Really cool video and thank you for the shoutout 🙂 I am happy to support you and this awesome channel and the other projects I got in contact with, thanks to the community! And a special thank you for always being an inspiration for me to create things 😀
Before even watch this video. Star Trek didn't have carriers in conventional sense. While some races did use space fighters (for example Caitans) and Federation shuttles were armed. Fighter tactic was generally ineffective due to potent Point Defense of the ships and limitations of compact warp drives. While what they call Fighter is Voyager Era is closer to a Corvette of Gunboat. BUT! Starfleet was also semi-civilian organization and while most ships did have shuttles and worker bees. Some ships did have massive hangars, as they were used for science and when use of teleporters was unadvised. Some ships have hangars so large that they were colloquially refereed as Carriers. Most well known examples are: Arc Royal class, Constellation class, Akira class and refitted Crossfield.
Hello Ryselle. Even though I dislike the Cardassians, and don't much care for their ship designs, I do like your work. Each design is well-thought-out, well executed, and the artwork on your page does an outstanding job of displaying them to their best advantage. All of this, from a non-fan of the subject! Keep on doing artworks. You have talent by the boatload, and more should see your site, to appreciate your artworks.
The most common excuse of why we don't often see carriers and fighters depicted in Star Trek is that ship's phasers are too effective at point defense. But if that's true, how come we never see phasers used to take out incoming torpedoes? The question here is actually similar to why we don't see enlisted personnel in Star Trek. It comes down to either lack of knowledge or laziness of the show runners and writers.
The 2009 Trek movies used phasers as point defense. I was really impressed that bit got included. I think Picard season 3 saw the new Titan intercepting torpedoes with phaser fire. I mostly chalk the big gaffes in Trek procedures and tactics to writer ignorance. Starfleet Battles is the other end of the spectrum where you have WarThunder levels of military minutiae introduced to Star Trek.
the real reason we dont see fighters a lot with trek was because the setting was never designed to include them. The showrunners back on the days of TOS recognized that fighters dont work in space, due to a wide variety of reasons revolving around the fact that space is not an ocean or an atmosphere, thus all the reasons fighter aircraft work do not apply in space. Fighters only ever got pinned on after the fact in part due to their popularity thanks to star wars. but even in TNG fighters where only shown as the weapon used by factions that really didn't have the tech or the resources for anything better. It wasn't until DS9 that the showrunners started to try and make fighters more prominent.
Because torpedoes are small and can move much faster than fighters. There is a limit to internal dampers making sure the crew survives the trip. That does not include the fact pilot would slow their fighters down simply to give the pilots the time to react and maneuver around in combat. To fast and they are likely to accidentally run into enemy weapon fire, each other, or their targets for they cannot react fast enough. Plus, most torpedoes are fired within a light second of a target, if not point-blank range. It is possible to intercept torpedoes at further distances, but most starships engage in close-range combat, if not point-blank range, to prevent the enemy from intercepting their torpedoes. Think about the Expanse and effective combat range. In theory, they can fire their missiles from Earth to hit the fleet over Mars and vice versa, but they would likely be intercepted well before they can get close enough to be a threat. Meanwhile, fighters would be launched much further away, especially if they depend on a carrier, so they are easier to detect and react to. The only way around it is for a starship to launch them as it does a flyby over an enemy starship. But it still does not change the fact they would be slower and a bigger target to hit, and a glancing shot is enough to destroy a fighter craft.
The Intrepid class was the best most versatile battle carrier as demonstrated by Voyager. Not only did it carry the Delta Flyer that is a formidable shuttle sized ship, but due to Galifreyan technology the shuttle bay and its hanger doors were bigger than technically possible in euclidean space.
Star Fleet Battles the tabletop and later PC game, has all type of carriers for all of the races; they even had dedicated expansions focusing on them. You might want to have a look at those for ideas on using carriers in Trek type space battles.
I remember seeing a funny fan design that used a Galaxy-class with a heavily modified saucer section to be a carrier for a "squadron" of Defiant-class starships.
Yes, or even just use a Galexy to act as a tender with multiple docking ports along its Hull. The galaxy provides more advantaged engineering, crew, relaxation and long term operations support to the more spartan and shorter duration mission deviants. They operate independently but support the wing, help it maintain, refuel, keep morale up and mean the crews can have spare and relief officers on board the galaxy. The larger bays can also be a mobile shipyard for damaged craft whom need mayor repair or diagnosis. It's like a central hub to the wider formation.
@@alexh3974 Pretty much the concept my Cavanagh Class Orbital Construction Ship and its combat craft, the Witt Class Interdiction Corvette, operate on, if exaggerated to both ends; The Cavanagh is a Warp-capable Spacedock whose spaceframe is so big it can barely hold together, but can be an invaluable base of operation for constructing Orbital Infrastructure on-site. The Witt Class is taking the Miniaturization of the Defiant to what I felt was a logical conclusion for Star Fleet; A Corvette that's basically just weapons and engines strapped directly to a Warp Core, with only a five-man crew needing claustrophobic body conforming Operating Cradles and life support suits just to survive the extreme stresses of performing combat maneuvers at relativistic speeds.
Unlike in a lot of other space Sci-Fi, carriers take 2nd fiddle in Trek. Though it is interesting to see them every now and then. They at times have their niche (mostly in support roles during mass jamming) and when they do, they can excel.
It's primarily because of how many fighters and bombers you need to actually contest a battlecruiser and or a cruiser that keeps them from dominance ie they can wear down and knock out a ship and the level of casualties they will wrack up because of it
The answer seems to be yes and no. 24th Century starships are very well protected so it becomes an exercise on whether 1) The fighter craft can carry heavy enough ordinance to actually damage a starship, 2) Whether that fighter can survive long enough to deliver it load, and or be generally survivable enough to not suffer catastrophic casualties. Ultimately, based off DS9, pure fighters were not terribly valuable. True fighters, under 30m long, didn't have heavy enough weapons to really destroy even medium sized starships. Even Federation fighters carrying mini-quantums only did modest damage to the humble Galor Class, while suffering staggering losses due to their inability to even withstand one phaser hit from a Galor's secondary batteries. Two observations: 1) In order for a ship to carry a full photon torpedo load, it has to be on the larger side, at which point it becomes an attack ship, rather than a fighter. Maquis raiders were more attack ships than fighters in size, and were moderately effective because they could carry photons. Attack ships and fighters have different doctrine. 2) Federation fighters would actually be quite useful against attack ships. Attack ships generally only carry one heavy weapon, and don't have good 360 degree weapons coverage. The lighter weapons of the fighters can actually do a lot of damage against the more light shielded and armored attack ships. So, as a consequence, it would make sense for large capital ships with poor firing arcs, like the D'Deridex, to carry fighters to protect themselves from attack ships. But, lore is different from canon. Lore has all kinds of fighters that do whatever. In any event, large ships like Jem Hadar Battleships, the Hutet, or even D'Deridex, could and should carry small squadrons of attack ships.
So you when think about the carrier, it came to be in our history that the carrier extended the power of the fleet, by being able to strike from long distance. But when you can go anywhere, like a starship, doesn't really work too well does it? But I love that comparison to something like HMS Ocean, where it has far more versatile uses than just launching fighters, and in fact the alternate uses end up being more important! Also, bro, that music, just dreamy. Wicked job!
Did the music tempt you to get some cardassian ships ;) Yeah the interesting thing with modern carriers as compared to ww2 is that they have jets. Giving them enormous inland reach.
Also Carriers in the ST universe when they become obsolete for military use, they can be converted to civilian use more easily I imagine like those early federation colony ships. Also imagine the science division with a carrier ship where you can send out multiple shuttles or probes. Or the engineer core with a carrier rigged for deploying relay stations for sub space platforms the size of shuttle. And if a war breaks out you can call back all your carriers from the other divisions or services to repurpose them for fighters.
One common argument I see against fighters in Trek is that the phasers are so accurate they’d one shot the fighters without any issue, but didn’t the Jemhadar use fighters to great effect during the Dominion war? An angry swarm of Delta Flyer class fighter bombers loaded down with quantum torpedoes would wreck most targets
It would have been awesome to see these types of vessels in a Star Trek series. Kind of like in a Battle Star Galactica style of combat. Another fantastic video! Thank you!
exactly now Galactica is a hardened carrier a battleship like carrier, they just call their carriers battlestars, being able to stand together toe to toe & slug it out plus the benefit of the fighter craft you could be whipping all kind of ass ! a flank or rear attach that actually had some teeth or like planetary conquests : you'd have the boots, fighters support, plus the mothership in orbit, to fight off any rivals it would be awesome the Galactica w/ the shields, weaponry, & warp drive of Star Trek oh food synthesizers, teleporters, & holodecks... you'd be set man
exactly now Galactica is a hardened carrier a battleship like carrier, they just call their carriers battlestars, being able to stand together toe to toe & slug it out plus the benefit of the fighter craft you could be whipping all kind of ass ! a flank or rear attach that actually had some teeth or like planetary conquests : you'd have the boots, fighters support, plus the mothership in orbit, to fight off any rivals it would be awesome the Galactica w/ the shields, weaponry, & warp drive of Star Trek oh food synthesizers, teleporters, & holodecks... you'd be set man
exactly now Galactica is a hardened carrier a battleship like carrier, they just call their carriers battlestars, being able to stand together toe to toe & slug it out plus the benefit of the fighter craft you could be whipping all kind of ass ! a flank or rear attach that actually had some teeth or like planetary conquests : you'd have the boots, fighters support, plus the mothership in orbit, to fight off any rivals it would be awesome the Galactica w/ the shields, weaponry, & warp drive of Star Trek oh food synthesizers, teleporters, & holodecks... you'd be set man
exactly now Galactica is a hardened carrier a battleship like carrier, they just call their carriers battlestars, being able to stand together toe to toe & slug it out plus the benefit of the fighter craft you could be whipping all kind of ass ! a flank or rear attach that actually had some teeth or like planetary conquests : you'd have the boots, fighters support, plus the mothership in orbit, to fight off any rivals it would be awesome the Galactica w/ the shields, weaponry, & warp drive of Star Trek oh food synthesizers, teleporters, & holodecks... you'd be set man
Star fleet battles has extended rules for fighters but I never felt they belonged. In TNG phasers proved too accurate and powerful for fighters to survive
@@merafirewing6591 It's Just fighters don't have Much fire power compared to other ships. Maybe ground attack and air support, maybe for scout role? If transporters failed etc
Great vId, but no mention of Star Fleet Battles? (where carriers play a major role in the game and in the lore, such as the Romulan 'Imperial Standard' and Federation's Big Mac 'MacArthur' heavy carriers that faced off at the Battle of Remus) I'm a big fan of their Federation 'flat bed' heavy carrier and the 'through deck' strike carrier where the hangar bay runs the entire length of the secondary hull. Also the Andromedans who could carry whole starships in their capital ship hangars and would launch them via massive transporter.
@@blockmasterscott Yep, it was a horrific battle. The Imperial Standard was destroyed along with most of the Romulan fleet. In frenzied fighting over Remus, the Big Mac was crippled, lost control, and smashed into Remus. The resulting explosion and aftermath killed every living thing on the planet. Many Romulans in the fleet were from Remus or knew someone on Remus, and were driven mad with vengeance and drove their attacks home with added viciousness. Most of the Federation fleet was seriously mauled during its withdrawal. The battle did effectively knock the Romulans out of the General War.
Is that the same Ariel I remember, that was shaped kind of like the Discovery? I had the blueprints as a kid but I didn't know FASA used it too. My 1990's-era headcanon of an Enterprise 1701-F from the 25th century was also largely based on that design.
The 24th century and beyond Carrier still maintains a lot of utility for Starfleet. Part of surveying a system or just exploring involves a lot of going around and scanning at different positions and points of interest. Being able to deploy good numbers of capable auxiliary craft, like Runabouts is excellent for not just expanding the sensor coverage of the mothership but for actually getting teams of people to the locations they need to be to explore and scan things. This is the exact thinking behind the Intrepid's Aeroshuttle. It's a large well equipped auxiliary craft capable of multiday operations, pretty useful when you need survey and catalouge potentially dozens of targets in a Star system.
