The Wet Rag Speaks Out...

[Patrick Degan]

I'm sorry, but even if the Federation had the time to get its act together and mobilise the resources of all its worlds, you're still talking about the full industrial output of 150 worlds v. the full industrial output of 1-12 million worlds. The situation would be roughly akin to the Lakota Sioux v. the United States Army or the Zulus v. the British Empire.

The Federation's best bet would be to build hundreds of ships on the Defiant pattern; restructured so that only a crew of ten would be required to run them and for every available cubic metre of internal volume to be packed with high-yield antimatter missiles, with multiple launchers; with a powerful destruct charge to be used in a suicide manoevuer.

Even then, the force disparity is far too great for the UFP to overcome in a full-scale war. They'll put up a better fight, inflict more casualties. But the Empire won't be deterred by casualties. They will do whatever is necessary to win, and expect their choices to be determined wholly by the most ruthless conception of military pragmatism.

And if the "kironide option" was so readily available, why didn't the Federation use it against the Dominion? Sorry, but that's right down there with the time travel strategem —theoretical but practically useless.

[Sabastian Tombs]

Take some Vulcans and Betazeds.
Inject them with kironide.
Wait six to eight hours.

Source: ST:TOS Plato's Stepchildren

Note: A single Platonian was strong enough to hold the Enterprise in orbit, and to block all communications between the Enterprise and Starfleet Command.

How would he do that when he's been vapourized by heavy turbolaser bombardment of the surface?

Thats why you have several thousand of them scattered all over the fleet. However, there does seem to be one advantage the Sith have that the Federation can't duplicate. Straight Extra-Sensory Perception (i.e. clairvoyance, precognition, etc). The Federation has telepaths, and they can manufacture psychokinetics, but the only way they can get powerful ESPers is to take a weak ESPer, ram 'em into the barrier at the edge of the galaxy and hope they live through the experience. (As I recall from Where No Man Has Gone Before , between the Valiant and the Enterprise, there were sixteen people with high ESP scores. Thirteen of them died from contact with the barrier. Only one on the Valiant and two on the Enterprise live through the contact, and they all three went power-mad after the experience.

Anyway, my point is that the Siths' ability to know what the Federation will do ahead of time, joined with the Empire's production capability could very well nullify Federation mass-produced psychokinetics. A lot would depend on what kind of intelligence the Federation's telepaths can gather.

[Darth Wong]

How would he do that when he's been vapourized by heavy turbolaser bombardment of the surface?

Thats why you have several thousand of them scattered all over the fleet.

Baaad idea. Let's imagine that your silly idea works AWAY FROM THAT ONE PLANET (big leap there). Let's say that there's a ship in the fleet with a TK on it who can immobilize an ISD (again, big leap; an ISD is a helluva lot bigger and harder to hold in place than the E-Nil). What would happen? The ISD would be immobilized relative to the Fed ship holding the TK. This means that the Fed ship holding the TK would also be immobilized relative to the ISD! Swing those heavy turbolaser turrets around boys, we've got a sitting duck at 10 o'clock!

However, there does seem to be one advantage the Sith have that the Federation can't duplicate. Straight Extra-Sensory Perception (i.e. clairvoyance, precognition, etc). The Federation has telepaths, and they can manufacture psychokinetics, but the only way they can get powerful ESPers is to take a weak ESPer, ram 'em into the barrier at the edge of the galaxy and hope they live through the experience. (As I recall from Where No Man Has Gone Before , between the Valiant and the Enterprise, there were sixteen people with high ESP scores. Thirteen of them died from contact with the barrier. Only one on the Valiant and two on the Enterprise live through the contact, and they all three went power-mad after the experience.

Note that their godlike status is also somewhat dubious. We never saw any of them doing such remarkably things that you would call them godlike. Some TK, surviving a hit from a phaser rifle, etc. There was an implication that their powers would grow beyond those levels, but we never actually saw it. The guy was ultimately killed by a falling rock, and the girl died of non-obvious wounds.

