One ISD in ST galaxy (serious)

[Darth Wong]

A lot of people enjoy asking how one SW ship would do in ST, but it's often facetious. Why not do it seriously? Imagine the following scenario:

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One ISD has appeared in the Alpha Quadrant. Let us conservatively assume that its general capabilities are roughly 60% better than the official specifications of an Acclamator transport, which gives it 400,000 light year operational range, 60% more light guns than an Acclamator, and 300 gigaton heavy guns.

Someone in the Q continuum has decided that it would be amusing to show the Federation that they have grown overconfident after defeating the Borg and the Dominion. He has altered the minds of the ISD's crew so that they believe that the Emperor has been killed along with Coruscant's entire population, thanks to a super-bioweapon secretly deployed by the Federation and its Alpha Quadrant allies in a cowardly first strike with no warning. The crew believes the Emperor sent them across spacetime with his dying will on a mission of vengeance, and they will fanatically carry out that mission, in an attempt to cause maximum casualties before they are taken down.

Question #1: how much damage could this ship realistically do before it is either destroyed in action or it runs out of fuel? Assume reasonable competence on the part of the ISD's commanding officer (obviously, given his speed and lack of support, hit and run tactics make the most sense).

Question #2: if you were a Starfleet Admiral, what tactics might you try to use against this marauder? Is there any hope? Or is your only hope to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye? (EDIT: after Kaz's post, I thought I should modify the scenario so that this Q-nut briefs you on the capabilities and intentions of this vessel, so you're not totally in the dark).

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

Let me just answer question 2. Apparently, as the Federation Admiral, I'm totally in the dark.

Short of mysterious, one time treknobabble, unless the ISD takes a really long time to get to anything important, I'm doomed.

[Patrick Degan]

Well, let's see. You have a fully armed ISD with a massive FTL speed advantage over anything the Alpha Quadrant powers can conceivably deploy, but it's isolated far from its home galaxy, without hope of resupply, refueling, or reinforcement, but the captain is determined to carry out his mission of revenge for the atrocity he imagines has been committed by the Federation.

Limited resources suggests a guerilla-style campaign; quick hit-and-run strikes. The ISD can jump in to a Federation system, hit the inhabitabed planets and moons found there, and jump back out again before Starfleet units can be called in to give battle. The destroyer will not expend the energy or time required for a lone BDZ attack. But then, it doesn't have to, does it?

Federation worlds are relatively undefended; even the Core Systems seem to have minimal starship protection at any given time. They have no planetary shield technology or even area theatre shields to protect individual cities, so the surfaces will be totally naked to orbital bombardment. They may have planetary phaser banks or orbital defences and fighter craft (e.g. the "mighty" Martian defence fleet blown away by Locutus' cubeship in "The Best Of Both Worlds(2)"), but these will present no challenge to the ISD.

Were I the ISD captain, I'd opt for a random-walk attack plan. Hit Federation worlds according to an unpredictable pattern while avoiding battle with Starfleet units altogether. At each system, I'd jump in close to the target world and subject one area to a focussed five minute bombardment from the heavy turbolaser batteries, delivering the equivalent of a large asteroid impact. The resulting blast effect should be enough to produce global devestation and decimate the planetary population, after which I'd jump to the next target of opportunity. As Starfleet scrambles and scatters, attempting to distribute forces to guard the worlds deemed likeliest to be hit next, I'd go where they haven't deployed forces and hit those planets. One or more major UFP homeworlds could be hit early to increase the military and societal disruption, inducing massive panic throughout their civilisation, but by and large, I'd avoid any place where there would be a sizeable formation of starships. The resulting political pressures which would follow in the wake of such massive, hit-and-run devestation which their starfleet would be inadequate to avert might work in my favour if it causes UFP member worlds to pull the fleets back for homeworld defence or even to secede and claim portions of the Federation starfleet for their own defence. Given the paltry numbers of Starfleet forces overall, any division in the ranks reduces opposition. If the Federation's enemies decide to launch their own campaigns to take advantage of the UFP's weakness, so much the better: that's even less opposition I have to face.

