Lore Debate: Starfighters - Useless in Startrek
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
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What's up Lore Masters,
Let's take a look at Star Trek's red headed stepchild .. namely to say Starfighters in Star Trek.
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"Fightercraft in space: When you are a nail and everyone else is a hammer."
And u Speed Up the Nail and the Hammers wooden handle will BE Split and the whole Hammer ist Destroyed.
When one of tousand nails gehts Destroyed WE can handle IT but when the Hammer ist Destroyed you Need a new Hammer.
Thats a one way thinking path.
@@MechArenaChiller
When your hammer is faster than the nail and shoot all of them into atoms it doesn't matter.
I think one of the reasons Starfleet used fighters in the Dominion war was to counter the Jem'Hadar fighters, which were extremely effective.
Even then, Jem'hadar attack ships were about the size of the B'rel warbird and crewed at least a dozen people. Runabouts and Maquis ships had two to four crews + whoever they're transporting.
@@dragonknightleader1
I agree. The term "Fighter" is grossly overused in Star Trek, & is often used to describe ships most would consider frigate or light picket ship.
What the Jem'hadar call a fighter is more of a large destroyer or corvette...
I personally call it the Jembug
Even though they call them fighters those would be more accurately referred to as something like a Corvette.
@@85Funkadelic and the Runabouts are closer to what Star Wars called "pocket destroyers", ships like the Skipray Blast Boat that are too large to really be starfighters, but too small to be anything else.
Instead of fighters like the F-16 or P-51 think more of gunship or assault ships. That's what all the fighter and shuttle craft come across to me in Star Trek. Trek's combat was more inspired by submariner warfare. Star fighters work in Star Wars because GL was inspired by WWII air combat, dive bombers destroying battleships and the like.
Trek fighters make me think of PT boats actually
I always assumed this was the intent of the defiant class. Much more compact than others, carries heavy weapons, is fast and maneuverable. All power no luxury.
@@Isador911 It's just, if the reason fighters don't work is because capital ships are too powerful and accurate, that seems to contradict the concept of relatively small and compact vessels like the Defiant and Jem'hadar attack ships. It seems to me you would actually always want to field as large ships as possible since they would be able to take more punishment and carry more powerful armaments.
@@RelativelyBest That was always my understanding of the defiant though. it is essentially a compressed larger ship. It has all the power, weapons and shielding of larger classes in a smaller target profile. You can argue that the smaller target profile is of limited effectiveness due to the accuracy but if you can reduce the size while maintaining the power level of a larger ship then that marginal benefit is still a benefit. additionally this would allow the shields to be more efficient, giving better protection with the same power output.
“Star fighters” in Star Trek are more akin to torpedo boats from WW II, or the gun boats in Vietnam. Destroyers are meant to hunt and kill ships like these. Cruisers and battleships, however, that’s a different story all together. Look at the DS9 episode, “The Emperor’s New Cloak;” an “escort vessel” in the Defiant was too small, and too close to be effectively targeted. “Fighters,” as you call them, have a very distinct and large role in the Star Trek Universe, we simply haven’t seen it on-screen.
Whenever the topic of fighters in Trek comes up, I'm reminded of that TNG episode where an alien gives the crew amnesia so they believe they have to crush his enemies, and the Enterprise-D vs. the alien fighters makes Wolf 359 look like a phyrric victory
You and me both.
yea, that's a really good point..
Worth noting that those only mounted lasers. They were technologically vastly inferior. It wouldn't have mattered if they were fighters or capital ships, _Enterprise_ would have beaten them easily.
Conundrum was the episode and I thought of that too when I saw this in my video.
Although fighter may have some use in fleet support starship remove shields and fighters finish off with micro torpedoes. Also ground support could be perfect for places that you can't just beam a bomb too or for some reason can't rain orbit fire from on high
"We were the insects Lieutenant. The Cardassians were as allergic as trills." - Major Kira.
This idea actually should not be ignored, yet Starfleet does many times.
Consider when the Defiant in the mirror universe hugged the hull of the Neg'Var, and was able to chase it off. That's not that unrealistic an idea for small craft vs capital ships, especially with the phaser array technology that would allow up to full 360 degree firing arcs. The problem with Trek fighters in't necessarily design, it's implementation. As Picard once said, "Starfleet is not a military organization its mandate is exploration." This comes up frequently, and can be seen any time you really dig into Starflet tactics. Their ships are surprisingly good, and things like the Akira, the Defiant, the Prometheus, and even the Intrepid and Sovereign, are pretty good combat vessels. They just don't have the right mind set.
Fighters in Trek, first off, do need better shields. Even a minor upgrade would change a lot. Second, they need to be used as close-range swarmers. You don't send them after a fleet, you send a cluster of them against individual targets, and you use their small size and maneuverability to stay close like the Defiant did vs the Neg'var. A suite of ECM systems would be a good idea as well, to make it harder for sensors to get a solid lock on them, and it wouldn't violate the treaty of Algeron (did I get the name right?).
They also need to keep moving erratically when in the open. We see that even fast moving targets can be hard to hit in Star Trek. The faster and more erratic the movements, the harder they are to hit. But Starfleet strike craft pilots don't seem to be trained to do this. They fly like they're in a starship, which is not how a strike craft should fly. You don't drive a Striker APC the same way you do an Abrams tank.
Finally, combined with the ECM systems, if you can find the power, a holo-projector could get a lot of mileage in a fight. True, most sensors would cut through, but if you can confuse those sensors just enough, the enemy could fire on the wrong ship, or, fire the image of a ship that is bigger than the actual vessel. Just think if the visual image was even 50% bigger than the actual ship. If your sensors can't be sure which part is real, you could wind up shooting at, or simply "hitting", fake ship.
The ship herself is not necessarily useless. The problem is tactics, and Starfleet just isn't military enough to go there.
I think you are underestimating the inherent vulnerability of a fighter-sized spacecraft. They are operating in the hostile vacuum of space, and apart from shields you also need a ton of hull integrity to protect vital systems from failing when something slightly penetrates the shielding. Not just that, to even have any kind of more advanced shielding you would need a much heavier grade of generator and energy source (which in turn need a sturdy and large enough platform to be mounted on). Considering the immense power of capital ship weapons in the Star Trek universe, causing minor but still debilitating damage to a formation of fighters is not all that hard.
If they fly in formation, you could use some kind of timed or proximity rigged explosive weapon to cause a powerful blast. Any larger type of ship would potentially shrug that off, but fragile fighters would end up with all kinds of damage to combat systems, propulsion and even life support systems that (even if the ships survive) would take them completely out of the fight.
If they instead scatter far and wide, and approach from many different angles, they would have a better chance. This would however severely reduce the focus of the attack (not completely read up on the lore of how shields work within Star Trek, but focusing fire on sections of the shield seems more effective in my mind) and also hinders coordination. On top of that, as said in the video, capital ships around the time of TNG and DS9 have advanced and rapid targeting systems and immense power output. A series of short, low yield phaser bursts could damage or destroy dozens of fighters before they could engage, and would destroy even more after an attack run (which probably didn't penetrate the shielding of a capital ship). If this was closer to something more unguided like the weaponry on ships from Star Wars (which were inspired by WW2 AA systems on carriers), then you'd have a chance with enough fighters. In the context of the even more advanced tech from Star Trek, the countermeasures would wipe them out within a single attack run.
That said, fighters would still have significant roles for warfare in-atmosphere and in low orbit, where the destructive power of capital ships might cause friendly fire and tons of different other issues. They would also be convenient for smaller outposts, armed reconnaissance, escort of lone freighters and many peacetime roles that don't require dispatching a proper full-sized vessel. For wartime situations, you need a vessel (or better yet a squad of vessels) at least the size of the Defiant, with enough defense systems and weaponry to not get wiped by a grazing hit and also be able to do more than drop their shields by a percentage or two.
Nah the problem is that fighters are a waste of resource compared to what you get out of them. You need to train the pilot, you need to build the ship. So you need personal and resources to operate the fighter, you also need to maintain the ship, the pilot needs to recover etc. For the same amount of resources you could get many more missiles. Fighters are essentially more expensive missiles with crew on them that you need to maintain. A complete waste of material and personal.
Even when considering them as some sort of planetary invasion support. Because frankly, mounting a planetary invasion is impossible and would most likely never be done ever. More likely you would threaten whoever is in command with orbital strikes till they surrender. You simply wont spend months or years on a planet just to defeat every holdout.
Fighters make sense on a planet but they have absolute not place in space, especially considering the distances at which fights actually happen in space.
I agree with your points. If nothing else, why not use drones? Less humane governments would probably go "Star Wars" and just use droids.
@@michaelminden2482 Because drones are more expensive than missiles and offer no real benefit in space combat. They require specialized equipment, operators, need to be hack proof, need a much bigger power source etc etc.
Considering the state of point defence accuracy in ST fighters would need to be deployed in large numbers to overwhelm the PD perimeter. The same is true for missiles but missiles are much cheaper and much more expendable.
And now I'm going to piss on your parade.
The only reason we switched to planes and stopped using battleships is because it was cheaper to build a plane with bombs and torpedo that could damage a ship even if it took 20 planes to sink one ship. I guarantee that fighters would stop being used in naval engagements if it took a MOAB to sink the smallest ship in a naval fleet. That is the issue star fighters have in the Star Trek universe and as an M1 crewman I can state this as a fact, "it doesn't matter how great your tactics are if you can't hurt what you hit with your first shot."