Anyway, my point is that the Siths' ability to know what the Federation will do ahead of time, joined with the Empire's production capability could very well nullify Federation mass-produced psychokinetics. A lot would depend on what kind of intelligence the Federation's telepaths can gather.

The fact that the Siths have a huge fucking fleet with enormously powerful weapons is another minor advantage too.

[Sabastian Tombs]

And if the "kironide option" was so readily available, why didn't the Federation use it against the Dominion? Sorry, but that's right down there with the time travel strategem —theoretical but practically useless.

Face it. Anyone one of us, equiped with the full power of Star Trek's backstory, could have ended the Dominion War by lunchtime.

This may be the reason why none of us are professional writers for Star Trek .

[Ender]

. Hm... The Voyager armour is a good start, but what can be done to increase it's strength?

The Voyager armor runs entirely contrary to my advice. HTe Batmobile armor, when energized, uses replicators and transporters to cover the ship in armor and then runs an extremely high power SIF field through it. And damage done is fixed on the fly by way of replicators and transporters. It's not that the stuff is all that tough, it is just easily replaced. As a result, it is incredibly energy intensive, and exactly the opposite of what I reccomend.

Perhaps... What if you "infused" a metaphasic sheild into the armour? We don't know what the armour's made of, but we could add to it's strength by meshing it, right? Then again, we don't even know if we CAN mesh it.

I believe you refer to running a SIF field through it. This is already done.

Star Trek Australia. Com has several designs of Dagger-designed Federation starships. They're all small attack craft like the Defiant. Did you read Lord Wong's posting on this? Perhaps using masses of Federation fighters and light strike craft (supported by slightly bigger ships that are essentially flying torp batteries) would allow the Feds to even the odds? They can't go toe-to-toe with them with cap ships, but masses of smaller ships, carrying heavily powered up torps in huge clusters of tubes might do the trick?

The problem is that Wars fighters carry far more powerful then Feddie Tac fighters and their fighter grade missiles are alot more powerful then torps. And SW fighters can't do squat against their cap ships. Wong is correct in that that is a better attack plan, but I question the ability of those fighters to do any signifigant damage.

[Patrick Degan]

However, there does seem to be one advantage the Sith have that the Federation can't duplicate. Straight Extra-Sensory Perception (i.e. clairvoyance, precognition, etc). The Federation has telepaths, and they can manufacture psychokinetics, but the only way they can get powerful ESPers is to take a weak ESPer, ram 'em into the barrier at the edge of the galaxy and hope they live through the experience. (As I recall from Where No Man Has Gone Before , between the Valiant and the Enterprise, there were sixteen people with high ESP scores. Thirteen of them died from contact with the barrier. Only one on the Valiant and two on the Enterprise live through the contact, and they all three went power-mad after the experience.

Note that their godlike status is also somewhat dubious. We never saw any of them doing such remarkably things that you would call them godlike. Some TK, surviving a hit from a phaser rifle, etc. There was an implication that their powers would grow beyond those levels, but we never actually saw it. The guy was ultimately killed by a falling rock, and the girl died of non-obvious wounds.

Not only do you have a high death-rate simply trying to "manufacture" psionics from this method, not only is their "godlike" status questionable, their long-term survival is also highly doubtful. The visual evidence from "Where No Man Has Gone Before" shows that Gary Mitchell's enhanced psi-abilities were also burning out his body; ageing him at a massively accelerated rate. Even if he had managed to avoid having the big rock dropped on him, he wouldn't have lasted more than a few days. Neither would've Elizabeth Dehner.

[Neko_Oni]

I think that as others have stated, the problem with ST ships is that they try to do to much at once. Half Science Vessel, Half Explorer, Half Warship and Half Luxury Passenger Liner. To even dent GE ships they need some dedicated warships. Lose the creature comforts and go back to spartan quarters. Put a massive library in the computer or something to make up for the lack of Holodeck (those things are lethal anyway).

