Galaxy Class and fighter capacity

[Alyeska]

From what I can tell the Delta Flyer would make a superior fighter while the Tac-Fighter is a superior strike craft.

[Lord Poe]

How do you expect to fit all these fighters in a GCS? Stack them atop one another? The shuttlebays aren't all that roomy, and support machinery, fuel and maintinence systems don't seem to be taken into account.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Well, truly they should rip out all the militarily useless shit in the Galaxy and give the crew bunks.

Then you'll be able to fit plenty of fighters in the new hangar bays.

[Gil Hamilton]

Capital ships would have longer endurances then tac-fighters. That why the Federation would produce them more then tac-fighters.

Agreed that tac-fighters, especially if based on the Delta Flyer, could cause problems for aggressors of the Federation.

That's why you have carriers, to carry the fighters close enough to the battles zone so they can scramble and then move into the combat. They don't need to be particularly long ranged as a capital ship, cause they are operating from a carrier.

[Alyeska]

How do you expect to fit all these fighters in a GCS? Stack them atop one another? The shuttlebays aren't all that roomy, and support machinery, fuel and maintinence systems don't seem to be taken into account.

I listed the space in the shuttlebay itself. All support equipment is stored near the shuttlebay but not in it. Just look at the shots of the interiors. We see access doors elsewhere. The Galaxy has physical room in the bays themselves to hold 14 fighters.

Wayne, did you even bother read what I wrote up? I detailed the space each had and left realistic amounts of space between the fighters.

[Alyeska]

Well, truly they should rip out all the militarily useless shit in the Galaxy and give the crew bunks.

Then you'll be able to fit plenty of fighters in the new hangar bays.

Agreed. An improved main shuttlebay along with side hanger systems could hold a similar number to what the Akira could hold. Place the weapon systems in the battlesection (torpedoes and the like) and you have a decent carrier. However a dedicated carrier itself is needed. I could see a dedicated carrier with the ability to hold 160+ fighters being built and it wouldn't be much larger then a Galaxy class.

[Alyeska]

I just realized a mistake I made when calculating the carrying capacity of the Akira. I treated the Tac-Fighters as square forgetting that they are longer then they are wide with the wings folded.

Using a single fighter storage bay of 150 meters by 150 meters an Akira can hold 15 fighters wide by 8 fighters deep. Taking into account the need for room in the bay to move about and to be conservative I will reduce that down to 10 fighters wide by 6 fighters deep. That is 60 fighters. This ignores the calculation that says the Akira has enough room for a double stacked bay (120 fighters instead of 60) Conservatively an Akira can hold a minimum of 60 fighters. Furthermore using tight pack storage of torpedoes an Akira can easily have more then 2,000 torpedoes.

Considering that an Akira is designed as a warship, the listed figures above are valid IMO.

[paladin]

Capital ships would have longer endurances then tac-fighters. That why the Federation would produce them more then tac-fighters.

Agreed that tac-fighters, especially if based on the Delta Flyer, could cause problems for aggressors of the Federation.

That's why you have carriers, to carry the fighters close enough to the battles zone so they can scramble and then move into the combat. They don't need to be particularly long ranged as a capital ship, cause they are operating from a carrier.

Carriers would be considered capital ships. So, the Federation still has to produce Capital ships. Also, the SF vessels tend to operate alone. A battleship would be better suited for this then a carrier. A carrier would need escort vessels for protection especially when launching or recovering its fighers. And consider SF likes vessels that can bea jack of all trades.

I would consider the carrier a good suppliment to the battleship not a replacement in ST terms.

[Alyeska]

Capital ships would have longer endurances then tac-fighters. That why the Federation would produce them more then tac-fighters.

Agreed that tac-fighters, especially if based on the Delta Flyer, could cause problems for aggressors of the Federation.

That's why you have carriers, to carry the fighters close enough to the battles zone so they can scramble and then move into the combat. They don't need to be particularly long ranged as a capital ship, cause they are operating from a carrier.

