Minbari vs. the UFP (Babylon 5 vs. Star Trek)

[Sidewinder]

I was browsing FanFiction.Net, and found A Thin Veneer, a Babylon 5/Star Trek crossover. The premise is this:

1) During the Earth-Minbari War, a Minbari warship pursues an Earth Alliance ship through a transwarp conduit to the Alpha Quadrant, encountering the Enterprise-A and Kronos One immediately after the formal dinner. The Enterprise-A intervenes to rescue the human ship's passengers and crew, is attacked, and destroys the Minbari warship in self-defense. The Minbari send a transmission through the transwarp conduit, before their ship's destruction.

2) The Minbari, thinking the UFP is an Earth Alliance colony, send another ship through the transwarp conduit, attack the Regulus System and wipe out the planets' population.

3) Adm Cartwright, Gen Chang, and their co-conspirators let the UFP and the Klingon Empire sign a peace treaty- they now have bigger fish to fry. The UFP declares war on the Minbari, sends a fleet (including the Enterprise-A and the Excelsior) through the transwarp conduit, and provides materiel and technological aid to the Earth Federation, just before the Battle of the Line.

4) The Vorlons are unable to directly attack the Alpha Quadrant, which is under the Metrons' protection (the fanfic describes the Metrons as a more powerful member of the First Ones). Vorlon aid is limited to shield generators and weapons, which is retrofitted to some Minbari ships- the Minbari are unable to manufacture the devices themselves, because the Vorlons deny them the knowledge to do so.

The author repeatedly wanks the UFP and its technology (James T. Kirk and the Enterprise-A in particular), and inserts some political commentary regarding the War on Terror. So I ask those familiar with the franchises: If the Minbari and the UFP were to go to war, which side has a realistic chance of victory? For the purposes of this thread, assume the other powers (including the Vorlons, Metrons, Klingons, and Romulans) won't directly intervene.

[Lord Revan]

Brian Young this did same scenarion and he concluded that while Mimbari have advantace is most areas (even without vorlon assistance) they have a serious achiles heel when it comes to their FTL (due it being tied to the Jumpgates), I tend to agree with his conclutions for the most part.

[mr friendly guy]

The author used to post here, but he seems more confined to SB.com. I just follow this fic and some of his others on fanfiction.net.

[Themightytom]

The fanfic seems to rely heavily on aspects of the Federation I have personally never seen before, as well as cooperation between the Klingons and the Federation and even the Gorn. The Mimbari are also characterized in all of AlbertG's work as suicidally arrogant. I mean I certainly think they are cocky but not so ridiculously so. There were several instances in which the Mimbari just let their ships be slaughtered at pivotal engagements. Don't get me wrong, that works in the fanfic, Albert is putting a a character to them, and he's trying build a conflict of ideologies in order to capture the essence of Babylon 5. I just disagree as to the extent of their incompetence versus Federation competence.

The Kirk era UFOP has advantages in FTL and shielding, but it was a staple of the show that they hardly ever had any ships available for one reason or another, let alone enough to send a sizeable force through a wormhole. I think UFOP lack of ships negates the FTL advantage, as the Mimbari have enough of a fleet to guard their bases and make strikes. If they get a beachhead, I'd expect things to go the other way. There isn't a serious challenger to the Mimbari in their home galaxy, if the Federation can't hit their infrastructure, if the Earth Force estimate about a "third of their race being in the military" as mentioned in In The Beginning, The Federation could be in trouble. if they were WRONG, the federation may be in even more trouble. From Delenn's comments at the close of the civil war, it seemed like while there are three castes, the WORKER cast is the biggest, and if that is the case, they could potentially school the federation in terms of ship building, logistics, maybe even research and design. If federation technology is captured, I don't think it's ridiculous that the Mimbari could rapidly reverse engineer some of if given time. If Mimbari ships start to show up with shields or if they found a way to negate the FTL advantage, things don't look so good for the UFOP.

The Mimbari have the unity of will the resources and the societal structure to respond quickly and ferociously to the Federation. I don't think the reverse is true. The romulans wiped out a tone of outposts, and the Federation really didn't do anything in return. Personally, I would see the Mimbari gaining a foothold in federation territory while the UFP scrambles ineffectually, and I could totally see THEM allying with the Klingons. With the Klingons the federation is probably screwed, without them, I think it'd be a long and bloody advance for the Mimbari that would ultimately result in their victory.

[Esquire]

I can't help but wonder why the Klingons would pick the Federation to side with - seems like they have a lot more in common with the Minbari, or at least the ones they'd be interacting with, and Minbar is very unlikely to try and mess about with Klingon border operations the way Kirk's Federation did.

[Sidewinder]

I can't help but wonder why the Klingons would pick the Federation to side with - seems like they have a lot more in common with the Minbari, or at least the ones they'd be interacting with, and Minbar is very unlikely to try and mess about with Klingon border operations the way Kirk's Federation did.

The problem is, the Klingons and the Minbari have TOO MUCH in common. In the fanfic:

"Two days ago near the Klingon border, the Empire lost contact with four Klingon patrol ships and a convoy located the former areas of the Neutral zone. Some of you already know this, however for those who don't; this is the same area where we first encountered the Minbari."