I wonder if the Valkyrie-class fits in as a Federation super carrier or not. I've always liked the way it looks... considering its played as an advance on what the USS Typhon is in ST: Invasion.
A type of carrier I'd like to see is a mobile repair station carrier. Think a mobile space station that can repair larger ships. It won't be massive, slow, and maneuver like a brick house, but it would also be near indestructible like that brick house and hit like a tone of bricks. It would probably trail behind an attack fleet and show up later in the battle or after the battle to repair the ships.
There are alot of carrier concepts for TOS and TMP that are very interesting. There are alot of designs from the starship schematic site that are worth looking at, would be nice if those concepts were to be given new life and see how they would fit into alpha or beta canon.
Love the mention of the Vo'Devwl! It's supposed to be something like 1.8 km long. It's like the KDF saw Starfleet building the Jupiter and said "Why can't we just build our own carrier and make it so gigantic you can park Birds of Prey in the hangers?"
Awesome video. learned a lot on Starfeet carriers I was surprised when you quoted Ryan Mcbeath. I watch his channel quite often. his quote on giving your enemy dilemma is better. Problems have 1 solution, while dilemma has 1 or more solutions.
if the fighters had something akin to an adaption factor, like the Dreadnaught missile or the RTX Repair droids, I could see a kind of fighter wing becoming extremely viable in the Star Trek galaxy. The fighters adapting their strategies and weapons mid-flight to maximize effectiveness, or specifically to handle countermeasures and shielding. It would be an instance of Fighting Smarter not Harder. Which is something I could see a fighter having to do a lot of that without being able to fall back on the kind of fire power a larger ship might have at its disposal.
this really isnt viable at all. Unliike ships fighters dont have a real crew, usually just a pilot and maybe a weapons officer. Single seat fighters would b e completely incapable here, since one person cannot possibly slit their attention enough to pilot the craft, operate weapons and also keep their eye on fiddling with the shieds, sensors and countermeasure systems all at once. No one is capable of that level of multitasking. Large ships are fer better at this since they have dedicated crews to handle each subsystem.
@@ryuukeisscifiproductions1818 Hence the need for a powerful and adaptive computer system to augment the pilot capabilities. Otherwise, I'd just splurge for a Echo Papa Drone set and be done with it. I'd prefer to have pilots making decisions then trusting a purely automated system than risk another M5 incident. Also, I think a fighter in the Star Trek universe would likely be something akin to the Delta Flyer or a vessel of that size, ie a large shuttle craft or Maqui Raider. That seems to be where the balancing point is.
@@hughtonne1775 Technology here is not going to overcome basic physics and square cube law. And adaptive computer system you can apply to make a fighter run better can also be made to run starships better, only starships can afford to carry vastly larger and more powerful computers. Fighters are heavily constrained by size and weight limitations on all their systems. and no amount of technology is going to make up for having a full dedicated ops and engineering staff to ensure the system runs smoothly. In a war of adaption between computers, the more powerful computer with a better trained staff is going to win, and in a contest between a small compact fighter grade computer core with no staff at all vs a large starship computer core with thousands of times the processing power and a trained staff, the starship computer core is going to win every time. Electronic warfare capability is also heavily tied to computer processing power and operator training. The more powerful the computer the better EW systems work. Again a fighters EW system is going to lose badly to a large starship EW system with its large computer core and dedicated ops staff backing it up.
@@ryuukeisscifiproductions1818 All that's expensive, and for a defense system on a tight budget, it might be better to produce small fast fighters with just enough fire power to Threaten a starship, than it would be to build an entire dedicated vessel to take stand toe to toe in a brute shoving match of raw damage. Quantity has a quality all its own, and if the ships can be adapted to new battlefield conditions and weapons systems, then they can stick around a lot longer and I can focus on improving torpedoes or other technology and strategies to make their job easier. Linked Sheilds might come into play, new types of phasers or sensors. Hell, I might through on a basic cloaking devices or Sensor scattering hull platting just to be a cheeky Romulan! I know small vessels are often scoffed at, but heck, even trade ships carry firepower equal to most Federation starships and they're not so big. The Swarm made it work and so did the Kazon and others. It can be made to work; it just takes some forethought and strategy.
I know this may be weird, but I was rewatching Home Front, and they mentioned a thollian being an observer at a High-level diplomatic meeting. And I thought that was cool
@@venomgeekmedia9886Considering Tholian isolationism and their rather hardline xenophobia, they were likely the only one there in a fully sealed powered exoskeleton that is capable of EVA and possibly even combat considering the Beta Canon.
The problem has always been terrible attrition. Torpedo bombers, such as the peregrine craft, would often be able to deliver their payloads, but suffered horrible losses throughout the Dominion war. I would also throw the 24th century runabout as a combat ship able to be carried in significant numbers. I'm surprised you didn't mention the Galaxy class and it's many giant shuttle bays as a stand-in carrier. Peregrine fighters, along with tugs and almost all the other small craft used by Federation fleets were mostly stored in the oversized shuttle bays of wartime Galaxys.
Years ago I designed a Starfleet carrier quite unlike anything shown here, but unfortunately I have no artwork I can share. I never paid much attention to fighters in the Trek universe, for the simple reason that in order to have shields strong enough to be effective, you need a power supply too large to fit in a fighter style spacecraft. The carrier I designed however,, was part of the same program that gave us the Defiant. My carrier was called the Reprisal, and with a length of about 1,500 meters, carried 64 Defiant class ships on it's outer hull, with phasers pointed port and starboard, allowing for massive broadsides without the need to launch the Defiant class ships first. The movie First Contact really cemented in my mind, that Defiant class ships were not capable of taking out a Borg cube by themselves, they would fight in packs, and would need the support services of a larger ship.
@@MikeLima777 Or used in Swarm Kamikaze tactics, after all we've seen the Jem'Hadar do it Space Collisions are still incredibly dangerous even with all the technology, hell we saw Enterprise-D get destroyed by a collision with a 80-year old Soyuz Class that didn't even hit the main hull
In effect yes because understand a ST ship is actually incredibly hard to bring down without capital ship weapons so fighters need to be deployed in truly massive numbers to even threaten a ship
The one Cardassian design I'm seeing on Ryselle's page that catches my eye, is the Jannissor class assault carrier. It kinda makes me think of it being the Hutet's angry gun toting cousin 😂
Yeah it's an interesting variant of the janisarry turning it into an assault ship capable of deploying 4 whole battalions at once. Although I doubt it ever saw service.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I'm inclined to agree with you on that. Although if it had, I suspect several battlefronts would have been better for the Dominion alliance
The fact that Star Trek energy weapon power is tied directly to reactor size makes fighters pretty much useless without extensive use of torpedoes, exotic technology or by bending the canon. I'm fascinated by the idea of a support carrier because it makes perfect sense within these rules, extending sensor range, acting as a picket line.
I definitely like the Keldon class concept because it can deploy a sizable number of fighters without sacrificing its firepower and speed. Utilized correctly, it has the agility and beam weapons to move in and out of engagements, battering enemy shields with a powerful spiral wave attack, then retreat and let the fighters exploit their weakened areas. Rinse and repeat. Additionally, the Cardassians tend to favor higher numbers of smaller ships over building large expensive single ships like other species - which in the case of carriers allows them to deploy from multiple locations simultaneously. A single carrier can be outmaneuvered and gunned down before fully delivering its payload, whereas a group of carriers like the Tornen can assist each other and attack from multiple vectors. They don't put all their eggs in one basket. The same strategy applies to the Galor and Keldon classes. If I had to view the Cardassians from a real time strategy game perspective, I'd compare them to the Zerg. Building quickly and in larger numbers for swarming attacks. Well coordinated groups will always overpower larger, slower ships. This strategy probably played a large roll in how the Cardassians managed to contend with technologically superior opponents. It's just more flexible when you have clever leaders and well disciplined officers.
Generally the keldon is used to carry dropships to support planetary landings. And is a capable cruiser in its own right. The tornen gains its greater capacity by sacrificing those ship to ship capabilities
@venomgeekmedia9886 I imagine the dropships could be swapped out for fighters, though. Or at least that's what I'd do if I were customizing it in a game. I'd love to see the results of a swarm of fighters attacking them accordingly after one or more hit and run attacks. Bombarding them based on where I weakened or breached their shields. I used to that with Hydrans in Starfleet Command 1 and 2. Hydrans were great at punching holes in enemy shields, then sending in fighters after to exploit the weakened areas. It was devasting. In the case of the Tornen, I was thinking of its deployment abilities and the logic of having multiple smaller carriers over single massive ones. It seems the Cardassians applied their group strategy to carriers as well, given how small they are compared to the Klingon and Federation versions. I like the overall strategic flexibility.
The issue is that sizeable number of fighters is only a threat to equivalent ships if something bigger and or meaner like say a Defiant or a Vorcha picks a fight with it they can either rush past or bulldoze through a fighter screen and knock it out before cleaning up the fighters comfortably which is sort of the issue at the heart of why fighters and bombers aren't that dominant in Trek a Trek cruiser or battlecruiser is very very difficult to actually knock out if you aren't beating it with capital ship weapons
@michaelkeha The Defiant is actually what gave me the idea in the first place when it took on a Negvar class battleship in the alternate universe. If they could do that, then fighters can do it even better. A full squadron of fighters packs a formidable level of firepower and even better mobility. The big mistake of the Keldon vs Defiant fight was to go toe to toe with the Defiant instead of using the Keldon's speed and agility. My thoughts are to let my fighters hang back while my own ship would make a full impulse kamikaze style pass using all primary compressors and plasma torpedoes on a single shield. Instead of hanging in there for another pass, I'd fly away from my opponent, leading them straight into the fighters. With their weapons having been spent on me and their shields strained, the fighters can swoop in with a barage right where they're hurt and start spinning circles around them. If the enemy keeps chasing me, they'll be taking nonstop fire from the fighters while I continue to fly away. If they attack the fighters, they leave themselves open to another brutal pass from me. The idea is to remain adaptive and unpredictable. To keep them guessing using rhe fighters.
@@justinwallace269 not really fighters would be far worse you have to understand they pack nowhere the near same firepower and durability of a Defiant and with each pass at a ship there is a good chance a portion of your fighter wing would be knocked out and if enough get knocked out you are rendered combat ineffective rather rapidly
I love the idea of fighters/bombers being used. I think they have their uses, but with Star Trek weapons and sensors/tracking, these strike craft would need some pretty good ECM combined with their small size and speed when attacking starships since strike craft shielding and armor, assuming they have any, wouldn't hold up against return fire from the larger ships.
Very interesting and compelling terrific gem of a video. Totally agree that carriers only seem to become a useful commodity as a weapon of war in star trek, once fighters can actually be of use and inflict damage on enemy capital ships like we see in sacrifice of angels episode in wolf pack tactics. Damaging, destroying or crippling enemy vessels in combination with a carrier or supporting battlegroup , could be of immense tactical value to a factions fleet alla the carrier and naval warfare of world war 2.
IF, You Ever Played Star Fleet Battles, as a Board-Game, then, You'd ALREADY KNOW Who has "What', and Why! My Faves are the Federation CVA or CV (different 'Kirk-era' Hulls, the Hydran Cruisers or Battle-ships, and the Andromedean Heavies, that carried Frigate/Scouts that used 'Transporters to 'Beam-out' Behind an Enemy vessel during an attack. One second, it's clear space, 400K klik's behind You, then, "Shhmmm", and there's a Tractor-Repulsor vibration-beam equipped Frigate.... You are Velcro, being ripped apart, under Heat, in Space! Good Luck!
Yeah I definitely miss playing Star Fleet Battles. I started when it was just a simple pocket game in 1975. Stayed up with all the modules and upgrades. Fighters when played correctly could turn a battles. Even more so when the Fast Patrol Ships were added (PFs)
I'd imagine they're too close of a concept to the Attack Ships for Venom to consider, but I always liked the PFs and, more generally, the General War ship concepts (War Destroyer as a middle ground/replacement for Frigates and Destroyers, NCL/War Cruisers as a true Light Cruiser that was more efficient to produce, etc.)
