Topic: Federation Hopper design I'm stealing from Rick Sternbach
Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
posted
How about a giant mass driver cannon that rains down asteroidy & cometary death from above? That's make the LZ super-secure, yeh?
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
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quote:Originally posted by Reverend: Oh for heavens sake - As I've repeatedly said, it's not a tactically wise thing to do. Helicopters don't use tear-gas, they pick an LZ that is secure, or they make damn sure they get in quick and get the hell out, preferably before RPGs start flying at them. Ever seen Black Hawk Down? I'm sure dropping out of the stratosphere right on top of the enemy, stun grenades and phasers a flyin sounds great and terrably dramatic and I'm sure a fanboy could make a very exciting CG animation out of it, but the reality is, doing that will get your hopper shot down before it even has a chance to fire stun grenade #1. So the only thing that will hit the ground running to the accompaniment to Song 2 by Blur would be smoking wreckage and cooked flesh.
It'd be like trying to mount the d-day landings by sailing up the Elbe and into Berlin. You'd last about three seconds longer than a snowball on the surface of the sun.
If you want to quickly insert a small team, you'd use transporters. If the transporters are being jammed, then it's likely there are other defences like shields and force fields, in which case stun grenades will do precisely f*ck all, except tell everyone for half a mile in every direction exactly where you are about to land and it's death from below again.
Which ever way you cut it, landing on the base and using stun devices of any description will only cause an enemy to point and laugh. If you're doing the sane thing and established a beachhead a safe distance from any fortifications and you happen across a lone patrol, you don't waste time trying to stun them, allowing for the possibility one will hit a panic button, you vaporise the buggers and hope you can dig in before they're missed.
All that anger and ranting and you chose to censor "fuck all"?
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quote:Originally posted by Reverend: Oh for heavens sake - As I've repeatedly said, it's not a tactically wise thing to do. Helicopters don't use tear-gas, they pick an LZ that is secure, or they make damn sure they get in quick and get the hell out, preferably before RPGs start flying at them. Ever seen Black Hawk Down? I'm sure dropping out of the stratosphere right on top of the enemy, stun grenades and phasers a flyin sounds great and terrably dramatic and I'm sure a fanboy could make a very exciting CG animation out of it, but the reality is, doing that will get your hopper shot down before it even has a chance to fire stun grenade #1. So the only thing that will hit the ground running to the accompaniment to Song 2 by Blur would be smoking wreckage and cooked flesh.
It'd be like trying to mount the d-day landings by sailing up the Elbe and into Berlin. You'd last about three seconds longer than a snowball on the surface of the sun.
If you want to quickly insert a small team, you'd use transporters. If the transporters are being jammed, then it's likely there are other defences like shields and force fields, in which case stun grenades will do precisely f*ck all, except tell everyone for half a mile in every direction exactly where you are about to land and it's death from below again.
Which ever way you cut it, landing on the base and using stun devices of any description will only cause an enemy to point and laugh. If you're doing the sane thing and established a beachhead a safe distance from any fortifications and you happen across a lone patrol, you don't waste time trying to stun them, allowing for the possibility one will hit a panic button, you vaporise the buggers and hope you can dig in before they're missed.
I wasn't exactly suggesting it as an offensive weapon, more of a deffensive deterent to protect retreating troops, trying to load back up in an emergency, or to provide some sort of fire support role, like a BlackHawk does.
-------------------- "Kosh, I'd like to introduce you to our Resident schmuck and his side kick Kick Me."-Ritten
"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity". -George Carlin
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It seems the militaristic/infantry tactics discussions kinda spilled out of the Fed Army stuff in my thread and into the wild huh?
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So, this doesn't deliver the troops right into the combat zone, might the Federation have anything that does that? Perhaps there is a version of this with a big transporter system, so you can deliver a whole platoon in 3 or so squads through the Transporter, 12 men ( or how ever many constitutes a squad)at a time.