If anyone remembers the series Macross, I think this shows how the Feds should go. The infamous 'Macross Missile Massacre' using Q-Torps. Unfortunately the resupply issues associated could be problematic given the speed of Warp Drives. Mount small Phasers for attacking fighter craft.

Also stated, stop using force fields to hold the ships together and actually design them with some inherent structural strength. In addition there must be a way to design things like Warp Cores so that when power is lost they automatically shut down (like that Fission reactor where the control rods are suspended over the core by electro-magnets which are powered by the reactor itself. Hence a coolant loss means the power is cut and the control rods drop into the reactor).

The reduction in power hungry things like Holodecks, Replicators (maybe a few for important stuff), countless force fields will free up more reactor power for engines, and weapons. Whether this will help or not is debatable but it's a start at least.

[Patrick Degan]

Also stated, stop using force fields to hold the ships together and actually design them with some inherent structural strength. In addition there must be a way to design things like Warp Cores so that when power is lost they automatically shut down (like that Fission reactor where the control rods are suspended over the core by electro-magnets which are powered by the reactor itself. Hence a coolant loss means the power is cut and the control rods drop into the reactor).

The reduction in power hungry things like Holodecks, Replicators (maybe a few for important stuff), countless force fields will free up more reactor power for engines, and weapons. Whether this will help or not is debatable but it's a start at least.

Unfortunately, this means that the Feddies would all have to go back to engineering school. After having first, of course, rediscovered logical engineering principles to begin with. Unfortunately, the Federation's particular brand of technological Lysenkoism has pretty much foredoomed the effort.

[Master of Ossus]

The real problems that the Federation has against the Empire come down to a couple of things.

1. Power Generation.
2. Firepower.
3. Shield strength.
4. Speed.
5. Numbers.

Many of these are interelated. In order for the Federation to stand a chance, they need to increase their speed, firepower, and shield strength by at least two orders of magnitude. In order to do this, they probably need to stop using M/AM reactions to power their warp cores, as they simple do not have the power to crank out phaser shots strong enough to damage large SW ships. My guess is that they need to stop using phasers in combat and rely completely and totally on torpedoes, as they are significantly more powerful than their phasers. Also, while these weapons are more powerful than phasers, they also do not appear to draw large amounts of power directly from the ship itself. By using torpedoes exclusively, the Federation could both boost its firepower, and also increase the amount of energy their ships could spend on their shields. That would not in and of itself solve the problem (by a long shot), but it would help and it would be very easy to do.

[Knife]

Now if they can get the kinks worked out, isokinetic cannons might be effective. They were designed to fight heavily armored and shielded craft. Course then you have to define heavily armored and shielded, as the armor and shields on the strongest Trek ships pale in comparrison to the Warships used by the Empire. Another alternative is to spiral the strips. As power is in part dictated by the length of the strips, winding them in a spiral fashion would allow for greater length in a smaller area.

Thank you Ender, for this and everything else. Hm... The Voyager armour is a good start, but what can be done to increase it's strength?
Perhaps... What if you "infused" a metaphasic sheild into the armour? We don't know what the armour's made of, but we could add to it's strength by meshing it, right? Then again, we don't even know if we CAN mesh it.

Star Trek Australia. Com has several designs of Dagger-designed Federation starships. They're all small attack craft like the Defiant. Did you read Lord Wong's posting on this? Perhaps using masses of Federation fighters and light strike craft (supported by slightly bigger ships that are essentially flying torp batteries) would allow the Feds to even the odds? They can't go toe-to-toe with them with cap ships, but masses of smaller ships, carrying heavily powered up torps in huge clusters of tubes might do the trick?

