Have Trekkies used these arguments?

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, I'll agree that Runabouts/shuttles would be of dubious effectiveness as air support in a Trek where powerful, shielded ground batteries are widespread if you agree that they would be highly effective in that role in canon Trek.

[Batman]

We're talking about a universe where the only available military forces for ground battles are
a) full-up starships in orbit
b) shuttles/runabouts and specifically designed for it atmosphere-capable starships, and
c) guys on foot in PJs on the ground,
so yeah, with nobody having so much as a truck-mounted AAA gun or tracked MANPADS launcher (or any ground vehicles whatsoever) yes, for/against an all infantry force on foot they'd probably have a field day.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, they did have that sad little jeep thing in Nemesis.

And the odd piece of artillery.

New timeline Trek gave us what looked like a dedicated atmospheric gunship in Into Darkness, as well.

[Batman]

Whenever did we see artillery?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Klingon mortars in "Nor the Battle to the Strong" is the closest thing that comes to mind, plus that weapon in TOS "Arena."

[Batman]

Sorry. I thought you meant actual artillery and I had somehow missed that.

[Q99]

The buggy was silly.

Anti-grav is so easy in trek there's very little reason *not* to just have your primary fighting vehicle be something that can hover over bad terrain.

Well, I'll agree that Runabouts/shuttles would be of dubious effectiveness as air support in a Trek where powerful, shielded ground batteries are widespread if you agree that they would be highly effective in that role in canon Trek.

Runabouts can clash with ships a bit so there's not much reason to think they'd be easy prey in ground battles (especially if you have a group of them), and can go low enough to use ground/cities/etc. as cover.


Powerful ground batteries are going to involve sizable fusion generators (stationary stuff generally doesn't use anti-matter since they don't have stopping by space stations or ramscoops as refueling options. DS9 doesn't have a warp core), and any really big ones, you're going to want a starship and not ground stuff anyway.

[FaxModem1]

We do have canonical evidence of planet based batteries.The Dominion used them on Trelka V. Martok damaged them by 'calvary raids' diverting the ships guarding the system chasing part of his forces.

The strafing run is underway.)
KOLANA: Their shields are down to sixty five percent. Three Cardassian cruisers are in spacedock, orbiting the far side of the planet. Two of them are getting underway. The Malpara and the Ning'tao have completed their attack.
(A Cardassian blows one of them out of the sky.)
KOLANA: The Malpara is gone. No survivors. Ning'tao is heading out of the system. The Cardassians are pursuing.
MARTOK: Leaving their base unprotected. Helm, take us in. Bring us to a hover three hundred metres above the base. Stand by to decloak on my command.
SYNON: Holding at three hundred metres.
MARTOK: Scan the base.
KOLANA: They've dispatched damage control teams. Two defence batteries are out and they've just dropped their primary shield grid.
MARTOK: Decloak the ship and open fire.
KOLANA: Shields are down to eighty five percent!
WORF: Reroute emergency power to the secondary shield emitters.
MARTOK: Fire torpedoes! Helm, lay in an escape course.
SYNON: Aye, sir!
(Big BOOM on the bridge. Martok and Worf are out cold. Up steps the third officer.)
KOR: Continue firing! Target their primary reactors!
KOLANA: Chah Veh!
KOR: And bring us around for another pass!
SYNON: Coming about!

We also get to see the planetary base batteries firing.

Klingon BoPs making a pass while the base defenses fire back

Dominion base hitting a Bird of Prey

Bird of Prey hightailing it as the base's batteries fire

So, we do have canonical evidence of both Trek ships being used in atmospheric combat and for planetary batteries.

[WATCH-MAN]

So's a starship hanging in orbit above it. And who said anything about shielding the entire freaking planet? Just put a shield on the battery itself. You can do it for a starship, you can for it for a ground battery (which generally has a lot more room to spare thanks to not needing artificial gravity. life support, drive systems and so on).

To clarify: ground-based shields that can resist a star ship are exceedingly rare. Don't ask me why.

Why? Not why are they exceedingly rare? But why do you claim that they are exceedingly rare? Because you have never seen them? That would be only conclusive if there were many opportunities in which one would expect to see such ground-based shields if they exist and are not exceedingly rare. Otherwise such ground-based shields would be only one of many things we have never seen in Star Trek. And only because we have not seen some things in Star Trek does not justify the assumption that these things do not exist. That's why I am asking you to explain why you claim that "ground-based shields that can resist a star ship are exceedingly rare".

[The Romulan Republic]

So's a starship hanging in orbit above it. And who said anything about shielding the entire freaking planet? Just put a shield on the battery itself. You can do it for a starship, you can for it for a ground battery (which generally has a lot more room to spare thanks to not needing artificial gravity. life support, drive systems and so on).

