fighters vs. fed task force scenerio

[Col. Crackpot]

A pirate raiding convoy from the outer rim is carried off to the alpha qudrant by the rick berman standard omnipotent being cliche plot device TM.
in addition to it's transport ships this raiding convoy consists of:

2 standard Correllian Corvettes
6 X-wing fighters.
12 Y-Wing fighters
16 Z-95 Headhunters (later model w/ with shielding and concussion launchers)

the target is a Federation convoy of 12 large unarmed transport ships.
they are defended by:

1 Soverign Class Battlecruiser (with nemisis refit)
2 Akira Class Carrier/Cruiser
-each Akira carries 18 peregine fighters

Fed re-enforcements consiting of a Nebula w/ 9 Perigines is 10 minutes away and will move to intercept the moment the attack commences.

what happens?

[Oddity]

* The Corvettes attack one akira each.
* The Headhunters and the X-Wings attack the peregine fighters.
* The Y-Wings deliver their payload of proton torpedoes into the Soverign's warp nacelle.
* After the peregines have been dealt with, the Headhunters & X-Wings hit the akiras with protons.

Results:
1. The Corvettes blow apart one akira each.
2. The Headhunders and the X-Wings slaughter the peregines.
3. The Soverign go off like a bomb.
4. They wait for the fed reinforcements, then let the Headhunters attack the new Perigines, while the rest of the fighters unload any remaining protons into the Nebula. Boom.

[Col. Crackpot]

* The Corvettes attack one akira each.
* The Headhunters and the X-Wings attack the peregine fighters.
* The Y-Wings deliver their payload of proton torpedoes into the Soverign's warp nacelle.
* After the peregines have been dealt with, the Headhunters & X-Wings hit the akiras with protons.

Results:
1. The Corvettes blow apart one akira each.
2. The Headhunders and the X-Wings slaughter the peregines.
3. The Soverign go off like a bomb.
4. They wait for the fed reinforcements, then let the Headhunters attack the new Perigines, while the rest of the fighters unload any remaining protons into the Nebula. Boom.

i don't see it as being so one sided. 4 fed cap-ships and 42 fighters would put up a fight. granted, the perigines would be slaughtered, but not before picking off a few fighters. they are warp capable after all. The pirate fighters, while faster in FTL are limited in making jumps to hyperspace. whereas the perigines can enter and exit warp at will. while not fully compensating for the vast inferiorty in firepower, it can be used as an advantage. With a lack of an interdictor, torpedo runs by the y-wings will be difficult.
as for the Akiras, 15 torpedo launchers can put up one hell of a flack screen, however short lived.
If the Soverign can survive the first few minutes, it will survive the battle.
my prediction:

if feds caught off guard:
all fed combatants destroyed, trasnports disabled and captured
Z-95's 60-70% loss
Y-wings 40-50% loss
X-Wings: 30-45% loss
1 heavily damaged corvette 1 undamaged corvette

if feds respond quickly
All Pirate forces destroyed or driven off
Perigines: 90% loss
Soverign: towed to drydock for extensive repair
Akiras: One lost, on scrapped
Nebula: enters battle toward end, sustains moderate damage.
several transports disabled

[Oddity]

i don't see it as being so one sided.

Well, perhaps I exaggerated a bit.

[Patrick Ogaard]

A pirate raiding convoy from the outer rim is carried off to the alpha qudrant by the rick berman standard omnipotent being cliche plot device TM.
in addition to it's transport ships this raiding convoy consists of:

2 standard Correllian Corvettes
6 X-wing fighters.
12 Y-Wing fighters
16 Z-95 Headhunters (later model w/ with shielding and concussion launchers)

the target is a Federation convoy of 12 large unarmed transport ships.
they are defended by:

1 Soverign Class Battlecruiser (with nemisis refit)
2 Akira Class Carrier/Cruiser
-each Akira carries 18 peregine fighters

Fed re-enforcements consiting of a Nebula w/ 9 Perigines is 10 minutes away and will move to intercept the moment the attack commences.

what happens?

This actually depends on whether or not the Federation convoy has previously encountered vessels hailing from the Galactic Empire.

If the Federation has not previously encountered such ships, it becomes a first contact situation from the UFP point of view. In such a situation the Sovereign would likely take the lead in confronting the alien convoy. To avoid affront to the peaceful alien convoy the Akiras would keep their fighters hangared and assume a protective position near the Federation transports.

The pirate commodore aboard one of the pirate corvettes would most likely order the fighters to remain with the transports, probably even aboard the transports and ready for a rapid launch. Given the rapid rate of fire of the dual turbolasers the corvettes should be carrying, and their presumably high firepower combined with their high rate of fire, the corvettes should realistically be able to eliminate all three escort ships within the space of seconds.