Well it depends on how they are used. If used in a cliched WW2 fighter style than no. But if used in modern stealth tactical strikes than maybe.
Hmm.. Is there a fighter that has stealth technology?
i think romulans have them and maybe the klingons but no the federation.
A small ship that employs stealth tactical strikes. That's called a Klingon Warbird.
@Mammoth Wrangler I did say stealth strategic assaults. So cloaked strike craft.
+Mammoth Wrangler
_"Even if you armed your Fighters with Photon torpedoes it would still be more cost-effective to have externally mounted Photon torpedo racks on Corvette sized ships that could fire every torpedo at once."_
Yes, let's put a lot of explosive antimatter on the _outside_ of our ships. Nothing could go wrong...
_"22nd century Earth had a verteron array when they only had two warp 5 ships. Verterons according to Canon are a tachyon type particle. Therefore it is only a plot contrivance tachyon detection grids we're not standard fortifications within every star system."_
Yes, because shooting a tachyon cannon at someone and detecting the few stray tachyons from a cloaking device thousands of kilometers away is the same thing.
_"The issue here is lazy shit headed inconsistent writers, nothing else."_
Or, you aren't halfway near smart enough to understand what the hell is happening.
I think that very small ships can be used for recon, harrasing soft targets and weak ships behind lines, or even maybe destroy capital ships if equipped with few mounted self guiding torpedoes by mass salvo without entering phaser range. Soviets went with same approach in cold war, using small ships equiped with few anti-ship missiles able to hit target behind horizon. You needed to shoot them in big salvo to kill big ships due to enemy trying to shoot missiles down.
i actually dont remember if ive ever seen a starship shoot down a torpedo.
@@demonocolips Considering that phaser is super accurate beam able to hit very small targets almost immediately, this is very strange. How can we expect it to hit fighter if it has problem with torpedo.
no im just saying i dont remember them ever taking out a torpedo intentionally or otherwise. no wait there was an episode in enterprise with doctor sung and the genhanced where they had to destroy a torpedo or it would release a plague over a klingon colony. the thing is a torpedo isnt much larger than a human so 2 meters by half a meter by half a meter. which is really small in addition the amount of power contained in it is rather high. so long as it has some sort of baffling equipment the half a meter wide beam from a phaser array would have some difficulty hitting it.
I think shooting down incoming is hinted at as a tactic, (Wrath of khan), Kirk ordered 'Phaser's' when he saw the Reliant fire the first Photon, but someone said 'to late' ie too close and not enough time to power up and lock on
So stealth or ambush might work, as long as you can disable the ship before the return of fire from your intented target wipes out your torpedo/missile boats (for lack of a better term), not so much fighters as say the use of PT boats or S-boots at night during WW2
I Wish Seaquest DSV had a soft Reboot,
Starfighters do have a role, drawing fire is one of them. Take a Miranda class for example, as one of the smallest full-fledged starships employed in battle - it has a crew complement of roughly 200. If you have a material surplus, and a manpower shortage, all of a sudden strapping a Type-4 phaser (or better) to each person fielded suddenly becomes a whole lot of firepower per person. Also there's potentially the better usage of materials. Once again fabrication of complicated life support systems, redundancies, of a full sized ship is whittled down to a only accommodate a single, or two, pilots.
Federation starfighters have sufficient firepower and durability that they cannot be ignored, or swatted without repercussion. While it does take one or two directed energy blasts, that is firepower that is not directed at more valuable assets. Energy weapon refire rate is dependent on how quickly they can recharge phaser coils (or disruptor capacitors). And while a Type-4 phaser isn't particularly intimidating, it is still sufficiently powerful to take out stragglers, or cause substantial damage to a target whose shields have failed. In essence, they're too dangerous to be left alone, and destroying them still requires committing a non-insignificant amount of effort. In Star Trek, overwhelmingly, offensive systems are far more powerful than defensive systems.
In addition, their size makes it possible to squeeze through, and strike at the enemy formations where traditional ships cannot. Take for example the example of the Peregrine strike against the Dominion lines. Imagine replacing each wing with a Miranda. Now ask yourself if you believe the enemy would have sustained, "real" damage. Then ask yourself what was the likelihood of those Mirandas surviving, and what is the life cost of such a venture. A dozen hits and a Miranda is out of commission, along with 200 lives. A dozen hits and you've lost 12 starfighters, the cost is incomparable. Of course if you replaced those Mirandas with Defiants, the outcome would be quite different. At the same time a Defiant is substantially more expensive than either of the two options. In addition, if the goal is to draw fire, and inflict opportunistic damage, committing such an expensive ship, along with 50 lives, is a "an inefficient use of resources".
Regarding the usage of drones, given the technological levels, there are plenty of risks associated with this, whether they're remote or independent. These range from hijacking, jamming, rogue AI, AI rights issues, the requirement for more powerful processing costs, enemy sabotage (especially if you're using the same program).
There are comments that say the use of starfighters is a waste of lives, it's not. It's a very utilitarian way of sacrificing the least amount of lives to obtain a result. It is truly the lives of the few for the lives of the many.
If you need a meat shield. A cheap drone can do that job.
Starfighter could bê good to police or protect small colonies
agreed
I think generally thats the point behind most of these small craft designs, be it a runabout or a Peregrine (they were originally courier ships), as small craft can be made in larger numbers with the same industrial capacity, meaning they can take on more individual missions, meaning that policing or patrol missions that dont require large ships can be done much more efficiently.
Or you do it like the modern day german army and use full on battle tanks for recon.
I’ll say again starfleet fighter drones!
Even nowadays we're working on "Star Wars" technology for intercepting missiles mid-air. Torpedo/missile/phaser-based planetary defenses probably render a lot of the thing. That's probably why the Dominion had to resort to using ground troops to destroy Cardassia (or they were attempting to be more surgical about it to protect something/someone they never mention).
whoops, that should read "probably render a lot of the things fighters would be good against moot or futile to begin with."
Federation targeting systems can be spoofed and even suffer target overload, they're not perfect plus there are other reasons to build a space fighters or a PT boat analog. They're cheaper and faster to produce, they need fewer personnel to man and maintain them, and 100 fighters can cover far more territory than one capital ship can. In war time the fighter would be fitted with a ship killer like a quantum torpedo launcher, or two and then it's suddenly 1 pilot and 1 fighter vs 1500 crew and a capital ship. In the cruel math of war I can throw 100 fighters, or 500 of them for that matter, at one capital ship and loose all of them and still come out ahead. I only need one missile to get through. You're using the same argument the US Navy did concerning fighters and fighter bombers pre WW2.
The use of torpedo boats depends on the torpedoes being able to disable/destroy a target with a small number of hits. However, in Star Trek, both the power of a ship's beam weapons and the strength of its shields (and therefore how many hits it can survive) scale directly with its warp core power output, therefore warp core size rules everything (which is why the Defiant is noted for having a hugely oversized warp core for its mass).
The only way to make torpedo boats viable in such a situation is if one faction develops a method of rapidly analyzing the target's shield harmonics so that they can match the torpedo to them and bypass them (as the Duras sisters did to disable the Enterprise-D with a single torpedo in "Generations").
The problem with Star Trek systems is the level of complexity of those system. You have a warp core? Better have a warp core specialist engineer to do maintenance...same thing with the weapons and shields. By the time you get a ship or fighter or whatever that has even marginal effectiveness against whatever it was designed to do, you'll probably get up to a crew level of over a dozen or 2. A single person in CIC can't effectively drive and fight an AEGIS warship by themselves.
@@namyun2743 Yet just about anyone in Starfleet could operate & repair shuttles, runabouts, ect. while crewing them only with a few people. Meanwhile they've got warp capability, shields, and usually weapons of some sort.
If it can get a few quantum torpedoes & beefier weaponry onto one of those, then craft that size can be a threat to even large capital ship if you throw several of them at one.
That doesn't even count the kamikaze gambit we've seen used in DS9
@@InfernosReaper Yes, that is absolutely true, but can a single person do all that while fighting off Dominion ships? The point I was trying to make wasn't for qualified personnel, it was for a single person to do EVERYTHING as is the paradigm for a contemporary single-person fighter. The point I WAS trying to make is that a Star Trek "fighter" wouldn't be a single-person affair. Most likely something between a runabout and a Defiant-class with an actual crew.
@@sailordolly Or, you can design a bigger torpedo boat that can carry and deploy even more torpedoes, assuming your design bureau still wants to go with that concept. :)
Maybe you should explain what properties of space combat that puts starfighters at a disadvantage and how the Defiant corrects for them?
Dont hate that idea
The defiant can carry heavy weapon.
If the defiant was a two man ship, it might be a big starfighter.
The star fighters appear to be small, super maneuverable, and quick to produce ships with light armament. If star ships had really powerful weapons that took time to get on target and lacked the accuracy to hit fast, erratically moving targets, then star fighters would have a purpose. But phasers speed and targeting systems are able to mostly counter that advantage and only need to make a couple of hits to take out a star fighter. You -might- could make the case for a large swarm of star fighters vs a single star ship if they stayed danger close and hit from blind spots.
The Defiant on the other hand is a smallish starship that is still super maneuverable and able to weave through large groups of ships, and use hit and run tactics to take advantage of blind spots or targeting delays, but unlike star fighters, it is very heavily shielded and armored, able to take fire and damage that would destroy most other star ships. In addition it has weapons as powerful, and in many cases, more so, than larger general purpose star ships.
In two words, power and size.