Don't have it replicated or transported, just build the stuff on to the ship and reserve the energy used for the armor for shields.
Power generation and use needs to be looked at. Obviously MARA needs to be reconsidered and perhaps discarded. Wasteful use of energy for holodecks, transporting armor to the hull, forcefields designed to hold the ship together instead of the ship holding the ship together, massive lifesupport need for large habitable area, transporting people in the ship to other locations in the ship, and a geedunk machine(replicator)in every room instead of a freadin kitchen needs to be discarded in favor of redirecting the energy to shields, weapons, and propulsion.
Plus some serious combat schooling for StarFleet, especially for the so called Command staff. A dedicated army or atleast a Marine force for the UFP could help too.
The torpedo's need a higher yeild before you worry about shapecharges, and guidence systems need work. Totally get rid of phasers and get something that does not rely on weird reactions to work and choose something based on sheer power not finess. Low power laser may not penetrate ST shields, but put enough power behind it and.....Zap.
Pretty much same old, same old. Go for power and flexibility, not specilized. You don't need everything crosswired into everything else, decentralized not centralized.
Once your get some basic policy, and design philosiphy worked out then you can start building some warships. You will still lose, but in a more dignified way.

[Mr Bean]

Put a massive library in the computer or something to make up for the lack of Holodeck (those things are lethal anyway).

Acutal we can keep the Holo-Deck it just needs to stop being a giant room thing for no freken reason, The thing SHOULD be scalable so building 3 closet sized Holo-Decks with a MANUAL cut off would be the best way to keep the crew interntated and simply have Holo-Decks as the first thing to be cut off when the crew needs more power

(And in case the manual Handel breaks take the power cables, run em in the open a little bit away and hang a big Ax/Bucket of Water on a peg there that says in case of fuck up... )

[Cpt_Frank]

Additionally to switching to small craft like frigates etc. you could modify the big ships to large computer guided M/AM bombs, dropping out of warp and striking their target at around 0.9 c.
That way, you could get quickly rid of the crappy galaxy class.

[Andrew Joshua Talon]

The problem is that Wars fighters carry far more powerful then Feddie Tac fighters and their fighter grade missiles are alot more powerful then torps. And SW fighters can't do squat against their cap ships. Wong is correct in that that is a better attack plan, but I question the ability of those fighters to do any signifigant damage.

Granted, but if you have masses of these fighters A: Carrying large amounts (for fighters, anyway) of heightened-yeild torps B: With the Endgame armour grafted to their hulls and not deployable and C: Some extra warp cores attached to them like a FLIR pod to a F-14 for additional power, and they might do some heavy damageto ISD cap ships if they went for the vulnerable areas i.e. the engines, launch bay etc.

In 'Rebel Assault' an X-Wing could take out an ISD by destroying it's sheild gens and hitting it's reactor core. This may just be video game magic, but couldn't it work for Fed fighters?

However, keep in mind that what I'm suggesting for this whole thing is that the Feds have some time to put their act together to face this threat: say, a few years? And yes, if the Imps threw their entire Empire into this invasion the Feds would become another rebel group AT BEST, so yeah, as Lord Wong said, it's a relatively small force, like an expeditionary task force. Though it will cause plenty of trouble for the Feds...

[Ender]

In 'Rebel Assault' an X-Wing could take out an ISD by destroying it's sheild gens and hitting it's reactor core. This may just be video game magic, but couldn't it work for Fed fighters?

No, because it is just video game magic. We have the quote from TPM that fighters can't do squat against a converted freighter with it's shields up. They's have even less of a chance against an actual warship.

[Mr Bean]

In 'Rebel Assault' an X-Wing could take out an ISD by destroying it's sheild gens and hitting it's reactor core. This may just be video game magic, but couldn't it work for Fed fighters?

Nope because thats a brain bug, The shield generators are
BEHIND THE SHIELD

You know.. caues they generate the shield and everything? And furthermore, the Reactor Core is behind roughly fourty feet of soild Armor its not somthing you can just destroy easily

Granted, but if you have masses of these fighters A: Carrying large amounts (for fighters, anyway) of heightened-yeild torps B: With the Endgame armour grafted to their hulls and not deployable and C: Some extra warp cores attached to them like a FLIR pod to a F-14 for additional power,

Remeber this aways

Extra-Warp cores=Extra chance of expolsions

Warp cores by their very nature are unstable and the further idioicy of the Fedderation ehances the problem.

