Battleships and carriers

posted on February 21st, 2014, 8:39 pm

Iv wondered this for a while but why do you think the creators of star trek left out carriers in favor of battleships.

Battleships became redundant since 1944 on the seas in favor of carriers for good reason, they are massive targets that you cannot miss. Doesn't it seem more logical for that same reason to exist in space combat, a carrier would be a far better choice in that regard as it launches a ton of fighters or bombers that are fast,small and agile. Impossible to hit in manual fire and surely it would take a hell of a lot longer for any computer to get a lock on such a small craft torpedoes would miss 99.9% of the time as would disruptor's unless you got really lucky so why do you think carriers were never introduced in the star trek universe in any of the Tv shows or films.

You saw fighters in the last battles in DS9 and how effective they turned out to be, iv been thinking about this for a couple of days and have been arguing with my self over why they picked battleships so often like the deridex and how scared all the crew would get when one decloaked but it would be far more terrifying if the deridex was a massive carrier and had like 100 fighters/bombers that could all spam torpedoes as well because seeing a volley of 100 torpedoes being fired towards what always looked like the bridge would instill alot more fear than a volley of 1-5 from one large ship.

posted on February 21st, 2014, 9:02 pm

Like a lot of quirks originating in early Trek, I'm sure it was budget reasons. The transporter was invented because they couldn't afford to film a shuttle landing every episode. Most aliens looked like humans because they couldn't afford the makeup and prosthetics. It's unlikely they could have afforded the models needed to have carriers with fighters.

An in-universe reason could be that the Federation and other factions simply chose to focus in other areas. Torpedoes can be compared to cruise missiles, for instance. The range advantage of using fighters is also largely irrelevant when using light-speed weapons like phasers or seeking weapons like torpedoes.

Battleships became redundant since 1944 on the seas in favor of carriers for good reason, they are massive targets that you cannot miss.

Carriers are usually the same size as or bigger than battleships. Their real advantage was that they could use fighters to attack from outside of the enemy's range and they weren't affected by treaties limiting the number of battleships a nation could have.

posted on February 21st, 2014, 9:39 pm

Their real advantage was that they could use fighters to attack from outside of the enemy's range and they weren't affected by treaties limiting the number of battleships a nation could have.

Well i think it was more or at least alot to do with submarines that caused the decline in battleship, a carrier has protection from subs with helicopters and jets equipped with radar and with those aircraft a much wider range in searching for them, a battleship never did.

Altho a bit later in time but still relevant was the sinking of the belgrano by the British submarine HMS conqueror during the falklands war, previously named the USS Pheonix an old ww2 type cruiser (altho it looks more like a battleship) sold to the Argentinians. It was sunk with ease and they didn't even know what was happening at the time but its size made it impossible to miss. A ship of that size just cant be missed and it cant out manoeuvre a torpedo because its too large i see your point about the budget but they had much larger budgets in the later startreks with picards star trek,DS9 and voyager yet still never saw any carriers only ever big ships. I think DS9 had the biggest CGI budget by far so i would have expected them to try something new after they tried the skin type shields rather than bubble shields as it was in all previous star treks.

posted on February 21st, 2014, 9:44 pm

While I do believe that much of the actual reasoning is as Cabal pointed out, it has always seemed to me that fighters in Star Trek would be minimally effective. It is also difficult to draw parallels between space combat and terrestrial naval combat when the speeds and ranges of the different craft are so gigantic.

Fighters or other aircraft serve a unique tactical purpose on an ocean because they can occupy a greater volume of the battlefield (the air above), operate with the timeless "high ground" advantage, can get to the enemy faster via their high speed and can discharge weapons which will destroy an enemy ship with a handful of shots.

None of those fighter/small craft advantages would be true in space. Battleships or other combat vessels would have all the capabilities of fighter aircraft in space multiplied by a few factors in regards to power, protection and range .

Undoubtedly, space fighters would be short ranged and have inferior power sources to their battleship counterparts. If, like in Star Wars, some fighters had warp/hyperdrive, it would certainly be of lesser power or endurance compared to capital ships. Similarly true regarding weaponry. Both Star Trek and Star Wars fighters/shuttlecraft exhibit these inferior characteristics.

Targeting of fighters might be the only real issue for a capital ship. I never really understood why Star Wars only had turbolasers or laser cannons as a defense against fighters and an offense against other capital ships. It seems like they could have developed some more powerful and precise weapons, such as missiles or torpedoes. (I know they have both in Star Wars, but they are never on-screen employed by capital ships.)