Carriers would be considered capital ships. So, the Federation still has to produce Capital ships. Also, the SF vessels tend to operate alone. A battleship would be better suited for this then a carrier. A carrier would need escort vessels for protection especially when launching or recovering its fighers. And consider SF likes vessels that can bea jack of all trades.

I would consider the carrier a good suppliment to the battleship not a replacement in ST terms.

Exactly. Seeing how the Tac-Fighters displayed themselves in SOA, I could see a handful of large fleet carriers with a large number of Tac-Fighters being a powerful but not costly addition to a fleet.

[Gil Hamilton]

Carriers would be considered capital ships. So, the Federation still has to produce Capital ships. Also, the SF vessels tend to operate alone. A battleship would be better suited for this then a carrier. A carrier would need escort vessels for protection especially when launching or recovering its fighers. And consider SF likes vessels that can bea jack of all trades.

I would consider the carrier a good suppliment to the battleship not a replacement in ST terms.

You'll notice I never said replace all capital ships with fighters. I just said replace the huge battleships with them, since the amount of Tac-Fighters that could be made with the same resources would be worth much more in battle than than the battleship itself. I contend that the massive battleships aren't worth the same resources as you could have with tac-fighters and smaller ships.

Plus, I don't see why carriers would necessarily need an escort fleet in this context. After all, it can be just as heavily armed as another ship and it does have it's Tac-Fighters as escorts. If a Carrier ship carried 75 Tac-Fighters, 25 of them could fly escort and cycle so at any given time 25 - 50 of them would be in space at any given time. This would provide the Carrier with plenty of escort while the rest of the fighters scramble should problems arise and besides, it's not like wouldn't be able to see an attack coming from far enough way for them to scramble the rest of their fighters anyway.

I'm willing to bet you could get a dedicated well-armed Carrier and a decent amount of Fighters for it for the same price as some of the bigger ships in the Federation, but with much greater value as it would be a threat to even groups of enemy vessels that the one ship alone couldn't handle. Plus, they'd be perfect for those stupid little bush-wars that you are always hearing about throughout the series.

I'm also big on ships like the Defiant class, which are overpowered for their size and the amount of resources they cost to produce. Wolf packs of Defiants would be very dangerous and would still be more effective than their mass in battleships.

[SCVN 2812]

The Federation builds battleships mainly because they have to be able to be jacks of all trades, not purely defensive or offensive. Aside from the laboratories there is really nothing that doesn't serve a purpose on a Fed ship.

[paladin]

Carriers would be considered capital ships. So, the Federation still has to produce Capital ships. Also, the SF vessels tend to operate alone. A battleship would be better suited for this then a carrier. A carrier would need escort vessels for protection especially when launching or recovering its fighers. And consider SF likes vessels that can bea jack of all trades.

I would consider the carrier a good suppliment to the battleship not a replacement in ST terms.

You'll notice I never said replace all capital ships with fighters. I just said replace the huge battleships with them, since the amount of Tac-Fighters that could be made with the same resources would be worth much more in battle than than the battleship itself. I contend that the massive battleships aren't worth the same resources as you could have with tac-fighters and smaller ships.

I still disagree about the tac-fighters because of their limited role but I agree that smaller vessels with a multi-role function would be better then a battleship. Something like a Defiant class type would be excellent.

[SCVN 2812]

Except that tac fighters or smaller ships aren't capable of long term deep space exploration which is one of Starfleet's main requirements of most of their designs, multi-role, jack of all trades capability. For patrol and quick response larger numbers of smaller vessels are more practical and more effective but they're useless for anything besides defense. An explorer has to be able to operate for extended periods away from the nearest outpost or friendly world and also deal with all the crap that Kirk and Picard were constantly running into, whether it means rigging the main deflector to something that it was never designed for, or blowing something to smithereens.

[Lord Poe]

Wayne, did you even bother read what I wrote up? I detailed the space each had and left realistic amounts of space between the fighters.

