basically always how shuttles in Star Trek were used. We can't send the ship, but we want to have a presence there. So we send a shuttle. It's not there to deal with bigger fish, but for what we expect to be there, it should suffice. (And often in TNG at least, what they expected to be there were conferences. Something a Shuttle can deal with quite well. )
Should it not be aleast a few runabouts, I doubt shuttles can do much, sure it is a federation presence, but a shuttle...
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,708Community Moderator
edited May 2015
I've never really heard of an instance in Sci-Fi of a fighter jamming a larger craft. It was always something bigger. However that doesn't mean that EW craft wouldn't exist in one form or another. Citing Wing Commander, the Confederation never fielded actual EW fighters. They used corvette sized ships for the job. But I can see fighters being equipped with jammers for use in a similar capacity as current chaff/flare anti missile defense systems or even offensively against other fighters or setting up ambushes in combination with any terrain in the area, such as asteroids.
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Also, in fiction, the Codex in Mass Effect tells us that the Treaty of the Citadel limits how many Dreadnaught-class ships any given race in their space can build. Humans were limited to five. So humans invented the Everest-class heavy cruiser, which had basically the same capabilities as a dreadnaught (including a relativistic railgun as a main weapon), but slightly lighter armor. Since the treaty didn't say anything about how many heavy cruisers they could have, well...
The Everst was a dreadnought, even the Alliance admitted that. But carrier, on the other hand were not limited (even if they are dreadnoghut-sized), so humans build a bunch of them instead.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,708Community Moderator
The Everst was a dreadnought, even the Alliance admitted that. But carrier, on the other hand were not limited (even if they are dreadnoghut-sized), so humans build a bunch of them instead.
I was about to bring up the carrier thing myself. I think Humans in Mass Effect were really the only species to even field carriers.
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I was about to bring up the carrier thing myself. I think Humans in Mass Effect were really the only species to even field carriers.
I remember Codex said that space carrier is a human thing. But shouldnt other specie have developed atleast sea-navy carriers as well?
Hast thou not gone against sincerity
Hast thou not felt ashamed of thy words and deeds
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Hast thou exerted all possible efforts
Hast thou not become slothful
The Everst was a dreadnought, even the Alliance admitted that. But carrier, on the other hand were not limited (even if they are dreadnoghut-sized), so humans build a bunch of them instead.
Pretty much the Washington Naval Treaty in space there - couldn't build battleships, but we've got these crazy new aircraft we can try out instead.
But to quote, "Talent borrows, Genius steals."
The Codex mentions, I believe, that fighters are deathtraps - you're always going to lose some on the way in firing those disruption torpedoes, and most species had some support, but the human addition was creating dedicated carriers instead of ships carrying a few.
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I've never really heard of an instance in Sci-Fi of a fighter jamming a larger craft. It was always something bigger. However that doesn't mean that EW craft wouldn't exist in one form or another. Citing Wing Commander, the Confederation never fielded actual EW fighters. They used corvette sized ships for the job. But I can see fighters being equipped with jammers for use in a similar capacity as current chaff/flare anti missile defense systems or even offensively against other fighters or setting up ambushes in combination with any terrain in the area, such as asteroids.
Given how powerful sensors are in Starfleet, it would make sense to at least have some type of anti-sensor capabilities. Just enough to make sensors unreliable for fighters to make a strike.
every time you square(double) the size, you cube(tripple) the mass.
so unless you add 33% more thrust each time you will lost your agility.
of course there will be diminishing returns a very small ship just wont be able to mount the engine needed to get the highest Dv. where as, a very massive ship wont be able to put out the energy needed even i it had engines tat could in theory, move it.
It's worse than that...
Take an example, cube 1 unit wide, 1 unit long, 1 unit high, mass 1 unit...
1 W x 1 L x 1 H = 1 Vol = 1 Mass
2 W x 2 L x 2 H = 8 Vol = 8 Mass
Then there is 'Moment of Inertia'
When you double the size of a ship, you massively increase it's resistance to being turned.
On the double sized fed super 'dreadnaught' cruiser, the saucer section is now 8 times more massive, AND twice as far from the ships center of rotation...
If your double sized engines and thrusters don't do 8 times the power output, your new MEGA ship is a sitting duck.
THAT is part of the reason nobody builds wet navy battleships in the 21st century, the things are too easy to find and hit and kill, to make their ridiculous cost worth while.
