John Sheridan in the Dominion war

[mr friendly guy]

Since both B5 and DS9 are 20 years old, lets bring up this RAR hypothetical.

In the DQ the Starship voyager comes across an abandoned ship. Its the ship of former ISA President John Sheridan who has moved beyond the rim to die. Since Sheridan has only been dead for a short period of time, Seven of Nine manages to revive him with Borg nanoprobes in a manner similar to how she revived Neelix. As far as the Voyager crew can work out, Sheridan's ship encountered <insert spatial anomaly of the week> and ended up in the Trekverse, with no way to get home.

Experimenting with B5 technology, they find that its possible to go a) enter into hyperspace by remodulating the main deflector to <technobabble technobabble blah blah> and b) whilst in hyperspace, with a few adjustments can go into warp, significantly shortening their time to arrive back into the AQ (since hyperspace is a short cut as opposed to normal space). They open a jump point near earth only to find out the Federation is engaged in a life and death struggle with the Dominion. This is after the retaking of DS9 but before the Romulans join the war.

With no way back, Sheridan offers his helps. Admiral Ross wants to decline, but Sisko gets a vision from the Prophets and he manages to convince Ross to let Sheridan help after all the security clearances etc have been done.

Sheridan is in full command of his faculties, and is just as sharp as when he was in the Shadow war. His ship's computers have basic information on hyperspace, quantum space, what the ships in B5 look like, tachyon communications which will be different from Trek subspace ones, but no knowledge on weapons. Tech sharing is allowed (duh).

What happens next? How do subsequent battles go?

[Thanas]

Little different. Federation strategical and tactical limitations are due to overall techbase, which would take time to integrate etc. Leadership is already provided by Starfleet en masse. Tactical prowess as well.

Even more, considering he comes from a totally different tactical system, Sheridan is unlikely to be of any help in that.

[mr friendly guy]

In my OP I deliberately made it so that it was easy to adopt the ability to open up a jump point without needing major upgrades to Federation ships. Other tech such as tachyon communications and ship designs would take some time. I imagine the UFP might be interested in designing a ship like the White star.

Going on, I think a greater FTL with hyperspace plus warp gives a strategic edge, in the sense they can mass more ships. In the battle to retake DS9 one of the fleets didn't get there on time, leading Sisko to be outnumbered 2 to 1, until the Klingons arrived to turn the tide.

What about a ship in hyperspace creating a jump point near a Dominion ship? Communication can occur between the ships in hyperspace and normal space, but ensuring a few telepaths are on board the ships, since hyperspace boosts telepathic powers. This way they can time the jump point to open in the midsts of the Dominion fleet. Even in non fleet to fleet combat, we see that Worf in a cloaked Klingon ship works well with the Defiant to ambush Jem'hadar fighters. With each starship now able to make the modification to enter hyperspace, they can affect an ambush just like a cloaked ship can.

The other tactical situation I envisage is if a weaker Federation ship flies near a stronger Dominion ship and opens a jump point so that the hyperspace gate cuts the Dominion ship in half. A tactic Sheridan used against Drakh fighters with the Excalibur.

The other thing that occurs to me is the Sheridan method of mining an asteroid with a bomb. It appears the federation can make cloaked mines without breaking the treaty with the Romulans (maybe a cloaking device only counts when its on a ship). Surely Sheridan's tactic would be more devastating with Federation tech.

[Lord Revan]

well with the extensive beacon network present in B5 verse, navigating hyperspace is more or less impossible you could get lucky once or twice but it's nowhere near relible enough to base a battle strategy on it and using jump points as weapon works only as long your enemy doesn't catch on to it and adjust tactics.

Addapting Mimbari (or heaven forbid Vorlon) tech into SF ships is gonna take time and seeing as Sheridan is a Navy officer not an engineer and not that familiar with non EA tech anyway it's highly doutfull there's gonna be any signifigant advances in tech within the timeframe on the dominion war.

in essense Sheridan will cause minor if any impact on the war

[mr friendly guy]

I had forgotten about hyperspace relying on a beacon network.

I still think ambush tactics in small groups can work - ie just get the ship to hold position in hyperspace and communicate with the ship in normal space. The jump point tactic will be less effective in fleet combat if the ships space themselves out, but in small groups like the numbers Jem'hadar hunt in, it should still be effective. The Minbari ambush works by luring ships to a predetermined location anyway, so its not like the ambushing ship in hyperspace needs much in the way of navigation.