-------------------- "Kosh, I'd like to introduce you to our Resident schmuck and his side kick Kick Me."-Ritten
"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity". -George Carlin
Registered: Jul 2007
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posted
I only thought of transporters because Reverend mentioned them for small team insertion. Most of the T-porter pads we see in Trek have maybe 6 or so transport platforms, so to insert a whole squad at one time, you would need a larger pad. You could probably deliver a whole platoon within a minute, without really risking the ship itself.
But, I know what you mean. It's either transporters, or some new technobabble device that disappears from existance next week.
-------------------- "Kosh, I'd like to introduce you to our Resident schmuck and his side kick Kick Me."-Ritten
"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity". -George Carlin
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
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quote:Originally posted by Ahkileez: The magic nature of Treknology annoys me. It has so many shortcuts it makes for lazy thinking sometimes.
Not that I'm accusing you of that, Sean. It's just that the first solution to almost any problem is 'Transporters'.
Why WOULDN'T you go for the easiest solution first? Why complicate things unnecessarily from the outset?
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
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Because whenever transporters are the easiest solution, there's a diffuse magnetoflux spectroscopic subspace gravimetric shear force that means they have to use the shuttle. Not to mention lots of ionizing radiation to interfere with sensors. (You wouldn't think ionizing radiation would do a damn thing to FTL sensors, would you? And if it's bad enough to blind the ship, the away team should be toast or riddled with tumors...)
Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Ahkileez: The magic nature of Treknology annoys me. It has so many shortcuts it makes for lazy thinking sometimes.
Not that I'm accusing you of that, Sean. It's just that the first solution to almost any problem is 'Transporters'.
Why WOULDN'T you go for the easiest solution first? Why complicate things unnecessarily from the outset?
Essentially it boils down to the fact that your opponent would have to be totally fucking incompetent to not know that and take measures to reduce the effectiveness of that tactic or find a way to use it against you entirely.
A forward assault is almost always the easiest course of action in a battle, but an even slightly competent enemy will cut you to shreds if you aren't smart about the way you do it.
Trekno-magic makes for very lazy thinking; the perception is that the solution is always a wave of a wand and a push of an inoffensively colored button away.
The instant they run into an enemy who is even the smallest bit challenging, they get caught flat-footed and have their asses handed to them.
Using the toys should only ever be part of a more comprehensive and thoroughly planned strategy, not a means in and of itself.
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quote:Originally posted by Sean: Yes. It's all your fault.
So, this doesn't deliver the troops right into the combat zone, might the Federation have anything that does that? Perhaps there is a version of this with a big transporter system, so you can deliver a whole platoon in 3 or so squads through the Transporter, 12 men ( or how ever many constitutes a squad)at a time.
Well, since their default seems to be about six pads then, at least for SF, a "squad" seems to be 6.
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quote:All that anger and ranting and you chose to censor "fuck all"?
There be young'uns present. And that wasn't anger, it's mild irritation.
quote:I wasn't exactly suggesting it as an offensive weapon, more of a deffensive deterent to protect retreating troops, trying to load back up in an emergency, or to provide some sort of fire support role, like a BlackHawk does.
Why would you want to stun pursuers? This thing will have at least two Type-V phaser turrets, so you can just kill the bastards or force them to ground.
quote:So, this doesn't deliver the troops right into the combat zone, might the Federation have anything that does that? Perhaps there is a version of this with a big transporter system, so you can deliver a whole platoon in 3 or so squads through the Transporter, 12 men ( or how ever many constitutes a squad)at a time.
Sure it does, just not directly into the line of fire as that's suicide. It really all depends on precisely what you're attacking and what defences it has. Attacking a fixed installation like a ground base mean's it's likely to have a defence perimeter and heavy anti-vehicle weapons, so you'd set down out of range or out of sight (hopefully not in the middle of a mine field) and establish a forward position from there. If you're re-enforcing one of your own bases that's under attack by a ground force then yes, you much land right on their heads. As a rule, you still don't stun them.
