Starfighters in Star Trek

[DuneMessiah]

Sorry if this has already been discussed but I couldn'T find it on the fly around.

In one episode of The Next Generation you see a couple of "Starfighters" attack a BORG cube. Unfortunately you can't see them well. I was wondering if anyone got a better picture of them or if someone even made up Spacedock stats for them...???

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Uhh... which episode?

[Cut]

The Best of Both Worlds, the ships belong to a defence perimeter near Jupiter IIRC. They are blasted out of the skies with a single shot from the cube. They aren't seen very long, so it's no surprise that you don't remember them!

[C5]

I remember reading somewhere (probably in a RPG book) that they were actually supposed to be automated defense shuttles, or something like that.
Anyway, as Cut said given their screen time was a little less than one second, it's not a surprise no one took much interest in them (I remember my friends' reactions when watching BOBW : "Hey what are those little... oh, never mind").
I'd treat them as a very specialized runabout, maybe, not far from a Klingon scout ship.

[Storm]

Ah, hm, yes, I thought it would be somehow this way. Not very cool, actually. The idea behind this was to invent a new prototype of warship that was invented during the Dominion War as reaction to the high demand of fast but cheap combat ships. The ship should be nothing less than a starfighter carrier, heavily armed but relatively slow and able to bring a huge complement of fighters into a combat area. The fighters would be very fast an agile but only for short range operations suited.
My idea was to play a series a little like Battlestar Galactica on this prototype, set during the DW...some of the picket ships could be klingon, some maybe even romulan later on. By this you could mix the style of DS-9 (space station-like) with the style of a TNG series (mobile base of operations).

What do you think????

[The Tatterdemalion King]

The Best of Both Worlds, the ships belong to a defence perimeter near Jupiter IIRC.

Mars.

They are blasted out of the skies with a single shot from the cube. They aren't seen very long, so it's no surprise that you don't remember them!

Actually, those ships might've been roughly Oberth-sized.

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/ar...or/qualor8.jpg

Ah, hm, yes, I thought it would be somehow this way. Not very cool, actually. The idea behind this was to invent a new prototype of warship that was invented during the Dominion War as reaction to the high demand of fast but cheap combat ships.

Like the kitbashes?

The main difficulty with fighters in Trek is that it's about powerplant, not just maneuverability. The phasers you can mount on a fighter are going to be way less powerful than is necessary to affect a larger ship without sustained fire, which is why you only saw giant swarms of them in the battle scenes.

[Captain Otto]

Building Fighters has no tradition in Star fleet. While most ships are designed to fulfill a variety of missions Fighters and Carriers are contrary to the very roots of the Federation and Starfleet dedicated Warships were not designed until the DW (not counting the Defiant Project). Even the PDF Vessels like the Saber, Akira (serving as a small time Carrier IIRC), Norway or Steamrunner vessels were well rounded ships that could more than deliver a good punch.
As for the Kit bashes - i am personally reviled by the idea to cobble together a Working Starship by piecing various available parts together. These ships are probably plagued by a dozen design flaws and are plagued by all problems rushed production brings along: Malfunctioning equipment etc.

The main difficulty with fighters in Trek is that it's about power plant, not just maneuverability. The phasers you can mount on a fighter are going to be way less powerful than is necessary to affect a larger ship without sustained fire, which is why you only saw giant swarms of them in the battle scenes.

I agree Unless they field Photon torpedoes their impact is going to be minimal. And even if they do the Fighters don't have the ability to stay in the field for a prolonged fight And a lot of personal is probably doomed if the Carrier goes down in flames and the scattered fighters get hunted down by expandable Jem' Hadar fighters.
I think fighters at least in Trek are a waste of resources.
And speaking about Fighters in BSG their usefulness against capital Ships is doubtful as well. If The Galactica fills her surroundings with Barrages that could wipe out even friendly Fighters by incident. A attack run against one of these behemoths is equals suicide

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Building Fighters has no tradition in Star fleet. While most ships are designed to fulfill a variety of missions Fighters and Carriers are contrary to the very roots of the Federation and Starfleet dedicated Warships were not designed until the DW (not counting the Defiant Project).

Along those lines, the fighters from DS9 were originally termed couriers.

As for the Kit bashes - i am personally reviled by the idea to cobble together a Working Starship by piecing various available parts together. These ships are probably plagued by a dozen design flaws and are plagued by all problems rushed production brings along: Malfunctioning equipment etc.

Oh, they'd be deathtraps for sure. They'd need hellacious amounts of power for their SIF generators; maybe a second warp core, or a series of interlinked smaller cores.

I agree Unless they field Photon torpedoes their impact is going to be minimal. And even if they do the Fighters don't have the ability to stay in the field for a prolonged fight And a lot of personal is probably doomed if the Carrier goes down in flames and the scattered fighters get hunted down by expandable Jem' Hadar fighters.
I think fighters at least in Trek are a waste of resources.

Well, the Starfleet attack fighters had warp drives, so they could leave by themselves.

And speaking about Fighters in BSG their usefulness against capital Ships is doubtful as well. If The Galactica fills her surroundings with Barrages that could wipe out even friendly Fighters by incident. A attack run against one of these behemoths is equals suicide

A pyrrhic victory is still victory. And the flak, presumably, isn't 100% effective.