It seems that if today we have missiles and advanced guns which can target aircraft and missiles moving at Mach 2+, why would futuristic space weapons be unable to do the same against the fighters of their time?

posted on February 21st, 2014, 9:55 pm

i see your point about the budget but they had much larger budgets in the later startreks with picards star trek,DS9 and voyager yet still never saw any carriers only ever big ships.

I have not watch a whole lot of DS9, so I cannot speak to the use of fighters there, but there are a couple reasons for the lack of fighters.

TNG was very much like TOS in overall plot and episode themes: problems for the crew of the Enterprise to solve. Obviously, a bit more about morality and social problems than war. Although there were war-themed episodes and battle sequences, budgets were a concern as well as the focus on the story rather than the action. Not to say that they could not have thrown fighters and a carrier in some battle somewhere... it was never important to the episode structure to do so. There were a couple episodes with small craft that could be construed as fighters, but they were never really seen in the capacity you were talking about.

VOY was almost exclusively Voyager lost and alone, trying to get home. With not many other ships (normal, known races) encountered there wasn't a great opportunity to include fighters. Could it have been done somewhere, sure. But again, it was never important to the story.

DS9 and Star Wars share the "epic battle" sequences and thus DS9 had perfect reason and opportunity to include something like fighters, but again... probably wasn't in the budget. Heck, they had to use 80+ yr old ship classes for mainstays of the Federation fleet (Excelsior and Miranda/Soyuz), not surprising that new fighters and carriers were not a priority. Which is unfortunate.

posted on February 21st, 2014, 10:38 pm

Well i think it was more or at least alot to do with submarines that caused the decline in battleship, a carrier has protection from subs with helicopters and jets equipped with radar and with those aircraft a much wider range in searching for them, a battleship never did.

Altho a bit later in time but still relevant was the sinking of the belgrano by the British submarine HMS conqueror during the falklands war, previously named the USS Pheonix an old ww2 type cruiser (altho it looks more like a battleship) sold to the Argentinians. It was sunk with ease and they didn't even know what was happening at the time but its size made it impossible to miss. A ship of that size just cant be missed and it cant out manoeuvre a torpedo because its too large

Battleships do make rather large targets, but they're actually surprisingly fast since they can mount very large and powerful engines. The USS Enterprise (CVN-65) nuclear supercarrier could only be matched for speed by battleships. Carriers would definitely have an easier time hunting subs, though, since their aircraft allow them to cover a very large area.

posted on February 22nd, 2014, 6:55 am

I think the dynamic's in space combat just completely change. tis a lot of advantages that are simply lost when you get to space combat. but I think the thing that always put the nail in the carriers coffin for me in star trek, is shields. small craft / fighters just don't have the fire power to damage larger battle ships.

posted on February 22nd, 2014, 10:48 am

i think poxsibly a coulple of reasons
1) mainly federation and they were explorers and scientist there first 'warship' was the defiant i think
2) due to most/all races having shields then they need powerfull weapons to actually punch though and maybe fighters were not upto the challenge
3) fighters are 2 easily destroyed there computers are quite advanced and appear to be able to lock on objects rather quickly

posted on February 22nd, 2014, 2:58 pm

I think the dynamic's in space combat just completely change. tis a lot of advantages that are simply lost when you get to space combat. but I think the thing that always put the nail in the carriers coffin for me in star trek, is shields. small craft / fighters just don't have the fire power to damage larger battle ships.

Got to disagree with that, fighters and bombers can be equipped with torpedo tubes, photon torpedos have the ability to wipe out a city, i don't see how you can say a small craft with the ability to wipe out multiple citys as not having the fire power to deal damage. Small craft numbers would number in the hundreds 100 photon/plasma or the more advanced quantum torp would easily knock out any battleship in fact that sort of dps could probably drop a cube.

A carrier doesn't only have to be carrying small fighter or bomber craft either, it could drop multiple defiant or bird of prey class ships into battle.

Air craft carriers on the sea are mostly unarmed with out a few automated guns for defense that shoot down in coming missiles, but a space carrier could be equipped with phasers, torpedoes, disruptors so not relying completely on its drop ships.

Also unless the computers can predict the unpredictable human movement since fighters and bombers are going to be piloted ,manually i don't see how they could ever get a 100% lock on them, they are too small too fast and agile to hit like that, even giving the pilot a moments notice of incoming fire and similar to the battlestar galactica fighters could instantly alter course and go up or down or side to side in an instant as there is no air resistance or gravity to fight with in space there for in my opinion even phasers would have a hard time hitting them.