To pull numbers for the corvette turbolasers and lasers from unmentionable regions, I'll assume that the guns themselves are equivalent to those from the AOTC ICS Acclamator listing. I will also assume that the firepower rating for the Acclamator's quad batteries refers to a combined volley from all four barrels. This would give each turbolaser barrel from the Acclamator a firepower per shot of 50 gigatons.

Even assuming that the lightweight, dorsal and ventral rapidfire turbolaser twins of a classic corvette have only a piddling 10 gigatons of firepower per shot, with each barrel firing separately, the UFP ships have a terrible problem. A single 10 gigaton bolt should be equivalent to just over 150 full-yield photon torpedoes. No ship in starfleet could withstand that kind of firepower. Even if the bolts were scaled down to a mere 1 gigaton each, that's just over 15 photon torpedo equivalents per bolt.

For the auxiliary laser cannon, I could assume anything from a few dozen kilotons, useful for point defense against fighters, to the full 6 megatons per bolt that the Acclamator's lasers have. That firepower would certainly be useful against any UFP fighters that might survive.

So, what really happens?

The corvettes maneuver into a favorable firing position, the gunnery crews working on firing solutions for the Sovereign and the two Akiras. With four alternately firing turbolasers per corvette, the three UFP capital ships immediately explode, probably taking out one or more transports as collateral damage. Any surviving Peregrines quickly succumb to massed fire from the turbolasers and lasers of the corvettes, backed up by laser fire from the pirate fighters.

The pirate fighters herd the UFP transports toward the pirate transports, and pirate boarding teams make short work of the defenses of the transports.

In the meantime, the Nebula heaves into view, having deployed its cargo of Peregrines beforehand, the Nebula's captain takes a few seconds out to issue a stern warning before shooting. Then the corvettes open fire, with the Nebula trading shots with the corvettes for about one second before the Nebula explodes. The Peregrines last a few seconds longer, but are ultimately unable to do more than take out one or two of the pirate fighters before themselves being vaporized. One or two of the Peregrines may manage to disengage in order to bring word of the encounter to the proper authorities.

Shortly thereafter, the corvettes pop out of hyperspace about one planetary diameter away from the starbase the Peregrines were fleeing to. Federation authorities are initially mystified, attributing the bizarre ranting of the Peregrine pilots, the Nebula captain's mad yammering, and the huge smoking crater and orbiting debris where a starbase used to be, to some new Borg incursion.

The pirates withdraw and work on setting themselves up as pirate kings on a nice little planet offering enough resources to set up a minimal support infrastructure. Once they get the hang of the Trek galaxy's subspace network protocols, they begin raiding selectively, taking Dominion supply convoys, Federation merchant convoys, Klingon loot convoys, Kazon plundering parties, etc.

[Col. Crackpot]

hmmm, , i think the your turbolaser yield might be a just a bit high. those are primarily anti-starfighter cannons i believe, meant to deal with fighters with high-kiloton to low megaton level shielding, such as z-95's x and y wings etc. if we go by your calcs, that would give a standard corvette the ability to completely immoliate a shielded starfighter with a single shot, and i don't recall unmodified correlian corvetes ever demonstrating an ability to do this.

the feddies however, as you suggest, would take a nonagressive posture. combined with the technological inferiority would result in heavy losses. I don't beliee that any competant commander would keep all of his assets in formation within striking range of an unknown force. most likely the Akiras would lay back with the transports with a few perigines escorting the soverign. With attack on the Sovereign the Akiras would be best utilized if they quickly warped out of range and launched fighters. This is where it gets fuzzy. personally i think the relatively light shielding of the Z-95's would make them fall first. they are slow and not as manuverable as the other fighters , so blanket torpedo fire would waste a few of them. Also, the pirates have no experience dealing with ships equipped with warp drive. warping around the battle area would greatly aid the survivablity of the remainig fed ships and draw down the ordinance stores of the pirate fighters.

[Patrick Ogaard]

hmmm, , i think the your turbolaser yield might be a just a bit high. those are primarily anti-starfighter cannons i believe, meant to deal with fighters with high-kiloton to low megaton level shielding, such as z-95's x and y wings etc. if we go by your calcs, that would give a standard corvette the ability to completely immoliate a shielded starfighter with a single shot, and i don't recall unmodified correlian corvetes ever demonstrating an ability to do this.

the feddies however, as you suggest, would take a nonagressive posture. combined with the technological inferiority would result in heavy losses. I don't beliee that any competant commander would keep all of his assets in formation within striking range of an unknown force. most likely the Akiras would lay back with the transports with a few perigines escorting the soverign. With attack on the Sovereign the Akiras would be best utilized if they quickly warped out of range and launched fighters. This is where it gets fuzzy. personally i think the relatively light shielding of the Z-95's would make them fall first. they are slow and not as manuverable as the other fighters , so blanket torpedo fire would waste a few of them. Also, the pirates have no experience dealing with ships equipped with warp drive. warping around the battle area would greatly aid the survivablity of the remainig fed ships and draw down the ordinance stores of the pirate fighters.