<snip>

"The Klingon vessels are presumed destroyed and the Empire is fit to be tied." The man grimaced. "It didn't help that they transmitted a message into Klingon space telling that this attack was in retribution for them daring to aid the refugees. They also told them never to interfere with Minbari business again." The Admiral's eyebrow rose. "That didn't go over too well."

[lord Martiya]

I'd say it's a Federation win, if their sensors aren't blocked by Minbari stealth and their traditional enemies are not a factor (freeing Starfleet ships that would be otherwise busy patrolling the Neutral Zone and other hostile borders), due four factors: warp being more versatile and apparently faster than B5 hyperspace, Starfleet shields, the fact Starfleet ships are quite nimble (further complicating the task of hammering down those pesky shields and kill the starships), and photon torpedoes. The problem is: even if the Romulans agree to look the other way, how do you convince Starfleet Command they won't invade as soon as Starfleet is busy with the Minbari?

I can't help but wonder why the Klingons would pick the Federation to side with - seems like they have a lot more in common with the Minbari, or at least the ones they'd be interacting with, and Minbar is very unlikely to try and mess about with Klingon border operations the way Kirk's Federation did.

Bad start: in this fanfic the Minbari attacked Qo'nos 1 in Klingon territory, and then nailed a couple Klingon ships that were in the wrong place when they obliterated a Federation colony. The Klingon did not appreciate.

[Batman]

I don't see how Warp is all that more versatile or faster. On both sides, stardrive speeds are all over the place, and Minbari hyperdrive is absolutely not tied to the jumpgate network, it's just more convenient to use the gate when you're going to a destination that has one anyway. Warp seems to have an advantage in that it cycles faster (try touch-and-go downwarping with B5 hyperdrives).
Trek has a potentially decisive advantage due to shields, the resilience of which is-all over the board. In 'The Changeling', the Big E absorbs the equivalent of 90 photon torpedoes in one go with her shields holding. In TUC, the BoP's torpedoes essentially ignore her shields from the word go.
Not in the OP, just using it for reference as I can't think of a TOS example right now, but without shields at least per TNG+ Trek ships seem to be pretty damn fragile most of the time. Shields are up, they can take a beating, but the moment the shields are down or were never up in the first place, a few salvoes from even much smaller ships can all but cripple them (ref TNG's Redemption Pt1 for example, or, of course, 'Generations'.
As for maneuveravility-I don't see how the Feds have an advantage, at least not after the original TOS. The TOS era movies showed the same glacial movements we would later see in TNG and on. Granted, Minbari ships don't exactly turn on a dime either, but they're perfectly capable of hitting small ships that do-Starfuries come to mind.
Also, the Minbari possibly have a noticeable range advantage. While outside the original TOS Trek engagement ranges are maybe double figure km, B5 has medium to long range engagements aplenty.

[Ahriman238]

Hard to say. Federation shields are a huge advantage, and the Minbari warships are easily destroyed with nukes, which Starfleet long ago phased out in favor of photon torpedoes (TOS Return of the Archons.) There is a question of whether Federation sensors could defeat the stealth fields that gave the Minbari such a crushing advantage over EarthForce.

[Batman]

Photon torpedoes that are single figure MT tops and even shielded AQ ships don't always hold up to those all that hot either (again, the resilience discrepancy). There's a number of episodes where the Big E is in danger from her own damned torpedoes.
I also wouldn't call Sheridan's Ambush 'easily destroyed'. You need to make the enemy ship maneuver close enough to your nukes for them to work (it's been a while since I saw ItB but if I recall correctly one crewmember commented 'we have only one nuke left in range'. How do you intend to get a brightly glowing, not moving all that fast, essentially moving in a straight line photon torpedo to hit a Minbari ship in a deep-space encounter?
The Sheridan Maneuver worked because he managed to lure the cruiser on top of his nukes and even with that it was a desperation gamble. You want to try that with photon mines, yes, assuming you can pull it off, it'd probably work too. But don't tell that just because photorps are 'better' than nukes (which I incidentally consider highly debatle given the yields displayed in Trek, they could easily have gotten away with-and seriously reduced their safety concerns-with fusion or even fission warheads with no reduction in firepower) Sheridan's one-time success will hand the UFP victory. The EA had nukes aplenty. Guess what? They still damned near got exterminated in the Battle of the Line.

[mr friendly guy]

I can't help but wonder why the Klingons would pick the Federation to side with - seems like they have a lot more in common with the Minbari, or at least the ones they'd be interacting with, and Minbar is very unlikely to try and mess about with Klingon border operations the way Kirk's Federation did.

In the fan fic the Minbari also attacked the Klingons. This is set around ST6 where the Klingons were in the process of negotiating with the Federation anyway. So the Klingons moderates gets peace with the Federation to fight a common enemy. The Klingon hard liners still get their glorious war, and one which they look like they will win and save face. Win win situation all round. Except for the Minbari.

[Batman]

This is the Minbari. Chances are the Klingons will turn out to be the reincarnated souls of the Warrior Caste's pet pitbulls.