The Defiant has a star ships warp core. She carries a star ships deflector shield. She has (exceptionally strong) star ship weapons.
A starfighter on the other hand won't have the power (and neither the space) to use them.
It can't carry sensor arrays that are bigger than the fighter itself (wich give a star ship, including the Defiant) pinpoint accuracy at light seconds range. Sure, the starfighter might carry a torpedo, or two. It does not have the sensor capabilities to aim them accurately at ranges where it actually might be able to launch them before being annihilated by the star ship it attacks.
It's weapons, even IF it had the power to use full size ships weapons, and the sensors to aim them won't be big enough to actually do damage.
It's shields will fold when a star ship sneezes at it, and it's hull strength might as well be compared to wet tissue.
And in the end, maneuverability is a much smaller advantage than what many people seem to believe. Carriers in WW2 where so effective because the planes where around an order of magnitude faster than their target, and maybe 2 orders of magnitude (maybe even more, a ocean ship is not very nimble, at least not the big ones) more maneuverable. In space it would be exceptional if it where 2 or 3 TIMES (not orders of magnitude) better.
Not enough to offset the significantly better sensors, stronger weapons and shields and (by several orders of magnitude) more power generation.
Lore Reloaded Yeah this could be good also maybe you should define what make a star fighter in Star Trek like the size people capacity weapon power etc
Fighters, runabouts, and other small craft make sense really for systems to police their shipping lanes, local search and rescue, and contraband interdiction. I.e. what the US Coast Guard does today. A system doesn't need a full starship or a fleet of starships to do the Coasties job, but a fleet of small, fast craft basing out of either orbiting stations, or as parasite craft to a larger mothership would be fine for local system control. Fighting a war? I'll take a purpose built warship. Keeping freighters from ramming into each other, or rescuing stranded civilians from an adrift ship? I'll take a fleet of runabouts backed by a heavier fighter any day.
Fighters kind of work when the dominions poleron beam make shields ineffective. That way each hit only kills one person. Instead of hundreds on a starship
If I am right Starfleet quickly fixed that Polaron beam problem. It was only an issue during the first couple of contacts.
My thought is that a star fighter loaded with a single strong phaser array/cannon and a torpedo launcher can do far more damage per cost then any small startship. We saw how quickly Miranda Class ships, and even larger ships were chewed through... how many died, now many resources lost? If 20 star fighters "costs" the same as a single Miranda refit, they could potentially do far more damage to enemy fleets. (same logic for starfleet making their warships smaller and more numorous as opposed to large Galaxy/Ambassador class ships.)
Its true that a star fighter could quickly be destroyed, and I'd even advocate for minimal shields focusing on its offensive capabilities... however if large enemy capital ships have to dedicate its phaser arrays on it and its the same effort that could have potentially punched through a Miranda, its a net win. Star Fighters make sense in large fleet combat. They are quick, inexpensive, have teeth and if focused on distract the enemy for your capital ships to capitalize on.
How fighters should work in Star Trek:
Single impulse engine, no warp. (Warp core/engine is all about power of phasers/shields/speed)
A single phaser pulse cannon like on the Defiant.
A quantom/photon torpedo launcher with as many torpedo it can hold.
Shields but minimal power, enough to survive debris, weaker weapons, and smaller arrays. Ensure that if your fighter is destroyed, a main gun from a capital ship was occupied.
An emergency transport if the fighter is manned. When the shields fail, transport the officer immediately off back to the Akira/Galaxy Class that launched it (or some recovery ship at the edge of battle)
The problem is survivability and firepower reduction due to losses. With a squadron of 20 fighters, you lose 5% of your firepower every time you lose a fighter, while a single Miranda or Defiant class can retain full firepower far beyond taking 5% of the damage necessary to disable it. And it's going to be easier to take away that 5% of the squadron in the first place due to the accuracy and shear power of capital ship weaponry in the setting. It's not like Star Wars where a large capital ship has to equip smaller point defense weapons just to be able to hit fighters simply because the big guns can't track targets fast or accurately enough. In Star Trek, the big ships can use their big guns on any target they choose.
The Mirandas were used because of how many they already had of them, and despite how aged they were, a refit would still be more cost effective then a bunch of small ships that can barely dent the shields of dominion vessels and light up like chinese firecrackers if a phaser so much as locks on in their general direction. The fighters were utterly useless to the point that they could safely be ignored by any dedicated warship with decent shields/armor, and the only time they seemed to work was because the enemy wanted to make it look like they cared about them.
that is suicide drone logic.
+Juntakyle I look at it more like this, the idea of the small 1 maned fighter is more or less pointless, however really small ships like Birds of Prey or Defiant class ships are basicly the fighters of the Era.
Use of fighters in more of a mass swarm of torpedo bombers, most likely as disposable drones.
Or more like the LACs in the honorverse and are more of a corvette or frigate sized craft.Used with stealthy materials and ECM to degrade sensor effectivity
100 drone fighters launching 2 or 4 torpedoes each would be capable of ruining a Captain's day.
ONE PLACE where fighters SHOULD BE .. Earth and Mars should have swarms and swarms and swarms of them based with enough on alert at all times to scramble and destroy a borg cube. Even if that means heavy casualties. They make sense in that they are un upgrade of the Mars defense ship we saw at one point.
Fighters would do nothing to a cube. The Borg went right through the mars defense perimeter sentry pods.
Yeah TWO of them. Now that the Borg are a threat with a known transwarp conduit ending in front of Earth … Earth should have millions and millions of those things. PLUS as real world war has shown capital ships are often vulnerable to smaller craft. Any ONE or TWO dive bombers against a WW2 battleship no problem. 50 of them and that battle ship is going down.
Maybe you should watch ST:NG episode Q Who-...If a Borg Cube can hold a Capital ship in place to Curve it up like a Roast, what u think a couple of Fighters will get done to them...
Fighters wouldn't attack two at a time. They would attack in coordinate groups seeking to overwhelm the point defenses of a capital ship while delivering torpedoes to it. ST uses naval ideas and naval metaphors right. During the battle of Midway did either side launch a couple of fighters or dozens and dozens of them? Same deal. Earth should have … SEVERAL MILLION fighters based on it (and the moon). Not to mention automated defenses up the wazoo.
IF we are going to be semi realistic about this it is a pet peve that we never see credible planetary defense anywhere in star trek outside of the Chintoka system.
Hontas Farmer, a single Borg cube carved up virtually the entire Starfleet at Wolf 359. Fighters aren’t going to be a threat, regardless of the numbers.
Something I brought up in the video's chat:
The fighters in Star Trek get used wrong. As LR points out, its suicidal to fight a capital ship with lightspeed, hyper-accurate weapons. So... don't fight capital ships. Strike craft should be used to attack an enemy's supply lines. They should be dedicated attack vessels, easily mass-produced, with small crews so that losses are easily replaced (compared to most of Starfleet's vessels that have a load of space dedicated to crap you don't need on a warship.)
You then send these vessels against craft like freighters, which would have weak shields and weapons, if they have them at all. This has the dual effect is crippling the enemy's logistics, and forcing the enemy to devote precious warships to escort duty when they'd rather have them on the front line.
It would be even better if the strike craft was cloaked, to prevent the target from seeing its approach, but the Federation threw away their right to do that to appease the Romulans.
Weaker phasers. And even if it takes several strike craft to kill one freighter, its a lot easier to replace the strike craft than it is to replace a freighter and everything it carries.
As for cloaks, the Federation was developing them in secret because they signed a treaty with the Romulans saying they wouldn't make any cloaks. The romulans already knew about the Pegasus, though perhaps not about the cloak. Picard at least gave the Federation a fig-leaf to say it had been done by rogue elements.
I don't recall the US ever signing a peace treaty saying they wouldn't develop the SR-71. If the Federation broke the treaty, it would have meant war. Those are some high stakes Admiral Pressman was playing with.
+ReddwarfIV
_"I don't recall the US ever signing a peace treaty saying they wouldn't develop the SR-71. If the Federation broke the treaty, it would have meant war. Those are some high stakes Admiral Pressman was playing with."_
The Romulans already broke the treaty, and repeatedly broke the Neutral Zone treaty.
That should demonstrate how little the Federation wants a war. They will ignore Romulan infractions to preserve the peace. Why would they commit an act that would almost certainly result in the Romulans claiming the Federation broke the treaty, resulting in all-out war?
+ReddwarfIV
_"That should demonstrate how little the Federation wants a war. They will ignore Romulan infractions to preserve the peace. Why would they commit an act that would almost certainly result in the Romulans claiming the Federation broke the treaty, resulting in all-out war?"_
Because if you want peace, you should prepare for war. That's why the Federation made the phase cloak: the Romulans weren't listening to the peace efforts.
in star trek especially, the use of fighters really struck me as a case of "we need to put as many weapons platforms into the battlespace as physically possible and the easiest way to do that is to put guns on space dinghies."
Pretty much.
Spot on sir. They would be great in close air support roles in ground battles but would only have limited use is space fights. If I were in charge I would deploy them close to capital ships and have them intercept incoming torpedoes. The only other way they could be useful would be to mount torpedoes to hard points and use squadrons to launch mass waves of torpedoes at ships and then bugging out like torpedo bombers of WWII.
Gene Roddenberry was a naval officer, which reflected that experience in Star Trek. Battleships are not affected by speedboats with turrets as much. In space, the ships are all on the same level, their is no aircraft or submarines equivalents, just ships that can move in three dimensions.