The thing is that the Tantive IV's turbolasers certainly demonstrated firepower that should have vaporized any fighter the turbolaser bolts connected with. The quads deployed on the Acclamators log in at, conservatively, 50 gigatons per turbolaser barrel. Assuming that the Tantive IV's Taim & Bak H9 turbolaser cannon are just a fifth as powerful as the Acclamator's on a per-barrel basis, that still means 10 gigatons per bolt, or the equivalent of 156.25 64-megaton photon torpedoes. Even ramping it down to a fiftieth of the firepower still leaves almost 16 photon torpedo equivalents per shot.

If one factors in the fact that those dorsal and ventral turbolasers managed a drastic rate of fire against the pursuing ISD, it really does not matter even if the turbolaser power is assumed to be ramped down to just a gigaton per individual shot. Starfleet capital ships are simply toast against anything of capital scale from the Galactic Empire, and the corvette qualifies as nearly the lowest end of capital ships in the Galactic Empire.

Warping about the battlefield might well provide some annoyance, possibly with pirate fighter losses. But if the corvettes get into a decent position before hostilities and pre-select their targets, the capital ships are still toast, immediately followed by the majority of the Peregrines. If the lateral laser cannon of the corvettes can engage them, I suspect that the few Peregrines that survive should be busier running than fighting.

[Drooling Iguana]

If they could take out the fighters the Feds might stand a chance since, according to TIE-Fighter, Correlian corvettes have a "sweet spot" just behind the engines that is out of the firing arc of any of the lasers. If the peregrines' shields are strong enough to protect them from the engine exhaust, then they'd be able to slowly whttle down the 'vette's defences.

[Patrick Ogaard]

If they could take out the fighters the Feds might stand a chance since, according to TIE-Fighter, Correlian corvettes have a "sweet spot" just behind the engines that is out of the firing arc of any of the lasers. If the peregrines' shields are strong enough to protect them from the engine exhaust, then they'd be able to slowly whttle down the 'vette's defences.

The things militating against that sensible course for the Peregrines would be lack of significant near-term effect against even puny capital ship shields, along with the problem of dealing with two such corvettes supported by Star Wars fighters. Flying in wingman formation will mean that the rear of the forward corvette will be protected by the rear corvette. If the rear corvette's shields should need a break, they simply switch positions.

[Wild Karrde]

If they could take out the fighters the Feds might stand a chance since, according to TIE-Fighter, Correlian corvettes have a "sweet spot" just behind the engines that is out of the firing arc of any of the lasers. If the peregrines' shields are strong enough to protect them from the engine exhaust, then they'd be able to slowly whttle down the 'vette's defences.

Wrong. The corvette has a peak dissipation rate on it's shields anywhere between high gigaton/low terraton. Even with the entire fed task force pounding on it they'd be hard pressed to harm it.

Also the peregrine is not a small fighter, it's nearly 30 meters in length. It's very questionable that even if it somehow managed to stay back there that it would be completely out of the corvette's firing arc.

[Darth Yoshi]

Game mechanics are ineligible fro debates. Besides, would the Z-95s really just sit there and let the Peregrines attack the Corvettes like that?

[Drooling Iguana]

Game mechanics are ineligible fro debates. Besides, would the Z-95s really just sit there and let the Peregrines attack the Corvettes like that?

Game mechanics are inelligable for debates when they've been contradicted by higher canon sources. Is there any source that says that a Corellian Corvette's lasers are positioned in such a way that there is no "sweet spot"? And I already said that for this tactic to work they'd have to eliminate the fighters first.

It wouldn't work, though, due to reasons mentioned by others in this thread. The two Corvettes can protect each other, and the peregrines' weapons are too weak to damage their shields.

[Col. Crackpot]

It wouldn't work, though, due to reasons mentioned by others in this thread. The two Corvettes can protect each other, and the peregrines' weapons are too weak to damage their shields.

the perigines are merely flack bait in this...drawing deadly turbolaser fire away from the akiras and the sovereign(if it survives the opening volley) I do think we need to determine exactly what the type of turbolaser is carried by a standard correllian corvette. the standard corvette available to the consumer market did not carry military level firepower.

