Would the Empire need to design new ships to invade the AQ?

PrinceofLowLight · Post by **PrinceofLowLight** » 2003-03-05 09:22pm

The Supplying and ISD thread got me thinking. It seems most of the bigger ships in SW are designed with the assumption that they'll be able to resupply at the next outpost along the patrol route. Very small cargoe holds for its volume and they really don't look as if they could go campaigning without a literal swarm of supply ships. If a wormhole was the only way to get into the AQ, as it is in most scenarios, this doesn't seem that easy(especially when you can only fit a few ships at a time).

Basically, they've been designed by a people who have had a more or less unified galaxy whose main conflicts have been localized rebels, pirates and the occasional border war. Do they have any warships that could really stand long-range campaigning without several stellar masses worth of merchant marine backing them up?

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2003-03-05 09:25pm

ISDs are good for several years after being supplied. I think that's more than enough time to take out the AQ.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-03-05 09:42pm

The operational range of an Acclamator is 250,000 light years. The operational range of an ISD is undoubtedly greater, since its internal volume is full of equipment and fuel rather than cavernous chambers for troops and weapons. Therefore, it should be quite easy to run sorties ranging all throughout the entire Milky Way galaxy (never mind the Federation's pitiful little patch of space) even without a local supply base.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-03-05 09:45pm

Given the relativity limited number of ships needed to overrun the Star Trek Galaxy, there already considerable range and the vast shipping resources of the Empire I see no need.

Ender · Post by **Ender** » 2003-03-05 11:02pm

Just bring in a deepdock and a few TF freighters full of supplies, and you're set.

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi · Post by **Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi** » 2003-03-05 11:02pm

IIRC, ISDs carry 6 years woth of supplies, and I'm sure the Federation will be defeated by then. Also, I was thinking that an ISD could be used to resupply other Imperial ships while invading the AQ, if the invasion is going to take far less than 6 years.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2003-03-06 12:22am

I think they'd mass produce Lancer and Carrack etc sized vessels for patrol and defense of occupied territory.

Smiling Bandit · Post by **Smiling Bandit** » 2003-03-06 10:21am

Mwa ha hah hah! Once they conquer the alpha quadrant, they'll easily be able turn it into a useful mass military base by settling millions of Iperials on cheap land. Soon,

Smiling Bandit · Post by **Smiling Bandit** » 2003-03-06 10:23am

Drat.

I meant to say that soon, earth will be partly a large city-world like Coruscant (though not totally, the Imps would not need to destroy all the natural environement, and marginilizing the old Earthers in the rural areas would help their rule). It will be their base of power!

HAHAHAHAHAHAhAHAHHAHAH!

Sorry. I juts had to get it our my system.

Admiral Johnason · Post by **Admiral Johnason** » 2003-03-06 06:26pm

If anything were to go wrong, theyu can always scavenge for supplies. The Federation is crammed full of open trade routes and supply depots. And lets not for get the suprisingly undefended science stations.

XPViking · Post by **XPViking** » 2003-03-06 09:29pm

New ship designs? No, since the wormhole serves as a handy conduit. If there was no wormhole, then I could see the Empire designing specially-designed ships for inter-galaxy travel. I don't thing their current ships can do that. But why would they bother doing that just to squish the Feds?

XPViking

seanrobertson · Post by **seanrobertson** » 2003-03-08 05:33pm

Darth Wong wrote:The operational range of an Acclamator is 250,000 light years. The operational range of an ISD is undoubtedly greater, since its internal volume is full of equipment and fuel rather than cavernous chambers for troops and weapons. Therefore, it should be quite easy to run sorties ranging all throughout the entire Milky Way galaxy (never mind the Federation's pitiful little patch of space) even without a local supply base.

Precisely.

Besides, there's no reason for the Empire to try and conquer the entire galaxy all at once. I imagine they'd set up shop in several thinly populated areas of the galaxy, establish multiple bases of operation, then start cutting the pie piece by piece. Palpatine might not care much for the life of an individual Imperial soldier, but he's not stupid; he wouldn't have his ships flying across the galaxy repeatedly without the opportunity for them to operate at peak efficiency, with lots of fuel and so on.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-03-08 06:01pm

Agreed. I still get a kick out of the one E-mailer who insisted that the Empire would be screwed without some kind of beach head if they want to attack the Federation, obviously not realizing that considering the size and mobility of the Empire, the Federation is a beach head.