Submarine = Bird-of-Prey
It's rather simple phaser / disruptors are pinpoint accurate at huge range, while star trek sensors don't have light delay.
The big ships don't even need to turn to get a direct hit and can fire multiple directions at once.
If your ship don't have strong shields there pretty useless.
You need a hull made from the special metal plotarmor, or just like the the Danube class from DS9 (WHICH is one of the best shuttles and closest to a useable fighter) your toast.
The fighters in DS9 just get incinerated instantly.
pretty much exactly this. In order to make fighters work you'd have to change so much about them (automated targeting/guidance, smaller size, disposability, etc) that they'd essentially be missiles or torpedoes going by a different name. Fighters are kind of unique to our current point in history where our ability to both target and fire continuously at multiple targets is bad enough for individual fighters to have a tactical purpose. In the ST universe they've fixed those problems.
Pretty much anything without plot armor was subject to instant annihilation; Hey, there's the C'Tek and the Majestic behind the Defi-and they're dead. Two hits each, if I recall. (And at least one of them went down to a Cardi...)
@@Sephiroth144 Good point.
The defiant takes several direct hits just prior and only takes minor damage. Thinking about it ships escorting Defiant seem to have a case of plot explodium. LOL
almost evry ship in DS9 gets incinerated instantly after few phaser hits etc..... they wanted to keep CGI cheap and didnt implement shield effects. well implementing crumbling hulls and exploding to 1k pieces is more cost effective. because logic ^^
@@sg586 In fairness, one of the first things Sisko has done to the Defiant is installing serious armour to go along with its serious (though not exceptional) shields. He knows what series he's in ;)
Keep in mind that at the battle of midway the Americans lost 150 aircraft while sinking 4 main line carriers, 1 heavy cruiser destroying 248 aircraft and turned back an invasion force almost 5 times it size. Fighters are not meant to attack in swarms and go toe to toe. They are the tip of a spear intended for very precise operation : destroying the command ship with Gil Dukhat on it. If used properly they can inflict massive damage.
Just going to make this point, rl fighters tend to also be one shotted by anti aircraft fire. It's the evasive and jamming abilities, or striking the AA centers that keeps rl planes alive.
Wonder if there is jamming tech that fits on a fighter in trek...
@SoloWing88
Don't forget the automated systems that allow some planes to fly low enough to use terrain as cover.
@@namyun2743 Even those can be foiled by more modern IADS, thus the ending of Low Level heavy bombers, I.E the B-1A/B's original mission types.
Unless your name is Mobius one, you are not going to easily deal with Feddie ships
@SoloWing88 And so are radar jammers against modern AESA radars. My point, it was a viable defensive tactic and technology at the time it was used.
@@namyun2743 I dont think terrain is an important factor in space.
I think it's worth noting that pretty much any ship without plot armor in DS9 was destroyed in a single shot or only a few shots. We see mirandas and birds of prey drop like flies in pretty much every battle they are in. Fighters make a lot more sense when you consider that one starship/space station shot can kill a bird of prey with several dozen crew, taking out the entire threat of the ship, OR it can take out one fighter out of dozens killing one or two people and only reducing the overall fire power slightly.
We do see pulsed weapons, particularly ones with limited fire arcs, miss, usually a volley of several shots is fired and at least a few are shown to go wide. We see dominion ships occasionally miss with their forward firing weapon particularly when targeting small fast targets. We also know that damaged ships can lose their target assistance and manual targeting is not as effective. It is not unheard of for even torpedoes and beam weapons to be shown to miss occasionally.
Perhaps in larger battles targeting computers have a harder time maintaining locks due to the number of ships, friendly fire issues complicating firing solutions, interference from the energy of all the weapons fire and possibly even jamming tech.
Hey Lore. As you stated, the writers did not care for fighters. Thus, the ones they made were intended as weak, almost WW2 like fighters, in terms of capabilities. That said, the technology available in Trek verse is well suited for a useful fighter-like craft. Some sort of heavy fighter, designed for lightning strikes. Don't believe me? Look at the Defiant. Its warpcore is only four decks high. Now, get rid of gravity on all the ship but its cockpit, and put that thing horizontally. Strap everything you need around that warpcore, put some ablative armor on, and there you go: a far cheaper attack craft, yet quite powerful, manned by only one to three officers. Torpedoes mounted on hardpoints under the wings, dorsal and ventral phaser arrays. Heck, maybe even one or two forward facing phaser cannons. Add a capital ship grade deflector shield, and you get a full wings of terrifying fighters each costing 1/3 of a Defiant, and costing 15 times less manpower. Easy to mass produce, less crew intensive, quick to dispatch any ship when moving in wolf packs. Want them in deep space ? Modify a heavy Cruiser like a Galaxy class to lock them on her hull, with an airlock and magnetic locks, and there you go: a Star fighter carrier, Trek edition, with Trek style starfighters, the size of shuttles, but fighters all the way.
Sounds to me like costing about the same as a Defiant, and defiants are expensive.
@@ribbitgoesthedoglastnamehe4681 It's literally the Defiant's warpcore, one impulse engine, half its weapons, 1/5 of its internal volume, 1/4 of its shield emitters. Smaller nacelles, extended wings but literally nothing else but a cockpit fixed on the main body, just like the wings. Believe me, it's feasible, and it costs less than the Defiant, significantly less. Plus search and development is already done. Only the framework needs to be designed. And it's a very simple design. This thing barely costs more than its already developed warpcore.
Few things here, first is the nature of the Federation, star fighters are a purely military ship with little application outside of combat. Second often show writers are more interested with plot rather than military application of technology.
For example we know that phasers can toast small vessels easily. Drawback of phasers are their limited range. Therefore if your going to have star fighters your going to need to equip them with long range weaponry. So star fighters would act like PT boats did in WW2, get close enough to launch torpedoes then get the heck out of there. This makes military sense, it doesn't make sense in a television show where large exploration ships are the primary vessels.
What is with this new RUclips Premiere system I keep seeing everywhere?
It allows you to see and chat before it goes live, if you look in the top right hand corner you can actually live chat.
@@LoreReloaded Hmmm... Don't see live chat option, on my phone. Eh, maybe I'm just tired.
Ahh, may not be on phones, you can go onto a computer and come chat ;)
@@LoreReloaded Nah, I've been up 30 hours, just got off a 16 hour shift, I'm going to bed, Lol. See you on the flipside :P
sleep well brother!
Thank you for making this video. This fighters were basically one shot kills for cadassian destroyers in the battle
Remote controlled phaser drones would have made FAR more sense. Imagine a dozen or more independently self governed AI pods each with it's own phaser bank, sheilds, and power core, about twice the size of a standard class 9 probe, being deployed from a ship. The ability to have a bunch of swarming weapons that can be programed to defend a ship or act as a micro armada in a crisis or ambush situation would have been a HUGE advantage. It Would have cost almost nothing in resources, easy to replicate since it would use off the self components, so you could keep making more of them in a seige scenario, and it would divide the enemies attention.
Heck, if they could seal off the wormhole with self replicating mines, I would think mass replication of those drones wouldn’t be much of a stretch
Remote controlled drones...not all that dissimilar from the Romulan marauder with holographic emitters on the hull?
It's just kind of part of the dramatic guidelines that drones in general aren't used for various reasons. They do for whatever reason tend to become sentient , get stupid, and/or go haywire, for instance. It's kind of a naval exploration/combat metaphor with all kinds of stories and stuff. Theorecticlly they could have everything all automated and sci-fi and just have Honor Harrington standing on a bridge being clever, but it's just kind of not what the show's about. :)
the main fleet ships already fight like fighters anyway. But fighters can be useful for area defense , police enforcement ( anti-piracy customs enforcement etc etc ) , ground support and strike
True, Star Trek do have some plot armor when it's needed. But so do Batman with his utility belt. Then there's Doctor Who with his infinite plot armor. The point I'm try to make is... some shows do have the right to use "power armor" in my opinion. But with moderation for the sake of not making a show totally ridiculous.
The Federation (or more properly Starfleet) fighters were never used as such in the few fleet engagements we see them in. They look like they were used like torpedo boats, rushing in shooting off photon torpedos and running away. A few fighters with 2 crew each blowing holes in several Galor class cruisers full of hundreds of personnel each may be suicide for the fighters, but a very good tradeoff considering how outnumbered Starfleet was during most of the Dominion War.
Here is how starfighters WOULD be very useful for the Federation if the Federation didn't have their heads up their anuses as per the usual.
1--They should field 2 types, a torpedo attack craft and a space superiority fighter
----The torpedo attack craft would be a large starfighter that would be more like a WW2 era motor torpedo boat in how it performs it's mission. Give it a shielding system that routes ALL shield power into only 1 axis of the shields (forward, dorsal, ventral, aft, port, starboard) so that only the side of the ship facing the opponent is shielded, but it's using all the power that would normally shield the entire craft (to give it reasonable endurance vs a couple of hits from heavy warship defenses). Give it phasers on par or slightly better than a runabout for defense against other small craft but it's primary anti-warship capabilities would be in launching large salvos of torpedoes at a capital ship. Now think of a flight of 3 or 4 of these or even a small squadron diving in on a capital ship with each craft letting lose a half dozen torpedoes in a few seconds before pulling out and sprinting out of weapons range. That's a hell of a lot of incoming torpedoes for any ship to deal with, especially if it's also engaging other federation starships. Alternately, these craft would function as heavy bombers against terrestrial targets when attacking planetary defenses or infrastructure.
