Shuttle Craft

[Tas II]

Star Trek isn't a fighter-heavy universe, and such light attack craft as they have are warp capable, and have consistently been shown as not being carrier-based. Sorry, guys, but this is not Star Wars.

Hmmmmm....not to disagree too much with our esteemed Mr Oulton, but.....I seem to recall Sisko, during the last battle of the Dominion Ware ordering "Carrier Wings" around. That would imply fighters....in fact, I think he mentions fighters too, although I really will need to check that one out. Now, I could be wrong (and it would not be the first time! The old memory is not as goo.....damn, what was I on about?)

Admittedly, the ST Universe is not fighter-heavy, but there is canonical evidence for fighters. And like Tobian says, it's interesting to see what people come up with.

Cheers

Tas

[calguard66]

Fighters or attack craft (VERY small craft of some kind not seen on screen before attacking in formation, anyway) are seen on screen, and Sisko refers to fighter wings. I don't recall if carriers are mentioned or not. Fighter carriers or attack ship tenders would almost be required. There wouldn't be any point in building fighters that had full crew comforts... the advantage of fightercraft is the lesser economic cost of building them. Put all that stuff on one vessel, it can be used by any number of personnel.

[Owen E Oulton]

The only Federation "fighters" seen on screen are the modified Peregrine Class Couriers originally used by the Maquis and adopted during the war by the Federation. They are clearly warp-capable and were never, ever, shown as carrier-based. If anyone can find an exact reference (so I can independantly check it on my tapes - I'm not taking anyone's word for it), let me know - cite episode, scene and immediately preceeding dialogue.

We know from Nemesis that the Romulans employed Reman Scorpion Class Fighters, but again there is no evidence of carriers. The movie has them based on a one-off prototype, so we don't know how they were deployed in the War...

[Tobian]

... can open.... worms everywhere....

Always a heated debate ammong the fans this one.. allong with lots of others. Bottom line with Startrek is there is SO little evidence of fighters in the whole of the show... *ONE* singe reference to them - out of HOW many episodes hardly makes for a convincing argument!

Stoll the closest thing we have to fighters is the peregrine ships.. even though theyare what I would call small starships - a very big size 2 vessel -

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/sc...dfighter-t.gif

Hmmm larger ships could hold a few of them for sure - and given the nature of the Dominion war I can see why they were used in that ONE instance... because the Cardassians and Dominion also fielded large numbers of smaller than average ships.

To me it never really sat well within the context of the federation - they are a humanist (or well aliens hehe) oriented organisation - I can't see them sending out kamikaze missions.. but then equally by the time of that phase in the war the Federation was probably quite desperate and running out of capital ships!

[Owen E Oulton]

Stoll the closest thing we have to fighters is the peregrine ships.. even though theyare what I would call small starships - a very big size 2 vessel -

Actually, they're not all that big - only 12.6 metres long (same length as a Star Wars X-Wing. This is based on a very clear publicity image from Paramount which shows that the cabin is the same size as a Type 15 Shuttlepod and in fact that set was used for the cockpit at least once in DS9.

[Tas II]

The only Federation "fighters" seen on screen are the modified Peregrine Class Couriers originally used by the Maquis and adopted during the war by the Federation. They are clearly warp-capable and were never, ever, shown as carrier-based. If anyone can find an exact reference (so I can independantly check it on my tapes - I'm not taking anyone's word for it), let me know - cite episode, scene and immediately preceeding dialogue.

I stand corrected.....the 'carrier wings' etc are mentioned in the 'Sacrifice of Angels' episode, during the massive battle on the approach to DS9.

Cheers

Tas

[Tobian]

Yeah but if your citing Starwars as evidence.. The X wings weren't seen in carriers either (waits for some raving starwars fan to prove me wrong.. 3... 2... 1....) and 'carriers' were SO much bigger in starwars than any ship fielded by, or seen in Startrek.

As another possible nod to 'fighters' however the academy Training vessels were very similar in size and shape to the 'Peregrine' class - to the poiint of not looking like much else, so it's not hard to laterally assume something similar exists, or else why aren't they training in regular shuttles!

[Owen E Oulton]

"As another possible nod to 'fighters' however the academy Training vessels were very similar in size and shape to the 'Peregrine' class - to the poiint of not looking like much else, so it's not hard to laterally assume something similar exists, or else why aren't they training in regular shuttles!"

Actually, they didn't look much like Peregrines at all, and were quite a bit smaller. In the Star Trek Encyclopedia, for some reason the Okudas and their researchers substituted an illustration of the Peregrine for an Academy trainer, even going so far as to put an Academy insignia on the image. Very strange...

[Tobian]

Also trye but my point is they are 'fighter' shaped nontheless - they are not shuttlepod shaped.. so, even with that bizarre innacuracy in the Encycloaedia it still raises a question !