Yup. I just have a hard time believing it.

[Alyeska]

Wayne, did you even bother read what I wrote up? I detailed the space each had and left realistic amounts of space between the fighters.

Yup. I just have a hard time believing it.

Its pure mathematics. Simple really.

[Lord Poe]

Its pure mathematics. Simple really.

Agreed. It is simple.

Although I suspect the conclusions based on the source it comes from...

[Gil Hamilton]

The Federation builds battleships mainly because they have to be able to be jacks of all trades, not purely defensive or offensive. Aside from the laboratories there is really nothing that doesn't serve a purpose on a Fed ship.

Jack-of-all-trades ships are inefficent when it comes to fighting a war. I'm talking about giving the UFP a real fighting force and really, once you've got small craft capable of carrying weapons powerful enough to bust capital ships and sufficent range to use them (which Tac-Fighters have, just look at Sacrifice of Angels), huge battleships are are largely obsolete. This has historical precident within our own Navy, where carriers are the kings of the sea and there are few ships that aren't optimized for a certain role. As a rule, a ship that is designed to do many different tasks will not be as efficent at any of them compared to a ship that was designed for only a few tasks. Specialization is the way to go.

I mean, the numbers speak for themselves. If you can make 75 Tac-Fighters and a carrier to bring them to the battlezone for the same price as a Soveriegn, they are going to be much much more effective in a fight than just the Soveriegn and be able to defeat larger amounts of opponents. Hell, even if the carrier doesn't enter combat at all and keeps 25 of her ships with her at all times, 50 Tac-Fighters are still worth far more in a fight than the Soveriegn. Hell, I bet you'd have enough resources left over to cook up a fire rate science vessel to make up for the science labs that the Soveriegn doesn't have. Specialization at work.

[Alyeska]

Its pure mathematics. Simple really.

Agreed. It is simple.

Although I suspect the conclusions based on the source it comes from...

Either contribute to the thread or piss off.

[Lord Poe]

Its pure mathematics. Simple really.

Agreed. It is simple.

Although I suspect the conclusions based on the source it comes from...

Either contribute to the thread or piss off.

I guess you can't appreciate irony....

[paladin]

The Federation builds battleships mainly because they have to be able to be jacks of all trades, not purely defensive or offensive. Aside from the laboratories there is really nothing that doesn't serve a purpose on a Fed ship.

Jack-of-all-trades ships are inefficent when it comes to fighting a war. I'm talking about giving the UFP a real fighting force...

The only problem with that is SF views itself as an exploration organization. SF isn't very likely to build dedicated carriers with fighters. The best alternative would be to design vessels that can support fighters in time of war. I think that would give vessels similiar to the Akira Class, fighting vessels with limited science labs that can support fighters.

[seanrobertson]

A dedicated fighter carrier would be better of course. However the ability for Nebula and Galaxy class ships to carry a few fighters does increase their striking power. With the Klingon and Romulan accuracy, I could see 9 Tac-Fighters taking on and killing a Vorcha or D'Deridex on their own.

IIRC, approx. 30 such ships were required to subdue a single Galor in a late TNG episode ("Ensign Ro" or the one in which she defects?). To kill a superior ship like the Vor'cha, and especially a Warbird, you'd need at least that many if not more.

[Alyeska]

A dedicated fighter carrier would be better of course. However the ability for Nebula and Galaxy class ships to carry a few fighters does increase their striking power. With the Klingon and Romulan accuracy, I could see 9 Tac-Fighters taking on and killing a Vorcha or D'Deridex on their own.

IIRC, approx. 30 such ships were required to subdue a single Galor in a late TNG episode ("Ensign Ro" or the one in which she defects?). To kill a superior ship like the Vor'cha, and especially a Warbird, you'd need at least that many if not more.

Those were Maquis craft and they didn't have access to Starfleet weapons. Also I do not recall it being 30 such ships. I only remember seeing a half dozen Maquis craft swarming the Galor. This was the TNG episode Preemptive strike.