Also opening a jump point from normal space in front of an enemy ship wouldn't be affected by lack of a beacon network, since you aren't planning to fly into hyperspace. You just want the gate to rip into the opposing ship.

Edit - on further reading the B5 wiki, it seems like the beacons are merely devices which emits tachyons. Obviously if the tachyons in Trek aren't the same particle as in B5 (tachyon just indicates an FTL particle after all, and there will likely be more than one) we run into problems. If they can duplicate the same tachyons, then for tactical situations, you just need some ships in normal space, guiding the ships in hyperspace. Other infrastructure like space stations and starbases can serve the same purpose in UFP space. We run into problems trying to move large numbers when going into enemy territory, because the UFP can't exactly use enemy infrastructure as a beacon, but it won't be a problem initially since the Federation is on the defensive at this stage of the war.

[NeoGoomba]

I thought you couldn't really stay stationary in hyperspace due to some sort of drift effect? Were the beacons actually the jump gates in realspace?

[Lord Revan]

I thought you couldn't really stay stationary in hyperspace due to some sort of drift effect? Were the beacons actually the jump gates in realspace?

yes to both, there's gravity "currents" in hyperspace that make both standing still and navigating without beacons practically impossible and the beacons are generated by the jumpgates hence destroying a gate is such a major no-no, so there must something "special" about the gates.

and as I stated before any tactical use of the hyperspace gates is limited to the enemy not knowing about it, the Mimbari were able to do as their jumpdrives were alot more accurate compared to those of EA.

[mr friendly guy]

I thought you couldn't really stay stationary in hyperspace due to some sort of drift effect? Were the beacons actually the jump gates in realspace?

Entire fleets however have managed to not drift too far despite this phenomena. For example during the Battle of the Line the Minbari kept some ships in reserve and were going to jump to finish off Earth. Also when Sheridan retook earth, he used his Whitestars and the renegade EA ships against Clarke's forces. He kept a lot of aliens in hyperspace, and they didn't jump until Clarke turned the defense grid against Earth. So clearly they can remain in position for at least a few hours, certainly long enough for the tactics I am proposing, provided another ship in normal space acts as some sort of beacon.

[Batman]

Not to mention the Starfury daisy chain used to extend scanning range from the gate on several occasions. Wouldn't work if they couldn't stay stationary for at least a while.
As I understood it the problem wasn't staying put period so much but a) doing so when your engines were fried and b) there essentially being no way to tell whether or not you were staying put without a beacon.

[Stark]

Depends what you mean by 'position', and the starfury daisy chain is the worst example imaginable of being able to be 'stationary' in hyperspace, since they actively attempted to maintain contact with each other and without that reference would be fucked.

[Batman]

That was sort of my point? It is entirely possible to stay 'stationary' in hyperspace, you just have to work at it.

[Connor MacLeod]

Presumably as long as you have active drive systems you can keep 'stationary' because your ship can counteract whatever the Space Weather in Hyperspace (which like 40K warp seems to go with an ocean analogy, so we might argue those are 'space waves'.) imposes upon you. When Delenn's white star was crippled by Centauri attack ships in season 5, it was in danger of drifting off beacon due to aformentioned 'space waves'. Of course 'stationary' can mean all kinds of things.

The beacons were probably the tachyon thingamajiggers mentioned in other series (A call to arms I vaguely remember, although that may have only been the novalization) projecting a 'here I am!' signal. Basically they just let people know where the fuck they are and where they have to go to reach a destination.


There's also a certain inherent 'inaccuracy' in jump drives (the Minbari for example were noted to have an accuracy to within a hundred yards or so IIRC.) and if you aren't careful you could literally ram your ship into an enemy's trying to pull off those jump point tricks (Remember the Minbari had to lure the EA force into a pre-planned position and then signal the Black Star to arrive.)

[Starglider]

Problems with jump drive accuracy are much less of an issue for ships that are already capable of decent FTL speeds. In B5 all the small / merchant ships that don't have jump-point generators are completely screwed if they get lost in hyperspace. Even the warships that mess up and drop out of hyperspace light years from anywhere you are in serious trouble; sublight will take decades/centuries to get anywhere and further hyperspace travel will likely make the situation worse if you can't find a beacon (unless you are a first one with perfect hyperspace navigation). In this scenario, all Federation starships can create jump points and if they get lost, they can just return to real space and use conventional warp. Arriving a few light-years away from the target is no big deal and even going several hundred lightyears off course is not a disaster, just inconvenient.