To clarify: ground-based shields that can resist a star ship are exceedingly rare. Don't ask me why.

Why? Not why are they exceedingly rare? But why do you claim that they are exceedingly rare? Because you have never seen them? That would be only conclusive if there were many opportunities in which one would expect to see such ground-based shields if they exist and are not exceedingly rare. Otherwise such ground-based shields would be only one of many things we have never seen in Star Trek. And only because we have not seen some things in Star Trek does not justify the assumption that these things do not exist. That's why I am asking you to explain why you claim that "ground-based shields that can resist a star ship are exceedingly rare".

They'd be such a potent defence, yet we seldom see them, even in scenarios where they would be useful. The idea that we have just never seen them seems dubious at best when they are seldom if ever mentioned any of the times Earth is attacked, or during the height of the Dominion War.

Sure, they could be widespread and just never mentioned or used for some reason, but there's fuck all in terms of evidence for that frankly ridiculous proposition.

[Q99]

Yea, definitely the kind of stuff you want a starship against if you're planning on taking it head-on. Though the heavy weaponry does seem to be localized around their priority targets and not super commonplace

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Another example (albeit an oddball) is Vosk's facility in the second half of "Storm Front", which both boasted a ground-based plasma cannon powerful enough to threaten the NX-01 and shields strong enough to resist phase cannon fire from the same. Both it and the Dominion base are point defenses, do we know of any planet-based area defences?

[Q99]

Also, not all ground fights are gonna take place on worlds that have ground based installations (or alternatively, may take place on different parts of a world than has defenses, if a world only has one or a few bases). So there's still a call for shuttle/runabout support.

[The Romulan Republic]

We do have canonical evidence of planet based batteries.The Dominion used them on Trelka V. Martok damaged them by 'calvary raids' diverting the ships guarding the system chasing part of his forces.

The strafing run is underway.)
KOLANA: Their shields are down to sixty five percent. Three Cardassian cruisers are in spacedock, orbiting the far side of the planet. Two of them are getting underway. The Malpara and the Ning'tao have completed their attack.
(A Cardassian blows one of them out of the sky.)
KOLANA: The Malpara is gone. No survivors. Ning'tao is heading out of the system. The Cardassians are pursuing.
MARTOK: Leaving their base unprotected. Helm, take us in. Bring us to a hover three hundred metres above the base. Stand by to decloak on my command.
SYNON: Holding at three hundred metres.
MARTOK: Scan the base.
KOLANA: They've dispatched damage control teams. Two defence batteries are out and they've just dropped their primary shield grid.
MARTOK: Decloak the ship and open fire.
KOLANA: Shields are down to eighty five percent!
WORF: Reroute emergency power to the secondary shield emitters.
MARTOK: Fire torpedoes! Helm, lay in an escape course.
SYNON: Aye, sir!
(Big BOOM on the bridge. Martok and Worf are out cold. Up steps the third officer.)
KOR: Continue firing! Target their primary reactors!
KOLANA: Chah Veh!
KOR: And bring us around for another pass!
SYNON: Coming about!

We also get to see the planetary base batteries firing.

Klingon BoPs making a pass while the base defenses fire back

Dominion base hitting a Bird of Prey

Bird of Prey hightailing it as the base's batteries fire

So, we do have canonical evidence of both Trek ships being used in atmospheric combat and for planetary batteries.

Okay, but this all raises the question of why we so rarely see them on other occasions. Maybe its just that planetary invasions don't happen much in Star Trek (I think someone raised that possibility already), but I suspect its more than that.

One possibility is that they're not cost effective- that the amount of damage one does is not enough, generally, to justify the cost of making them, especially since they're fixed instillations and so can only be used to defend a single point while being vulnerable to attack from more mobile opponents. Maybe the Dominion uses them because they know how to build them more cheaply (they were, at least initially, portrayed as being more technologically advanced that the Federation in at least some ways, and are certainly more militaristic).

Actually, this thread comes to mind:

https://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic ... 7&t=165304

Its on why the US doesn't use automated towers and such in real life. I wonder if it might be applicable here.

[Esquire]

One can imagine a situation similar to the early-modern era on Earth; shore fortifications used exactly the same resources as naval artillery, and indeed many shore batteries were armed with cannon either diverted from warship production or re-purposed from decommissioned ships. Planetary phaser batteries, if they want to damage warships, need to be as powerful as warship phasers - which, without evidence to the countrary, is to say that they need to be warship phasers. The Federation (and neighbors) manifestly aren't supersaturated with warships; how many times has there only been a single vessel available to deal with a critical situation? Ground batteries would only make sense for targets you'd need to station a fleet over anyway, and even that's debatable. That we only see a few instances of ground defenses simply means that only a few governments made the choice to install them, not that they can't be made to work.