@@JohnAnderson-ws7ne Me too, I started with the pocket game in 1975. I remember Task Force Games trying their very best to stop people from using the term "pseudo fighters" for fast patrol ships. A lot of players called them "pseudo fighters" because that was the terminology in the early expansions. They were pretty militant too in trying to stomp out that name. I never could figure out why.
fighters in the dominon war took precedence for a few specific reasons 1. the dominion were using small mobile ships that loved their ramming/kamikaze attacks any and all additional firepower thinning the shields and engines was massively beneficial 2. the cardasians, klingons, breen and dominion were using fairly low fire-rate beam weapons with main armament consisting of projectile "cannons", so every beam not used against a ship of the line was saving considerable resources even if the fighters themselves could not weather the hit (i'm hoping they had emergency transport for beaming out fighter crew as their shield evaporated), good luck hitting (or ramming) an evasive and mobile fighter with unguided projectiles designed for anti-cruiser work. 3. each side was trying to massively scale up their fleets using every available resource so dedicating smaller shipyards to fighter production put a lot of easy to access mobile firepower (with warp drives) to support large sips that had already proven vulnerable to the swarm-tactics of a "victory or death" foe willing to go to extremes as long as the tonnage/tech difference was worthwhile. as soon as any of the sides started to field greater numbers of higher fire-rate beam weapons the fighter usage would be greatly diminished once again.
Something that the Stars At War series brought to my awareness was that a large carrier could train their full complement together, and that value was enough to keep under-sized units together to improve effectiveness. A full wing that you could redeploy or slot into a different ship formation is intimidating to consider.
To me the Soyuz class also looks like a carrier with that third large shuttlebay being the main difference from the Miranda. I can easily imagine the era between TMP and TNG having a greater role for fighters because the Federation's main adversaries, the Klingons and Romulans both having cloaked ships. Fighters would be very useful in tracking those down, flying in a grid pattern and of course those ships don't have shields up so lightly armed fighters can still do some damage.
You know, I'm a huge star wars fan. At least in regards to the legends side of things. But I've always tangentially liked Star Trek. It always had a great message and the universe is flushed out. But there's is so much to the universe that it's daunting for me to dive feet first into it. But as much as star trek does not focus on its warfighting I still love to learn about it. Especially since it's an IP focused on exploration, discovery, and diplomacy in its many forms. There's just a different approach to warfighting that the Star Wars universe where the galaxy is literally at war with itself at a galactic level every other decade.
Favorite carrier . . . .CV-6! The Legend of Legends!! In-universe, I'd say the Coronado Through-Deck Cruisers provided a pretty good intermediary for Starfleet
I've long thought it would be nice to see Starfleet build a supercarrier using the saucer from the top of spacedock. Filled with umpteen Defiants, Akiras etc.
My fav unofficial star trek carrier would be the Typhon-class carrier from the game "Star Trek: Invasion". I hope to see it in STO one day since her fighters have made it into the game.
I'm not a great fan of fighters in trek (when the TOS is hitting a meter-tall target a a few thousand clicks, I just...don't see fighters being that successful), but my biases aside this is a great video and good explanation of how this would probably work in Trekverses.
The principle of carriers has always been about extending range of fighter superiority, usually to aid potential ground operations as an offensive defense. For that reason, I see carriers more as a siege weapon useful for bringing air support to an invaded world, or to a world being invaded. Of course, this also depends on the range and payload of bombers; if you could put one or two hard-hitting torpedoes on bombers, they could greatly extend the range and angles of attack of a fleet with a carrier in it. Fly out, drop the payload, return to mothership for reload. Fighters themselves seem to have little purpose other than defeating other bombers, but sufficient point-defense screening ships would do that enough given the accuracy of phasers in star trek. A smal "phaser boat" destroyer could be placed at the front with the role entirely being to shoot down torpedoes and auxiliary craft, letting the longer range heavy hitters behind them fire-free.
Starfleet's Jupiter class reminds me of Zeon's Dolos class. Most of her complement went down with the ship given she only had 7 catapults for 182 mobile suits. The game was ridiculous, but I really liked the concept of the Typhon class. I've seen a picture where she launched a Defiant. If it were so, having a Defiant class plus long range multi-mission fighters could apply the doctrine of the Geronimo class. You could establish huge control zones that pack one heck of a punch, but its probably a bit too warlike for a humanitarian and peace-keeping armada. There's also the Vikrant Class, a fan design. She's absolutely gorgeous and everything a Starfleet carrier should be. In a future Starfleet, one we have yet to see and not described by Jar Jar Abrams and co., I believe fighters would rise in importance. Being able to use the wolf-pack strategy against small groups of Jem Hadar fighters probably would have saved an appreciable number of destroyers, cruisers, and battle cruisers. Its a lesson the AQ powers should, and would, I think, take to heart. My thanks and complements to Ryselle-Chan. It is very nice to see the Cardassian fleet get some tlc.
I really love the Idea of Space Carriers, and it is one of the Points where i believe another Show, namely Stargate, has more to offer then Star Trek, mostly for the Reasons you named in your Conclusion. But they can not stop us from Dreaming, amiright? And i really would love to see a Fighter Variant of the Runabout, launching from a truly dedicated Deep Space Federation Carrier, maybe supported by a Heavy-Artillary Perigrine Variant. But, to not hide my complete bonkersness, what i WANT to see is, let´s call it a Hyper Carrier. Basically a (somewhat) mobile resupply Station, (i´d say about Warp 3.5 max) that is following the/a Fleet, to give them a closer Fall-Back point for Maintanance/Repairs and restocking of whatever they need to be resuppleyed with. If you now want to know how big i would imagine this "Hyper Carrier", my answer would be so big, that it has 24 Hangar Bays, who each hold a Defiant Class sized Ship. So in other Words, you could also decribe this Idea as a Carrier for Defiants.
I remembered playing star trek: invasion on PS1 when I was a kid and was in love with the design of the USS-Typhon although I find it somewhat saddening that it's considered as non-cannon despite being in a star trek game.
Great video! I like carriers but always thought that in Star Trek fighters and shuttles have practicly zero survivability. In Star Trek Online when I use ship with hangar I always put bigest pet I can. Like Jem'Hadar Vanguard Gunboats, Jem'Hadar Support Frigate or Cardassians Yukawa Frigates. Big and can do kamikaze attack (Jem'Hadar). Idea with Romulan Drone Ship as carrier pet is great too. I think that hangar pets should be big as posible, AI operated with big antimater warhead inside to be guided missile of ther own (if needed). Question of the day: can Tornen take on board ATR-4107 "Dreadnought"? :D
I’m a large fan of the Jem’Hadar Vanguard Support Carrier from Star Trek Online and like carriers in general from sci-fi and how they’re prominence in a franchise dictates what space battles look like.
Great video. You did forget to mention the Scimitar. It had dozens of Scorpion fighters that were supposed to be able to swarm enemy starships and hit hard with plasma torpedoes.
I have played a Nintendo DS game called Infinite Space, published by Sega (I think Platinum Games was the dev on it). As soon as one gains the ability to use carrier-type craft, the game suddenly becomes a battle of carrier and fighter supremacy. I beat the game with a supercarrier group. Carriers are the definition of Naval Supremacy
1. The Federation should really examine those Cardassian nacelle designs, if they're of comparable performance. They are wider, but really compact. 2. I'm just thinking of those Galaxy-Class-dwarfing Romulan craft that were in TNG. The fact that they enclosed such a huge volume - all of which should be inside its warp envelope - and _didn't_ act as a carrier always baffled me.
I could imagine Star Fleet, having dedicated supply carriers and medical ships. Supply carriers with large cargo spaces and shuttles for delivering supplies to stranded starships or starbases. MEdical ships with lots of shuttles for use when beaming the injured might not be feasible or when there are too many casualties that the transporter room can't keep up.
Carriers are interesting in Star Trek and they should definitely be used more often, Did you know in Beta-Canon, there were Galaxy-Class Starships built to be Carrier/Battleship Hybrids during the Dominion War? The Galaxy-Class does boast a Cavernous Main Shuttlebay (So Cavernous that we can only see a small area of it on screen only in 1 episode with only dialogue mentions and breif miniature sets seen other times.) and with some alterations i can see it making a decent carrying platform. That does lead me to ask, What are your opinions on the Odyssey-Class since it’s canon now? I kinda imagine her more as a Gentle Giant, Sure she’s Far from a slouch in Combat, Packing 19 Phaser-Strips and 4 Torpedo Launchers, But she’s meant to be a Long-Range Peacekeeper, Explorer, and Humanitarian-Aid vessel. In Canon the Enterprise-F Rolled out of Dock in 2386, 15 years prior to her retirement at the end of PIC: “The Last Generation”, Prior to that Two More of the Starships were in service launching together in 2382, the USS Odyssey NCC-97000 and USS Verity NCC-97001, not much is known about Odyssey unfortunately, But Verity however had an interesting history as being the Flagship of Admiral Picard Prior to the Mars Incident in 2385, doing countless humanitarian missions and providing aid for the Romulan people prior to what was going to be a sector-wide evacuation of their home systems.
Honestly, the Akira Class would be more than capable of handling itself due to having both Regular and Quantum Torpedoes. With that said, could the Akira Class be classified as a Tactical Carrier?
TBH, the best anti capitol ship role for fighters would be torpedo spaming enemy ships until they're combat ineffective, with the carriers staying well back and just rearming the fighters for multiple runs, as well as acting as a fighter screen against other fighters and smaller craft trying to approach the fighter. TBH, thats the main thing I'll give to the reboot movies, they had long range torpedoes, load a torp spam vessel like the akira with medium and long range torpedoes, and they dont have to close with enemy ships, just rapid fire a bunch then warp out. And while, yes, such a craft would have to often resupply, the flexibility that offers is immense. Rapid fire off a hundred long range torpedoes at an enemy starbase from just outside the solar system its in, they go to warp, and close the gap very fast. Enemy ships would be harder to engage at distance, since they can move, but being able to inflict damage on the enemy from afar is still a major advantage. A runabout sized cruise missile that contains the explosive yeild of many regular torpedoes cruising to the target at warp 6 then sprinting to warp 9 for a brief intercept burn would be devistating against most trek ships.
The problem with most Star Trek capital ship designs is, that they simply lack the interior hull space for efficient use as a carrier. Also the hangars must be placed in a way that allows for easy launch and landing of the craft as well as rapid deployment and recovery of entire fighter wings. A proper carrier needs to have room for around at least 50 - 100 or more shuttle or runabout sized craft, including extensive maintennance facilities. And especially Starfleet designs usually just have too sleek and curvy shaped hulls for that. Big, roomy hangars are bulky. Also at least in current marine doctrine, no carrier ever operates on its own without a supporting battle group. Carriers in Star Trek would more have the function as a rear echelon supply, repair and support ship for larger battle groups, able to deploy a large number of work bees and similar repair craft to keep other ships in operation and supplied for extended operations, using its fighters and bomber craft primarily for scouting, probing enemy defenses and keeping enemy ships at bay.
I've often pondered if Starfleet could've purposed the Ross-class into a battle-carrier with Valkyrie fighters as well as runabout-type shuttles with the upper torpedo modules.
🖖😎👍Very cool and very greatly well done and very nicely executed in every detail and every way shape and form on all of this subject matter on the various types of carriers with in the Startrek universe, And I myself can see carriers as being very useful with various kinds of fighters and various rescue and troop deployment shuttle's in any kind of space fleet as for attacks in space against other vessels and for ground support on protecting and defending your ground forces and evacuating the wounded on various planet battles against your enemies and so on indeed!,👌. P.S. it works great in every other sci-fi universe shows and movies and so forth why is the Startrek universe so special that it doesn't work like it should it doesn't make any sense whatsoever 🤔?.
For me, a space carrier should be a space station with high warp capacity. That means it also needs a lot of power generation, which would give it good shield and phaser capacity, but that's secondary. The carrier warps into the edge of the system and it's small craft and floatilla depart to do their business. If they need it, they have somewhere in system to fall back to and get repairs. This works as well in Star Trek as it does any setting.