[Storm]

I can see that the technology of Trek might be less suitable to build effective fighters but - at least for my game - I could find a justifiable workaround to this problem: just doing a brain storm here...I would build a carrier as a true behemoth with slow and cumbersome impulse movement but the ability to reach "higher" warp speeds for a prolonged time, including vast production facilities to replace lost or damaged fighters, consumables for several years of independant operation (therefore you could play this carrier series voyager like in the gamma quadrant while the wormhole is mined) ec.
the fighters would have only limited warp capability something like warp 5 or so for a short duration only to enable deployment and pick up while the carrier is travelling at warp. But they would have very high impulse maneuoverability and good engines, one fast shot-sequence torpedo bank and a rapid fire phaser array. The latter would NOT be powered through the warp core but through something like a "dilitium battery" blah-thingy. So the warp core on the fighter would only power the engines, life support for the single pilot, shields and thats it. The fighter would have shooting power for only a very limited number of shots since it is deliberatly not designed for prolonged missions without the carrier. So it might even be necessary to "recharge" a fighter during a long battle.
The fighter would not even carry an emergency transporter but a crude old fashioned pilot-ejection system and be dependent of a carrier based pick up vessel.

Therefore starfighters would be extremely simple in their structure, absolutely "cheap" to build, easy to maintain and moreso to replace.

I'm speaking here of a proto type because I'm aware that this warmongering piece of tech is contrary to the very heart of the FED. But the FED was forced into a corner where they were willing to test any desperate plans. Whatever happens to the carrier during my series - I would decommission it right the day after the hostilities with the Dominion ceased.

As for my part I could think of a couple of very interesting and nice adventures featuring such a carrier. But I'm still wondering if I would run amok in the ST universe if I invent such a nightmare - however brief. And if it would really be believably justifiable in ST tech terms to build these vessels. I'm neither convinced of either yes or no till now.

[JALU3]

My suggestion to the original poster is to do a search on Fighters on these boards. There are a lot of good threads discussing their design, deployment, and the creation of fan based, and canon carriers and fighters for both the ICON and Spacedock startship combat systems.
If you think you can contribute better designs, we would love to see them.

[Storm]

Ah, sorry, (it's me, DuneMessiah, the original poster) I thought this hasn't been discussed before. I'm awfully sorry that I bothered you with this. Nevermind, I'll try the search-function tonight and see what the older threats have to offer. Thanks a lot for the advice! Sorry for the hazzle.

As for the end part of my last posting - any suggestions/comments about that?

[Storm]

Found a couple of interesting threads. I include them here just for completeness and reference for future discussions about this.

Where are the Fighters in ST?

BSG campaign idea

Klingon War ideas

Fighter Carriers

[toadmage]

my take on star fighters in trek is that they are small ship or big run abouts . crew size 3 to 10 people . I do not have any cannon facts to back this up with .

Drone fighters may be around to protect fixed points like star bases and planets under direct control of local commanders . Best of both worlds show three small ships being blow out of the sky in seconds .

The most important thing to keep in mind is that it your group game and there can be anything you want .

[JALU3]

If done improperly they can be so overpowered . . . think of them as mini-gun boats or PT Boats. . . and take a look at how effective they were against a D'Deredix. Thanks CMDR Powers! Furthermore, that was just with Photon Torpedoes. Imagine if Quantum torpedoes were their load out . . . Oh . . . my God!

Also, drone fighters would make an excellent defensive platform.

[DuneMessiah]

My suggestion to the original poster is to do a search on Fighters on these boards. There are a lot of good threads discussing their design, deployment, and the creation of fan based, and canon carriers and fighters for both the ICON and Spacedock startship combat systems.
If you think you can contribute better designs, we would love to see them.

It will take a while to complete the designs cause I'm not that overly familiar with Space Dock but I'll try to come up with something that doesn't look like a power gamer's wet pants.
As for the carrier I had another idea. Just if we assumed the FED already had some sort of "fighters" as I suggested above - why not convert a civil ship into a battle ship or at least support ship for war purposes? This has been a long standing practise among countries invovled in prolonged wars when their resources start to thin out. And this was definately the situation of the FED during the DW.

So back to the carrier idea it should be possible to jury-rig a FED heavy transport (one of those behemoth-style super-giant cargo ships mentioned in the FASA game) into a fighter carry ba mounting launch-bays instead of cargo pods, heavy shielding and a couple of torpedo launchers. And finaly put a super-phaser type of wapon on it to make it able of delivering a monster punch hit on stationary targets like space stations ec.
You could rule this phaser would only be able to fire every 5 rounds or something. It could look like the super phaser deployed by the Enterprise D in the episode with the three Warp nacelle config.
And the fighters would be nothing less than pciket vessels protecting the carrier on it's "Thors Hammer"-mission.
And since it's only some sort of "kit bash" it would definitaley be decomissioned the moment the war is ended. And again since it's a kit bash it might have it's moments during the war but generally it would perform poorly and be a testimony to the desperation the FED is in. So this would be an excellent starter for a series, I think...