As far as Transporter based invasions go, again it depends on the situation. By the late 24th century transport inhibitors seam to be small, quick and easy to deploy so it's more than likely that the first wave of a ground assault has to be done the old fashioned way. Once a planetary "beachhead" is secured then I suppose they could deploy pattern enhancers to cut through the jamming, but I wouldn't depend on it. On the odd occasion when a mass transporter based invasion is possible then I imagine that would be done from the mothership (which I still fancy as a Steamrunner) with specialised pads, not unlike the evacuation transporters from the old FJ manual, at least in concept. Of course, you'd also transport down equipment and possibly small shuttle sizes vehicles.
quote:Originally posted by Ahkileez: Essentially it boils down to the fact that your opponent would have to be totally fucking incompetent to not know that and take measures to reduce the effectiveness of that tactic or find a way to use it against you entirely.
A forward assault is almost always the easiest course of action in a battle, but an even slightly competent enemy will cut you to shreds if you aren't smart about the way you do it.
Trekno-magic makes for very lazy thinking; the perception is that the solution is always a wave of a wand and a push of an inoffensively colored button away.
The instant they run into an enemy who is even the smallest bit challenging, they get caught flat-footed and have their asses handed to them.
Using the toys should only ever be part of a more comprehensive and thoroughly planned strategy, not a means in and of itself.
Although Ahkileez and I tend to fundamentally disagree on the military nature of Starfleet and the Federation, the same basic tactics apply. In any war there is usually one side that has some technological or tactical advantage and for the other side to survive, they need to find a way to counter that advantage. The Dune Universe provides a good example of this as after tens of millennia of warfare using advance field technology, energy weapons and numerous variety of nuclear weapons, the point and counterpoint nature of warfare technology results in it all coming do to human vs human, armed with a pointy stick...and of course being sneaky always helps. In the case of Star Trek you have tachyon beams to detect cloaks, better cloaks to get around that, shields the block phasers, phasers with rotating modulation to defeat shields, regenerative shields for better protection and on and on and on.
At the end of the day it still comes down to sneaking up on the enemy and beating him to death with a heavy object...strategically speaking. That means boots on the ground and killing them before they kill you.
posted
Exactly so, Rev. Exactly so.
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
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That's what I never fancied about the way Starfleet operates throughout most of TNG (DS9 was much better about it) - you don't go into a battle to be honorable and chivalrous and stun your enemies and give them a ham sandwich, not in an all-out war. A skirmish with a power you're likely to reestablish ties with, that's a different story. But the Borg or the Dominion - no. Kill them. From behind if you have to. While they're sleeping. Before they come and kill your children, rape your women, and steal your land. Or, y'know, the 24th-c equivalent of that...
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Well that's a totally different situation. During the run of VOY, TNG, TOS and most of DS9 they weren't at war so while they did occasionally exchange phaser fire it was rarely an "us or them" scenario so it's treated more like a security issue. Stun if possible, kill if necessary and violence in general only as a last resort. Starfleet aren't supposed to be the bullies of the Galaxy, hunting down potential threats and killing them off. Quite the contrary, they went to extraordinary lengths to make peace avoid open hostility with the likes of the Cardassians, even under open provocation. The Dominion War was the exception because never in Federation history had an interstellar war of that magnitude been waged. Border wars, sure, stand-offs, yes, prolonged cold wars, absolutely, but nothing even approaching that scale. The Dominion are most certainly NOT on par with the Borg. They're an organisation of many distant worlds under the control of a race that knows exactly what they're doing. Negotiation is possible with them, they're not machines or a force of nature like the Borg and regardless I don't think one's conduct in war should be dictated the likelihood of meeting them again at a diplomatic social. Of course Section 31 has other ideas, but that's why they're a rogue unit and not representative of the Federation as a whole.
(Ahkileez and I disagree at this point) Starfleet is an essentially peaceful, non-militant organisation (which not the same thing as pacifist.) They're the coast guard of the Federation, the backbone of interstellar science and exploration and at most, act as a reserve defensive force.
That is why I'm designing this thing as an essentially civilian craft, adapted for Starfleet use. NOT as a gunship & APC for the space marines.
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