------The other type would be the size of a large shuttle or runabout, with weapons and shielding meant to take on other fighter sized starcraft or aircraft if conducting planetary operations. These would defend the torpedo attack craft from rival fighters, help defend capital ships from threats such as Dominion attack craft, and of course be strike fighters with A2G and A2A capability in planetary engagements.
2--Several times the Federation comes across technology that helps a spacecraft avoid weapons lock on by targeting sensors, making it harder for these spacecraft to be targeted, particularly at longer ranges due to needing to fire dead reckoning. Obviously a starfighter is a prime candidate for such tech, it would allow them to get close enough to a capital ship to launch it's own weapons while having a very good chance of escaping as long as it doesn't get too close and doesn't linger near the ship for very long.
3--Federation has holographic projectors for starcraft, obviously fitting out all or just *SOME* starfighters in a squadron will give the rest of the fighters cover as the opposing starships divide their own defensive fire between the real starfighters and the holographic decoys
4--SCOUTING and Forward Observer missions, there are Fed weapons that technically have a longer range than the ship's own sensors could reliably reach for targeting data, if you have a few stealthy starfighters (with such small size, it should be possible to make them hard to detect without having to resort to Klingon/Romulan/Reman cloaking devices) who can advance on the threat, long range weapons can fired by federation starships at long range and guided to the target via the starfighters' own fire control computers. This is merely a ST version of current military networking systems like Link-16.
5--The starfighters can help find cloaked vessels and can help federation capital ships fight them. Federation ships under fire from cloaked enemies can deploy starfighters for assistance, particularly since, as started before, their sensors and targeting systems should be fully networked with their mother ship as well as all friendly ships since current military technology permits this in the real world. These little craft can participate in creating tachyon dragnets or at the very least, when the cloaked vessel fires or when a shot from any weapon impacts the cloaked vessel's shields, there are now multiple, maybe dozens of networked sensors and fire control that record it and presumably fire upon it and in the immediate vicinity of the recorded impact or weapon release point, greatly increasing chances that continued strikes against the cloaked vessel's shields keep it "lit up" and thus able to be continuously targeted since every possible vector from the last detected shield hit location be saturated with fire.
Torpedo bombers (let's call them that) based on real world history would probably not be flying in close to the ships they are attacking. They just need to get close enough that the target will not be able to maneuver out of the way of the torpedo before it hits. The original threat was torpedo boats (like PT Boats) that would approach with high speed and maneuverability to attack battleships. The big guns on a battleship were not suited to engaging such a threat so a new type of ship was developed or purposed - the destroyer (originally "torpedo boat destroyer") a fast maneuverable ship mounting sufficient deck guns to engage and destroy torpedo boats. They were effective enough in that role that nations turned to submarines to sneak close enough to launch torpedoes at enemy ships. The development of aircraft carriers just led to a different type of craft delivering the torpedoes.
The model there is that the carrier does not need heavy armour, weapons and shields as it is not intended to go into battle. It will instead escape, withdraw, stand off and launch its craft.
Torpedo bombers would lack the size to mount heavy shields but would have an advantage if not intended to operate far from a carrier - not needing to devote a large part of their volume to living quarters, life support, etc. A typical starship needs an engine room so that engine components can be removed and repaired. A torpedo bomber that breaks down may be towed back to its carrier for repairs in a hangar bay. This will make torpedo bombers smaller than a regular starship of similar mass. They should therefore be harder to hit. A star trek capital ship will have tremendous computing power and sensors for targeting the torpedo bombers but two can play the electronics warfare game. Maybe some torpedo bombers may be specialized for this role - not carrying torpedoes but accompanying the attack to scramble/distort sensor information as well as projecting holographic bombers. Instead of a squadron of distinct targets approaching, the torpedo bombers may appear as an indistinct cloud - the closer they get the better the targetting information will get but then they are getting closer to launch range.
The need to intercept the torpedo bombers before they get close might lead to battleships mounting more small point defense weapons and/or the development of dedicated interceptor craft (fighters) to stop the bombers. Gets you to the WW II roles of carrier based fighters intercepting attacking aircraft or screening your own attack craft from interception.
The threat and response can balance out. The tremendous accuracy of phasers would force torpedo bombers to launch their torpedoes earlier from longer ranges where most would likely miss (similar to WW II where anti-aircraft fire from ships was generally useless at actually shooting down attacking planes - but effective in defending ships; not contradicting myself there - the ineffectiveness at shooting down enemy aircraft was because aircraft would not get close to the ships they were attacking or would be spending too much time dodging to launch an accurate attack). It would change the nature of combat from what we see in shows and movies - but not necessarily unbalance it. Maybe a force of torpedo bombers alone might not be expected to succeed against a fleet with the most powerful capital ships - but if they can distract and tie down some of those ships while your own fleet of capital ships launches its attack.
I dug around memory alpha and found 3 prime technologies that should have low enough power requirements for small craft and also really help out starfighters' chances in attacking warships without being wiped out. Masking Circuitry, which makes a small vessel almost invisible to long range sensors and even shorter range sensors have trouble reliably identifying and keeping track of the vessel, monotanium hull coatings, which scatter targeting beams so that automatic phaser locks cannot be achieved, and as previously mentioned, hull mounted holographic decoy generators to provide ghost targets for the opponent to waste their defensive fire on. I think that would be a great way to go for starfighters in the ST universe, they don't require high power (warship power) phaser banks and shields, and can still be destroyed with just one or two strikes from a warship grade phaser array or a photon torpedo hit, but of course actually hitting the fighters becomes far more difficult, and small fighters can still pack a major punch with a sizable torpedo load. Because heavy warships have strong shields and are themselves highly fast and maneuverable, these technologies wouldn't make them sitting ducks against fighters, but would at least make fighters effective enough and survivable enough to legitimize them as potent weapons to be used in space combat instead of the afterthought that ST writers treat them as.
There is something else which would allow small fighters to attack a large ship. Multiple fighters coming in from multiple vectors so you have five or six fighters attacking in one direction and another group of fighters coming from another direction. The fighters are flying too fast for the targeting sensors to lock on and too many fighters so the phasers are outnumbered by the number of fighters you do this at multiple points of the ship and someone is going to get a hit.
I like every thing you said but untill other powers start useing fights as will a superiority fight is a was of time in space combat. As there are no other enemy fighters to tack on.
@@22steve5150 Sounds like a great gold-bricking strategy. If you notice, none of those 3 technologies made it into the mainstream of starfleet ships, indicating there is some inherent flaw in those technologies, (including political, ideological, or doctrinal).
I think Starfleet Academy mainly used the Peregrine type as an advanced trainer for Starfleet bridge officers to learn ship handling skills, at least until the Dominion War.
OMG, best swag promo ever. Cause science.
Ok, it's like, why purple?
Answer; because purple.
WTF, it makes no sense to me.
Because science?
The fun thing about starighters, is they make plenty of sense in a Zap Brannigan context. "On my command all ships will line up and file directly into the alien death cannons, clogging them with wreckage!"
Hahah “the Union inability to adapt to terrorist tactics”....., not like the bloody cardys didn’t have 50!!! Years of experience with terrorists lol you’d think they would learn
I always felt sorry for the fighter pilots in star trekDS9 favour the bold they where getting destroyed easily lol, most if not all where destroyed after getting one shotted by galor class
But when they swarm attack a target they can inflict heavy damage. On their target
Those fighters where very powerful in swarms, but.... if starfleet used i DUNNO DRONES!!!! they could have been very useful ? And you wouldn’t care if you lose them ????
i feel like those fighters would of done more damage if they just kamikazi the cardis.
Dan V haha yeah, always wondered too why starfleet didn’t design fleet buster weapons like the nuclear weapons of their day basically a warp core bomb fire it at a fleets and watch the fireworks bye bye birdi lol
Because Starfleet isn't military (remember Lore's rant about that one? LOL) hence why the Cardies were the first to come up with those unmanned self-sustaining orbital defense platforms of OMG!!!!! Or everyone's favorite -- self-sustaining/self-replicating mines around the wormhole designed by the non-Federation engineer Rom. Because Starfleet doesn't believe in autonomous defense systems....... they're not military and need the help of a 200 year old popsicle to design their modern warships.
Sometimes the writing for Trek just gives me a headache :P Though I suppose their aversion to automated defenses may stem from the Ultimate Computer incident where one machine was able to knock out 3 Starfleet heavy cruisers and probably would have done more damage if they didn't stop it. Probably why Picard didn't want Data to command his own ship during the Klingon civil war for the blockade action. We just can't trust those damn toasters!!!! XD
@@Marcus51090
Hypothetically, they could, but deliberately detonating a warp core counts as a subspace-damaging weapon (as seen in "Insurrection"), and those were banned under the Khitomer Accords. FYI, subspace-damaging weapons can make entire solar systems impassible to starships for centuries or longer.
sailordolly sounds a perfect weapon
I think swarms of Star fighter drones with cloaking technology and at least one devastating weapon (quantum torpedoes?) Would be highly effective in many tactical engagements. Launch 40-60 of these swiftly from the decks of a number of Akira class gunships and watch them quickly divide, disrupt, and destroy the advancement of even the most worthy of foes with minimal casualties. But that's just my impression.
I just have one question:
Sensors are pinpoint accurate with no delay, correct? But phasers are visible to the naked eye, meaning they travel under the speed of light, as the beam is not instantaneous.