The thing is we are trying to say its better to have shielding and more torp storage there rather than wasting the enourmace amount of room one needs for Fighters that are not very manuvrable

What we've seen of Tac-Fighters indicates that they are slower than Y-Wings and a third as manurable

I've seeen Space Shuttles with tighter turn rates

[Andrew Joshua Talon]

Yeah, this is true. In that case, the fighters just fill the standard fighter combat duty and harrassing the cap ships.

Akira class ships, as I said before, seem to be the best example of ships to be used against the Empire. 15 torp tubes, plenty of speed and manuverability if you remove all the creature comforts, and can deploy up to forty fighters. Additionally, grafting the Endgame armour (maybe modified with Borg nanites who constantly "stitch" the armour back together?) and boosting both the power of the torps carried and the quantity carried, and I think you have a pretty good weapon against the Empire. Throw out the phasers and boost the power of the sheilds as much as possible and it's even better.

Of course, you could upgrade other ships to this standard because designing an entirely new class of vessel is time consuming: Time the Feds might not have. The Sovereign's saucer section could be modified to house a large number of cluster torpedo tubes. They could move the command area to the Engineering section (provides better protection) and suddenly have several times the amount of firepower they'd otherwise have. The forward part of the saucer is the tubes and launchers: The aft stores the weapons. And of course, all the other upgrades put to the Akira class above.

[Cpt_Frank]

The Akira goes the right way, although you'll need many with many torps to actually scratch an ISD's shields. SF's best bet is to switch to small ships and to modify the hulls of the big ships to giant bombs.

SDs don't go down easily even by SW standards, so all that Starfleet can do is actually evacuate all planets and become nomad rebels just like the Rebell alliance, basically hiding and running away, and striking when the Empire is unprepared and always with a vast advantadge.
Though it will take them time to develop the technologies necessary to fight the Empire, on the other hand, once the Milky Way galaxy is integrated into the Empire, the Starfleet Rebels could possibly buy the equipment necessary to fight the Empire directly from the SW galaxy.

As a last issue: For the sake of fairness, though, I'd say if the Trek side is allowed to modify designs and invent new ones, then the Wars side should also be allowed to, although we could be generous here.

[consequences]

Okay, its been awhile since I last posted this idea: Presuming the Feds can get the Phase cloak into mass production, is there any reson why robot controlled suicide ships would not be a viable tactic? Even if they have to reenter normal space before hitting the shields, it would keep losses from defensive fire to a minimum, and the nerve gas torpedo solution wouldn't work without a living crew on board.

[Mr Bean]

Okay, its been awhile since I last posted this idea: Presuming the Feds can get the Phase cloak into mass production, is there any reson why robot controlled suicide ships would not be a viable tactic? Even if they have to reenter normal space before hitting the shields, it would keep losses from defensive fire to a minimum, and the nerve gas torpedo solution wouldn't work without a living crew on board.

The Internal Compesators would crunch the Phase ship like a bug, Remeber how powerful those suckers are and how baddly Gravity affects Phase ships

[Andrew Joshua Talon]

(sigh) Great. So far the best option's for the Federation to go Rebel Alliance until it can get the tech needed to defeat the Empire (which, knowing the Feds, is what they'd do if they wised up in time). Great. So... Anyone read "A Breif History of Time" lately?

[Mr Bean]

Heh sorry but a SW VS ST fight to be fair is about as hard as trying to make an Empire VS The Culture fight fair

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Andrew Joshua Talon, the domes atop ISD towers aren't shield generators. They're sensor domes.

Boy, you are a n00b.

[Andrew Joshua Talon]

The Akira goes the right way, although you'll need many with many torps to actually scratch an ISD's shields. SF's best bet is to switch to small ships and to modify the hulls of the big ships to giant bombs.