Setesh · Post by **Setesh** » 2003-03-09 06:20am

The only thing I can see them having to design is a new way to take ships 'alive'. Ion cannons are to system destructive. With the Feds need for active safeties it will take a few tries to take a crew alive.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-03-09 06:24am

Setesh wrote:The only thing I can see them having to design is a new way to take ships 'alive'. Ion cannons are to system destructive. With the Feds need for active safeties it will take a few tries to take a crew alive.

No new technology is necessary. Simply seize the ship in a tractor beam, inform them that if they give up peacefully they will be well-treated, point a MTL turret at them, and order them to surrender.

Setesh · Post by **Setesh** » 2003-03-09 06:38am

Darth Wong wrote:
Setesh wrote:The only thing I can see them having to design is a new way to take ships 'alive'. Ion cannons are to system destructive. With the Feds need for active safeties it will take a few tries to take a crew alive.
No new technology is necessary. Simply seize the ship in a tractor beam, inform them that if they give up peacefully they will be well-treated, point a MTL turret at them, and order them to surrender.

To much risk of them self-destructing. Lets say you were an Imperial Captain, you've been ordered to capture the Ent-E's command staff. You grab them by tractor beam demand surrender. There's even money Picard blows the ship rather than surrender. And you'd have to catch them in the first place.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-03-09 06:40am

I don't think they'd have much need to seize vessels. The Federations awful security and ground troops, would allow for the easy capture of planetary installations. Those could provide any data which might be required.

Once the Federations planets are overrun they can either serve the new order or be destroyed. The only exception would probably be a ship carrying Federation political leaders, in the unlikely event they can flee and the Empire still sees a use for them.

Really, all Federation assets are readily expendable unless we construct scenarios in which the Empire has very limited resources or no resupply.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-03-09 06:42am

Setesh wrote:To much risk of them self-destructing. Lets say you were an Imperial Captain, you've been ordered to capture the Ent-E's command staff. You grab them by tractor beam demand surrender. There's even money Picard blows the ship rather than surrender. And you'd have to catch them in the first place.

No, you don't. They can either come to you or rot in the wilderness, since you will be hitting crucial strategic targets. You don't need to worry about them, and you don't even need to capture them unless you do so on a whim, by sitting at a target and waiting for them to show up.

As for the "Picard blows the ship rather than surrender" bit, you've been watching too many movies. Real people are not so likely to kill themselves for honour.

Setesh · Post by **Setesh** » 2003-03-09 06:46am

Real people no, Picard maybe. This is the twit who was going to kill his ENTIRE crew and civilian population because the 'Mystic Monkey' was going to kill half his crew to learn about death.

Patrick Ogaard · Post by **Patrick Ogaard** » 2003-03-09 10:05am

As already noted, the operational ranges and speeds of Star Wars capital ships are almost ludicrously overpowered in comparison with those of Star Trek capital ships. An ISD could, without resorting to the use of wormholes or other risky phenomena, all but simultaneously prosecute a three-front war against the Federation, the Borg and the Dominion, so long as there is sufficient lead time to develop the necessary navigational charts.

Basically, an ISD appears in the Dominion and blasts a strategically important planet into a glowing cinder, and follows that same procedure with various other worlds held by the Dominion. With its prominent fleet bases, cloning facilities and Ketracel White production facilities destroyed in the course of a day or two, the Dominion would be dangerously destabilized. Its inevitable external enemies in the Gamma Quadrant would pounce, as would the more restive of the subjugated populations. The Dominion could then be left to stew in its own juices for a few days.

This is quickly followed by the ISD jumping to the Alpha Qadrant. Even if the Empire taskforce decides to play nice and avoid the deliberate destruction of major civilian population centers, that still allows the ISD a great deal of leeway. As an example, the ISD could quickly appear in Earth orbit. All paramilitary orbital assets disappear, and a few turbolaser bolts pick out military ground targets, which primarily means that San Francisco is turned into a crater. Starfleet Command, Starfleet Academy and various other facilities disappear. A short hop to Mars destroys the Utopia Planitia shipyards, and since Mars would (in Imperial eyes) qualify as a military target, a BDZ might be carried out just to demonstrate the capability. As Starfleet does not appear to make a secret of the location of its various mothball yards, the ISD should then simply make an appearance at one or more of those yards. Mothballed starships by the dozens and hundreds burst apart under turbolaser fire, reducing the Federation's ability to muster any kind of response.