So, having a smaller more maneuverable ship that can (in theory) dodge attacks, deal at least strafing damage or cause a distraction, and takes 2 men to pilot rather than 100 with vastly lowered resource costs to build, does make some sense for an underdog to use, doesn't it?
A: Bajorans were occupied, their planet strip mined, no materials to build anything bigger let alone their fights usually taking place in their system and atmosphere.
B: Maquis were utilising hit and run tactics on starships yes, but usually to distract them, divert them into the badlands where the environment destroyed them, or they were raiding planets so small, maneuverable ships makes sense.
C: Sacrifice of Angels they knew they were up against an enemy fleet of capital ships: if they hit that fleet head on with their own capitals that couldn't manoeuvre, they would have lost major resources and manpower.
Now I agree, particularly with sacrifice of angels, that to be a pilot in those ships was suicide... But in the same sense, they obviously thought it was worth it and would work
_"Sensors are pinpoint accurate with no delay, correct? But phasers are visible to the naked eye, meaning they travel under the speed of light, as the beam is not instantaneous."_
VFX are not considered highest canon in Star Trek for a reason: they are made to look cool more than to be accurate.
@@Idazmi7 fair call, but considering that is what is seen on screen, that is what we have as cannon.
Remember also that phasers are (as far as I can find) made of particles, not light, and so would still travel under the speed of light.
If they weren't, and were an instantaneous beam.... How could they ever miss? Ever?
+Sir Henry
_"If they weren't, and were an instantaneous beam.... How could they ever miss? Ever?"_
Interference, user error, computer error. 98% of the time, phasers don't miss.
@@Idazmi7 well no.
Interference yes, but then all beams would miss rather than just a few we see, which would make fighters a whole lot more viable in everyday fights.
User error yes, only if each target for every beam was put in manually, which it isn't since they have targeting scanners and lock on for both phasers and torpedoes. Most of it is automated.
Comouter error yes, but as with interference then all beams would miss, which is not seen, and would then discredit their pinpoint accuracy making fighters a viable option for war.
None of those, on their own, explain the occasional misfires.
The fighters' ability to even perform strafing damage is probably debatable. There is a place for maneuverable ships which is the function of the Defiant class of ships. They're small enough to be maneuverable but large enough to have the shields and armor that would keep it from immediately getting killed. You see that in the battle of Sector 001 where the USS Defiant is weaving around destroyed ships I'm guessing to mask its approach and then does a strafing run across the side of the Borg cube (they repeat the maneuver but are caught by the Borg tractor beam until Enterprise-E shows up).
I would argue that shuttles, Runabouts, the Delta Flyer are very effective.
I would love for you to look at other "starfighter" heavy franchises and how they use them like SDF Macross, B5 and Battlestar Galactiga.
Or the real big daddy Starfighter sci-fi franchise, Star Wars, where single seat fighters can kill anything up to and including planet size super weapons
I have loved Star Wars since I was a young kid and my dad would read the story book of A New Hope to me and my sisters as our bedtime story, but man are Starfighters stupidly broken OP in Star Wars. What is even the point in capitol ships at all in Star Wars? Star Fighters kill everything, so why bother with anything other than carriers?
@@weldonwin well I chose the three I did because they use space to their advantage and give unique design choices to improve space combat.
Incidentally, did you mean the original 70's Battlestar Galactica or the remade series?
@@weldonwin carryers and long space flight.
My headcanon, and I think this is backed up with the way starship fights play out on screen, is that for any weapon powerful enough to damage a capitol ship, there must be a split-second "warm up" between targeting and firing. So even with super-computers doing the targeting with pin-point accuracy, they still have to anticipate where the target will be after half a second, not where they are when they're targeted. This explains why "evasive maneuvers" actually works sometimes, and more often for a maneuverable ship like Voyager or the Defiant. A starfighter would be useful in a large battle partially because they're easily overlooked and able to avoid slower targeting systems, giving them windows for striking targets of opportunity--ships with weakened shields or unprotected ground targets.
I always found it interesting Kira missed the Jem Hadar fighter when the Odessey was destroyed and that no one commented on it .
Star ships with omni directional phaser banks can render the edge a star fighter might gain from its agility futile. They are not large enough to carry effective shields or generators for weapons. On their own they are an annoyance but when deployed along side a cruiser they have very potent potential for delivering photon torpedoes to areas of enemy ships that are less shielded. Shields are focused in the direction of an enemy cruiser's fire. "Fighters" should remain out of range and target neglected areas of the shields.
A use for fighters that never comes up is projecting a tachyon grid surrounding a capital ship to prevent a cloaked ship from getting close enough to fire its weapons undetected. Its true that one could do this with drones, but the drone would lack the ability to "Tag" a spotted ship and make it drop its cloak so weapons from the capitol ship could be locked.
I kinda thought of the possibility that they were operated autonomously being that they seemed to get blown up instantly and usually seemed like anyone ever acknowledged that anyone got killed on them.
We should probably take note of Janeway's advance shuttle with deploy-able armor that could pretty much solo a few Borg cubes. This does show that technology potentially could reach a point where small craft can hold their own as force multipliers.
In my view, the best use of small shuttles would be in orbital/planetary combat supporting planetary attack/defense forces.
In the game "Star Fleet Battles", fighters are treated more as Helicopter gunships as opposed to WW2 fighters; such ship usually are designed to support starships in combat rather than launch independent strikes. Later, "Fast Patrol Ships" (basically hot rod runabouts) are fielded that can act more independently.
Going off of what we see, I think we can assume some sort of sensor jamming and ECM being employed in those battles, which would make sense given how much weapons seem to miss, even at point blank range.
My theory is, if you get enough ships together, their collective jamming dramatically decreases sensor and targeting acuity, thereby making starfighters viable/not-suicidal. We only ever really see fighters being used en masse in major conflicts, likely for this reason.
It should also be noted that the Dominion utilized suicide charge tactics when the battle wasn't going their way, slamming their ships into enemies, which meant that smaller, more agile ships might by best to dodge. It also helps that the jem-hadar attack ships don't seem to be as accurate with their weapons, using pulse like blasts instead of beam type, reducing their overall accuracy or so it would seem.
You’re right about the idea of starfighters in Trek. It would make more sense to have star fighter drones trying to lure the Cardy ships out of position. It would fall better in line with Federation principles for the ultimate respect for life.
In later Trek shows it seems like the shuttles/runabouts have shields that can take multiple hits. So it would seem that a "starfighter' with the movement and defensive ability of the runabout when used in groups against a designated capital ship target might work and be cheaper than a Defiant type ship.
remember Wesley Crusher had join Nova Squadron at the Star Fleet Academy , and they flew the single seat star fighter , they got a team mate kill when they attempted a dangerous and prohibited flight maneuver
At least in the SFC games you had "suicide shuttles" which were shuttles loaded with explosives that would attempt to kamikaze into enemy vessels. They were generally pretty useless but they could be effective if you could get close enough and then launch when the enemy weapons were on cooldown or such.
The best illustration as to why they are so ineffective compared to phasers can be seen in the game Everspace. If you can shoot a weapon and have it produce a point that fixes its position on the target you can then control that point to follow it around everywhere it goes. The hardest part is getting the initial lock.
The runabout is basically just a larger shuttle, so you can carry more people and supplies, until and including TNG the shuttles aren't warp capable nor armed (one episode they specifically state they outfit one with phasers to find the null space pocket), the runabouts are, in VOY, the shuttles are capable of warp and are armed with both phasers and small photon torpedoes. Though vulnerable it does make sense for ships to use their shuttles in combat in some situations, like if they're up against a numerous enemy with smaller vessels, like the Kazon, or if it's a very close match between two large vessels, the firepower and additional targets could tip the balance in their favour, but these are not common circumstances.
I mean.. You're not wrong, but it's still fun to see 12 flights of Scorpion fighters spamming Heavy Plasma Torpedos to make everything die.
I think the best example or equivalent is how the Bismarck was sunk, by small planes equipped with torpedoes for a one shot. If they would load the fighters with torpedoes or mines and send them for attack waves it might work better. Also they should be unmanned and there is no reason for them not to be. Also if you ever played Star Trek games like star fleet command they made fighters work pretty well too
Except they basically don't do unmanned military stuff in Trek for various story/dramatic reasons. Not much drama in it, if nothing else. But the idea of waves of fighters following up volleys from starships and their own long-range torpedoes would make a whole lot of sense. It does seem that the busier a battle gets in Trek, the more everyone starts missing . You just don't want to set your fighters up like it's target practice.
Bismarck was not sunk by torpedo planes. It was sunk after hours of heavy shelling by battleships. However the decisive blow was the torpedo that hit the rudder. Which was a very lucky and very unlikely hit.
Propsal: Take a Norway Class vessel, refit the bay storage area to hold a wing of Valkyrie class fighters, assign it as a rapid response unit to isolated starbases near Federation protectorates in hot-spots near areas of contested territory.
Its a very specific use case, but I can see it being the basis for a decent story, especially if the fighter unit has some kind of sensor scattering tech that prevents larger ships from getting accurate phaser lock.
My personal theory is that star fighters worked best in swarms against larger dreadnoughts and capital ships, in the heat of large scale battles where they can quickly weave in and out enemy Lines. They're also effective when accompanied by larger ships, by having the ship (say an akira) accompanied by a squadron of fighters, the enemy ship will be too focused on the capital ship to effectively target the faster, fighters swarming it.
You overlooked that the Maquis used electronic countermeasures to interfere with targeting locks. There are also sensor absorbing materials that can interfere with sensors.