Standard torps, yeah, but if we follow Wong's advice and boost the yeild on the torps (subspace compression of the warhead material would be a good start) to >100 MT, then we can actually start hurting the Imps without having to expend our entire inventory. Just modify all our ships to carry multiple launchers and we can do plenty of damage.

Another way would be taking some lessons from Andromeda: When firing torps in warp, Fed ships pass on a short-lived warp feild from their warp feild to the missile, sending it at the ship they're engaging (ST Encylopedia entry "photon torpedos") . Well, what if you threw your entire warp field into boosting your torps to Warp 9.9 while in normal space? A torp slamming into an Imperial Starship at 42 billion mps ("The 37s" VOY) is nothing to sneeze at.

There are problems with this: Firing from long range allows the Imps FTL sensors to track the torp and possibly shoot it down. From short range, it would work only if A: The Fed ship squeezed off the shot fast enough before it would be blown to bits and B: The Fed ship got out of there before the blast got them. And aiming might be difficult, but it would at least eliminate the problem of boosting our warhead power.

The big, useless ships like Galaxies would be perfect as flying bombs, but it's not nessescary to drop them out of warp to ram into an ISD at 0.9c. Just fly them relatively near the ISDs at Warp 2 or so and they'll do plenty of damage. Even if they only graze the Imp it'll cause a pretty big boom.

SDs don't go down easily even by SW standards, so all that Starfleet can do is actually evacuate all planets and become nomad rebels just like the Rebell alliance, basically hiding and running away, and striking when the Empire is unprepared and always with a vast advantadge.
Though it will take them time to develop the technologies necessary to fight the Empire, on the other hand, once the Milky Way galaxy is integrated into the Empire, the Starfleet Rebels could possibly buy the equipment necessary to fight the Empire directly from the SW galaxy.

Yes, we could, but only if we failed to close the wormhole that brought the Empire to this galaxy in the first place. Flying bomb ships would probably be best for this: Anything traveling at about Warp 9 is difficult to stop, even with FTL sensors and especially if they're a lot of them. One good sized anti-matter explosion in the wormhole and the Imp forces already here are all we have to worry about for about seventy years ("The Search Part II" DS9)

As a last issue: For the sake of fairness, though, I'd say if the Trek side is allowed to modify designs and invent new ones, then the Wars side should also be allowed to, although we could be generous here.

Fair?! The Empire, after already analyzing the Fed ships they first encountered, would probably start the invasion after laughing their asses off. They would only feel a need to advance if they thought they would have to, and remember the basic tech of the Empire didn't change much between AOTC and ROTJ. Why should we advance? they would wonder.

[ClaysGhost]

It's perfectly apparent what has to be done. Just have the current ST chief writers/whatever produce a technical manual with some very big numbers in it and state that it overrides everything else. Problem (such as it is) solved.

[Andrew Joshua Talon]

Andrew Joshua Talon, the domes atop ISD towers aren't shield generators. They're sensor domes.

Boy, you are a n00b.

I already stated that I figured that out, more or less! Thank you Ender for showing me what's video game magic and what's canon. And right back at you pal.

Now then, we've put together a strategy of how to make sure the Empire could be kicked out of the Milky Way if we acted quickly enough. We know the means by which we could. So, now we need to think alliances.

If the Klingons, Romulans and Cardassians joined the Alliance, they'd have the resources of perhaps six hundred planets at their disposal. Obviously, this is nothing compared to the Empire's 1.2 million worlds, but if enough preperation was done it might be all that they needed. The first priority would be to ensure that the Empire could not get a foothold on AQ territory. This was a disaster to the Feds when the Dominion did it. Collapsing the wormhole they were coming out of would be the most important thing they could do. And the Allies, if they were smart (and we'd have to be), wouldn't give a damn if some little alien culture treated the wormhole as a religious icon. They'll have to grow up.

Of course, if we can't close the wormhole, it's time to pack up the entire Alpha Quadrant and head off to hide somewhere. We won't stand a chance unless they cut off the Empire and that's all there is to it.