As the Galaxy had 60% of its volume empty when it came out of the shipyards I like the idea of the Dominion War refits acting as carriers. Take the already cavernous Main Shuttlebay and extend it. Have Bays 2 and 3 more focused on recovery while the Main Bay can just spew out hundreds of Peregrines, Runabouts and different Shuttlecraft types. Why didn't we see that in DS9? Probably not enough fighter capable shuttles to go round.
If memory serves, Starfleet made use of drones during the TOS. I always found it puzzling that they didn't pour more effort into that field subsequently. As both the Ancient's drones from SG-1, as well as the drone fighters from Andromeda showed how far you can potentially take that tech. Which would make a drone carrier far more viable. Have a bunch of industrial replicators (replenishment by way of gasgiants and asteroid fields) on board to create new ones and you can unlessh far greater swarms with no loss of life amongst your skilled pilots. Combine that with good shielding and some decent weaponry and they'd be an utter PITA to take out. Hell, they have that transphasic tech from that failed cloaking tech experiment that Riker was involved with. The cloak might've been proscribed tech, but the transphasic element sure as hell wasn't. (Again, echoing the Ancient drones from SG-1.)
I always Saw fighter's and carriers as redundant in late era trek. With transporters And phasers what is the point? The only reason I think could be justified for lot's of shuttles for ships with the sole role of them would be Colony ships, evacuation medical ships eyc
@@alanmike6883 yeah I miss when it was still a sister season of trek with its own spice I remember it got dark and wierd when the new crew split up after everyone nearly died
I do not know about fighters, but if i were to think about a carrier in star trek, i would imagine a large passenger oriented vessel with a very large shuttle bay holding a hundred or so shuttles. It would carry marines, doctors, and engineers. The idea i think to be most star trek would be an occupation force, or disaster relief. Hauling heavy equipment, personell, or medical patients and doctors, and security for it all. If you can land the carrier on a planet surface, you have a very effective armored base of operations for ground troops to anchor from. It could operate like a star base in a pinch, too.
From what 'we' have seen, whether canon or fan fiction, a carrier could project a cloak for its fighters to travel through. Theoretically, any enemy that didn't have a comprehensive countermeasure to such a cloak could, in fact, be very vulnerable to a surprise first strike from its opponent. In theory, this "projective cloak" could enable a less sophisticated enemy to engage a more advanced opponent with a high probability of success. The major problem with this theory is the origin of the cloak. Such a weapon would give off a considerable amount of energy, requiring a lot of power from its engines. Due to this weakness, the vessel that produces the cloak would be easily detected at long range and vulnerable to counterattack. A better plan would be to house such a weapon system on a stationary or near stationary platform such as a planetoid or space station. This would allow for the placement of a much larger and defendable structure from counterattacks and the ability to engineer a power plant to project the cloaking effect at a much greater distance than any space vessel. Maybe I'm reaching.
i think in the trek universe ironically the most practical use of carriers would be used by the "army" I imagine that important enough worlds would have a large a robust network of transport inhibitors. which means that planets and moons and perhaps even large enough bases would need to be taken the old fashioned way, with ships carrying a lot of shuttles of soldiers flying down towards the surface. some shuttles might even be carry combat ground vehicles or have enough weapons to be used as a gunship after their compliment of troops disembarks.
In Star Trek Online, technically the Discovery/SNW Constitution-class Enterprise is a "battle" carrier, with entire squadrons of Tactical Flyer drones being deployed.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 Well, that "awful" battle reportedly included a lot of the bits included in the design of the TOS Connie by the designer, stuff we never saw on screen during TOS, including the DOT-27 repair bots, the Tactical Flyers and the Polarized, Lattice-Optimized Tritanium Armor. (Which, I just realized, can be acronymized to read P.L.O.T. Armor. Heh, literal plot armor for the Enterprise. Go figure.) So the Constitution-class has always been an aviation battleship, or "battle carrier" as you put it. We just never saw it utilize this function on-screen until DIS/SNW.
I assume Trek eschews carriers and fighters because all those additional models were too expensive back in the 60s. Once that was set at the baseline, there is inertia keeping Trek focused on capital ships. I don't see why Paramount couldn't afford computer based models for fighters, but they probably don't want to offend the fan base. That said, it would be nice to see at least some minimal paper/rock/scissors interplay between ship types. Ex: Carriers > Torpedo Ships > Phaser Ships > Carriers.
I think that with starfleet's latest advancements in the late 24th century, what with revolutionary ships like the Protostar, Dauntless, Prometheus, Aledo and Delta Flyer, and with new tech like ablative armor, more compact tech that would normally be seen in larger ships, a fighter class worth having a carrier for would be feasable if starfleet was pushed in that direction.
I would think that within the Star Trek universe, a carrier might not be something that has dozens of shuttle-sized fighters but rather a very large vessel that has a handful of Defiant-like ships. Perhaps even smaller than Defiant, as they wouldn't be conducting any science missions or even leaving their carrier for more than a day or so. A ship carrying 4 or 5 such vessels would need to be pretty big, but each would bring an immense amount of firepower to a battle.
Ive played 2 games franchises with fighters/bombers for ST. 1. Star fleet command 1/2/orion 2. The PS 2 series with Keonig, Tekai and Dorn. In the first they were at best "tacked on" felt clunky and you could on a good run knock 2 romulan CV (Carriers) with one klingon crusier (D6 series). This was the better of the two. The second by mid game you NEEDED to run a bomber with MIRV torpedoes and i found in each vessel blind spots i could just stay in and WRECK ANY heavy cruisers (enterprise A and the excelsior mainly). Now onto canon. I am reminded of a Series statement as a battlestation was being attacked by an equivalent to a state of the art high end fighter, "i cant get through! We're talking about a different power league here!!!" Could even a state of the art fighter, be it Jem'Hadar or Federation even breach the shields of a 2 generation old LIGHT Cruiser unupgraded?! No alone its a turkey shoot, in a wing? No even burning a fighter wings power to 0 will have little effect..... This is why fighters in ST are a non factor, they outside of Space station numbers or seriously old ships they DONT have enough punch to waste the resources to build.
I can definitely see the potential for carriers in Trek. Let's just assume that fighter-born phasers will never be strong enough to penetrate starship shields, so they don't even bother (sorry Nemesis). Let's also ignore the mini torpedoes that ships like the Runabout get. It should be easy enough to pack 4 quantum torpedoes in single-launch tubes on something roughly the size of a standard shuttle. Now build a ship that can deploy a hundred of them. Considering that even the Borg seem to have trouble firing on more than half a dozen ships at the same time, and you're practically unstoppable. UNLESS, of course, you're up against a series protagonist, because in that case all they have to do is re-route primary fire control through the main deflector array and they'll be able to lock phasers on all your craft at once.
Id have to say my fav carriers are from other series. The Earthforce Omega tho more of a battleship carrier hybrid or the Galactica. I just don't think carrier in ST, though there was that one Aquatics ship that the NX01 fit inside...that has to have been a carrier class.
You need to talk about something i am sure exists. Fighter-sized sensor jammers. In TNG, phasers were far too accurate for fighters to exist. But in DS9, bam, fighters everwhere, and ships started missing. For me, that indicates that the Maquis invented some form of jamming device that the feds started using on a much broader scale
If Kirk's TOS Enterprise could shoot down an object the size of a wastepaper bin from thousands of meters away, one can only imagine the lethality of starship weapons by the Dominion war. Flying a fighter in Star Trek isn't brave it's suicidal. Presumably the producers of DS9 wanted more action in Sacrifice of Angels, as if 'wandering Galaxies' weren't enough, so they stuck in waves of fighters? Assuming the writers are competent and possess some technical knowledge of in-universe technology, the only way those fighters survive is if their targets are sensor-blind from jamming. Of course we see that isn't the case as even 2nd rate Cardassian cruisers are swatting Federation strike craft aside like the pests they are. Swarms of repair drones or anti-torpedo screens are as far as it should go. Metal and plastic can be replaced, lives cannot.
I think Carriers were a thing in the early days of Starfleet, even during the Romulan War, but as i shields and phasers got more accurate and powerful, they became less and less of a thing but still had some uses, as we saw in the Dominion War,
During the romulan war you run into the problem of scale. Ships aren't big enough to carry fighters. Nor do the fighters have much range. But for static instillations they would be great for fire direction
@@venomgeekmedia9886 Talking about old school Romulan Wars, i think the Romulans tended to have a more "fighter based" fleet, or at least ships that would carry smaller starships that didn't have warp capability into systems and into battles. Starfleet focused more on Warp capable ships and used carriers as you mention in the video as colony ships or static based/planetary defense. It still amazes me tho that they even exist in Star Trek considering how powerful Starships are.
Starfleet ships have always been carriers. It's just that the Delta Flyer was the first Starfleet shuttle that was worth mentioning. Everything before it was essentially the Mystery Machine with nacelles. The Defiant should have been a dedicated fighter class. My version of it essentially would have been the T-34 tank in space. They never should have bothered trying to make it warp capable at all, IMHO. I also would have made it hexagonal, both for the structural reinforcement at the vertices, and because that geometry makes it easy to arrange basically everything (phaser banks, torpedo launchers, EPS network all following the vertices) and redundant reactors around the rear edges. With two compact AM reactors on each rear and side edge, and a three level design, you could get a total of 16 reactors on the top and bottom level, and a sickbay along the rear edges of the middle level, to shut Julian up. 😜
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
Really cool video and thank you for the shoutout 🙂 I am happy to support you and this awesome channel and the other projects I got in contact with, thanks to the community! And a special thank you for always being an inspiration for me to create things 😀
Your work is stunning TY so much for adding this to the community truly amazing
Your work is outstanding and should absolutely be used for Star Trek shows and games. I especially loved your Hutet. Keep up the amazing work! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Your art is really cool
Before even watch this video. Star Trek didn't have carriers in conventional sense. While some races did use space fighters (for example Caitans) and Federation shuttles were armed. Fighter tactic was generally ineffective due to potent Point Defense of the ships and limitations of compact warp drives. While what they call Fighter is Voyager Era is closer to a Corvette of Gunboat. BUT! Starfleet was also semi-civilian organization and while most ships did have shuttles and worker bees. Some ships did have massive hangars, as they were used for science and when use of teleporters was unadvised. Some ships have hangars so large that they were colloquially refereed as Carriers. Most well known examples are: Arc Royal class, Constellation class, Akira class and refitted Crossfield.
Hello Ryselle. Even though I dislike the Cardassians, and don't much care for their ship designs, I do like your work. Each design is well-thought-out, well executed, and the artwork on your page does an outstanding job of displaying them to their best advantage. All of this, from a non-fan of the subject!
Keep on doing artworks. You have talent by the boatload, and more should see your site, to appreciate your artworks.
The most common excuse of why we don't often see carriers and fighters depicted in Star Trek is that ship's phasers are too effective at point defense. But if that's true, how come we never see phasers used to take out incoming torpedoes? The question here is actually similar to why we don't see enlisted personnel in Star Trek. It comes down to either lack of knowledge or laziness of the show runners and writers.
When it comes to small fast movers like fighters and torpedoes it's more s question of are they worth shooting at with your main weapon.
also phasers can miss they arent auto hit due to ecm and eccm suites
The 2009 Trek movies used phasers as point defense. I was really impressed that bit got included.
I think Picard season 3 saw the new Titan intercepting torpedoes with phaser fire.
I mostly chalk the big gaffes in Trek procedures and tactics to writer ignorance. Starfleet Battles is the other end of the spectrum where you have WarThunder levels of military minutiae introduced to Star Trek.
the real reason we dont see fighters a lot with trek was because the setting was never designed to include them. The showrunners back on the days of TOS recognized that fighters dont work in space, due to a wide variety of reasons revolving around the fact that space is not an ocean or an atmosphere, thus all the reasons fighter aircraft work do not apply in space. Fighters only ever got pinned on after the fact in part due to their popularity thanks to star wars. but even in TNG fighters where only shown as the weapon used by factions that really didn't have the tech or the resources for anything better. It wasn't until DS9 that the showrunners started to try and make fighters more prominent.
Because torpedoes are small and can move much faster than fighters. There is a limit to internal dampers making sure the crew survives the trip. That does not include the fact pilot would slow their fighters down simply to give the pilots the time to react and maneuver around in combat. To fast and they are likely to accidentally run into enemy weapon fire, each other, or their targets for they cannot react fast enough.