[lord Martiya]

I don't see how Warp is all that more versatile or faster. On both sides, stardrive speeds are all over the place, and Minbari hyperdrive is absolutely not tied to the jumpgate network, it's just more convenient to use the gate when you're going to a destination that has one anyway. Warp seems to have an advantage in that it cycles faster (try touch-and-go downwarping with B5 hyperdrives).

Warp drive has two advantages.
1)Due cycling faster, the hyperspace-using Minbari would have issues forcing an engagement, as a warpship could just turn and run with little vulnerability (while a Minbari ship would be a little more vulnerable when moving in the vortex, if only because you know exactly where to fire the torpedoes).
2)Again due cycling faster, a warpship could do something akin the Picard manouver for both offense and tactical retreat. Sure, the offensive variant would be easily countered after the first time, but the tactical retreat of a few million km to recharge the shields and regroup isn't.
On the other hand, using hyperspace has a terrifying devastation potential due the sheer energies in the vortex (see the Black Star's jump point attack and the Bonehead Manouver for examples).

As for maneuveravility-I don't see how the Feds have an advantage, at least not after the original TOS. The TOS era movies showed the same glacial movements we would later see in TNG and on. Granted, Minbari ships don't exactly turn on a dime either, but they're perfectly capable of hitting small ships that do-Starfuries come to mind.

With point defenses, sure. The heavy weapons? That would be a little more complicated, at least with the Refit Connie...

[Connor MacLeod]

I don't see how Warp is all that more versatile or faster. On both sides, stardrive speeds are all over the place, and Minbari hyperdrive is absolutely not tied to the jumpgate network, it's just more convenient to use the gate when you're going to a destination that has one anyway. Warp seems to have an advantage in that it cycles faster (try touch-and-go downwarping with B5 hyperdrives).

Compare Picard Manuever to what the Black STar did in ITB. Warp is clearly superior, if for no other reason you don't need to lure your opponent into a precise position using a decoy ship (and act as a targeting beacon) in order to execute FTL attacks.

Trek has a potentially decisive advantage due to shields, the resilience of which is-all over the board. In 'The Changeling', the Big E absorbs the equivalent of 90 photon torpedoes in one go with her shields holding. In TUC, the BoP's torpedoes essentially ignore her shields from the word go.

And the same doesn't apply to B5? I can recall a shit ton of examples where single shots (and not just from Shadow ships) utterly OBLITERATE enemy vessels. Fuck look at Legend of the Rangers if you want some particularily bad examples, espcially given that was the same movie that mentioned how 'volatile' the weapons arrays are on B5 starships (you want to destroy them? aim for the guns.)

Not in the OP, just using it for reference as I can't think of a TOS example right now, but without shields at least per TNG+ Trek ships seem to be pretty damn fragile most of the time. Shields are up, they can take a beating, but the moment the shields are down or were never up in the first place, a few salvoes from even much smaller ships can all but cripple them (ref TNG's Redemption Pt1 for example, or, of course, 'Generations'.

How is this different for B5 vessels? If you hit them in the right place, they're quite easily destroyed. Or they just get sliced apart. OR crippled.

As for maneuveravility-I don't see how the Feds have an advantage, at least not after the original TOS. The TOS era movies showed the same glacial movements we would later see in TNG and on. Granted, Minbari ships don't exactly turn on a dime either, but they're perfectly capable of hitting small ships that do-Starfuries come to mind.

Maneuverability is overrated for one thing. Sure you get to move in random directions but another way to look at it is 'you're wasting power that could be put to other uses.) Of course this assumes weapons firepower is a significant part of firepower (if its trivial then it becomes irrelevant) but ST at least has the advantage that they can cheat with mass lightening and stuff to boost their own sublight mobility. Not without drawbacks of course, but it still is an advantage.

Also, the Minbari possibly have a noticeable range advantage. While outside the original TOS Trek engagement ranges are maybe double figure km, B5 has medium to long range engagements aplenty.

Uh how? Top range for most B5 ships thta doesn't include non-televised/movie sources is around 10,000 km, and even then their weaponry degrades with distance (I think it was at 10K km they lose like 90% of their weapons power as per Legned of the Rangers. A Call to Arms also mentions beam dispersion at 10K km for the Excalibur's guns. This is slightly better in the ACTA novelization in teh sense it happens at 16,000 km rather than 10K km)

We know of longer ranges in Trek. I'm sure you could say 'but Trek fights at point blank range all the time' blah blah, but that same argument can be used against B5 quite frequently as well, so you're not going to prove anything by pulling that.

Photon torpedoes that are single figure MT tops and even shielded AQ ships don't always hold up to those all that hot either (again, the resilience discrepancy). There's a number of episodes where the Big E is in danger from her own damned torpedoes.

To which I reiterate - super bad guy ship blown up by hand grenades in Legend of the Rangers. And the nuke scene in ItB still can be made to look as pretty unimpressive. Or the 200 mw pulse cannons (starfuries in official sources have been noted to have 20 MW pulse cannons. you know, the same Starfuries that can attack capital ships?)