[Patrick Ogaard]

The one problem that fighters would definitely face, assuming that the technology of the week is not discarded as usual, would be the omnidirectional energy pulse that the Cardassian smart missile (Juggernaut?) encountered in one of the early Voyager episodes. That was extremely effective in wiping out a swarm of small alien vessels attempting to attack the missile. The smaller the ship the weaker the shielding.

Thus, one either protects fleets by deploying advance cruisers that can sweep enemy fighters out of the way with those pulses, or one develops missiles or torpedoes capable of generating such pulses and then fires the projectiles as a form of flak burst.

The "spatial charges" used by the toxic waste dumping aliens on Voyager would also fit the bill: relatively low-powered, omnidirectional explosion, high rate of fire, and just powerful enough to rock an Intrepid-class starship.


Barring those developments, though, the one thing that seems to be missing is the light fighter, the snubfighter of Star Wars fame.

A single-seat, short duration fighter the size of a typical Starfleet shuttlecraft would fit the bill. Shuttlecraft are thoroughly hollow. Shuttlecraft also normally have seating for a pilot and copilot. That could be changed.

Ablative armor, improved shields, more sublight speed, more raw power production, more powerful phasers, short range launchers for two regular torpedoes and a decent supply of microtorpedoes would be nice. Deleting the touchscreens would also be sensible for a fighter.


Starfleet shields can be extended considerably beyond the generating vessel itself, though that does logically reduce the protection offered by the shields. Starfleet starships can also beam their power to other vessels, though that can't be particularly efficient.

So what does this have to do with anything? Take a squadron of 12 small fighters outfitted with the necessary systems to produce a large shield bubble, beam power to each other, and maneuver in unison when locked into a suitable formation. This allows the fighter squadron to generate a single large and powerful shield bubble instead of a dozen small and weak shield envelopes. That should give the fighters a better chance of successfully weathering defensive fire when closing with enemy vessels, though the formation would have to be broken once the enemy is engaged, as otherwise it would be more efficient to just produce one tiny combat starship instead of a dozen fighters.

Of course, if Starfleet could do that, it could do the same with its capital ships. The fact that we haven't seen a full squadron of Galaxy-class starships maneuvering in perfect synchronization, protected by a huge common shield and joined together by a tracery of power transfer beams, makes it unlikely that Starfleet can actually integrate all those disparate technologies.

[seanrobertson]

Those were Maquis craft and they didn't have access to Starfleet weapons.

Yes, but their design was outwardly identical to the Peregrine fighter (modified courier ships). And they most certainly had Starfleet weapons, since we saw them using phasers against the Galor. (Sure, they could've gotten phasers from another source, but I'm pretty sure the Maquis episodes in DS9 firmly establish that most of their ships and weapons do come from Starfleet.)

Also I do not recall it being 30 such ships. I only remember seeing a half dozen Maquis craft swarming the Galor. This was the TNG episode Preemptive strike.

Thanks for the episode title, but there were more than six ships fighting the Galor. More like 30. They were all over the place.

And as I said, the Galor is a vastly inferior ship to something like a Warbird: a GCS or Nebula can blow a Galor away with a single volley ("The Wounded," "Sacrifice of Angels"); yet, they can't manage the same against a Vor'cha or Warbird.

Therefore, what can dispatch a Galor isn't necessarily that which could hope to match these superior warships...though, of course, I should note, the swarm of Maquis ships appeared to have a *decisive* advantage in "Preemptive Strike." As such, to expect that an equal no. might be required to fight a Klingon or Romulan battlecruiser might be hasty on my part.

[Alyeska]

The heaviest weapons the Maquis seem to have complete access to is phasers of different types. Those phasers took sustained fire to damage Runabouts. The Tac-Fighters used by Starfleet had actual Pulse Phaser Cannons (small versions) as well as heavy micro torpedoes. These were able to take down Galors in single passes by groups of 4 fighters.

There is a difference between military grade technology and civilian grade.