I'm not 100% sold on the accuracy of weapon systems. Yes, it may be plot armor but look at how well the Defiant and many other smaller destroyer class ships like the B'rel are able to avoid enemy fire. With proper support vessels throwing up ECM helping fighters, can increase their survivability. But the biggest advantage is the reason you stated, they are nothing more then canon fodder. The raw material used to produce a single heavy cruiser plus manning such a vessel, imagine all that diverted to just star fighters. An engagement scaled to equal resource ratio, star fighters would win with overwhelming numbers though their limitation is distance. They have their use but where never used properly in Star Trek AFAWK.
Equal resource ratio? So with equal you mean that you are only counting in firepower, and not adding the huge carrier ships necessary to transport the fighters? Or that if you want to get enough fighters, you need a carrier big enough that you cant afford any fighters?
@@ribbitgoesthedoglastnamehe4681
Well Starfleet already has ships capable of ferrying small vessels. I doubt it would take much to modify an existing ship like say the Nebula with a flight bay pod vs a tactical or science pod. But by the numbers, how many fighters could be made and piloted with the raw material and manpower of a Galaxy class? You essentially get better bang for your buck, the losses doesn't hurt you as much, at the price of versatility. In war time when resources are limited, fighters make sense and clearly someone in Starfleet thought so too to deploy them. They just didn't know how to use them it seems.
Here's another thing to think about. Approximately 98% of Starfleet vessels have their FTLs mounted on the OUTSIDE of the ship. and you don't even have to destroy a nacelle, just bend it out of the symmetry required to generate a warp field. Then you just pick at it as it tries to escape on impulse. The best thing would be to simultaneously hit a Trek ship just as it comes out of warp with missiles, fighters, and railguns. Since shields are tuned to deflect energy weapons, hit it from behind and you get past the nav deflectors, and hit it hard.
The best a Starfighter could do in star trek is to annoy capital ships and larger vehicles, even equipped with all torpedoes a star fighter was at best mediocre when compared to small, fast ships such as the Miranda class. other than use for scouting and harassment, a stafighter in star trek is pretty much useless.
if you had a small ship/fighter one light minute away from a large ship, assuming the smaller ship could adjust and accelerate its course every minute, the larger ship could never hit the small ship with pin point weapons because the small ship would always be an after image to the enemy ship, this was a problem german flak had trying to counter super fortress bombers, the flak would target one area of the sky and the bombers would make course changes now and then to evade the flak because while the planes took time to change course, the flak shells took even more time to climb the hundreds of yards to their designated target, so imagine how much more difficult for germans to hit a bomber with a non explosive warhead in this case, since no laser can move faster than light, it is impossible for any weapon to strike a target one light minute away sooner than one minute, the smaller vessel has the advantage because while it would be darn near impossible to hit a nimble object smaller than the head of a needle from the large ship’s perspective, the smaller ship has a larger, more cumbersome target to strike at, if the larger ship can still hit a small ship at 1 light minute away or 10 light minutes away, assuming both ships are using comparable aiming systems, the smaller more agile ship need only extend the range in the near limitless expanse of space to engage the large enemy ship, no matter what, you will get a problem where fighters prey on vulnerable capital ships like the Yamamoto getting eaten alive by fighters because even though the Yamamoto had stupendously accurate anti air craft weapons at 200 yards, they became increasingly less accurate trying to snipe a flying rice grain carrying a torpedo of death at 1000 yards. Just not a fan of star trek’s combat for all the pride they say they have for being realistic or practical, they neglected the basic principle of the speed of light, not to say most other sci fi series are better but I think star trek didn’t have fighters because it wasn’t part of the story, it wasn’t about a rogue hero in an independent ship fighting the world but a captain managing a crew/family and being responsible
Hmmm let me think, what is the most useless? Let hundred ppl die in a stupid fight with a miranda class ship or let 1-5 ppl die in a stupid fight with a starfighter... At least with multiple starfighter some could survive... But the miranda...There are just there for show the ennemy can kill something...
I suspect when weapon technology became dangerous enough for fighters (or strike craft) to have enough punch to damage or cripple a capital ship, then they become far more relevant. The question changes from "Is piloting a fighter a suicide mission?" To "Is Manning capital ships without fighter support a suicide mission?" It is feasible for the federation to create 1-2 man ships around the size of a runabout that packs enough of a wallop and sufficient shields to turn them into a threat that can't be ignored.
Then let's think about the Dominion: it became clear that small vessels like the Dominion Attack ship were serious threats to capital ships (poor Oddessy). Why not create a smaller vessel that could effectively Hunt the Attack Ships that ware smaller and cheaper to produce than the Definant Class, yet tough enough to fulfill its mission?
For all intents these could become the "Fighters" of Starfleet and other races.
In fact, races like the Klingons might relish the opportunity for personal honour.
And quantity has a quality all its own. Especially if you aren;t in a striaght up slugfest like it's really one on one, or twenty separate fights.
Starfighters could work on ships using bubble shields, especially if they used an ECM suite to disrupt the ship’s sensors. All you’d have to do is load them up with a pair of torpedos and then let them fly. They’d be hard to hit on approach, especially in enough volume to make a difference, and all they’d have to do is refrain from firing until they were within the ship’s shields. Then they’d just pick a structural weakness or subsystem, let their torpedos fly, and return to their carrier for repair, refuel and rearm. Rinse and repeat.
Yes, I just saw the STNG television trailer for the Conundrum episode. The Enterprise wiped out the opposing attacking fighter fleet as if they weren't there. That's not a war if you can't fight back. I don't think the engagement lasted 5 seconds. Maybe some of the personnel in the helm section of the ship didn't even notice the attack because the event was over before they could get into proper alert status.
Actually that 'enemy force' were vastly technologically-inferior: the fact they were fighters mattered less than that they had no shields or threatening weapons at all. In that episode a species with crazy telepathy but also was really technologically-inferior hoped to use the Federation's technology to defeat their enemies for them, so they did an elaborate setup.
The one thing I don't like about Treks after ST: TNG - if the shields are down, you are screwed!! In later treks, you have ships taking phaser and photon torpedo hits to the hull... A single photon torpedo would kill even the biggest ship like a Galaxy class ship. Especially on Voyager, they made torpedoes look like just kinetic impacters which they weren't!!! On Yesterday's Enterprise, a split second of Federation phasers to a BOP and it was destroyed as soon as its shields collapsed!!
Edit - In ST lore, it is all about power generation to keep the shields up that matters.
Was talking in the chat about this at the end of the premiere/stream, but I really didn't like the way the Federation handled the use of fighters in the Dominion War. As others pointed out in the chat, they kept tossing a pilot or two into a shuttle or runabout and would have a few of them joining the fray in every major battle, only for most of them to be blown up with a single hit or two (except for the ones with plot armor). More ships on the field is good (even if they aren't the most powerful) but my issue with it is that Federation vessels have been shown in several episodes through the various series to have REALLY damn good autopilot functionality and the autopilot was even shown once or twice to be capable of handling attacking and defensive roles. So just taking into account how many shuttles and runabouts a Galaxy Class can house, if they were going to use them in those big battles, it would have made more sense (to me anyway) if they had just emptied out their holds, put all the shuttles and runabouts in autopilot mode and used them as swarms of drone fighters. If they were still destroyed so be it, at least it wouldn't have wasted the lives of the Starfleet personal that were actually piloting in the series.
Anyway, good episode LR.
Minimum requirement for a usable fighter (imho):
- size of an aerowing or waverider
- LOW warp capabilities (just plug the warp engine of a Type 6 shuttle into it and call it a day, *maybe allow it to have warp 4 if you feel really generous).
- thick, multi-layered ablative armor as your very last safety roll on the dice
- shielding as strong as possible. Basically you need to cram a huge fusion generator into the hull and just strap a tiny cockpit to the front. Add some sarium krellite battery containers to the aft if needed to have some extra juice, or use the antiproton/beta-tachyon booster trick from TNG (hopefully without igniting your own shield bubble, og course)
- 8-10 photon/plasma/quantum torpedos, which can all be fired *AT ONCE*. No firing sequence, just use the targeting system to lock on yor target, tell the torpedos where to go, then dump them out, immediately engage warp speed and get the hell out of there! Do not even consider waiting for the warheads to do their job, just pray that you make it out of the attack alive.
Great video! I have often lamented the lack of starfighters in Trek with the associated take off and landing sequences and fancy flight maneuvers and maybe a flight stick with red trigger buttons and visual targeting gimmicks. I think the reason fighters are lacking from TOS is purely for the cost of the special effects at the time. They are missing from TNG because it started as a clone of TOS. If Nick Meyers had been in charge of TNG, he would probably have extended the naval references he brought to Wrath of Kahn and we would have seen fighters akin to PT boats from WWII, sleek swift craft with one or two chances to take down a capital ship. Stories reminiscent of submarines, of which Trek has a few, would have been more prevalent as subs are just PT boats under water. The original Battlestar had the fighters as Larson attempted to clone Star Wars, but they did not have the WWII fighter techniques upon which Lucas based the movements so we just saw a lot of straight line turbo thrusting which lived through the cancellation of the show to be seen again in Knight Rider.
I bet you think the reboot was an awesome idea. ;-)
I would think a Runabout with all the normal open space devoted to stuff that makes it more killy and survive longer would be a good 'fighter'. It might have a crew of two wishing their were in an escape pod for how little room they would have but it would be useful. Maybe.
