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Surface Warfare in the 23d & 24th Century...
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Timo: [QB] Combat in Trek is going to be dictated by what is affordable to show in television. Yesterday, it was capital ship battles and dress-uniformed gentlemen firing their hand phasers from a stand-up position. Today, it is melees with small interceptors and medium fighting vessels thrown in with the big capital ships, and grunts hugging the ground and firing rifles. Tomorrow, Paramount might afford to show ground vehicles and close air support and exotic weaponry. Our efforts must be aimed at explaining how ground combat in DS9 style is possible even though we have for decades been told that single big starships can handle everything. We must preserve the strength of the capital ship while giving the grunt a niche as well. We must also make sure we don't make DS9 ground combat *too* attractive, so that it would be inconsistent to show more mechanized fighting in the future as budgets and technology allow. I think it solves many things if one simply assumes that strong opponents have powerful jamming tech that negates the sensor advantages of the capital ships, and makes transporters less useful. That's two main points taken care of. The rest is fine-tuning. The lack of army mechanization could be just an illusion, since we saw so little of ground combat, especially in open terrain. I'm sure future episodes will feature "flying APCs" or militarized shuttles very soon, while mech armor will follow only when CGI gets better and cheaper. The lack of personal or squad-sized shields is a greater problem. Perhaps shields are cumbersome, difficult to hide from sensors, and never sufficiently strong to withstand heavy weaponry, so they are used as little as possible and only when the unit has already been spotted and is being shelled? Currently, one could argue that ground troops are only used in small numbers in the few cases where starships fail, explaining why the units we see are so lightly armed and protected and of poor mobility. But in the future, such a view might be too limiting. Perhaps it's best to assume that we simply missed the heavy gear in the less than half a dozen ground combat episodes. Timo Saloniemi [/QB][/QUOTE]
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