Eventually, ship's resources would begin to dwindle, and there would inevitably be at least one world which would be heavily defended by a sizeable fleet. Most likely Earth. If I were facing a mission-terminal situation, that's when I'd implement a kamikaze strike against Earth itself. Ram my ship in toward the surface at full drive, detonate what's left of the ship's arsenal, and devestate the Federation homeworld as my final act.

Given the relatively short travel distances between Federation and allied systems and the speed capability of hyperdrive, devestating at least 75% of Federation worlds before implementing ship-suicide at Earth could be feasible. If I choose to hit Earth first, decapitating the Federation politically and militarily with the initial strike, the toll may wind up closer to 90%. In such case, hitting the Klingon, Romulan, and Cardassian homeworlds in the initial phase would also be strategically prudent.

[Imperial Federation]

Do we assume that Q has told Starfleet about the impending threat?
If not, the first warning would probably be an ISD popping out near Earth before they get blasted to oblivion.
I guess if the Admiral has warning he gets to field a fleet of maybe 20-30 ships (going by "Endgame" and assuming they actually gained the intelligence to have a home fleet) but it'd probably amount to the same thing.

[Tsyroc]

Given the relatively short travel distances between Federation and allied systems and the speed capability of hyperdrive, devestating at least 75% of Federation worlds before implementing ship-suicide at Earth could be feasible. If I choose to hit Earth first, decapitating the Federation politically and militarily with the initial strike, the toll may wind up closer to 90%. In such case, hitting the Klingon, Romulan, and Cardassian homeworlds in the initial phase would also be strategically prudent.

The Cardassians aren't in any shape to aid the Federation and both the Romulans and Klingons may be convinced to stay out of it or join in on the ISD's side. Certainly the Klingon's would have more in common with humans from the Empire than they would with the Federation plus they understand the need for blood vengence.

[Sea Skimmer]

[1] The Imperator's firepower and shielding are sufficient to destroy all of star fleet, unless they've recently built a Star Based 74 sized battle station, which has no warp core. I believe it could destroy at least 50% of Star Fleets infrastructure, and a thousand odd ships. The same could be done to at least one other major empire before running out of fuel and ammunition. The Imperial crew is going to be very angry about the whole bio weapon thing, and is going to burn a lot of worlds. Most won't get the full BDZ treatment though; it would use up too much power. They wont be destroying to many ships, because they want to kill as many people as possible and AQ ships are lightly manned. They're only going to be destroying the star bases and ships in defense of planets they want to kill.


[2] A commander of Star Fleet, surrender is not really an option. The Imperials are bent on blood, and surrender will still lead to the Imperials BDZing everything they want. That would likely kill more people then there are in all of Star fleet, so fighting looks like a better option.

To defeat it, conventional tactics won't work. A fleet of the sized needed, assuming all of SF combined even has the firepower, would take far to long to assemble.

Ramming attacks seem to be the only way to deliver the firepower needed. Older capital ships and runabouts would all be loaded with anti matter pods and have their helms linked to Photon torpedo guidance systems. Command guidance wont work in the face of such massive jamming.

The newer capital ships will provide cover fire in hopes of degrading Imperial targeting sensors. They will also attempt to use tractor beams to slow the Imperator. It has far more powerful engines, but dragging along the extra mass will hurt.

[IRG CommandoJoe]

The Feds would probably reveal the Q messed with their minds, but the ISD captain gets bored and kills them all anyway. Oh well.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

The newer capital ships will provide cover fire in hopes of degrading Imperial targeting sensors. They will also attempt to use tractor beams to slow the Imperator. It has far more powerful engines, but dragging along the extra mass will hurt.

This last part would be just hilarious. Think about the Star Destroyer "Great Dragon" (I know they are unlikely to name one that name, but it provides the nice allusion.) Imagine the USS Cochrane, Roosevelt...etc all dragging on it with their puny abilities as the Great Dragon continues moving

More likely they'll die as the Star Destroyer glances at them with TLs.

[SPOOFE]

Question #1 : how much damage could this ship realistically do before it is either destroyed in action or it runs out of fuel?