[mr friendly guy]

There's also a certain inherent 'inaccuracy' in jump drives (the Minbari for example were noted to have an accuracy to within a hundred yards or so IIRC.) and if you aren't careful you could literally ram your ship into an enemy's trying to pull off those jump point tricks (Remember the Minbari had to lure the EA force into a pre-planned position and then signal the Black Star to arrive.)

Marcus managed to use a Whitestar to open a jump point quite accurately in Mars' atmosphere when Garibaldi fed him coordinates. It may be possible for the UFP to do the same with one ship feeding targeting data from normal space.

Of course the other trick is to open a jump point in normal space when the ships are right in front of you. Sheridan did that against the Drakh quite effectively. Given that most Trek battles occur at "close" range, this should be an effective tactic.

[Stark]

That was sort of my point? It is entirely possible to stay 'stationary' in hyperspace, you just have to work at it.

You're a fucking idiot. They don't remain stationary at all and only retain contact with each other due to the double reference points of the next and previous ships in the line. They absolutely could not do this without basically being on a rope.

It's like trailing a rope out the back of your moving boat and deciding that a) the rope is stationary and b) holding position behind the boat is thus easy.

[Batman]

And you know they don't remain stationary because of...? Especially as the whole setup would be completely pointless if your 'rope' randomly flailed about hyperspace.
Not to mention that they explicitly say in the series that the fighters are to hold position relative to the gate/the fighter behind them in the chain.
There's an idiot here but I don't think it's me.
That the boat is moving is your assumption, and I can't recall ever saying it was 'easy'. That'd be the 'having to work at it' part.
And incidentally, that was a really lousy analogy.

[tezunegari]

As I understand it there are no points of reference in hyperspace that you can use to determine you position, speed or heading.
You only have the navigational sensors detecting the hyperspace beacons and your instruments telling you the how much your own engines are putting out.

What makes hyperspace difficult to navigate are undetectable eddies that influence your ship, they push you off course, they slow you down or they turn the ship into different direction.

To stay stationary, you need to know if the hyperspace eddies are affecting you and how they are affecting you so that you can use your engines / thrusters to counter their effect.

Without the beacon system you wouldn't know how the eddies are affecting you which means you can't counter them.

So while it is possible to stay stationary in hyperspace, doing so without a hyperspace beacon signal or another fixed point of reference is impossible unless you are one of the First Ones.

[Rycon67]

While hyperspace travel would be useful, the lack of a hyperspace beacon network wouldn't be as bad for Starfleet as it would for B5 ships.

Keep in mind, without hyperspace beacons or getting lost in hyperspace, a B5 ship with it's own jump engines could exit hyperspace, but with no other means of faster then light propulsion, they'd never be able to get back unless they just happened to randomly jump into an inhabitied system.

Starfleet ships, if they got lost in hyperspace, could simply jump back into normal space and use their warp drive to get back to wherever they need to be.

I could see this as a huge strategic advantage early on. Federation attack fleet's could enter Cardassian/Dominion territory through hyperspace, and jump back into normal space somewhere well behind the Dominion lines. It might take a few months to set up, but it would be a perfect chance to stage assaults on key Dominion shipyards and other facilities too far behind the lines for Starfleet to be able to get at using just warp travel.

[Batman]

Which is why the E-D was totally in no trouble when she was displaced by 7000 ly in Q Who or VOY didn't expect to need 70 years to get back home. Oh wait.

[FaxModem1]

Does hyperspace really travel ships that far? I seem to recall JMS saying that Babylon 5 was just a very thin pie slice of the Milky Way galaxy.

[mr friendly guy]

More to the point, is that part of Cardassian space that your target is located, that far out from UFP space? If the Fed ship ends up in the middle of nowhere and too far out via warp, they can try and retrace their steps in hyperspace. If they end up in Cardassian space as per the plan, if Federation space isn't that far, they can use warp to get back. If it is at the farthest end, then go into hyperspace and use warp (as per my OP) then jump out and see where you ended up.