Also I'm pretty sure someone (like Stofsk) has brought up the photorp yield issue before, so I don't see why you're arbitrarily declaring photorps are ONLY single digit MT. Like this is going to help B5 (because they can simply volley multiple photorps and its not like B5 ships are designed to withstand hugetatsic megatons of firepower unless you use some very generous calcs.)

I also wouldn't call Sheridan's Ambush 'easily destroyed'. You need to make the enemy ship maneuver close enough to your nukes for them to work (it's been a while since I saw ItB but if I recall correctly one crewmember commented 'we have only one nuke left in range'. How do you intend to get a brightly glowing, not moving all that fast, essentially moving in a straight line photon torpedo to hit a Minbari ship in a deep-space encounter?

How close are you thinking is close? I've heard it argued as beigh either 'practically on top of' or several km away depending on who you ask. I'd find it hard to believe that if starfuries can get so close to Minbari cruisers (close enough to ram them on more than one occasion in ItB) that photorps couldn't get into range like that, especially given how much smaller a target they are.

Also its hilarious that you're arguing that photorps are somehow going to be less able to hit Minbari ships (which move glacailly in straight lines if not sit in place), given that Minbair ships can actually MISS a fucking starfury (they've missed more than once) nevermind letting them up to point blank ranges.

And we've seen enoughof missiles in b5 that they behave in the same way you ascribe to ST photorps (the Earth defense grid in endgame comes to mind.)

The Sheridan Maneuver worked because he managed to lure the cruiser on top of his nukes and even with that it was a desperation gamble.

The first nuke might be argued as being 'practically on top of', but the second nuke? It looks way off in the distance.

You want to try that with photon mines, yes, assuming you can pull it off, it'd probably work too. But don't tell that just because photorps are 'better' than nukes (which I incidentally consider highly debatle given the yields displayed in Trek, they could easily have gotten away with-and seriously reduced their safety concerns-with fusion or even fission warheads with no reduction in firepower) Sheridan's one-time success will hand the UFP victory.

Depends on what 'better' is supposed to mean. Photorps can be better in some ways to nukes but not neccesarily in others. Amazingly enough, nothing is absolute.

The EA had nukes aplenty. Guess what? They still damned near got exterminated in the Battle of the Line.

Proof?

[streetad]

From memory, the concept of protecting a ship in B5 seem to mainly revolve around not getting hit in the first place; the state of the younger races technology is such that their offensive weaponry seriously outstrips the ability of passive defence systems like armour to resist it. Hence the Minbari's exotic jamming systems, the emphasis on agility seen in the cutting-edge White Star design, and the point defence and fighter screens deployed by all the younger races.

The tactics we see the Minbari use in B5 are naturally developed around these 'glass cannon' limitations; for example loitering in Hyperspace to ensure you can get the drop on your opponents and hopefully wipe them out before they have the opportunity to respond. Assuming firepower levels between the two franchises are broadly comparable, they are going to need to quickly come up with completely new tactics when faced with the much more resilient Trek ships.

On a strategic level is there any indication that the speed of the two methods of FTL travel are significantly different? The trek method does seem to be more versatile and provides a quicker transition between the two states; B5 hyperspace on the other hand does provide some interesting tactical possibilities that the Minbari are quite used to exploiting.

[Batman]

I don't see how Warp is all that more versatile or faster. On both sides, stardrive speeds are all over the place, and Minbari hyperdrive is absolutely not tied to the jumpgate network, it's just more convenient to use the gate when you're going to a destination that has one anyway. Warp seems to have an advantage in that it cycles faster (try touch-and-go downwarping with B5 hyperdrives).

Compare Picard Manuever to what the Black STar did in ITB. Warp is clearly superior, if for no other reason you don't need to lure your opponent into a precise position using a decoy ship (and act as a targeting beacon) in order to execute FTL attacks.

Neither of those is technically an FTL attack, and neither of them seems to be all that useful on a broader scale. If the Picard Maneuver is so eminently useful, how come nobody ever used it again?

Trek has a potentially decisive advantage due to shields, the resilience of which is-all over the board. In 'The Changeling', the Big E absorbs the equivalent of 90 photon torpedoes in one go with her shields holding. In TUC, the BoP's torpedoes essentially ignore her shields from the word go.

And the same doesn't apply to B5?

No, not really.

I can recall a shit ton of examples where single shots (and not just from Shadow ships) utterly OBLITERATE enemy vessels. Fuck look at Legend of the Rangers if you want some particularily bad examples, espcially given that was the same movie that mentioned how 'volatile' the weapons arrays are on B5 starships (you want to destroy them? aim for the guns.)

Can you recall any examples where they blithely ignored 90 hits from those same weapons that instakilled them on other occasions?

Not in the OP, just using it for reference as I can't think of a TOS example right now, but without shields at least per TNG+ Trek ships seem to be pretty damn fragile most of the time. Shields are up, they can take a beating, but the moment the shields are down or were never up in the first place, a few salvoes from even much smaller ships can all but cripple them (ref TNG's Redemption Pt1 for example, or, of course, 'Generations'.

How is this different for B5 vessels? If you hit them in the right place, they're quite easily destroyed. Or they just get sliced apart. OR crippled.