I say that a single ISD can single-handedly topple the Federation's, Romulan's, Klingon's, and Cardassian's infrastructure within a month. Unless they quickly develop some sort of superweapon, find a technobabble Deus Ex Machina, or get massive amounts of ships to swarm the ISD, there ain't nothin' the AQ can do to stop 'em.

Think about it... a single HTL shot will destroy any non-planet target in the Alpha Quadrant. Ships, starbases, space stations... A dozen such shots would render the AQ powers' respective homeworlds useless (no need for a BDZ, especially when the ISD is limited on resources).

Of course, an ISD is insufficient to actually CONQUER the AQ... they'd have to kill, well, EVERYONE, which just isn't feasible. They CAN obliterate the major production centers, but every colony on every planet? Not gonna happen. Ultimately, after decimating the Federation et al, the ISD captain is either going to order his crew to self-destruct the ship, or he'll get somewhere FAR away and try to set up a new Imperial base.

Question #2 : if you were a Starfleet Admiral, what tactics might you try to use against this marauder? Is there any hope? Or is your only hope to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye?

There's no military strength in the AQ that could stop an ISD short of mass-fleet tactics (which an ISD can easily ditch). The only hope would be some superweapon or technobabble solution. All the Trekkies constantly mention "phase-cloaked torpedoes"... as much as I scoff at the idea, it really is among their only hope (not a GREAT hope, mind you).

If I were the commander? I'd do my best to surrender, unconditionally. If the Imperials won't agree to a surrender, then I pack as many people into as many ships as I can find, and RUN like the hounds of hell were nipping at my heels.

[Enforcer Talen]

the imperial could start his own barony - wipe out a few dozen planets and a few score billion citizens to make his point, then tell a few major industrial sites if they dont want the same, they will work for him. then make a peace treaty with the feds, with their penchant for diplomacy and fear of a bdzed earth, they'd prolly write off the missing planets. wait five or ten yrs, build up and advance the factories of the conquered territories, use slave labor, wipe out local ecologies, all that good stuff. then with a fleet of more advanced ships, clean out starfleet.

[Lord of the Farce]

the imperial could start his own barony - wipe out a few dozen planets and a few score billion citizens to make his point, then tell a few major industrial sites if they dont want the same, they will work for him. then make a peace treaty with the feds, with their penchant for diplomacy and fear of a bdzed earth, they'd prolly write off the missing planets. wait five or ten yrs, build up and advance the factories of the conquered territories, use slave labor, wipe out local ecologies, all that good stuff. then with a fleet of more advanced ships, clean out starfleet.

I don't know, my thought is that according to the scenario, the Imperials would believe that the Federation would just as soon drop another super-bioweapon on them while they are not looking than to make any peace treaty. The Imperials would believe that the Federation would say/do anything to have them drop their guards.

[Mr Bean]

Yes this is a *killing Spree style Senarior, somone who is there to do as much damage as possible in the shortest amount of time

[CNS Sarajevo]

Agree with Mr. Degan on all points. Hyperdrive makes tracking the ship down almost impossible. The only limiting factor is the ISD's supplies and ammo.

If the commander's the wily, political type, he might try to strike a deal with the Dominion or the Cardassians. Give me fuel and ammo, and I'll weaken the Federation enough for you to conquer them.

The Feds' only chance is treknobabble, as usual. Let's say they find a "hyperspace disturbance" where the ship....

Hell, let's not.

[Sea Skimmer]

Agree with Mr. Degan on all points. Hyperdrive makes tracking the ship down almost impossible. The only limiting factor is the ISD's supplies and ammo.

If the commander's the wily, political type, he might try to strike a deal with the Dominion or the Cardassians. Give me fuel and ammo, and I'll weaken the Federation enough for you to conquer them.

The Feds' only chance is treknobabble, as usual. Let's say they find a "hyperspace disturbance" where the ship....

Hell, let's not.