Fighters in _Star Trek_ are ships like the _Runabout_ class or the _Perigen_ class, large ships that hold 2 or more pilots. The closest _Star Wars_ analog would be the Skipray Blast Boat. The closest Star Trek analog to something like a X-wing or a Y-wing would be those Starfleet Academy cadet trainers ("The First Duty"), or Bajoran sub-impulse raiders ("The Siege").
I find star fighters in ST to be more like the PT boats of WWII. Sure if directly hit they're done for. But for harassing larger ships, and going after soft targets then they can be effective.
In beta canon, in the game Star Fleet Academy, there was a Federation star-fighter in the line up. It was insanely fast and maneuverable. It could literally run rings around a Excelsior class.
1. Due to technical progress, everything gradually becomes smaller, just like our phones, until small fighters become so powerful that large ships become impractical in combat.
2. Star Trek generally assumes that defensive measures are superior to offensive weapons. IRL we see the opposite - even the heaviest tanks only have small parts of their hull protected against modern anti-tank weponary.
3. Species 8472 used fighters.
For fighters to make sense, there are two requirements:
1) the combination of their shields + maneuverability need to make them as survivable at _their own_ effective weapons range as a larger ship, and
2) they need powerful enough weapons to matter.
You might be able to argue about the second (for the record, the Galaxy class was supposed to carry multiple torpedo types, some more powerful than others), but point 1 is pretty clear: fighters have no maneuvering advantage at the ranges they're used at, since all Star Trek battles happen at no further than square-dance ranges.
One factor that I think is underappreciated in these discussions is the technical challenges posed for filming fighters pre-CGI against ships that by all rights should dwarf them. Sure, it could be done, but given the time and cost restraints on TOS, TNG and early DS9, I can see why they decided it was unfeasible.
I can see how 'fighters' could fit into a star trek battle, but it would be very niche. Recon is definitely a possibility, as would be torpedo strike (each fighter releasing a volley of 1-4 torps and then fleeing), and screening against torpedo bomber attacks.But to work out exactly how feasible, you'd need to have accurate stats about detection and engagement ranges, with Star Trek has always been a bit wibbly on.
Honestly, their best roles would be either as recon vessels, or quick hit-and-run attacks on very weak targets (ie: ground troops).
I think fighters make sense, especialy if they do not have a warpcore. They use up less crucial resources to be built than a photon torpedo, as they do not require any antimatter or any other exotic material. Add some emergency teleporters to save the crew and maybe some sensor scrambler to make it harder to get a clear target lock, and suddenly its not such a bad idea to trade them for photon torpedoes.
But they do not only add surviveability to your fleet by eating torpedoes, they are also an additional defensive layer against kamikazee-jem'hadar. Also if a significant amount of them manage to break throught the enemy line, those enemy ships suddenly need to redirect some power to their aft shields and weapons, as the fighters are just annoying enough, that they cannot be ignored.
I'm not a major proponent of fighters. But, they would have a few advantages to go with the flaws noted.
First, they are fast and maneuverable at sublight, this makes a target lock harder - though by no means impossible.
Second, they can get right on top of an enemy ship. A weapon can't target something right beside it. Or otherwise in a blind spot.
Third, they serve as a defense against Hideki or Jem'Hadar Attack Ships attempting #2 above.
During the Borg incursion the Mars Defense Perimeter had drones that look like the Soliton Wave Rider. Discovery had Klingon fighters but they are death traps.
Only in ST Beyond did we see fighters effective in swarm tactics.
It would work if there were carrier ships that had the ability to carry hundreds of attack ships, utilising massive, simultaneous attack runs or other types of calculated swarm tactics. But that gets added to the production budget!
I think one of the reasons why starfighters are not part of the original Star Trek is because the Star Trek concept was based on a World War II Navy analogy. The Enterprise was a battleship. The romulans were a submarine.
This concept of starfighters didn't mature until Star Wars, which was an analogy for the air battles of World War II.
Would have to agree with the sentiment of this video. A better use of Runabouts and fighters would be to treat them similar to torpedo boats during WW2. Long range (relatively) independent recon units for comerce raiding and movement of small specialist units for spec ops. At all costs avoid capital ships.
For comparison the UNSC did the same thing as the Federation small craft like the Long Swords were designed for the destruction of enemy ground targets. Then the Covenant showed up and the need for interceptors became a new directive to help counter act the sheer number of hostiles. With the Dominion it was the same way as they could build small attack ships in huge numbers. Also lets not forget the Federation had a far larger pool of personnel to bring to bear. That's why they became a dominant superpower by the end of the war, where as the Klingons were decimated and would take decades to recover.
In the TOS era, big starships moved like big starships. But starting with TNG, starships three times the size of the original Enterprise are flitting about with more maneuverability than an F-16. If the weapons are pinpoint accurate, and capital ships can turn on a dime, then they've effectively become giant fighters anyhow. I love Trek, but combat through the years just got dumber and dumber.
maingun07 : Agreed.
I think we just never see the "Lower Decks" like in TNG or the Grunts on the Ground like in "The Siege of AR-558" in DS9 very often. You become very fragile when you don't have plot armor to protect you :D
In small groups it would be suicidal, but what about in waves such as Swarm Logic? IE 30 fighters vs one Excelsior. The Excelsior's Phaser Banks are highly accurate but their rate of fire is actually relatively low. An example might be the destruction of Enterprise in the alt timeline.
There a few non-plot armor examples of fighter size weapons platforms being extremely effective in the Star Trek universe. The Cardassian Union orbital weapons platforms, the drones in Next Generation episode 'The Arsenal of Freedom' (around the size of a person), species 8472 bio-ships (single occupant). The in-universe logic is if the technology is advanced enough, the systems can be small enough to make a small ship or fighter viable.
Arrays have the ability to fire at multiple targets. It would need to be a pretty large group, before accuracy became a problem. Since they take far less power to destroy, they should be able to take out a rather large number at once.
This is an interesting thing to explore in a Star Trek versus Star Wars scenario. Would star fleet captains know how to contend with the Empire fielding tie fighters since the whole point of those is to swarm the enemy with numbers with little regard to losses
i would say they have the capability. we know how fast phaser strips recharge and that torpedos ca have insane blast radius. can the captain/tactical officer keep his cool though, thats not something i can say
The accuracy of phasers makes starfighters iffy in trek. Unless you are the Delta Flyer. Which is basically the same size as some of the fighters we see. Fighters make some sense against the Dominion though. They use lots of small, weekly shielded ships that mostly fire forward. The Jem Hadar ships basically functioned as heavy fighters, and something that could outmaneuver them could be affective.
I wasn't sure if I had commented here and these seem to bubble up way after the fact. But my one counter would be from Star Trek Insurrection. Where fighter sized vessels fired tachyon barrages to make larger ships have to lower and reset their shields. This tactic with just a hint of stealth technology would mean they fly in being harder to detect while the capital ships approach. You are looking at big ships and targetting them. Not searching for needles in the haystack as it were. The fighters unload salvos to lower enemy vessel shields making them vulnerable right at the beginning of the engagement. If they can come in for more sweeps as the ships close and mix it up it could come down to who has the fighter advantage. This technique however only works in a full engagement and as long as that shield weakness exists. After that they return to be ablative meat.
There is a bit of inconsistency especially in terms of what 'fighter' means. In particular in DS9 there are times when things like the Jem Hadar Attack ship, the B'rel and the Hideki class are presented as physically comparable to something like the miranda class, and sometimes they seem to operate like the peregrin are presented. If you go back and look at shots from DS9 you will see shots of ships that canonically are much larger then the peregrin, being shown in similar fashions during the dominion war, specifically the Brel alongside larger Klinon warships, and the Jem Hadar Attack ship and Hideki along side dominion forces. We know if you actually look at established numbers in the lore these ships are significantly bigger and more capable then a peregrin fighter, but they are presented to be comparable. Then there is the fact that the 'maquis raider' is supposed to be a peregrin class 'fighter' but in voyager, there was something like 30 crew on the Val Jean instead of like 2 or 3. So exactly what the Peregrin actually is is confusing. If its a 30+ crew starship then its a useful craft in war that is agile and can take multiple hits from capital ship phasers and do signficant but not huge damage back, especially in numbers. But if its the canonical tiny one or 2 man fighter craft with sub capital weapons (micro torpedos and lower type phasers) then its not. Though the cannon says its the latter, the way it was actually presented on screen means its more of the former. Also while in the Dominion war footage you see peregrins getting ripped through by phaser and torpedo fire, you see that for basically everything, its clear the show runners wanted the drama of explosions, everything from miranda to galaxy class ships seemed to be lined with explodium for those big set piece battles.
Used in massive numbers, say like ww2 style, where a 4 carrier fleet would send upwards of 3-400 planes to attack specific targets, could theoretically cause significant damage, but that requires a different stage of sacrifice, one I don't think fits in the original cannon.
I like to think, although it’s never clearly stated or stated at all, that starfighters have sensor disrupting shields or armor that makes them harder to lock onto
There's a beautiful scene in TNG where the Enterprise vaporized a hand full of fighters in an instant in the episode Conundrum. Granted those fighters were technologically primitive, but from what we see, the Enterprise wasn't firing at full strength and based on evidence from the Dominion war, a group of Peregrines wouldn't fair much better if the Enterprise were to fire at full strength.
Having been a fan of Starfleet battles back in the day, I'm of the opinion that starfighters do provide some advantages, but drones can do pretty much everything a starfighter sized ship can do and do so without risking a living pilot.