The difference is that Trek vessels apparently are crippled, or at least severly impaired, regardless of where you hit them if they're caught with their pants shields down.
As for maneuveravility-I don't see how the Feds have an advantage, at least not after the original TOS. The TOS era movies showed the same glacial movements we would later see in TNG and on. Granted, Minbari ships don't exactly turn on a dime either, but they're perfectly capable of hitting small ships that do-Starfuries come to mind.

Maneuverability is overrated for one thing. Sure you get to move in random directions but another way to look at it is 'you're wasting power that could be put to other uses.) Of course this assumes weapons firepower is a significant part of firepower (if its trivial then it becomes irrelevant) but ST at least has the advantage that they can cheat with mass lightening and stuff to boost their own sublight mobility. Not without drawbacks of course, but it still is an advantage.

Um-so, what other element would it be that plays into firepower beyond weapons firepower? I assume you meant power generation. And wether or not maeuverability vs firepower is worth it is at this point an unanswerable question because, for either side,
we don't know if and if so to which extent engine power draw affects available firepower, and to which extent maneverability affects the chances to be hit.

Also, the Minbari possibly have a noticeable range advantage. While outside the original TOS Trek engagement ranges are maybe double figure km, B5 has medium to long range engagements aplenty.

Uh how? Top range for most B5 ships thta doesn't include non-televised/movie sources is around 10,000 km, and even then their weaponry degrades with distance (I think it was at 10K km they lose like 90% of their weapons power as per Legned of the Rangers. A Call to Arms also mentions beam dispersion at 10K km for the Excalibur's guns. This is slightly better in the ACTA novelization in teh sense it happens at 16,000 km rather than 10K km)

Since I'm one of the three smartest persons on the planet I had the good sense to never watch Legend of the Rangers. From B5 itself, I don't recall any mention of weapon dispersion ever being a problem, their targeting just stinks (the alien doomsday probe episode), but just because the information you mention was unknown to me doesn't make it any less relevant.
What I meant was medium to long range by Trek standards.

We know of longer ranges in Trek. I'm sure you could say 'but Trek fights at point blank range all the time' blah blah, but that same argument can be used against B5 quite frequently as well, so you're not going to prove anything by pulling that.

Has it ever occured to you I use the 'post the original TOS' qualifier for a reason? Yes, Trek fought at long ranges, and yes, B5 did the stupid dogfighting stuff. The difference is, post TOS Trek did it every once in a blue moon, while B5 did it pretty regularly.
What, at least to my knowledge, B5 never did was fight at the upper end of Trek ranges. TNG's The Wounded established that Starfleet ships can engage at a range of a lightsecond and if memory serves VOY once fired a photrp at a range of 8 million km.
Doesn't change that for whatever reason, most of the time, they don't fight at those ranges, and without knowing why they don't, I'm inclined to assume they'll try their default knife-fighting tactics against the Minbari.

Photon torpedoes that are single figure MT tops and even shielded AQ ships don't always hold up to those all that hot either (again, the resilience discrepancy). There's a number of episodes where the Big E is in danger from her own damned torpedoes.

To which I reiterate - super bad guy ship blown up by hand grenades in Legend of the Rangers.

Unless somebody seriously blew that ship up by throwing a hand grenade at it, as opposed to having it go of somewhere inside the ship, I'm not quite sure that's a fair comparison.

And the nuke scene in ItB still can be made to look as pretty unimpressive. Or the 200 mw pulse cannons (starfuries in official sources have been noted to have 20 MW pulse cannons. you know, the same Starfuries that can attack capital ships?)

That 200MW pulse cannon was used to threaten merchantmen. As for the Starfuries, how much actual damage have they ever done to a capital ship?

Also I'm pretty sure someone (like Stofsk) has brought up the photorp yield issue before, so I don't see why you're arbitrarily declaring photorps are ONLY single digit MT.

Oh, they're not only single figure MT. They're usually much less. I used single figure MT because that's about the yield of the Sheridan nukes that oh so easily destroyed the Black Star.

Like this is going to help B5 (because they can simply volley multiple photorps and its not like B5 ships are designed to withstand hugetatsic megatons of firepower unless you use some very generous calcs.)

Assuming they ever hit, of course. Unlike Trek, Minbari ships actually have point defenses worthy of the name.

I also wouldn't call Sheridan's Ambush 'easily destroyed'. You need to make the enemy ship maneuver close enough to your nukes for them to work (it's been a while since I saw ItB but if I recall correctly one crewmember commented 'we have only one nuke left in range'. How do you intend to get a brightly glowing, not moving all that fast, essentially moving in a straight line photon torpedo to hit a Minbari ship in a deep-space encounter?

I'd find it hard to believe that if starfuries can get so close to Minbari cruisers (close enough to ram them on more than one occasion in ItB) that photorps couldn't get into range like that, especially given how much smaller a target they are.

Starfuries also don't always go in a straight line, they may be a lot faster than photon torpedoes (which ever since the TOS movies make modern day missiles look speedy), and they're not painfully visible to the naked eye (which would probably not make much of a difference to a ship with a halfway decent sensor suit anyway, but you never know).