<center><font size="+5"><b>Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day... Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...</b></size></center>
... I tried to make her look like she was moving fast and slick even standing still. ...
Funny, all Starship designers try to make their (starfleet) ships look "fast moving even when standing still", since the Sovereign.
Not very original tbh.
Regarding to real worlds science:
Didn't Starfleet ships (TNG+) generate a low powered Warp bubble at impulse to lower the ships effective mass and inertia iirc?
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
Regarding to real worlds science:
Didn't Starfleet ships (TNG+) generate a low powered Warp bubble at impulse to lower the ships effective mass and inertia iirc?
I do not think it was stated on screen, but it was in the Technical Manual. So more like "soft canon", if you believe in such terms.
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Take an example, cube 1 unit wide, 1 unit long, 1 unit high, mass 1 unit...
1 W x 1 L x 1 H = 1 Vol = 1 Mass
2 W x 2 L x 2 H = 8 Vol = 8 Mass
Then there is 'Moment of Inertia'
When you double the size of a ship, you massively increase it's resistance to being turned.
On the double sized fed super 'dreadnaught' cruiser, the saucer section is now 8 times more massive, AND twice as far from the ships center of rotation...
If your double sized engines and thrusters don't do 8 times the power output, your new MEGA ship is a sitting duck.
If you double, widht, legnth and height of the ship, you can probably also easily double width, length and height of your engines.
You may even make it bigger than that, unless you think you really need 8 times as much space for everything else, too.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Regarding to real worlds science:
Didn't Starfleet ships (TNG+) generate a low powered Warp bubble at impulse to lower the ships effective mass and inertia iirc?
The 'driver coil' as referenced occasionally on-screen is a demi-warp coil used in the impulse engines, it's never been said explicitly, but O'Brian once faked one on DS9 to move the station on its station-keeping thrusters to the wormhole.
The trick is whether power goes up faster than mass when building bigger reactors, for how big it makes sense to build your ships.
Fate - protects fools, small children, and ships named Enterprise Will Riker
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My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
The 'driver coil' as referenced occasionally on-screen is a demi-warp coil used in the impulse engines, it's never been said explicitly, but O'Brian once faked one on DS9 to move the station on its station-keeping thrusters to the wormhole.
The trick is whether power goes up faster than mass when building bigger reactors, for how big it makes sense to build your ships.
Yep, that's it!
It's been some years since i last saw that episode.:)
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
I wonder how some of this material might influence STO ship design.
I know the ships don't all fall neatly into each of these categories, and I'm not sure the Dev team has a strong definition for "this is a frigate, this is a destroyer, etc."
I would almost certainly put BoP's into the corvette class after reading this, whereas most of the escorts and science vessels would end up as either frigates or destroyers.
To be fair, even modern ships don't really fit nicely into definitions, and those definitions shift over time. Such as what the US calls "destroyers" are the size of heavy cruisers and fill a similar niche.
I was about to bring up the carrier thing myself. I think Humans in Mass Effect were really the only species to even field carriers.
It's also quietly pointed out in ME that the attrition rate among fighter pilots is pretty suicidal. Fighter attacks on capital ships rely on massed numbers and the logic that the target's GARDAN defense lasers will overheat picking off so many incoming JAVLIN torpedoes and fighters. The first guy in the wave is probably dead, second guy likely, third guy the guns are starting to overheat and he's got a chance to get in and so does everyone behind it. They're swarm tactics, basically.
It's also noted that those defense lasers never, ever miss. Their main weaknesses is limited range because of blooming and that they generate tremendous amounts of waste heat very quickly, which means they can be overwhelmed by numbers and become progressively less effective over the course of the battle if they're forced to sustain continuous fire.
Humans are the first - and as far as I know only - species to field carriers because of their extensive experience with oceanic warfare (Palavin doesn't seem to have Earth's massive oceans), them building their own small empire before bumping into aliens meaning they'd come up with some oddball ideas because of the lack of Citadel influence (such as Medigel, which is technically illegal under Citadel law but the law was rewritten because of how useful it is), and because their limited technology forces them to use tactics other species wouldn't, such as being crazy enough to deploy dedicated fighter carrier vessels. Also because of treaty obligations that limits Humanity's deployment of dreadnoughts, so Humanity in it's long tradition of weaseling it's way around the spirit of their obligations via the letter of it, built carriers.
