ok, I have a suggestion to why the Akira has the supposed 15 torp launchers.
If it carries fighters then to launch them they would need to lay down cover, right. Well photon and quantum torpedos are a "long range" weapon as opposed to phasers or disrupters.
The TrekRPG Dominion War Sourcebook said that they, along w/Steamrunner were carriers.
NOTE:I have no intention of starting a big argument over one of the coolist ships that Starfleet uses. I just thought I would share my finding with you all.
Also, if this has been raised before, I'm sorry.
RS
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
Yeah, this has been brought up before. It doesn't work because: 1) there are no carriers in onscreen ST 2) 15 torpedoes tubes violates laws of ship design 2.II) 15 tubes isn't logical or practical 3) Jaeger's an idiot 4) Starfleet fighters are too large for the Akira, not even the Galaxy can carry a meaningful amount of them 5) we never see the Akira act as anything other than a regular warship
I used to love the Akira, until this whole thing with Akira being a 15 tubed fighter. Now I love the Excelsior-B. No one ever argues about the Excelsior-B...
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Except for the aux impulse engine vs. aux shuttlebay people, of course...
Frankly, I think the Starfleet interceptor would fit in aboard an Akira or a Steamrunner just fine. Scale the thing so that the cockpit window matches the Type 15 shuttlepod set which was used for the interior, fold the fins, and you can pack a dozen of them aboard easily enough. For a 440-460m Akira, a single-volume rectangular flight deck, as wide as the shuttlebay doors and possibly as high as the boxy part of the hull under the bridge, would be some 150-160m long, perhaps 90m wide, and at least 12m high, so plenty of interceptors ought to be able to sit in there if they are only about 15-20m long. Then there could be extra hangar spaces on the lower levels. The limiting factor is the size of the aft doors, about 9x15 meters, but with folding outer fins and some not-so-extreme downscaling you can fit the fighters in. With Steamrunner, there's no problem at all.
Tactically, it would be either stupendously smart or supendously stupid to give a carrier a heavy torpedo armament. In a multi-ship fleet setup, it makes a lot of sense. Today, SSMs and fighters have basically the same role, so why not equip a launching platform with both? You can then dedicate the other ships in the fleet to the protection duty and omit protective weapons from the launching platform, which allows each ship type to be optimized for its mission.
In a solo ship setup, it's idiocy, though. A carrier has inherent vulnerabilities, so whatever room isn't taken by the carrier function should be primarily dedicated to patching up the vulnerabilities. No "offensive" weaponry at all, just strong shields and good close-in weapons.
Any in-between design would be a compromise, but then again, most technology is.
And just because we never see the "carriers" launching fighters, we shouldn't consider it impossible. Well, actually it IS impossible - the carrier shuttlebay doors do not open! The CGI models aren't built for that function... So we have to assume the fighters are launched off screen. But then again, shuttles tend to be launched off screen, too - TOS and VOY had some actual shuttle launch footage that actually showed the craft departing the bay, but TNG had none. They covered up for that nicely, though.
Timo Saloniemi
[ March 07, 2002, 02:22: Message edited by: Timo ]
Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :
I would imagine that those fighters we see in the Dominion battles came from a mothership of some kind. If you think about it, those fighters going where they were from homebase to the battle and if they survive back to homebase again. That would be like sending a WW2 PT boat from San Francisco to Japan to torpedo a destroyer and sending her back to San Francisco.
In terms of common sense, there has to be a mothership. But of course when using common sense you wouldn't put 15 torpedo tubes and carrier flight deck as well on a ship no larger than a Excelsior class.
Posted by Fedaykin Supastar (Member # 704) on :
Maybe....the SF designers did add 15 tubes on the AKira but only like 3 actually work....the rest are just to scare the living daylights out of whoever.....
well it was just a thawt.....
Buzz
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
I hate to reopen the whole carrier debate, so I won't.
I just want to place these thoughts:
The only fighters we know of are the warp capable Peregrines (or whatever we call them).
Just because these are the only ones weve seen doesnt mean thats all there are. I could very well imagine a shuttle-sized fighter (such as the Valkyrie from some video game.. looks like a sleek Delta Flyer). The Peregrines could simply be bombers, which arent designed to be picked up by a carrier, so they have the range to go back to a base themselves. A shuttle sized fighter might be sublight only, or low warp. The reason we might not have seen it is that it would have been EXTREMELY stupid to use it during the types of wars weve seen (Borg, Klingon, Dominion) since they all have equal or superior firepower to shielded starships. But we cant rule out the possibility that there are smaller fighters and attack sleds that have limited uses, and probably we can infer that they are aboard Akiras.
This satisfies a) onscreen canon. they would fit within the ship, and there is a satisfactory explanation why they weren't used. b) design intentions. this theory also satisfies the designers comment that the Akira can be used as a carrier. we just know why is isnt:-D .
I like the dummy torpedo tube ideas too.. probably empty hardware slots designed to possibly have new weapons systems integrated in the future, keeping the Akira fresh despite its age (*ducks* sorry didnt mean to go there!)