West End Games (the sourcebook publisher) states that te corvette is armed with 6 double tubolasers. but i found someone disputing that:
http://www.synicon.com.au/sw/br/tantive.htm

[DocMoriartty]

How is anyone on the ST side going to suddenly understand exactly where this "sweet spot" happens to be located and the proper manner to exploit it?

If you are going to say that then I am going to go one better on you. R2 has proven himself more technologically advanced than anything computer wise in ST. He was able to contain the entire Death Star plans and not have it affect his other abilities.

So.....

All Starfleet ships have Prefix Codes. The pirates take a single R2 unit and have it determine the Prefix Code of each ST ship and then order it to lower shields. Once this is done any shot from any of the pirate ships is likely to cause massive damage.

[Col. Crackpot]

All Starfleet ships have Prefix Codes. The pirates take a single R2 unit and have it determine the Prefix Code of each ST ship and then order it to lower shields. Once this is done any shot from any of the pirate ships is likely to cause massive damage.

just because prefix codes existed in the 2260's doesn't mean they exist in the 2370's Thats like saying The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and the three masted sailing ship USS Constitution have the same locks.

[Sir Sirius]

All Starfleet ships have Prefix Codes. The pirates take a single R2 unit and have it determine the Prefix Code of each ST ship and then order it to lower shields. Once this is done any shot from any of the pirate ships is likely to cause massive damage.

How would the R2 determine the prefix code of any Feddie ship? Why are you even assuming that SW computer systems are compatible with ST computers? I somehow doubt that my PC would be compatible with Eniac.

[Col. Crackpot]

All Starfleet ships have Prefix Codes. The pirates take a single R2 unit and have it determine the Prefix Code of each ST ship and then order it to lower shields. Once this is done any shot from any of the pirate ships is likely to cause massive damage.

How would the R2 determine the prefix code of any Feddie ship? Why are you even assuming that SW computer systems are compatible with ST computers? I somehow doubt that my PC would be compatible with Eniac.

LOL oh, and just a nitpick, it's ENIAC. All caps, its an acronym for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer

[Kerneth]

Well, according to ID4, Macintosh laptops are compatible with alien computer systems, so it's possible an R2 unit would be compatible with a Federation system

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

4 double guns and 4 smaller turrets are enough to destroy a Federation ship in, at worst, a few volleys.

[Sea Skimmer]

4 double guns and 4 smaller turrets are enough to destroy a Federation ship in, at worst, a few volleys.

Basic corvette has two double turrets. Though some have three double turrets. Doesn’t matter though.

[Darth Wong]

just because prefix codes existed in the 2260's doesn't mean they exist in the 2370's Thats like saying The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and the three masted sailing ship USS Constitution have the same locks.

Actually, prefix codes are known to exist in TNG era. In the episode involving Darwin Station and Pulaski aging at an accelerated rate, they used a dead starship's prefix code to take control of its interior cameras and look around the bridge. That's how they saw all the withered dead bodies.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Game mechanics are inelligable for debates when they've been contradicted by higher canon sources.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, here, but video games are neither canon, quasi-canon, nor official and so are total immaterial in a debate.

[Lord of the Farce]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, here, but video games are neither canon, quasi-canon, nor official and so are total immaterial in a debate.

Video gameplay is generally considered to be very (very) low end official, while the cut-scenes and the overall storyline for the game is still considered fairly official.

[Drooling Iguana]

How is anyone on the ST side going to suddenly understand exactly where this "sweet spot" happens to be located and the proper manner to exploit it?

I managed to find and exploit it myself without much trouble. I forget exactly how many missions I flew before I founf it, though.

Anyway, this is irrevelant, since if the two corvettes were beside each other and a reasonable distance apart, they'd each be able to aim into the other's sweet spot and take care of any attackers that might be lurking there.

[Col. Crackpot]

just because prefix codes existed in the 2260's doesn't mean they exist in the 2370's Thats like saying The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and the three masted sailing ship USS Constitution have the same locks.

Actually, prefix codes are known to exist in TNG era. In the episode involving Darwin Station and Pulaski aging at an accelerated rate, they used a dead starship's prefix code to take control of its interior cameras and look around the bridge. That's how they saw all the withered dead bodies.

i remember that episode now. It was the USS Tsilokovski (sp?) IIRC. Like th reliant, a Miranda class ship. seems like Miranda's have shitty computer security.... must still be using windows. but in all seriousness, i don't see this as a practical strategy. maybe this has been said before but both times this process has been used the signal has come from another federation ship, no doubt it used federation encryption. Now if a fed ship was captured, i'm sure a good slicer could break the encryption and pull it off, but not without first capturing it.