In Star Wars, however, warship hardware isn't the problem, loyal and competent crews are.* They can afford to stick heavy ground batteries everywhere, and apparently do - or at least they do so more regularly than Star Trek governments.

*This is supposition, rather than explicit fact.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

It appears Trek powers rely more heavily on Starbases and orbital defences to protect important worlds. Some interesting information is located here:

Memory Alpha

The Cardassians hadn't quite mastered the concept in the Dominion War, however

[Q99]

A starbase does make a lot more sense for protecting a planet- all the advantages of fixed defense, much better vantage point (weapons blocked by less of the planet. Also unlike a ground base, due to rotation of planet it covers every part of the planet each orbital sweep, rather than just part of the planet), better place to dock ships (no fighting the gravity well *and* many can protect them internally), and getting in a fight causes less collateral. A miss goes flying off into space, rather than smacking the area over to the left with an antimatter warhead.

Also it may be possible to transport/move space stations in some cases, at least small ones. It'd be a big affair, but still an option.

[texanmarauder]

just to point something out, seeing as I am coming in late to this, star trek does have the verteron array on mars. it was able to hit near Starfleet HQ with pinpoint precision from MARS. it was also able to target the enterprise in space and did significant damage to them . we are talking about an array with enough power to be on par with the first xindi probe that killed 7,000,000 on earth.

also, since this thread died out, we have seen an orbital bombardment from at least 5 ISDs in star wars rebels "zero hour".

[EnterpriseSovereign]

The array outranges any other beam weapon in Trek-

The minimum distance from the Earth to Mars is about 54.6 million kilometres. The farthest apart they can be is about 401 million km. The average distance is about 225 million km.

So we have ~55 million km and ~400 million km as lower and upper range limits, respectively. Because the date was given as January 22, 2155 it's possible to work out the locations of Earth and Mars in their respective orbits and thus their separation to get a more accurate figure on the distance demonstrated. Since the array was designed to hit comets, extreme accuracy is required though as targets they're practically stationary and would be far less effective hitting a target moving as fast as a starship.

This ignores the fact that beyond a certain range it becomes far more practical to use a ship to alter the orbit of a comet, however because it's a planetary installation it's not restricted in the size of reactor (and thus destructive yield) it can have in the same way that a starship would. As a result it was more powerful than ships of the line as it could cripple the NX-01 at only 2% power.

The array also suffers from the same problem as any other planetary installation in that its firing arc is limited to whichever area of the sky it's facing at any given moment. Because the Martian day is less than an hour longer than Earth's this isn't a problem when it comes to hitting comets but becomes a serious limitation when it comes to hostile ships.

[WhiteLion]

So there there are two idiotic Trekkie arguments that I suspect some dye hard Trekkies think but I haven't really seen argued on this forum or others. They more or less sound like this.

• Land armies in Star Trek are obsolete because Phasers are so super duper more powerful than boasters that one guy with a hand Phaser can take out hundreds of storm troopers and tanks and vehicles and walkers.

• Star Wars needs armies because there ships can't bombard planets or at least can't shoot at planets accurately. Ships in Star Trek can easily and accurately just wipe out entire armies and there for star fleet doesn't need land armies.

What I'm asking is has anyone hear has herd of people use these arguments on any forums and if so could anyone point me to them were the person or persons arguing them gets the imperial smack down so you know to get a good chuckle out of there stupidity.

The phaser issue is irrelevant, all the weapons are effective based on the power of the weapons, it happened to me several times that in a discussion some ST fans claimed that the phasers are more advanced than the turbolasers and therefore more effective, while the turbolasers they are primitive weapons compared to phasers. I objectively responded by saying that according to his speech, an ST ship could easily fly in a star, since plasma is present in the star, the same plasma used by turbolasers. Obviously it is not possible given the high plasma energy of a star, and with this example I have pointed out to him that even though turbolasers may be less advanced, if loaded with more energy than phasers they are more effective. In the end it is always a question of the weapon's energy surplus.

for the speech of precision, I would say to point out to your interlocutor that if on one hand it is true that the phasers have a greater scope and precision it is also true that the SW ships have a much larger number of weapons, it is a little like comparing a sniper rifle and a machine gun, the sniper rifle will surely be more precise but in a planetary bombardment how much can count the accuracy if you can literally submerge the target with a rain of fire?

Personally I am not a fan of a specific series, I am a fan of objectivity, it makes no sense to defend a position that cannot be given up in a speech just because one likes a particular series. You would only end up ridiculing yourself and the series you love, also because the reader is not stupid. But for the reasons that I wrote I think that the phasers and the turbolasers have characteristics that make that there is not an overwhelming superiority from any of the two, obviously unless canon data are available on the power in megaton or watts of each weapon, that would be an objective and irrefutable fact.