Plus, most torpedoes are fired within a light second of a target, if not point-blank range. It is possible to intercept torpedoes at further distances, but most starships engage in close-range combat, if not point-blank range, to prevent the enemy from intercepting their torpedoes. Think about the Expanse and effective combat range. In theory, they can fire their missiles from Earth to hit the fleet over Mars and vice versa, but they would likely be intercepted well before they can get close enough to be a threat.
Meanwhile, fighters would be launched much further away, especially if they depend on a carrier, so they are easier to detect and react to. The only way around it is for a starship to launch them as it does a flyby over an enemy starship. But it still does not change the fact they would be slower and a bigger target to hit, and a glancing shot is enough to destroy a fighter craft.
The Geronimo is the equivalent of a ww1-ww2 seaplane tender, acting as a carrier for light scout aircraft to provide better recon for the fleet.
The Intrepid class was the best most versatile battle carrier as demonstrated by Voyager. Not only did it carry the Delta Flyer that is a formidable shuttle sized ship, but due to Galifreyan technology the shuttle bay and its hanger doors were bigger than technically possible in euclidean space.
😅😅😅
the Doctor's did help Voyage!
TARDIS best carrier ever. Cheers!
LOL
😂 I think that by the end, they had used like 18 shuttles, with no resupply.
@@comproggi They invented the ship replicator.
Star Fleet Battles the tabletop and later PC game, has all type of carriers for all of the races; they even had dedicated expansions focusing on them. You might want to have a look at those for ideas on using carriers in Trek type space battles.
I still have my expansions. SFB was totally awesome!
I remember seeing a funny fan design that used a Galaxy-class with a heavily modified saucer section to be a carrier for a "squadron" of Defiant-class starships.
Yes, or even just use a Galexy to act as a tender with multiple docking ports along its Hull.
The galaxy provides more advantaged engineering, crew, relaxation and long term operations support to the more spartan and shorter duration mission deviants.
They operate independently but support the wing, help it maintain, refuel, keep morale up and mean the crews can have spare and relief officers on board the galaxy.
The larger bays can also be a mobile shipyard for damaged craft whom need mayor repair or diagnosis.
It's like a central hub to the wider formation.
@@alexh3974 Pretty much the concept my Cavanagh Class Orbital Construction Ship and its combat craft, the Witt Class Interdiction Corvette, operate on, if exaggerated to both ends; The Cavanagh is a Warp-capable Spacedock whose spaceframe is so big it can barely hold together, but can be an invaluable base of operation for constructing Orbital Infrastructure on-site.
The Witt Class is taking the Miniaturization of the Defiant to what I felt was a logical conclusion for Star Fleet; A Corvette that's basically just weapons and engines strapped directly to a Warp Core, with only a five-man crew needing claustrophobic body conforming Operating Cradles and life support suits just to survive the extreme stresses of performing combat maneuvers at relativistic speeds.
Unlike in a lot of other space Sci-Fi, carriers take 2nd fiddle in Trek. Though it is interesting to see them every now and then.
They at times have their niche (mostly in support roles during mass jamming) and when they do, they can excel.
It's primarily because of how many fighters and bombers you need to actually contest a battlecruiser and or a cruiser that keeps them from dominance ie they can wear down and knock out a ship and the level of casualties they will wrack up because of it
The answer seems to be yes and no. 24th Century starships are very well protected so it becomes an exercise on whether 1) The fighter craft can carry heavy enough ordinance to actually damage a starship, 2) Whether that fighter can survive long enough to deliver it load, and or be generally survivable enough to not suffer catastrophic casualties. Ultimately, based off DS9, pure fighters were not terribly valuable. True fighters, under 30m long, didn't have heavy enough weapons to really destroy even medium sized starships. Even Federation fighters carrying mini-quantums only did modest damage to the humble Galor Class, while suffering staggering losses due to their inability to even withstand one phaser hit from a Galor's secondary batteries. Two observations: 1) In order for a ship to carry a full photon torpedo load, it has to be on the larger side, at which point it becomes an attack ship, rather than a fighter. Maquis raiders were more attack ships than fighters in size, and were moderately effective because they could carry photons. Attack ships and fighters have different doctrine. 2) Federation fighters would actually be quite useful against attack ships. Attack ships generally only carry one heavy weapon, and don't have good 360 degree weapons coverage. The lighter weapons of the fighters can actually do a lot of damage against the more light shielded and armored attack ships. So, as a consequence, it would make sense for large capital ships with poor firing arcs, like the D'Deridex, to carry fighters to protect themselves from attack ships.
But, lore is different from canon. Lore has all kinds of fighters that do whatever. In any event, large ships like Jem Hadar Battleships, the Hutet, or even D'Deridex, could and should carry small squadrons of attack ships.
So you when think about the carrier, it came to be in our history that the carrier extended the power of the fleet, by being able to strike from long distance. But when you can go anywhere, like a starship, doesn't really work too well does it? But I love that comparison to something like HMS Ocean, where it has far more versatile uses than just launching fighters, and in fact the alternate uses end up being more important!
Also, bro, that music, just dreamy. Wicked job!
Did the music tempt you to get some cardassian ships ;)
Yeah the interesting thing with modern carriers as compared to ww2 is that they have jets. Giving them enormous inland reach.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I am, in fact, tempted to get a cardie ship. And yes, Jets make you basically indestructable at sea
Also Carriers in the ST universe when they become obsolete for military use, they can be converted to civilian use more easily I imagine like those early federation colony ships. Also imagine the science division with a carrier ship where you can send out multiple shuttles or probes. Or the engineer core with a carrier rigged for deploying relay stations for sub space platforms the size of shuttle. And if a war breaks out you can call back all your carriers from the other divisions or services to repurpose them for fighters.
What about carriers that are fit to be field repair ships. Like full of worker bees and materials
One common argument I see against fighters in Trek is that the phasers are so accurate they’d one shot the fighters without any issue, but didn’t the Jemhadar use fighters to great effect during the Dominion war? An angry swarm of Delta Flyer class fighter bombers loaded down with quantum torpedoes would wreck most targets
Its star trek, its anything but logical
It would have been awesome to see these types of vessels in a Star Trek series. Kind of like in a Battle Star Galactica style of combat. Another fantastic video! Thank you!
exactly now Galactica is a hardened carrier a battleship like carrier, they just call their carriers battlestars, being able to stand together toe to toe & slug it out plus the benefit of the fighter craft you could be whipping all kind of ass ! a flank or rear attach that actually had some teeth or like planetary conquests : you'd have the boots, fighters support, plus the mothership in orbit, to fight off any rivals it would be awesome the Galactica w/ the shields, weaponry, & warp drive of Star Trek oh food synthesizers, teleporters, & holodecks... you'd be set man
exactly now Galactica is a hardened carrier a battleship like carrier, they just call their carriers battlestars, being able to stand together toe to toe & slug it out plus the benefit of the fighter craft you could be whipping all kind of ass ! a flank or rear attach that actually had some teeth or like planetary conquests : you'd have the boots, fighters support, plus the mothership in orbit, to fight off any rivals it would be awesome the Galactica w/ the shields, weaponry, & warp drive of Star Trek oh food synthesizers, teleporters, & holodecks... you'd be set man
exactly now Galactica is a hardened carrier a battleship like carrier, they just call their carriers battlestars, being able to stand together toe to toe & slug it out plus the benefit of the fighter craft you could be whipping all kind of ass ! a flank or rear attach that actually had some teeth or like planetary conquests : you'd have the boots, fighters support, plus the mothership in orbit, to fight off any rivals it would be awesome the Galactica w/ the shields, weaponry, & warp drive of Star Trek oh food synthesizers, teleporters, & holodecks... you'd be set man
exactly now Galactica is a hardened carrier a battleship like carrier, they just call their carriers battlestars, being able to stand together toe to toe & slug it out plus the benefit of the fighter craft you could be whipping all kind of ass ! a flank or rear attach that actually had some teeth or like planetary conquests : you'd have the boots, fighters support, plus the mothership in orbit, to fight off any rivals it would be awesome the Galactica w/ the shields, weaponry, & warp drive of Star Trek oh food synthesizers, teleporters, & holodecks... you'd be set man
Star fleet battles has extended rules for fighters but I never felt they belonged. In TNG phasers proved too accurate and powerful for fighters to survive
Wouldn't phasers also have trouble hitting a small maneuverable craft?
True but maybe they had a place pre TNG.
@@alanmike6883 I would imagine that in reality, fighters and such have a place in the battlefield.
@@merafirewing6591
It's Just fighters don't have Much fire power compared to other ships.
Maybe ground attack and air support, maybe for scout role?
If transporters failed etc
@@alanmike6883pretty much this
Great vId, but no mention of Star Fleet Battles? (where carriers play a major role in the game and in the lore, such as the Romulan 'Imperial Standard' and Federation's Big Mac 'MacArthur' heavy carriers that faced off at the Battle of Remus)
I'm a big fan of their Federation 'flat bed' heavy carrier and the 'through deck' strike carrier where the hangar bay runs the entire length of the secondary hull.
Also the Andromedans who could carry whole starships in their capital ship hangars and would launch them via massive transporter.
Didn't the MacArthur go down over Remus, making the entire planet uninhabitable? I'm going from memory.
@@blockmasterscott Yep, it was a horrific battle. The Imperial Standard was destroyed along with most of the Romulan fleet. In frenzied fighting over Remus, the Big Mac was crippled, lost control, and smashed into Remus.
The resulting explosion and aftermath killed every living thing on the planet. Many Romulans in the fleet were from Remus or knew someone on Remus, and were driven mad with vengeance and drove their attacks home with added viciousness. Most of the Federation fleet was seriously mauled during its withdrawal.
The battle did effectively knock the Romulans out of the General War.
@@captainyossarian388 That’s right, I remember now. Thanks for answering!
Glad to see the carriers getting the spotlight, my favorite carrier is the Ariel-class from FASA
Hey i picked up those rules recently!!!!!
@@brianjohnson5272 lol Wish I had a way to play that game but, sadly, it's hard to find them rules.
@shadekerensky3691 three letters,
P
D
F
Took me a while, but i got the og on a pdf.
pathic apollo norm is op and bettler carrier as well as antares carrier andromeda class
Is that the same Ariel I remember, that was shaped kind of like the Discovery? I had the blueprints as a kid but I didn't know FASA used it too. My 1990's-era headcanon of an Enterprise 1701-F from the 25th century was also largely based on that design.
The 24th century and beyond Carrier still maintains a lot of utility for Starfleet. Part of surveying a system or just exploring involves a lot of going around and scanning at different positions and points of interest.
Being able to deploy good numbers of capable auxiliary craft, like Runabouts is excellent for not just expanding the sensor coverage of the mothership but for actually getting teams of people to the locations they need to be to explore and scan things.
This is the exact thinking behind the Intrepid's Aeroshuttle. It's a large well equipped auxiliary craft capable of multiday operations, pretty useful when you need survey and catalouge potentially dozens of targets in a Star system.
Oh absolutely but again that's because of runabout which are kind of revolutionary in their own right.
In a ww2 analog I would llke them to floatplanes and flying boats in capability, runnabouts that is
I wonder if the Valkyrie-class fits in as a Federation super carrier or not.
I've always liked the way it looks... considering its played as an advance on what the USS Typhon is in ST: Invasion.
A type of carrier I'd like to see is a mobile repair station carrier. Think a mobile space station that can repair larger ships. It won't be massive, slow, and maneuver like a brick house, but it would also be near indestructible like that brick house and hit like a tone of bricks. It would probably trail behind an attack fleet and show up later in the battle or after the battle to repair the ships.
There are alot of carrier concepts for TOS and TMP that are very interesting. There are alot of designs from the starship schematic site that are worth looking at, would be nice if those concepts were to be given new life and see how they would fit into alpha or beta canon.
I googled that site and only found errors?
@@jatzi1526 look up star trek starship schematic database.
I had the Ariel-class blueprints on my wall as a kid! Very similar shape to what we would end up knowing as the Discovery, and I loved it.