The premise is that the ISD captain thinks the Alpha Quadrant wiped out Coruscant with a bio weapon. There would be no deals made with other powers as the captain would think there just as responsible

[Darth Yoshi]

Well, the Fed commander knows the ISD is coming, right? Which means that he'll have to amass a fleet, meaning the shipyards will have heavy defenses, relative to the rest of the Federation. So attack a member world for five minutes, then hype out, leaving any communication centers intact and transmitting. That will spook the general population of the UFP, and force the SF admiral to move before he's ready. Meanwhile, the ISD will have recon units searching for any shipyards. Once the UFP fleet is either found or scattered, hype into a different system that's several days away from the fleet at maximum warp, and commence BDZ. Once the BDZ is finished, hype out and wait for the fleet to show up at the dead planet. Once it shows up, hype to the UFP shipyards and destroy them. With the shipyards gone, Starfleet will be unable to resupply. At this point, the ISD can go around commencing planetary bombardment at its leisure.

[Mr. B]

Question #1: how much damage could this ship realistically do before it is either destroyed in action or it runs out of fuel? Assume reasonable competence on the part of the ISD's commanding officer (obviously, given his speed and lack of support, hit and run tactics make the most sense).

Their first stop would be Earth, where they BDZ it an wipe out all SF ships nearby. Then would likely continue to wipe out major planets until they have nothing left, and when that happens they will likely crash the SD into a planet.

Question #2: if you were a Starfleet Admiral, what tactics might you try to use against this marauder? Is there any hope? Or is your only hope to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye? (EDIT: after Kaz's post, I thought I should modify the scenario so that this Q-nut briefs you on the capabilities and intentions of this vessel, so you're not totally in the dark).

The admiral would have no clue about how to stop it. He would likely pull ships in to protect the major planets. Then wait for a confrontation.

[Isolder74]

A lot of people enjoy asking how one SW ship would do in ST, but it's often facetious. Why not do it seriously? Imagine the following scenario:

Code: Select all

One ISD has appeared in the Alpha Quadrant. Let us conservatively assume that its general capabilities are roughly 60% better than the official specifications of an Acclamator transport, which gives it 400,000 light year operational range, 60% more light guns than an Acclamator, and 300 gigaton heavy guns.

Someone in the Q continuum has decided that it would be amusing to show the Federation that they have grown overconfident after defeating the Borg and the Dominion. He has altered the minds of the ISD's crew so that they believe that the Emperor has been killed along with Coruscant's entire population, thanks to a super-bioweapon secretly deployed by the Federation and its Alpha Quadrant allies in a cowardly first strike with no warning. The crew believes the Emperor sent them across spacetime with his dying will on a mission of vengeance, and they will fanatically carry out that mission, in an attempt to cause maximum casualties before they are taken down.

Question #1: how much damage could this ship realistically do before it is either destroyed in action or it runs out of fuel? Assume reasonable competence on the part of the ISD's commanding officer (obviously, given his speed and lack of support, hit and run tactics make the most sense).

Question #2: if you were a Starfleet Admiral, what tactics might you try to use against this marauder? Is there any hope? Or is your only hope to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye? (EDIT: after Kaz's post, I thought I should modify the scenario so that this Q-nut briefs you on the capabilities and intentions of this vessel, so you're not totally in the dark).

Question #1: The ISD is fully loaded right so ten garrison basses to use to set up basses on some planets. The ISD carries the technition required to set up a planetary shields. Given this the ISD should be able to create a supply base and then strike from there to strategice targets. As long as the"base keeps his shields up them the Feddies won't be able to hurt the base so after this is the ISD will have free reign.

Question #2: THe Federation Admiralo is doomed. You can't predict where the ISd will strike and by the time you respond the planet will be dead. so you would have to station all of your fleet units at as many of you planets as possible but it will be a useless gesture as no weapon you have will kill the ISD.

[Omega-13]

Does a stardestroyer have the ability to harvest fuel for itself somewhere?
Food can be obtained from anywhere,

ammo and fuel is the problem, can they make it with the right resources?

[Vertigo1]

Before I start really getting into this, I've got a few questions.

1. Which era are we talking about here? TOS? TNG? What?

2. Does the ISD gain knowlege of the layout of UFP space prior to moving in? (If someone remotely suggests that an ISD can do that with sensors alone from anywhere in federation space, I'm gonna come unglued. )

3. Since its supplies are seriously limited, does the ISD make any deals with known enemies of the Federation to gain a foothold in the galaxy? (ie: a place to jump back to after a successful mission to resupply, etc)

4. Is there a competant commander on-board? (ala Thrawn or similar) The rest (except for Palleon) aren't exactly the brightest minds in the galaxy.