The last is inspired by the Treaty of Washington that placed limits on the construction of dreadnoughts and battlecruisers for the United States, Great Britain, and the Japanese Empire... which all three got around by developing more advanced aircraft carriers. Humans just got the short end of the stick, Japan's position in the treaty, and reacted similarly, by abusing that the treaty says nothing about building carriers.
On the topic of fighters... well, let's just say shuttlecraft which is what most of the canon small ships actually were...
Shuttlecraft, especially in TNG and DS9, had a unique armament: Plot Devices.
MOST of the time, they didn't really factor in to any ship-to-ship battles. If there was any actual combat, it was usually small craft on small craft.
However, off the top of my head I do recall a rather novel use for a shuttle attacking a Borg cube. The shuttle itself did no appreciable damage, of course, but it did punch a shuttle-sized hole in the shields long enough to get the shuttle inside.
There are probably other examples I am forgetting about.
In STO, I see the role of a fighter wing as applying battle pressure and for precision strikes. A lone fighter attacking a ship isn't going to do much damage... unless you're Luke Skywalker. But several of them acting in concert with a starship could weaken shields enough for precision strikes to do real damage.
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Comments
Fighter in atmosphere also have range advantage because Earth and the horizon and gravity affect radar range and weapon falls down eventually .In space however, weapons and sensors will have much longer ranges, there is no horizon and no gravity, the warships and it powerfull radar/lidar/sensor can easily target fighter Before the fighters can lock on them
Hast thou not felt ashamed of thy words and deeds
Hast thou not lacked vigor
Hast thou exerted all possible efforts
Hast thou not become slothful
Well, at sea this didn't mean much. If you could make the bigger ship, you could give it a bigger engine - often much bigger even, so you end up being faster than the small ship.
Not sure how much that has to do with "hydrodynamics", however, which wouldn't matter in space.
Same engine but different mass gives the advantage to the lower mass ship, of course, but if you got a heavier ship, chances are you can also devote more mass to your engine.
In the comments of the post quoted by the OP, someone mentions that the advantage of smaller ships would be that they would have a better surface area to volume ratio. Since thrusters will probably occupy surface but can't be build in the middle of your ship, that will mean you have more "space" you can devote to propulsion. But - thrusters aren't 2-dimensional, and the fuel you need will still be proportional to volume and mass of the ship. Also, it's highly shape-dependent. For example, if surface area for your main thrusters is your concern, you could build a thin plate-llike ship, but if your ship gets too small, it would be too thin for the crew/pilot.
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colored text = mod mode
Which can still be useful - for example, when there are only fighters around. The role of Corvettes as the author mentions - it wasn't there to deal with bigger ships, but it was at least a presence in the area. That's basically always how shuttles in Star Trek were used. We can't send the ship, but we want to have a presence there. So we send a shuttle. It's not there to deal with bigger fish, but for what we expect to be there, it should suffice. (And often in TNG at least, what they expected to be there were conferences. Something a Shuttle can deal with quite well.
Should it not be aleast a few runabouts, I doubt shuttles can do much, sure it is a federation presence, but a shuttle...
Hast thou not felt ashamed of thy words and deeds
Hast thou not lacked vigor
Hast thou exerted all possible efforts
Hast thou not become slothful
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
The Everst was a dreadnought, even the Alliance admitted that. But carrier, on the other hand were not limited (even if they are dreadnoghut-sized), so humans build a bunch of them instead.
Hast thou not felt ashamed of thy words and deeds
Hast thou not lacked vigor
Hast thou exerted all possible efforts
Hast thou not become slothful
I was about to bring up the carrier thing myself. I think Humans in Mass Effect were really the only species to even field carriers.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
I remember Codex said that space carrier is a human thing. But shouldnt other specie have developed atleast sea-navy carriers as well?
Hast thou not felt ashamed of thy words and deeds
Hast thou not lacked vigor
Hast thou exerted all possible efforts
Hast thou not become slothful
Pretty much the Washington Naval Treaty in space there - couldn't build battleships, but we've got these crazy new aircraft we can try out instead.
But to quote, "Talent borrows, Genius steals."
The Codex mentions, I believe, that fighters are deathtraps - you're always going to lose some on the way in firing those disruption torpedoes, and most species had some support, but the human addition was creating dedicated carriers instead of ships carrying a few.