Love the mention of the Vo'Devwl! It's supposed to be something like 1.8 km long. It's like the KDF saw Starfleet building the Jupiter and said "Why can't we just build our own carrier and make it so gigantic you can park Birds of Prey in the hangers?"
And it is such a lovely ship with that whole art-deco tower aesthetic going on in the front end. Love the look of it.
I recall having the carriers in Star Trek debate 30 years ago with a friend hehe. Some topics are timeless.
Really like the video about this and how fighters became practical in Trek. Also thank you for using pressuring instead of pressurizing!
Wow these videos are so great to watch let's keep them coming
Awesome video.
learned a lot on Starfeet carriers
I was surprised when you quoted Ryan Mcbeath. I watch his channel quite often.
his quote on giving your enemy dilemma is better. Problems have 1 solution, while dilemma has 1 or more solutions.
I'm very suprised you didnt mention the USS Typhon, which was a dedicated carrier.
Me too. "Star Trek: invasion" was practically screaming for a shoutout.
That's all I could think about throughout this video.... Worf commanded the Typhoon 🌀 class carrier for a time....
if the fighters had something akin to an adaption factor, like the Dreadnaught missile or the RTX Repair droids, I could see a kind of fighter wing becoming extremely viable in the Star Trek galaxy. The fighters adapting their strategies and weapons mid-flight to maximize effectiveness, or specifically to handle countermeasures and shielding. It would be an instance of Fighting Smarter not Harder. Which is something I could see a fighter having to do a lot of that without being able to fall back on the kind of fire power a larger ship might have at its disposal.
this really isnt viable at all. Unliike ships fighters dont have a real crew, usually just a pilot and maybe a weapons officer. Single seat fighters would b e completely incapable here, since one person cannot possibly slit their attention enough to pilot the craft, operate weapons and also keep their eye on fiddling with the shieds, sensors and countermeasure systems all at once. No one is capable of that level of multitasking.
Large ships are fer better at this since they have dedicated crews to handle each subsystem.
@@ryuukeisscifiproductions1818 Hence the need for a powerful and adaptive computer system to augment the pilot capabilities. Otherwise, I'd just splurge for a Echo Papa Drone set and be done with it. I'd prefer to have pilots making decisions then trusting a purely automated system than risk another M5 incident.
Also, I think a fighter in the Star Trek universe would likely be something akin to the Delta Flyer or a vessel of that size, ie a large shuttle craft or Maqui Raider. That seems to be where the balancing point is.
@@hughtonne1775 Technology here is not going to overcome basic physics and square cube law. And adaptive computer system you can apply to make a fighter run better can also be made to run starships better, only starships can afford to carry vastly larger and more powerful computers. Fighters are heavily constrained by size and weight limitations on all their systems.
and no amount of technology is going to make up for having a full dedicated ops and engineering staff to ensure the system runs smoothly. In a war of adaption between computers, the more powerful computer with a better trained staff is going to win, and in a contest between a small compact fighter grade computer core with no staff at all vs a large starship computer core with thousands of times the processing power and a trained staff, the starship computer core is going to win every time.
Electronic warfare capability is also heavily tied to computer processing power and operator training. The more powerful the computer the better EW systems work. Again a fighters EW system is going to lose badly to a large starship EW system with its large computer core and dedicated ops staff backing it up.
@@ryuukeisscifiproductions1818 All that's expensive, and for a defense system on a tight budget, it might be better to produce small fast fighters with just enough fire power to Threaten a starship, than it would be to build an entire dedicated vessel to take stand toe to toe in a brute shoving match of raw damage.
Quantity has a quality all its own, and if the ships can be adapted to new battlefield conditions and weapons systems, then they can stick around a lot longer and I can focus on improving torpedoes or other technology and strategies to make their job easier.
Linked Sheilds might come into play, new types of phasers or sensors. Hell, I might through on a basic cloaking devices or Sensor scattering hull platting just to be a cheeky Romulan! I know small vessels are often scoffed at, but heck, even trade ships carry firepower equal to most Federation starships and they're not so big. The Swarm made it work and so did the Kazon and others. It can be made to work; it just takes some forethought and strategy.
I know this may be weird, but I was rewatching Home Front, and they mentioned a thollian being an observer at a High-level diplomatic meeting. And I thought that was cool
I wonder if they were in a spacesuit because of environmental requirements
@@venomgeekmedia9886Considering Tholian isolationism and their rather hardline xenophobia, they were likely the only one there in a fully sealed powered exoskeleton that is capable of EVA and possibly even combat considering the Beta Canon.
I always like the Typhon class, Star Trek invasion was a great game.
The problem has always been terrible attrition. Torpedo bombers, such as the peregrine craft, would often be able to deliver their payloads, but suffered horrible losses throughout the Dominion war. I would also throw the 24th century runabout as a combat ship able to be carried in significant numbers.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the Galaxy class and it's many giant shuttle bays as a stand-in carrier. Peregrine fighters, along with tugs and almost all the other small craft used by Federation fleets were mostly stored in the oversized shuttle bays of wartime Galaxys.
Years ago I designed a Starfleet carrier quite unlike anything shown here, but unfortunately I have no artwork I can share. I never paid much attention to fighters in the Trek universe, for the simple reason that in order to have shields strong enough to be effective, you need a power supply too large to fit in a fighter style spacecraft. The carrier I designed however,, was part of the same program that gave us the Defiant. My carrier was called the Reprisal, and with a length of about 1,500 meters, carried 64 Defiant class ships on it's outer hull, with phasers pointed port and starboard, allowing for massive broadsides without the need to launch the Defiant class ships first. The movie First Contact really cemented in my mind, that Defiant class ships were not capable of taking out a Borg cube by themselves, they would fight in packs, and would need the support services of a larger ship.
It seems to me that carriers (and fighters especially) in ST are only useful in planetary invasions and if you have them in great numbers
Honestly, Fighters in Star Trek are probably best for situations where larger starships cannot reach safely or would otherwise be distracted
@@MikeLima777 Or used in Swarm Kamikaze tactics, after all we've seen the Jem'Hadar do it
Space Collisions are still incredibly dangerous even with all the technology, hell we saw Enterprise-D get destroyed by a collision with a 80-year old Soyuz Class that didn't even hit the main hull
Or acting as light cavalry.
In effect yes because understand a ST ship is actually incredibly hard to bring down without capital ship weapons so fighters need to be deployed in truly massive numbers to even threaten a ship
I love your videos they are very informational 😊
Wow, Ryselle is an impressive 3d artist. Good show.
The one Cardassian design I'm seeing on Ryselle's page that catches my eye, is the Jannissor class assault carrier. It kinda makes me think of it being the Hutet's angry gun toting cousin 😂
Yeah it's an interesting variant of the janisarry turning it into an assault ship capable of deploying 4 whole battalions at once. Although I doubt it ever saw service.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I'm inclined to agree with you on that. Although if it had, I suspect several battlefronts would have been better for the Dominion alliance
The fact that Star Trek energy weapon power is tied directly to reactor size makes fighters pretty much useless without extensive use of torpedoes, exotic technology or by bending the canon. I'm fascinated by the idea of a support carrier because it makes perfect sense within these rules, extending sensor range, acting as a picket line.
I think they’d be great in planetary combat with marines
Absolutely fighters are critical in supporting ground troops in areas where starships can't reach.
I definitely like the Keldon class concept because it can deploy a sizable number of fighters without sacrificing its firepower and speed. Utilized correctly, it has the agility and beam weapons to move in and out of engagements, battering enemy shields with a powerful spiral wave attack, then retreat and let the fighters exploit their weakened areas. Rinse and repeat. Additionally, the Cardassians tend to favor higher numbers of smaller ships over building large expensive single ships like other species - which in the case of carriers allows them to deploy from multiple locations simultaneously. A single carrier can be outmaneuvered and gunned down before fully delivering its payload, whereas a group of carriers like the Tornen can assist each other and attack from multiple vectors. They don't put all their eggs in one basket. The same strategy applies to the Galor and Keldon classes. If I had to view the Cardassians from a real time strategy game perspective, I'd compare them to the Zerg. Building quickly and in larger numbers for swarming attacks. Well coordinated groups will always overpower larger, slower ships. This strategy probably played a large roll in how the Cardassians managed to contend with technologically superior opponents. It's just more flexible when you have clever leaders and well disciplined officers.
Generally the keldon is used to carry dropships to support planetary landings. And is a capable cruiser in its own right. The tornen gains its greater capacity by sacrificing those ship to ship capabilities
@venomgeekmedia9886 I imagine the dropships could be swapped out for fighters, though. Or at least that's what I'd do if I were customizing it in a game. I'd love to see the results of a swarm of fighters attacking them accordingly after one or more hit and run attacks. Bombarding them based on where I weakened or breached their shields. I used to that with Hydrans in Starfleet Command 1 and 2. Hydrans were great at punching holes in enemy shields, then sending in fighters after to exploit the weakened areas. It was devasting. In the case of the Tornen, I was thinking of its deployment abilities and the logic of having multiple smaller carriers over single massive ones. It seems the Cardassians applied their group strategy to carriers as well, given how small they are compared to the Klingon and Federation versions. I like the overall strategic flexibility.
The issue is that sizeable number of fighters is only a threat to equivalent ships if something bigger and or meaner like say a Defiant or a Vorcha picks a fight with it they can either rush past or bulldoze through a fighter screen and knock it out before cleaning up the fighters comfortably which is sort of the issue at the heart of why fighters and bombers aren't that dominant in Trek a Trek cruiser or battlecruiser is very very difficult to actually knock out if you aren't beating it with capital ship weapons
@michaelkeha The Defiant is actually what gave me the idea in the first place when it took on a Negvar class battleship in the alternate universe. If they could do that, then fighters can do it even better. A full squadron of fighters packs a formidable level of firepower and even better mobility. The big mistake of the Keldon vs Defiant fight was to go toe to toe with the Defiant instead of using the Keldon's speed and agility.
My thoughts are to let my fighters hang back while my own ship would make a full impulse kamikaze style pass using all primary compressors and plasma torpedoes on a single shield. Instead of hanging in there for another pass, I'd fly away from my opponent, leading them straight into the fighters. With their weapons having been spent on me and their shields strained, the fighters can swoop in with a barage right where they're hurt and start spinning circles around them. If the enemy keeps chasing me, they'll be taking nonstop fire from the fighters while I continue to fly away. If they attack the fighters, they leave themselves open to another brutal pass from me. The idea is to remain adaptive and unpredictable. To keep them guessing using rhe fighters.
@@justinwallace269 not really fighters would be far worse you have to understand they pack nowhere the near same firepower and durability of a Defiant and with each pass at a ship there is a good chance a portion of your fighter wing would be knocked out and if enough get knocked out you are rendered combat ineffective rather rapidly
I love the idea of fighters/bombers being used. I think they have their uses, but with Star Trek weapons and sensors/tracking, these strike craft would need some pretty good ECM combined with their small size and speed when attacking starships since strike craft shielding and armor, assuming they have any, wouldn't hold up against return fire from the larger ships.
Yep although fighters will always work best when supported by larger ships. Which sometimes can be the carriers themselves
You got a sub straight away from me for name dropping Ryan Mcbeth!!!!!
Very interesting and compelling terrific gem of a video. Totally agree that carriers only seem to become a useful commodity as a weapon of war in star trek, once fighters can actually be of use and inflict damage on enemy capital ships like we see in sacrifice of angels episode in wolf pack tactics. Damaging, destroying or crippling enemy vessels in combination with a carrier or supporting battlegroup , could be of immense tactical value to a factions fleet alla the carrier and naval warfare of world war 2.
IF, You Ever Played Star Fleet Battles, as a Board-Game, then, You'd ALREADY KNOW Who has "What', and Why! My Faves are the Federation CVA or CV (different 'Kirk-era' Hulls, the Hydran Cruisers or Battle-ships, and the Andromedean Heavies, that carried Frigate/Scouts that used 'Transporters to 'Beam-out' Behind an Enemy vessel during an attack. One second, it's clear space, 400K klik's behind You, then, "Shhmmm", and there's a Tractor-Repulsor vibration-beam equipped Frigate.... You are Velcro, being ripped apart, under Heat, in Space! Good Luck!