Also its hilarious that you're arguing that photorps are somehow going to be less able to hit Minbari ships (which move glacailly in straight lines if not sit in place), given that Minbair ships can actually MISS a fucking starfury (they've missed more than once) nevermind letting them up to point blank ranges.

Yes, because Starfuries always move in a straight line, like photon torpedoes usually do. Why don't you compare the number of Starfuries shot down by the Minbari with the number of torpedoes shot down by Trek forces.

And we've seen enoughof missiles in b5 that they behave in the same way you ascribe to ST photorps (the Earth defense grid in endgame comes to mind.)

At which point, pray tell, would the Earth Defense Grid missiles in Endgame have needed to maneuver? They were already heading straight for their targets anyway.
If you're referring to them not being intercepted despite of their apparently slow speed, the number of Minbari ships involved in that operation was zero.

The Sheridan Maneuver worked because he managed to lure the cruiser on top of his nukes and even with that it was a desperation gamble.

The first nuke might be argued as being 'practically on top of', but the second nuke? It looks way off in the distance.

Not more than a few kilometers. In space, I'd still consider that 'practically on top of'.

You want to try that with photon mines, yes, assuming you can pull it off, it'd probably work too. But don't tell that just because photorps are 'better' than nukes (which I incidentally consider highly debatle given the yields displayed in Trek, they could easily have gotten away with-and seriously reduced their safety concerns-with fusion or even fission warheads with no reduction in firepower) Sheridan's one-time success will hand the UFP victory.

Depends on what 'better' is supposed to mean. Photorps can be better in some ways to nukes but not neccesarily in others. Amazingly enough, nothing is absolute.

For the yields displayed in Trek, I don't see any advantage M/AM has over fission/fusion other than the fact that they're carrying the reactant anyway. We have 'dial-a-yield' warheads today. The main advantage of M/AM is energy density and apparently they're not making use of that.

The EA had nukes aplenty. Guess what? They still damned near got exterminated in the Battle of the Line.

Proof?

Proof of what? That they still damned near got exterminated?
Sheridan obviously took it for a given that they'd have nukes aboard. Unless you want to insinuate they knew he'd have to stage that ambush beforehand I'd say that's a pretty good indicator that EarthForce vessels routinely carry a supply of nukes.

[Meest]

Only thing I remember about Legend of the Rangers was the kung fu targetting, need to go back and watch for range references. Thought the Narn example against the Shadow ships showed good beyond visual range weapons for B5 in terms of main guns.

[Rekkon]

If the Federation cannot access or detect anything in hyperspace, the Minbari (assuming sufficient range and navigational data) can simply travel to a target of their choosing, jump out and make an attack. The Feds would not be able to intercept them en route or even know they were coming until the attack hit. One could make the arguement that warp gives the UFP a similar capability, but B5 militaries already operate in an environment where they may have little to no warning of an attack.

It is possible to make fast transitions to and from hyperspace. Jump engine cycle time is a design consideration as evidenced by that one Crusade episode where Gideon mentions that carriers are built with faster cycle times. Even without that consideration, it is possible for more than one ship to use the jump point created by another, so one vessel could open the point for its squadron to jump to normal space and then another, its jump engines still fresh, could do the same to get them all back to hyperspace. You only need jump gates if you lack your own jump engines (like most civilian traffic). Warships use them if they are there, presumably to save energy and wear, as long as it is safe to do so. I seem to recall Clark's attack force in Severed Dreams jumped in on their own rather than use the gate, presumably to avoid the bottleneck and potential killzone it represented.

[Ted C]

On both sides, stardrive speeds are all over the place, and Minbari hyperdrive is absolutely not tied to the jumpgate network, it's just more convenient to use the gate when you're going to a destination that has one anyway.

Minbari hyperdrive is tied to the jump gate network, because the jump gates are also navigational beacons. The "gravitational eddies" and other strange effects in hyperspace can cause any ship to go off course; the only way to compensate is to stay within range of one of the beacons. This means that Minbari ship's can't venture too far off of a mapped route. Furthermore, it means that destroying a significant number of jump gates cripples their interstellar travel capability.

The Federation doesn't depend on a beacon network to navigate, so they can freely destroy the jump gates to keep the Minbari from being able to move their assets effectively.

[Themightytom]

On both sides, stardrive speeds are all over the place, and Minbari hyperdrive is absolutely not tied to the jumpgate network, it's just more convenient to use the gate when you're going to a destination that has one anyway.

Minbari hyperdrive is tied to the jump gate network, because the jump gates are also navigational beacons. The "gravitational eddies" and other strange effects in hyperspace can cause any ship to go off course; the only way to compensate is to stay within range of one of the beacons. This means that Minbari ship's can't venture too far off of a mapped route. Furthermore, it means that destroying a significant number of jump gates cripples their interstellar travel capability.

The Federation doesn't depend on a beacon network to navigate, so they can freely destroy the jump gates to keep the Minbari from being able to move their assets effectively.