In the fights in DS9 not that many fighters were actually hit and the ones that were got in really close and only ever killed by the cardasian phaser fire which imo was totally unnecessary and i also think they were just killing some fighters for dramatic effect not only for the coolness of explosions but because each fighter exploding was a person dying.

posted on February 22nd, 2014, 7:42 pm

I think it depends greatly on the mechanics of your science fiction universe: in some universes, defensive technology has outstripped weapons technology and vice versa. In real life we have no such thing as a shield that can block attacks. Maybe a tank vs a machine gun will be okay but there is no tank that can withstand a weapon designed to destroy it. The best defense is to not get hit, which means moving the battle away from your assets. The reason carriers have replaced battleships is because they don't actually show up to the battle.

If mankind does develop space weaponry, I expect it would be so destructive and long range that ships would never mount such a thing as armor plating, and if we do invent energy shielding it would not be expected to stop weapons fire. In this situation fighter carriers are the only thing that makes sense (Ender's game)

As for torpedoes on fighter craft, I agree with you eraldorh, that if fighter craft could fire photon torpedoes then why not use them all the time. I once heard the perfect explanation by another star trek fan, which was "It's like if the US navy had their carriers deploy a bunch of rubber rafts, each with a single tomahawk cruise missile on it and that let them fire more missiles at once"

I think that the only explanation that makes sense is that torpedoes, at least the big ones that Star Trek battleships fire, are supposed to be huge and require a complex charging mechanism that prevents their use on fighter craft. For example, some sources list the runabout as having "micro photon torpedoes," indicating that although they're the same technology they are a scaled down version that can't really damage a battleship. When the show let us see a torpedo up close, it was an 8-dt metal cylinder that gives the impression that it could be mounted under a fighter's wing, but I I think it could not be fired that way. We also saw a warhead in voyager that could destroy an entire city and it was only 4 ft long but I think this was only cheating the lore a bit for budget reasons. That, or these shields are able to withstand explosions in space that would destroy a city if they occurred in an atmosphere. It is true that explosions and shockwaves have much more effect in a stronger medium such as air or water, so maybe something that can level a planet couldn't penetrate a shield in a vacuum.

posted on February 22nd, 2014, 8:04 pm

There's just so many reasons fighters don't work in space, I can't even keep track of them without hunting down a quarter dozen different sites so I won't be participating much but if you can get a little shell with an engine, basic life support and some boom strapped to the side into space, you might as well ditch all that nauseatingly heavy and expensive crew and its amenities and swap them with some electronics that probably weigh even less than a single pilot, giving you more room for the boom while also making the thing a disposable missile bus.
Or you could just take the engine and strap all your necessary boom directly onto that, meaning that your payload now no longer requires its own propulsion, making the thing more powerful while actually letting you carry even more of them! Since you're in space, there's no real issues with getting your cargo over any horizons like WWII carrier launched fighters, unless you're in low orbit over a sizeable body, in which case, given that I'm almost sure ST tech doesn't have to worry about communication shadows, the aforementioned bus would do, assuming you didn't have anything else you could send. And did I mention the thing would be disposable? Probably next to worthless, with a replacement getting pulled out of a replicator and having the few extra components you couldn't replicate bolted on in what would probably be minutes.

posted on February 22nd, 2014, 8:10 pm

He does have a point...what use is having the fighter craft come back? It would probably be easier to melt down a damaged one and re-replicate it than to repair it. And if you it doesn't have a pilot or come back to the ship, its called a missile.

posted on February 22nd, 2014, 8:36 pm

...its called a missile.

At orbital velocities, everything's a missile.
And it hits faster than you can say "Divine Wind."

posted on February 22nd, 2014, 9:12 pm

Well then i have another more imaginative thought, carriers that launch drones, remote piloted by a super computer or by the crew within the carrier, each drone being a essentially a torpedo it self that rams the target using a shaped charge explosive to transfer all explosive energy into the targets shields or hull. Or just regular drones, no need for life support or any life saving equipment that takes up space or room for a pilot just more room for a power plant and weapons or just simply weapons to inflict more damage. In DS9 those cardasian turrets were remote POWERED by another platform nearby the same could be done using a carrier as the power transfer. Those turrets had the capability to put a hole in the side of a galaxy class ship.

Iv got to say that if i worked on the star trek set i could have come up with far more imaginative ideas for ships and weapons.

posted on February 22nd, 2014, 9:18 pm

Well, it all comes down to opportunity cost. You could do some pretty sweet things it sounds like, but what would have to be removed to make room?

One series that I wish had gone farther was stargate universe. They had an awesome premise and technology, they just messed it up with thoroughly unlikable characters. I wanted them all to die, which made it a bit difficult to feel the dramatic tension