Yeah I definitely miss playing Star Fleet Battles. I started when it was just a simple pocket game in 1975. Stayed up with all the modules and upgrades. Fighters when played correctly could turn a battles. Even more so when the Fast Patrol Ships were added (PFs)
I'd imagine they're too close of a concept to the Attack Ships for Venom to consider, but I always liked the PFs and, more generally, the General War ship concepts (War Destroyer as a middle ground/replacement for Frigates and Destroyers, NCL/War Cruisers as a true Light Cruiser that was more efficient to produce, etc.)
@@JohnAnderson-ws7ne Me too, I started with the pocket game in 1975. I remember Task Force Games trying their very best to stop people from using the term "pseudo fighters" for fast patrol ships. A lot of players called them "pseudo fighters" because that was the terminology in the early expansions. They were pretty militant too in trying to stomp out that name. I never could figure out why.
fighters in the dominon war took precedence for a few specific reasons
1. the dominion were using small mobile ships that loved their ramming/kamikaze attacks any and all additional firepower thinning the shields and engines was massively beneficial
2. the cardasians, klingons, breen and dominion were using fairly low fire-rate beam weapons with main armament consisting of projectile "cannons", so every beam not used against a ship of the line was saving considerable resources even if the fighters themselves could not weather the hit (i'm hoping they had emergency transport for beaming out fighter crew as their shield evaporated), good luck hitting (or ramming) an evasive and mobile fighter with unguided projectiles designed for anti-cruiser work.
3. each side was trying to massively scale up their fleets using every available resource so dedicating smaller shipyards to fighter production put a lot of easy to access mobile firepower (with warp drives) to support large sips that had already proven vulnerable to the swarm-tactics of a "victory or death" foe willing to go to extremes as long as the tonnage/tech difference was worthwhile.
as soon as any of the sides started to field greater numbers of higher fire-rate beam weapons the fighter usage would be greatly diminished once again.
Something that the Stars At War series brought to my awareness was that a large carrier could train their full complement together, and that value was enough to keep under-sized units together to improve effectiveness. A full wing that you could redeploy or slot into a different ship formation is intimidating to consider.
Not seeing any surprised pikachu about the Vo'devwl, but if you said Event Horizon I'd agree.
Cardassian ship art...deviant indeed. They do look damn good.
To me the Soyuz class also looks like a carrier with that third large shuttlebay being the main difference from the Miranda. I can easily imagine the era between TMP and TNG having a greater role for fighters because the Federation's main adversaries, the Klingons and Romulans both having cloaked ships. Fighters would be very useful in tracking those down, flying in a grid pattern and of course those ships don't have shields up so lightly armed fighters can still do some damage.
The most OP build in Sins of a Solar empire mod is the Carrier build Geronimo class
You know, I'm a huge star wars fan. At least in regards to the legends side of things. But I've always tangentially liked Star Trek. It always had a great message and the universe is flushed out. But there's is so much to the universe that it's daunting for me to dive feet first into it. But as much as star trek does not focus on its warfighting I still love to learn about it. Especially since it's an IP focused on exploration, discovery, and diplomacy in its many forms. There's just a different approach to warfighting that the Star Wars universe where the galaxy is literally at war with itself at a galactic level every other decade.
Favorite carrier . . . .CV-6! The Legend of Legends!! In-universe, I'd say the Coronado Through-Deck Cruisers provided a pretty good intermediary for Starfleet
I've long thought it would be nice to see Starfleet build a supercarrier using the saucer from the top of spacedock. Filled with umpteen Defiants, Akiras etc.
My fav unofficial star trek carrier would be the Typhon-class carrier from the game "Star Trek: Invasion".
I hope to see it in STO one day since her fighters have made it into the game.
I'm not a great fan of fighters in trek (when the TOS is hitting a meter-tall target a a few thousand clicks, I just...don't see fighters being that successful), but my biases aside this is a great video and good explanation of how this would probably work in Trekverses.
The principle of carriers has always been about extending range of fighter superiority, usually to aid potential ground operations as an offensive defense. For that reason, I see carriers more as a siege weapon useful for bringing air support to an invaded world, or to a world being invaded. Of course, this also depends on the range and payload of bombers; if you could put one or two hard-hitting torpedoes on bombers, they could greatly extend the range and angles of attack of a fleet with a carrier in it. Fly out, drop the payload, return to mothership for reload. Fighters themselves seem to have little purpose other than defeating other bombers, but sufficient point-defense screening ships would do that enough given the accuracy of phasers in star trek. A smal "phaser boat" destroyer could be placed at the front with the role entirely being to shoot down torpedoes and auxiliary craft, letting the longer range heavy hitters behind them fire-free.
Reminds me of the Fed heavy carrier in Starfleet Battles! 👍💪
Starfleet's Jupiter class reminds me of Zeon's Dolos class. Most of her complement went down with the ship given she only had 7 catapults for 182 mobile suits.
The game was ridiculous, but I really liked the concept of the Typhon class. I've seen a picture where she launched a Defiant. If it were so, having a Defiant class plus long range multi-mission fighters could apply the doctrine of the Geronimo class. You could establish huge control zones that pack one heck of a punch, but its probably a bit too warlike for a humanitarian and peace-keeping armada. There's also the Vikrant Class, a fan design. She's absolutely gorgeous and everything a Starfleet carrier should be.
In a future Starfleet, one we have yet to see and not described by Jar Jar Abrams and co., I believe fighters would rise in importance. Being able to use the wolf-pack strategy against small groups of Jem Hadar fighters probably would have saved an appreciable number of destroyers, cruisers, and battle cruisers. Its a lesson the AQ powers should, and would, I think, take to heart.
My thanks and complements to Ryselle-Chan. It is very nice to see the Cardassian fleet get some tlc.
I really love the Idea of Space Carriers, and it is one of the Points where i believe another
Show, namely Stargate, has more to offer then Star Trek, mostly for the Reasons you
named in your Conclusion. But they can not stop us from Dreaming, amiright? And i really
would love to see a Fighter Variant of the Runabout, launching from a truly dedicated
Deep Space Federation Carrier, maybe supported by a Heavy-Artillary Perigrine Variant.
But, to not hide my complete bonkersness, what i WANT to see is, let´s call it a Hyper Carrier.
Basically a (somewhat) mobile resupply Station, (i´d say about Warp 3.5 max) that is following
the/a Fleet, to give them a closer Fall-Back point for Maintanance/Repairs and restocking
of whatever they need to be resuppleyed with. If you now want to know how big i would imagine
this "Hyper Carrier", my answer would be so big, that it has 24 Hangar Bays, who each hold a
Defiant Class sized Ship. So in other Words, you could also decribe this Idea as a Carrier for Defiants.
I remembered playing star trek: invasion on PS1 when I was a kid and was in love with the design of the USS-Typhon although I find it somewhat saddening that it's considered as non-cannon despite being in a star trek game.
Wait, how did I never find out they made a Star Trek game for Playstation? That would have been amazing.
Great video! I like carriers but always thought that in Star Trek fighters and shuttles have practicly zero survivability. In Star Trek Online when I use ship with hangar I always put bigest pet I can. Like Jem'Hadar Vanguard Gunboats, Jem'Hadar Support Frigate or Cardassians Yukawa Frigates. Big and can do kamikaze attack (Jem'Hadar). Idea with Romulan Drone Ship as carrier pet is great too.
I think that hangar pets should be big as posible, AI operated with big antimater warhead inside to be guided missile of ther own (if needed).
Question of the day: can Tornen take on board ATR-4107 "Dreadnought"? :D
I’m a large fan of the Jem’Hadar Vanguard Support Carrier from Star Trek Online and like carriers in general from sci-fi and how they’re prominence in a franchise dictates what space battles look like.
Very cool
I do like the curry class there's something to be said about the necessity in its invention
Great video. You did forget to mention the Scimitar. It had dozens of Scorpion fighters that were supposed to be able to swarm enemy starships and hit hard with plasma torpedoes.
Maybe in STO but realistically scorpions can't carry plasma torpedoes. And only really work in ground attack.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 Ah, cool. Never heard of them in a ground attack role, but you'd know more than me.
I have played a Nintendo DS game called Infinite Space, published by Sega (I think Platinum Games was the dev on it). As soon as one gains the ability to use carrier-type craft, the game suddenly becomes a battle of carrier and fighter supremacy. I beat the game with a supercarrier group. Carriers are the definition of Naval Supremacy
1. The Federation should really examine those Cardassian nacelle designs, if they're of comparable performance. They are wider, but really compact.
2. I'm just thinking of those Galaxy-Class-dwarfing Romulan craft that were in TNG. The fact that they enclosed such a huge volume - all of which should be inside its warp envelope - and _didn't_ act as a carrier always baffled me.
I could imagine Star Fleet, having dedicated supply carriers and medical ships. Supply carriers with large cargo spaces and shuttles for delivering supplies to stranded starships or starbases. MEdical ships with lots of shuttles for use when beaming the injured might not be feasible or when there are too many casualties that the transporter room can't keep up.
Carriers are interesting in Star Trek and they should definitely be used more often, Did you know in Beta-Canon, there were Galaxy-Class Starships built to be Carrier/Battleship Hybrids during the Dominion War?
The Galaxy-Class does boast a Cavernous Main Shuttlebay (So Cavernous that we can only see a small area of it on screen only in 1 episode with only dialogue mentions and breif miniature sets seen other times.) and with some alterations i can see it making a decent carrying platform.
That does lead me to ask, What are your opinions on the Odyssey-Class since it’s canon now? I kinda imagine her more as a Gentle Giant, Sure she’s Far from a slouch in Combat, Packing 19 Phaser-Strips and 4 Torpedo Launchers, But she’s meant to be a Long-Range Peacekeeper, Explorer, and Humanitarian-Aid vessel.
In Canon the Enterprise-F Rolled out of Dock in 2386, 15 years prior to her retirement at the end of PIC: “The Last Generation”, Prior to that Two More of the Starships were in service launching together in 2382, the USS Odyssey NCC-97000 and USS Verity NCC-97001, not much is known about Odyssey unfortunately, But Verity however had an interesting history as being the Flagship of Admiral Picard Prior to the Mars Incident in 2385, doing countless humanitarian missions and providing aid for the Romulan people prior to what was going to be a sector-wide evacuation of their home systems.
I hopped in hoping to see the Typhon class from Star Trek Invasion here, which was a massive fighter carrier vessel...
Honestly, the Akira Class would be more than capable of handling itself due to having both Regular and Quantum Torpedoes. With that said, could the Akira Class be classified as a Tactical Carrier?
Definitely
TBH, the best anti capitol ship role for fighters would be torpedo spaming enemy ships until they're combat ineffective, with the carriers staying well back and just rearming the fighters for multiple runs, as well as acting as a fighter screen against other fighters and smaller craft trying to approach the fighter.
TBH, thats the main thing I'll give to the reboot movies, they had long range torpedoes, load a torp spam vessel like the akira with medium and long range torpedoes, and they dont have to close with enemy ships, just rapid fire a bunch then warp out.
And while, yes, such a craft would have to often resupply, the flexibility that offers is immense.
Rapid fire off a hundred long range torpedoes at an enemy starbase from just outside the solar system its in, they go to warp, and close the gap very fast.
Enemy ships would be harder to engage at distance, since they can move, but being able to inflict damage on the enemy from afar is still a major advantage.
A runabout sized cruise missile that contains the explosive yeild of many regular torpedoes cruising to the target at warp 6 then sprinting to warp 9 for a brief intercept burn would be devistating against most trek ships.
The problem with most Star Trek capital ship designs is, that they simply lack the interior hull space for efficient use as a carrier. Also the hangars must be placed in a way that allows for easy launch and landing of the craft as well as rapid deployment and recovery of entire fighter wings. A proper carrier needs to have room for around at least 50 - 100 or more shuttle or runabout sized craft, including extensive maintennance facilities.
And especially Starfleet designs usually just have too sleek and curvy shaped hulls for that. Big, roomy hangars are bulky.
Also at least in current marine doctrine, no carrier ever operates on its own without a supporting battle group.