I always understood the beacons to be directions to the gates themselves. A ship without it's functioning jump engines needs to get to a gate in order to have a chance to leave hyperspace, and given the vastness of hyperspace and the eddies and whatever, the chances of bumbling across one are ridiculously small. I don't think it's directly stated in B5 that a jump capable ship really needs the beacon

[Ted C]

I always understood the beacons to be directions to the gates themselves. A ship without it's functioning jump engines needs to get to a gate in order to have a chance to leave hyperspace, and given the vastness of hyperspace and the eddies and whatever, the chances of bumbling across one are ridiculously small. I don't think it's directly stated in B5 that a jump capable ship really needs the beacon

The jump gate emits a beacon because it corresponds to a known location in normal space. I don't want to rehash it hear (you can check out the Federation vs Minbari video at scifights.net for relevant episodes and quotes), but hyperspace navigation is a matter of following a string of beacons to your destination. If you get out of range of the beacon, you are lost and gone forever, because hyperspace has absolutely no features to get you back on course.

If you were lost, but your jump engines still worked, you could presumably get back to real space, but in all likelihood you'd be in the middle of nowhere. You could probably figure out where you were in real space, but that would be no help at all in figuring out how to navigate back through hyperspace to civilization.

The beacons produced by the jump gates are the only way to know where you are in hyperspace compared to normal space.

[Ted C]

Overall, I voted "Pyrrhic Federation victory". As long as they destroy in jump gates that the Minbari try to build on the Federation end of the "transwarp conduit", the Minbari can't really go on the offensive due to lack of navigational data. Any Federation or Klingon ships that engaged Minbari forces would be overwhelmed by Minbari firepower, but their ability to destroy jump gates with torpedoes would force the Minbari to garrison their jump gates instead of pursuing their war against humanity.

[Connor MacLeod]

Neither of those is technically an FTL attack, and neither of them seems to be all that useful on a broader scale. If the Picard Maneuver is so eminently useful, how come nobody ever used it again?

How do you know it isn't done? We see ships get out of close range battles and then enter warp drive (The Defiant did it in DS9, and one has to wonder how the Klingons materialized from nowhere in that same last battle to retake Ds9 at such close range.) Given the existence of subspace sensors in trek its unlikely that Warp vessels can evade detection, but that doesn't make it useless since it still allows you to get close or into a combat at need.

I like how you try to pretend the fact they don't use it in their own universe suddenly means the tactic is equally useless against all other universes so arbitrarily. Got a better argument than 'It wasn't used the way I think it shoudl have so it can't be done?" crap? I see enough of that stupid shit on SB.

Hell I was also thinking that they can just use transporters to place warheads in close proximity to Minbari ships as needed, and they can probably do this from outside the range of Minbari weapons to damage the ships (and before you break out into a frothing EVIL TREKKIE rage, note I'm not saying beaming them onto the ship.) Exactly how many it takes depends on the warhead yields, the distances they emerge from the target (which can of course be hampered by things like EW and the speed the ship is moving at) and other factors, but it's certainly an option.

No, not really.

Black Star example says otherwise, unless you're going to begin the waffling about how that's an aberration.

Can you recall any examples where they blithely ignored 90 hits from those same weapons that instakilled them on other occasions?

Severed Dreams comes to mind, Clarks Town vs Alexander. IIRC season 2 when firing on the Streib vessel it was a single hit as well. Crusade (Excalibur vs Drakh cruisers as I recall.)

As far as crippling goes, we have Season 2, when the Minbari ship got crippled by a single beam from a Minbari cruiser (the beam in fact overpenetrated the hell through the fin.) Not exactly instakill of course, but crippilng is almost as good as outright destroying for all intents and purposes.

And while no examples of pulse weapons instakilling in a single hit occurs to me, there are a number of cases where relatively few shots are needed to cripple/destroy ships (Minbari Vorchans against Narn ships in season 2 and ItB, and in season 5 vs the League) I know that in Season 2 (Acts of Scarifice I think, 3 Centauri Vorchan vs 1 Narn Cruiser) it was fewer than a dozen shots, and it was half a dozen volleys in ItB)

Severed Dreams had B5's defense grid crippling/destroying an Omega with a brief barrage of fire as well.

The difference is that Trek vessels apparently are crippled, or at least severly impaired, regardless of where you hit them if they're caught with their pants shields down.

Examples? I remember them putting in a considerably better showing in DS9 up against the Dominion.

Um-so, what other element would it be that plays into firepower beyond weapons firepower? I assume you meant power generation. And wether or not maeuverability vs firepower is worth it is at this point an unanswerable question because, for either side, we don't know if and if so to which extent engine power draw affects available firepower, and to which extent maneverability affects the chances to be hit.

Yes I meant to say 'weapons firepower being a significant fraction of power generation.' And I notice you glossed over the mass lightening issue, which begs the question of what you're thinking top acceleration for ST ships is (and based on what/why.) I am well aware they move sluggishly in a number of cases, but this is not exactly contradictory with their technological capabilities (in case you didnt notice I specifically alluded to tradeoffs.) The thousand gee or so accelerations mentioned on the Main site alone would be more than sufficient to dance around your typical Minbari warcruiser (and just so you don't start reverting to the argument I already addressed, pay attention to the mass ligthening part. Clearly they can pull higher accelerations, which we can attribute to ML. That means the high accel comes at other drawbacks which might be undesirable in combat for various reasons. Power allocation, detectability issues, problems it creates with recoil, etc.)