A mixed raider squadron of blastboats and Sentinel-class landing craft can be deployed, operating from a garrison base placed on an isolated world a thousand or so light years outside Federation space. Armed with four forward-firing laser cannon, a turreted ion cannon and two forward-firing concussion missile launchers, a Sentinel should be a more than even match for most military/paramilitary starships of the Federation. Skipray blastboats sport three capital-scale ion cannon, a pair of turreted laser cannon, a proton torpedo launcher and a concussion missile launcher. Nuisance raids by these vessels would serve to destabilize the Federation by demonstrating the inability of Starfleet to deal with the problem. Federation colonies are often demonstrably isolated, cut off from assistance for weeks, months, even years at a time. A pair of blastboats and a pair of landing craft should be adequate to attack and overwhelm most such colonies, especially as aid to the colony could be a week or more away. If a light freighter or, better yet, a bulk freighter is called in to follow up the attack force, prisoners and usable supplies could be appropriated from the colonies.

Leaving the raider force behind to carry out its destabization mission, the ISD then proceeds into the midst of Borg space. Cubes explode right and left, and a series of BDZ operations would be appropriate. The ability of the ISD to disengage at will once the situation gets hairy is a telling advantage, especially when combined with the ability to travel much faster than the Borg. As soon as a sufficiently threatening Borg fleet assembles to engage it, the Star Destroyer fires a parting volley and makes a short jump of a few hundred light years and lays waste to the nearest Borg-held world. The game continues, and within a week the Borg should be reeling. The Borg cube losses should conservatively number in the hundreds, the Borg planet losses in the dozens. As worlds effectively subject to a cyberplague pandemic, the Borg-held worlds would not enjoy protection from BDZ operations. After about two weeks the operation could be reduced to one or two BDZ strikes per week on an irregular schedule. Within a year of such operations the Borg would have lost a hundred or more worlds and corresponding numbers of cubes to the strategy. By that time the countless enemies of the Borg should have figured out that the Borg are weakening and should be conducting attacks of their own.

Occasional further forays into Dominion space to reduce Dominion-held worlds and fleets and carry forward the destabilization could continue on an irregular basis. The Dominion could also be a useful starting point for the establishment of an Imperial sector government. For most subject worlds of the Dominion, the installation of an Imperial planetary governor would likely be a matter of replacing a vicious weasel of a Vorta and a small garrison of Jem'Hadar with a vicious weasel of an Imperial officer and a small garrison of white-armored stormtroopers.

It would be at that point that support ships would become important. A small deepdock facility would be particularly useful, placed near the secure hidden base outside the Federation's territory. Even the tiniest deepdock facility (from the Imperial Sourcebook) has three bays capable of repairing and even building up to two strike cruisers (for the smaller bays) and one Victory star destroyer (for the larger of the three bays).

Defending the Empire-held worlds in the Dominion's former territory would obviously demand appropriate vessel production, and recruitment of fresh troops would then begin. Aside from the usual production of TIE-series fighters and assorted shuttles, two major vessel types are obvious choices for production: system patrol craft and strike cruisers.

System patrol craft like the IPV 1 are 120 meters long, with a crew of 12, 10 troops, no hyperdrive, and four hefty laser cannon turrets. They should be able to wipe out most combat starships with one volley and would make ideal orbital picket ships and in-system patrol craft. Also, an ISD should be able to fit two of these craft in its main hangar bay for hyperspace transport. That way, the ISD can pick up pairs of these ships from the deepdock facility and deposit them where they are needed as part of its normal patrol activities.

Loronar strike cruisers are modular cruisers designed for easy mass production, 450 meters long, with a crew of 2,112 and space for 340 troops. They have the same hyperdrive and sublight speed capabilities of an ISD, with maneuverability comparable to a Carrack cruiser. The ship drastically outguns the Carrack, however. The Carrack has 10 turbolaser batteries, 5 tractor beam projectors, and either 20 laser cannon or 20 ion cannon. The Strike cruiser has 10 turbolaser batteries (of the same firepower as the Carrack's guns) and augments these with a further 20 turbolasers, 10 ion cannon and 10 tractor beam projectors. The Strike cruiser can also carry 2 AT-STs, 1 AT-AT and a squadron of TIE-series fighters. The modularity of the Strike cruiser also allows its mission-specific modification for service as a carrier, troop transport, a planetary assault vessel that can carry up to 5 AT-ATs, or even as a transport for the deployment of prefab garrison bases.