Carriers in Star Trek would more have the function as a rear echelon supply, repair and support ship for larger battle groups, able to deploy a large number of work bees and similar repair craft to keep other ships in operation and supplied for extended operations, using its fighters and bomber craft primarily for scouting, probing enemy defenses and keeping enemy ships at bay.
I've often pondered if Starfleet could've purposed the Ross-class into a battle-carrier with Valkyrie fighters as well as runabout-type shuttles with the upper torpedo modules.
Great video, but I was a little disappointed to not have see the USS Typhon carrier featured in it.
I like the Starfleet carrier that launched Defiant Class ships as fighters.
🖖😎👍Very cool and very greatly well done and very nicely executed in every detail and every way shape and form on all of this subject matter on the various types of carriers with in the Startrek universe, And I myself can see carriers as being very useful with various kinds of fighters and various rescue and troop deployment shuttle's in any kind of space fleet as for attacks in space against other vessels and for ground support on protecting and defending your ground forces and evacuating the wounded on various planet battles against your enemies and so on indeed!,👌. P.S. it works great in every other sci-fi universe shows and movies and so forth why is the Startrek universe so special that it doesn't work like it should it doesn't make any sense whatsoever 🤔?.
For me, a space carrier should be a space station with high warp capacity. That means it also needs a lot of power generation, which would give it good shield and phaser capacity, but that's secondary.
The carrier warps into the edge of the system and it's small craft and floatilla depart to do their business. If they need it, they have somewhere in system to fall back to and get repairs.
This works as well in Star Trek as it does any setting.
Carriers are used for anti ground instillation use. In space they are not the best.
I made that same shocked Pikachu face (no pun intended) when I learned that the Akira and D'deridex classes had fighters in their shuttlebays. 😮
As the Galaxy had 60% of its volume empty when it came out of the shipyards I like the idea of the Dominion War refits acting as carriers.
Take the already cavernous Main Shuttlebay and extend it. Have Bays 2 and 3 more focused on recovery while the Main Bay can just spew out hundreds of Peregrines, Runabouts and different Shuttlecraft types.
Why didn't we see that in DS9? Probably not enough fighter capable shuttles to go round.
If memory serves, Starfleet made use of drones during the TOS.
I always found it puzzling that they didn't pour more effort into that field subsequently.
As both the Ancient's drones from SG-1, as well as the drone fighters from Andromeda showed how far you can potentially take that tech.
Which would make a drone carrier far more viable.
Have a bunch of industrial replicators (replenishment by way of gasgiants and asteroid fields) on board to create new ones and you can unlessh far greater swarms with no loss of life amongst your skilled pilots.
Combine that with good shielding and some decent weaponry and they'd be an utter PITA to take out.
Hell, they have that transphasic tech from that failed cloaking tech experiment that Riker was involved with.
The cloak might've been proscribed tech, but the transphasic element sure as hell wasn't. (Again, echoing the Ancient drones from SG-1.)
I always Saw fighter's and carriers as redundant in late era trek.
With transporters And phasers what is the point?
The only reason I think could be justified for lot's of shuttles for ships with the sole role of them would be Colony ships, evacuation medical ships eyc
I’d see RC fighters and drones as a useful tool to supplement a ship or fleet as an additional screening field and harassers but never fighters
@@SuperGamefreak18
In A way kinda like Andromeda
@@alanmike6883 yeah actually hm wasn’t even thinking about that show even though at one time it was one of my favorite scifis
@@SuperGamefreak18
Me too. I hate what it eventually became because the first Two seasons and half of season three were great
@@alanmike6883 yeah I miss when it was still a sister season of trek with its own spice I remember it got dark and wierd when the new crew split up after everyone nearly died
I do not know about fighters, but if i were to think about a carrier in star trek, i would imagine a large passenger oriented vessel with a very large shuttle bay holding a hundred or so shuttles. It would carry marines, doctors, and engineers. The idea i think to be most star trek would be an occupation force, or disaster relief. Hauling heavy equipment, personell, or medical patients and doctors, and security for it all. If you can land the carrier on a planet surface, you have a very effective armored base of operations for ground troops to anchor from. It could operate like a star base in a pinch, too.
From what 'we' have seen, whether canon or fan fiction, a carrier could project a cloak for its fighters to travel through. Theoretically, any enemy that didn't have a comprehensive countermeasure to such a cloak could, in fact, be very vulnerable to a surprise first strike from its opponent.
In theory, this "projective cloak" could enable a less sophisticated enemy to engage a more advanced opponent with a high probability of success. The major problem with this theory is the origin of the cloak. Such a weapon would give off a considerable amount of energy, requiring a lot of power from its engines. Due to this weakness, the vessel that produces the cloak would be easily detected at long range and vulnerable to counterattack.
A better plan would be to house such a weapon system on a stationary or near stationary platform such as a planetoid or space station. This would allow for the placement of a much larger and defendable structure from counterattacks and the ability to engineer a power plant to project the cloaking effect at a much greater distance than any space vessel.
Maybe I'm reaching.
i think in the trek universe ironically the most practical use of carriers would be used by the "army" I imagine that important enough worlds would have a large a robust network of transport inhibitors. which means that planets and moons and perhaps even large enough bases would need to be taken the old fashioned way, with ships carrying a lot of shuttles of soldiers flying down towards the surface. some shuttles might even be carry combat ground vehicles or have enough weapons to be used as a gunship after their compliment of troops disembarks.
In Star Trek Online, technically the Discovery/SNW Constitution-class Enterprise is a "battle" carrier, with entire squadrons of Tactical Flyer drones being deployed.
Yeah thanks to that awful season 2 battle. Such a wasted opportunity...
@@venomgeekmedia9886 Well, that "awful" battle reportedly included a lot of the bits included in the design of the TOS Connie by the designer, stuff we never saw on screen during TOS, including the DOT-27 repair bots, the Tactical Flyers and the Polarized, Lattice-Optimized Tritanium Armor. (Which, I just realized, can be acronymized to read P.L.O.T. Armor. Heh, literal plot armor for the Enterprise. Go figure.)
So the Constitution-class has always been an aviation battleship, or "battle carrier" as you put it. We just never saw it utilize this function on-screen until DIS/SNW.
One thing I always appreciate about Star Trek is that fighter craft aren't really important in battles.
I assume Trek eschews carriers and fighters because all those additional models were too expensive back in the 60s. Once that was set at the baseline, there is inertia keeping Trek focused on capital ships. I don't see why Paramount couldn't afford computer based models for fighters, but they probably don't want to offend the fan base.
That said, it would be nice to see at least some minimal paper/rock/scissors interplay between ship types. Ex: Carriers > Torpedo Ships > Phaser Ships > Carriers.
I think that with starfleet's latest advancements in the late 24th century, what with revolutionary ships like the Protostar, Dauntless, Prometheus, Aledo and Delta Flyer, and with new tech like ablative armor, more compact tech that would normally be seen in larger ships, a fighter class worth having a carrier for would be feasable if starfleet was pushed in that direction.
I would think that within the Star Trek universe, a carrier might not be something that has dozens of shuttle-sized fighters but rather a very large vessel that has a handful of Defiant-like ships. Perhaps even smaller than Defiant, as they wouldn't be conducting any science missions or even leaving their carrier for more than a day or so. A ship carrying 4 or 5 such vessels would need to be pretty big, but each would bring an immense amount of firepower to a battle.
Ive played 2 games franchises with fighters/bombers for ST.
1. Star fleet command 1/2/orion
2. The PS 2 series with Keonig, Tekai and Dorn.
In the first they were at best "tacked on" felt clunky and you could on a good run knock 2 romulan CV (Carriers) with one klingon crusier (D6 series). This was the better of the two.
The second by mid game you NEEDED to run a bomber with MIRV torpedoes and i found in each vessel blind spots i could just stay in and WRECK ANY heavy cruisers (enterprise A and the excelsior mainly).
Now onto canon.
I am reminded of a Series statement as a battlestation was being attacked by an equivalent to a state of the art high end fighter, "i cant get through! We're talking about a different power league here!!!"
Could even a state of the art fighter, be it Jem'Hadar or Federation even breach the shields of a 2 generation old LIGHT Cruiser unupgraded?! No alone its a turkey shoot, in a wing? No even burning a fighter wings power to 0 will have little effect..... This is why fighters in ST are a non factor, they outside of Space station numbers or seriously old ships they DONT have enough punch to waste the resources to build.
I can definitely see the potential for carriers in Trek. Let's just assume that fighter-born phasers will never be strong enough to penetrate starship shields, so they don't even bother (sorry Nemesis). Let's also ignore the mini torpedoes that ships like the Runabout get. It should be easy enough to pack 4 quantum torpedoes in single-launch tubes on something roughly the size of a standard shuttle. Now build a ship that can deploy a hundred of them. Considering that even the Borg seem to have trouble firing on more than half a dozen ships at the same time, and you're practically unstoppable. UNLESS, of course, you're up against a series protagonist, because in that case all they have to do is re-route primary fire control through the main deflector array and they'll be able to lock phasers on all your craft at once.
I'm a big fan of the fan art for the U.S.S Galactica, Battlestar Class Starship
Id have to say my fav carriers are from other series. The Earthforce Omega tho more of a battleship carrier hybrid or the Galactica.
I just don't think carrier in ST, though there was that one Aquatics ship that the NX01 fit inside...that has to have been a carrier class.
the "support carriers" remind me of real life Escort carriers, like the casablanca class
You need to talk about something i am sure exists. Fighter-sized sensor jammers.
In TNG, phasers were far too accurate for fighters to exist. But in DS9, bam, fighters everwhere, and ships started missing. For me, that indicates that the Maquis invented some form of jamming device that the feds started using on a much broader scale
If Kirk's TOS Enterprise could shoot down an object the size of a wastepaper bin from thousands of meters away, one can only imagine the lethality of starship weapons by the Dominion war. Flying a fighter in Star Trek isn't brave it's suicidal.
Presumably the producers of DS9 wanted more action in Sacrifice of Angels, as if 'wandering Galaxies' weren't enough, so they stuck in waves of fighters? Assuming the writers are competent and possess some technical knowledge of in-universe technology, the only way those fighters survive is if their targets are sensor-blind from jamming.
Of course we see that isn't the case as even 2nd rate Cardassian cruisers are swatting Federation strike craft aside like the pests they are.
Swarms of repair drones or anti-torpedo screens are as far as it should go.
Metal and plastic can be replaced, lives cannot.
It ain't suicidal, it's called having balls of steel.
Its always been my head cannon that the Galaxy Class Ships were used to carry all those fighters to the front.
Hope you can cover the kazon carrier too...
I think Carriers were a thing in the early days of Starfleet, even during the Romulan War, but as i shields and phasers got more accurate and powerful, they became less and less of a thing but still had some uses, as we saw in the Dominion War,
During the romulan war you run into the problem of scale. Ships aren't big enough to carry fighters. Nor do the fighters have much range. But for static instillations they would be great for fire direction
@@venomgeekmedia9886 Talking about old school Romulan Wars, i think the Romulans tended to have a more "fighter based" fleet, or at least ships that would carry smaller starships that didn't have warp capability into systems and into battles. Starfleet focused more on Warp capable ships and used carriers as you mention in the video as colony ships or static based/planetary defense. It still amazes me tho that they even exist in Star Trek considering how powerful Starships are.
Starfleet ships have always been carriers. It's just that the Delta Flyer was the first Starfleet shuttle that was worth mentioning. Everything before it was essentially the Mystery Machine with nacelles.
The Defiant should have been a dedicated fighter class. My version of it essentially would have been the T-34 tank in space. They never should have bothered trying to make it warp capable at all, IMHO. I also would have made it hexagonal, both for the structural reinforcement at the vertices, and because that geometry makes it easy to arrange basically everything (phaser banks, torpedo launchers, EPS network all following the vertices) and redundant reactors around the rear edges. With two compact AM reactors on each rear and side edge, and a three level design, you could get a total of 16 reactors on the top and bottom level, and a sickbay along the rear edges of the middle level, to shut Julian up. 😜
Diagram shows one reactor. Where did you get two reactors from? Ontario Class is the best carrier. 😊
curious that you didn't mention the galaxy class