[ March 07, 2002, 22:40: Message edited by: CaptainMike ]
Posted by Michael_T (Member # 144) on :
The only way I would consider it a carrier is if the ship carried heavily armed shuttlecrafts or runabouts, not the Federation Fighters. Also, a thru-deck carrier seems a bit dangerous to me; all the enemy has to do is to aim where the shuttle deck is at and blow the ship in two.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Plus, the very nature of a through-deck hangar bay practically guts the ship, and takes away a large volume of internal spaces that would normally be used for something else. For a ship that's relatively small like the Akira (compared to the big ones like Galaxy and Nebula), this is no small matter.
Posted by Michael_T (Member # 144) on :
I'll accecpt a foward and aft shuttlebay, but perhaps the deck where both of them are located is used to store shuttles and for maintenance.
Posted by NeghVar (Member # 62) on :
Perhaps they are used as a "Ground Attack Carrier" carrying troops, much like the Iwo Jima's are used today...
Later! Art
Posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov (Member # 742) on :
Well, some time ago I had an interesting idea about ground attack troop transports. The holoship from IX could be sort of warp-capable upgrade of a landing boat. I thought about it and maybe there's a large carrier structure with nacelles and a command module holding those - maybe four - vessels like a container freighter in some structure and then just dropping them from the atmosphere of a planet.
You have no idea what I mean, right? Posted by Michael_T (Member # 144) on :
Kyle, have you been drinking coffee again and not Starbucks? Just kidding...
I think I know what you mean; you are talking to something similar to the droid drop ship from Episode 1 or the ship Tom Hanks was in during the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
quote:Originally posted by Timo: But then again, shuttles tend to be launched off screen, too - TOS and VOY had some actual shuttle launch footage that actually showed the craft departing the bay, but TNG had none. They covered up for that nicely, though.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo! I'm ashamed, what about Best of Both Worlds Part II? Does that not count as a scene of a shuttle departing the bay?
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
I don't think so. IIRC, it's the standard type of "shuttle interior set with two characters chatting, bay wall visible behind -> brief movement of the said wall as stage hands frantically shove it towards the stern of the shuttle set -> cut to an already-departed shuttle". They didn't even have a matching set of type 7 shuttle and shuttlebay miniatures - a bay miniature was only built for "Cause and Effect", and that just for the main bay which was unusable for live-action because of its supposed immense size.
As long as we're talking "assault carriers", I think it's a good idea to dedicate most of their volume to one application and forget about saving any cubic meters for secondary things. A Steamrunner could be nothing but a big shuttlebay with two nacelles and an itty bitty dangling engineering section attached. (And she's truly through-deck, whereas the Akira "bow doors" would have trouble ejecting a workbee, let alone a full-sized shuttle!)
Another dedicated assault carrier could be the Norway. Virtually unarmed and lacking most of the standard recognizable starship gear, she could be a big bad barge carrier. Much like the barge carriers operated by the USN, she could store dozens of assault barges on rails running between the longitudal pylons. It's just that the Norways in FC were running empty...
Take a look at a barge carrier of today to see the similarities - the aft-extending twin deployment booms, the monobloc hull design, etc. Also, take a look at an LPD of today to see similarities with the Steamrunners - the big forward mass with a central cavity, opening to an aft "flooded" compartment sitting between the engines. The only thing missing from the Steamrunners to complete the illusion is a helo deck covering the flooded well, but a starship would look pretty silly with a helo deck.
This analogy would explain why the Steamrunner, the Norway and possibly the Sabre look different from "regular", saucer-hulled ships - they are special-mission ships, and RL special-mission ships tend to look weird. The Akira looks far more "regular" with that orderly saucer of hers, so assigning a special mission to her is optional.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Identity Crisis (Member # 67) on :
New idea for the Akira...
The multitude of tubes are for launching torpedo/probe sized drones. Small units packed with sensor jammers, ECM, EW, decoy generators, etc., etc. Launch a hundred of these along with your dozen fighters and they keep the enemy ships from blowing the fighters to pieces for long enough for thr fighters to get within weapons range of the target.
We didn't see them in the Dom War beacuse they would either be black specs (operating in jamming mode) or would visually (and to sensors) appear to be fighters (operating in decoy mode).
Only some of the tubes would actually be loaded with standard photon torps, which fits in nicely with First Contact where only a few of the tubes actually fired.
Posted by Fedaykin Supastar (Member # 704) on :
!!!! i had the same idea 'cept didnt put it forward coz i thawt that the 'dummy' tubes idea would not be taken seriously....not that i intended for them to be taken seriously...hehe
but yeah, the idea of like a ECM starship, with its multitude of torp tubes....or perhaps the Akira's mission profile is variable platform for launching of probes, satelites (maybe??), as well as a small complement of shuttles/warpsleds or watever can fit into that shuttle bay. perhaps the many tubes [other than the ones we know are used to fire torps] are actually micro torpedo launchers??? sort of like a rapid fire physical projectile offensive/defensive weapon - i'm just bouncing ideas of the wall , i dont mean that any of this should make practical sense....but hey lol
Buzz
Posted by Golden Tiger (Member # 586) on :
The Akira is supposed to have 15 torp. tubes... thus I have a theory...