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My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
Given how powerful sensors are in Starfleet, it would make sense to at least have some type of anti-sensor capabilities. Just enough to make sensors unreliable for fighters to make a strike.
It's worse than that...
Take an example, cube 1 unit wide, 1 unit long, 1 unit high, mass 1 unit...
1 W x 1 L x 1 H = 1 Vol = 1 Mass
2 W x 2 L x 2 H = 8 Vol = 8 Mass
Then there is 'Moment of Inertia'
When you double the size of a ship, you massively increase it's resistance to being turned.
On the double sized fed super 'dreadnaught' cruiser, the saucer section is now 8 times more massive, AND twice as far from the ships center of rotation...
If your double sized engines and thrusters don't do 8 times the power output, your new MEGA ship is a sitting duck.
THAT is part of the reason nobody builds wet navy battleships in the 21st century, the things are too easy to find and hit and kill, to make their ridiculous cost worth while.
Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...</b></size></center>
Not very original tbh.
Regarding to real worlds science:
Didn't Starfleet ships (TNG+) generate a low powered Warp bubble at impulse to lower the ships effective mass and inertia iirc?
You may even make it bigger than that, unless you think you really need 8 times as much space for everything else, too.
The 'driver coil' as referenced occasionally on-screen is a demi-warp coil used in the impulse engines, it's never been said explicitly, but O'Brian once faked one on DS9 to move the station on its station-keeping thrusters to the wormhole.
The trick is whether power goes up faster than mass when building bigger reactors, for how big it makes sense to build your ships.
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
It's been some years since i last saw that episode.:)
To be fair, even modern ships don't really fit nicely into definitions, and those definitions shift over time. Such as what the US calls "destroyers" are the size of heavy cruisers and fill a similar niche.
It's also quietly pointed out in ME that the attrition rate among fighter pilots is pretty suicidal. Fighter attacks on capital ships rely on massed numbers and the logic that the target's GARDAN defense lasers will overheat picking off so many incoming JAVLIN torpedoes and fighters. The first guy in the wave is probably dead, second guy likely, third guy the guns are starting to overheat and he's got a chance to get in and so does everyone behind it. They're swarm tactics, basically.
It's also noted that those defense lasers never, ever miss. Their main weaknesses is limited range because of blooming and that they generate tremendous amounts of waste heat very quickly, which means they can be overwhelmed by numbers and become progressively less effective over the course of the battle if they're forced to sustain continuous fire.
Humans are the first - and as far as I know only - species to field carriers because of their extensive experience with oceanic warfare (Palavin doesn't seem to have Earth's massive oceans), them building their own small empire before bumping into aliens meaning they'd come up with some oddball ideas because of the lack of Citadel influence (such as Medigel, which is technically illegal under Citadel law but the law was rewritten because of how useful it is), and because their limited technology forces them to use tactics other species wouldn't, such as being crazy enough to deploy dedicated fighter carrier vessels. Also because of treaty obligations that limits Humanity's deployment of dreadnoughts, so Humanity in it's long tradition of weaseling it's way around the spirit of their obligations via the letter of it, built carriers.
The last is inspired by the Treaty of Washington that placed limits on the construction of dreadnoughts and battlecruisers for the United States, Great Britain, and the Japanese Empire... which all three got around by developing more advanced aircraft carriers. Humans just got the short end of the stick, Japan's position in the treaty, and reacted similarly, by abusing that the treaty says nothing about building carriers.
On the topic of fighters... well, let's just say shuttlecraft which is what most of the canon small ships actually were...
Shuttlecraft, especially in TNG and DS9, had a unique armament: Plot Devices.
MOST of the time, they didn't really factor in to any ship-to-ship battles. If there was any actual combat, it was usually small craft on small craft.
However, off the top of my head I do recall a rather novel use for a shuttle attacking a Borg cube. The shuttle itself did no appreciable damage, of course, but it did punch a shuttle-sized hole in the shields long enough to get the shuttle inside.
There are probably other examples I am forgetting about.
In STO, I see the role of a fighter wing as applying battle pressure and for precision strikes. A lone fighter attacking a ship isn't going to do much damage... unless you're Luke Skywalker. But several of them acting in concert with a starship could weaken shields enough for precision strikes to do real damage.
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