Thus, to get back to the initial question, Strike cruisers would be the ideal choice for production in the conquered territories. No known Star Trek galaxy starship, with the possible exception of something like the Voth city ship, should be able to successfully engage a Strike cruiser. In the longer term, of course, the production of Victory star destroyers as heavy units would be useful. The Strike cruisers would also be particularly useful as a mobile defense force to support system patrol craft and the warp-driven starships of local allies and protectorates.

If a mass production line for Sentinel shuttles can be installed, they might actually be useful long-term replacements for the warp-driven combat starships of secured local protectorates.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-03-09 10:24am

An added advantage of the Strike cruiser is it has limited ability to be reconfigured for different roles, with added troop or fighter capacity or the ability to deploy a garrison base. Dropping a few of those on more important worlds would probably take care of quite a few Federation ships. In addition to turbolasers, shields and ground defenses each one also has forty TIEs to deal with any Federation ships that show up after the first couple are blasted by the fixed defenses.

Of course, deploying any fixed ground installations the Federation could strike at has disadvantages though, and would consume many resources.

Kerneth · Post by **Kerneth** » 2003-03-09 10:52am

Capturing Fed ships without having to worry about self-destruct would be ludicrously easy, thanks to the joys of shielded starfighters.

Just order your TIE Defender and gunboat pilots to target the screamingly obvious warp nacelles with proton torpedos, then do a strafing run against the impulse engines and the Feddie starship is dead in space.

Federation engines obviously have an "engine wash" of some sort based on the blue glow of the impulse engine. It can't be too powerful or they'd scorch their own hulls, given the location of the impulse drive. I can't see any reason a few squadrons of starfighters couldn't hammer the impulse drive into scrap with their lasers if they didn't want to risk a torpedo strike.

Patrick Ogaard · Post by **Patrick Ogaard** » 2003-03-09 12:16pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:An added advantage of the Strike cruiser is it has limited ability to be reconfigured for different roles, with added troop or fighter capacity or the ability to deploy a garrison base. Dropping a few of those on more important worlds would probably take care of quite a few Federation ships. In addition to turbolasers, shields and ground defenses each one also has forty TIEs to deal with any Federation ships that show up after the first couple are blasted by the fixed defenses.

Of course, deploying any fixed ground installations the Federation could strike at has disadvantages though, and would consume many resources.

Fixed ground installations would definitely be a liability if they were deployed too early. Once a substantial force is available for system defence, however, the equation changes. A garrison base would ideally be deployed on an annexed world in Dominion territory. Combined with a force of system defense craft and work on a planetary shield, as well as the ability to call on support from hyperspace-capable assets, such a world could quickly become all but unassailable. The situation becomes even worse for the attackers if locally produced warp-driven warships operated by protectorate personnel are used to augment the defenses.

The Dominion would be the ideal choice for the first Imperial sector in the Star Trek galaxy, well after the Dominion itself is reduced to a shambles. The worlds of the Dominion are used to the kind of rulership the Empire exercises, and many might actually welcome the comparatively benevolent rule of the Empire. Actually establishing such a sector would naturally require a presence on the ground, by which time sufficient warships should be available to prevent attacks. A production line for TIE/D fighters would also be a nice thing, especially to counter possible mass suicide ramming attacks by Jem'Hadar remnants.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2003-03-09 01:27pm

Darth Wong wrote:As for the "Picard blows the ship rather than surrender" bit, you've been watching too many movies. Real people are not so likely to kill themselves for honour.

But these aren't real people, these are Home Trekoidus. They all have a penchant stupid self sacrifice in the name of stupid philisophical concepts. Picard in particular has show a willingness to blow himself to bits over stuppid points of honor.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2003-03-09 06:30pm

But these aren't real people, these are Home Trekoidus. They all have a penchant stupid self sacrifice in the name of stupid philisophical concepts. Picard in particular has show a willingness to blow himself to bits over stuppid points of honor.

They are treated the same way that humans are, today, for the purposes of determining their psychological decisions, choices, and penchants.

In terms of logistics, the Empire already has more than enough ships and logistical abilities to easily conquer the ST Galaxy. I think that it would help them to design larger troop ships, with little protection but massive capacities, though I do not think that they could be designed and built quickly enough to change the outcome if attempts at designing such ships began after the wormhole was discovered (they could not be purpose-built).