- A small number of those tubes (perhaps 3) fires normal honest to goodness torpedos - The rest are used for ECM. If the Akira gets trapped in a battle, it fires very small (perhaps .5 meter) yet somewhat long rod shaped devices out the rest of the torp tubes that activate and serve to royally mess up all sensors in the area (sorta serving as the Nebula in ST movie II). Alas, when push came to shove, the Akira had the tubes and the Federation never could get the rods to work! So, the rest of the tubes just sit there waiting to be used!
A possible explaination... * In Star Trek Armada and Armada II the Akira has a Chain Reaction Pulsar weapon which is essentially one torpedo like plasma ball which hits one ship, bounces off that ship and hits another with slightly less force, bounces off and hits another, and so on... perhaps most of the smaller tubes (mentioned above) release a small .5 meter ball which generates a plasma field that joins up with about 12-13 other spheres of similar radius (or perhaps they are boxes... somehow they join together!) and they then form the plasma ball and chase after starships! It could happen!
Anyways, I'm certain that if the smaller torp tubes are used later on as cannon then it wouldn't be long before the Enterprise E had 120 torp tubes (only a few fire normal torpedos... the rest are micro-machine sized tubes... )
Oh well, that could work...
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
For God's sake, why can't it have 15 torp tubes? Why all these outlandish theories and explanations? It was just designed as a very heavily-armed ship. With 15 torpedo tubes. What is the big fucking deal?
I mean, ceratinly it's a little extreme...but I can live with it, y'know?
-MMoM
[ March 09, 2002, 21:30: Message edited by: The Mighty Monkey of Mim ]
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
The big fucking deal is that figures like that make the Akira
a)...more heavily-armed than the Galaxy, which just doesn't jibe with anything else from TNG or DS9.
b)...a ship with such a high weapons-to-ship size ratio that it looks like a ship designed primarily as a combatant, something we know that Starfleet doesn't do.
The real world answer is that Jaeger swings towards both "ubercool designer" and "silly fanboy" when it comes to his stuff. The Akira just isn't rooted in the same Trekiverse as the one we've seen for 15 years as far as the designer is concerned.
Now, if we were to accept that the Akira is some brand-spanking new Borgkiller then perhaps the torpedo thing would sit better. But I'd rather see the Akira as less heavily-armed ship of an age that complements its rego.
Posted by Woodside Kid (Member # 699) on :
Or, could it have been an older design that had had its armament upgraded to become a better Borgkiller?
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
This tends to be one of the better compromises we reach around here - which tends to be forgotten every time someone brings it up.
Mark
Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :
Maybe its one of few ships of the Akira class that have been modified with 15 torp tubes to be a Borg killer. Maybe its one of the many projects that Starfleet had prior to Wolf 359.
Its not that hard to imagine that a few ships like 5 or 6 ships out of like maybe a few doezen ships of the Akira class to be pulled over, gutted and fitted with 15 torpedo tubes to as a task force to rapidly destroy a Borg cube or two. It has been shown that even Borg defenses can be overwhelmed.
Then the other Akira classes that we see have sensor platforms and such in place of those torpedo tubes. Like the Nova class next to the Defiant Pathfinder. Where the Akira class is next to the Akira class Borgkiller.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
There's another interpretation that's brought forward and then forgotten here: perhaps 15 tubes is a sign of weakness of individual tubes?
A fun case in point: South Korea has some ancient Gearing class destroyers bought from the US and "modernized". From afar, they look like deadly fighting machines, because their decks are littered with *dozens* of missile canisters. Western frigates usually don't carry anywhere near that many SSMs.
When you get closer, you find out those aren't SSMs. They are one-shot SAM canisters, firing the as such potent SM-1 missiles but without the needed centralized C3I hardware that makes these weapons lethal aboard USN ships and allows them to work as part of the AEGIS system in some vessels. Without reloads, the ship isn't all that scary after all.
So perhaps the Akira is given fifteen torpedo tubes because with just ten, the ship would be grossly outgunned even by a Miranda? In a WWII setting, the ship sprouting the greatest number of gun barrels would probably be the big fleet carrier, but its AA guns wouldn't have the potency of the much fewer AS guns a small destroyer might carry.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
That would be assuming those 15 launchers are all box launchers, something we haven't seen in Trek before. Even if they were only single shot (not only one shot) launchers, they would still outgun a Galaxy when you factor in the reload time.
Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :
Still makes no sense seeing that the even the Miranda's torpedo launchers of 2-4 tubes seem to take up some room. Given 15 of those torpedo tubes, single fire ones, they still need ammo resupply, and power to them.
15 torpedo tubes would take up too much room for anything else useful such as crew quarters or maybe even science ships. Its seem that the Akira class being designed around the same time as the Galaxy, and the Nebula class is a warship. But I thought Starfleet doesn't have warships?
Granted it is the ultimate fanboy sip, but in Trek universe, it really makes no sense.
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