5. Do they gain knowlege of starfleet firepower beforehand? If not, they're definitely going to lay low for a while until the time is right, then pull some hit and fade tactics. I don't care how powerful your ship is, if you don't know how powerful your enemy is you're good as dead.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

We are probably talking about the more modern era, probably DS9.

We either assume they do or they can use telescopes to get rough data, and refine it with probe droids. Obviously, if they can never find the important targets, the fight does not start. Q does not want that (in this scenario,) so if they don't find anybody in a while, I'm sure Q would clue them in.

They do have six years of food and probably a reasonable amount of starfighter ordnance. Short term supply problems should be minimal, and they think the whole AQ is under suspicion, not just the Feds, so any supply bases would be far, far away and it would be a waste of fuel to get there. Besides, AQ and Imp tech is adequately different that short of really basic things like food, there won't be much commonality. They'll just cause as much destruction as possible before their deaths.

We are assuming reasonable competence. It does not take genius level competence to deal with the Federation. Semi-competence on the part of the Captain and crew is sufficient.

They are assumed to be fanatical. The first time they see a Fed ship, the worst case scenario is that they'll assume it is roughly comparable to a SW ship of similar size (which means the best Federation ship will be rated as good as an Assault Frigate, max,) then they are going to see the low power levels emitted and that would seal off their conclusion. Then they'll destroy it with a single broadside, and the total truth will be revealed...

[Evil Sadistic Bastard]

Unless the Feds could pin the SD down in one location and focus a full fleet's firepower on it, they won't have a chance in hell of destroying it. If we're talking about a good commander here, he'd do hit-and-run attacks like what many people on the board have already said. And the SD would be a highly visible symbol... Fear the evil wedge of death that turns the air to fire and the ground to dust.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

I think Wong said it's after the Dominion War.

[Darth Wong]

1. Which era are we talking about here? TOS? TNG? What?

To give the Feddies the best possible chance, I'd say the peak of their military buildup, which would presumably be just after the Dominion War.

2. Does the ISD gain knowlege of the layout of UFP space prior to moving in? (If someone remotely suggests that an ISD can do that with sensors alone from anywhere in federation space, I'm gonna come unglued)

They know who the Federation is (they must, given the scenario), which presumably means they also have some rough strategic information (Earth is its capital, it's got 150 member worlds, it occupies this general region of space, etc). The rest can be filled in with telescopes, probe droids, and simple triangulation of comm traffic to locate all of the important targets (unless you will "come unglued" at the notion that ISD's possess Galileo's exotic "telescope" technology or knowledge of triangulation).

3. Since its supplies are seriously limited, does the ISD make any deals with known enemies of the Federation to gain a foothold in the galaxy? (ie: a place to jump back to after a successful mission to resupply, etc)

It's a one-way mission. There's no way to get back. They believe they are there to die on a mission of vengeance.

4. Is there a competant commander on-board? (ala Thrawn or similar) The rest (except for Palleon) aren't exactly the brightest minds in the galaxy.

Thrawn is beyond competent. I already specified reasonable competence.

5. Do they gain knowlege of starfleet firepower beforehand? If not, they're definitely going to lay low for a while until the time is right, then pull some hit and fade tactics.

That seems to be the consensus.

I don't care how powerful your ship is, if you don't know how powerful your enemy is you're good as dead.

That falls under "reasonable competence". Mind you, if the difference in power is great enough, even a total lack of intelligence data won't be enough to make any difference.

[Ender]

Out of curiosity, how feasable is BDZing planet after planet? Doing so eats up mad ammounts of energy, which will drain their fuel even quicker. Since we do not know if they have the technology onboard to produce hypermatter, there has to be an upper limit on how many consequitive BDZs an ISD can preform before refuleing. Anyone got any numbers on that?

[Howedar]

I don't believe so, but remember that a full BDZ is far more than is actually required to destroy all multicellular life on a planet (save a few potential survivors).