Since I'm one of the three smartest persons on the planet I had the good sense to never watch Legend of the Rangers. From B5 itself, I don't recall any mention of weapon dispersion ever being a problem, their targeting just stinks (the alien doomsday probe episode), but just because the information you mention was unknown to me doesn't make it any less relevant.
What I meant was medium to long range by Trek standards.

Legend of the Rangers and the A Call to Arms movie both mention the dispersion problem with energy weapons (ACTA against the SPK - a target so fucking big you could not help but hit it) and they specifically say that at the range the beams would disperse and not do any damage. Legend of the Rangers was Liandra vs Hand and was more specific in alluding to the dispersion vs range issue.

I should note that this is only a problem if Starfleet ships engage at range. If they do what I alluded to before (Picard manuever type tactics to get in close) obviously the dispersion issues become irrelevant. Again, tradeoffs.

Has it ever occured to you I use the 'post the original TOS' qualifier for a reason? Yes, Trek fought at long ranges, and yes, B5 did the stupid dogfighting stuff. The difference is, post TOS Trek did it every once in a blue moon, while B5 did it pretty regularly.

I can only remember 3 explicitly long range engagements: The Long, Twilight Struggle (narns vs Shadow ships, which JMS stated ot be 'thousands of km') and the aformentioned LOTR and ACTA examples. In severed dreams the engagement range was under 800 km (B5 vs EA forces) though the Clarkstown vs Alexander example was point blank range. ItB had lots of EA vs Minbari point blank range examples, Seasons 2-5 were chock full of space conflicts where point blank range was the norm. What exmaples are you thinking of?

What, at least to my knowledge, B5 never did was fight at the upper end of Trek ranges. TNG's The Wounded established that Starfleet ships can engage at a range of a lightsecond and if memory serves VOY once fired a photrp at a range of 8 million km.
Doesn't change that for whatever reason, most of the time, they don't fight at those ranges, and without knowing why they don't, I'm inclined to assume they'll try their default knife-fighting tactics against the Minbari.

Why?

Unless somebody seriously blew that ship up by throwing a hand grenade at it, as opposed to having it go of somewhere inside the ship, I'm not quite sure that's a fair comparison.

Escape pod full of hand grenades loaded onboard a ship. Was recovered (with ambassador) and blew the fuck out of the ship. I suppose you could argue its 'internal detonation' but frankly given the yield of a hand grenade unless you're claiming b5 has palm nukes its not a fairly impressive example since they didn't exactly place the escape pod right up against the power generation systems of the ship.

That 200MW pulse cannon was used to threaten merchantmen.

Made as a very serious threat. It's not unreasonable: the mongoose D20 RPG gave B5 the station something like GW range outputs for its reactors.

As for the Starfuries, how much actual damage have they ever done to a capital ship?

Against the Centauri cruiser that threatened B5 in 'Fall of Night', and against EA starships in Severed Dreams (at least one case of a Thunderbolt strafing an EA ship and doing damage to the hull.

Oh, they're not only single figure MT. They're usually much less. I used single figure MT because that's about the yield of the Sheridan nukes that oh so easily destroyed the Black Star.

which sounds incredibly arbitrary. Given that photonic torps from the Enterprise Era could put a 3 km crater in an asteroid I don't see how you can treat 'single digit MT' as an upper limit. Rather, it seems like they tailor Photorps to specific purposes by trading off between different performance paramaters (yield, maneuvering, etc.)

Hell, given Yield ot Weight ratios for modern nukes (highest which is around 5 kt per kg) and that a photorp is going to mass half a ton to a ton at least (200 kg being enough to hamper a Photorps manueeverability from that tricobalt bioweapon Sisko used in DS9) single digit MT would be quite possible (particularly since oyu seem intent on treating them as basically unguided bombs to begin with.)

Assuming they ever hit, of course. Unlike Trek, Minbari ships actually have point defenses worthy of the name.

I'm pretty sure people like Alyeska have advanced the idea of how good phasers are at hitting targets at close range. Have Minbari ships (or anyone of lower tech) in B5 ever hit a target as small as a photorp with beam weaponry, exactly?

It's alos fairly hilarious how you're thinking that photorps are going to miss against such incredibly sluggish targets in B5, especially given how slow as fuck pulse cannon fire is in the series. Fuck the fighters can be practically point blank range with their uber beam weapons and fucking miss a slow moving, straight line starfury (happened at least once in ItB at the Battle of the Line, point of fact.)

Starfuries also don't always go in a straight line, they may be a lot faster than photon torpedoes (which ever since the TOS movies make modern day missiles look speedy), and they're not painfully visible to the naked eye (which would probably not make much of a difference to a ship with a halfway decent sensor suit anyway, but you never know).

Don't always go in a straight line? The most impressive manuver they usually make is spinning relatively slowly about on their axis and strafing whilst moving in a straight line. Somtimes agianst fighters (like Raiders) they may pull some impressive, 3 dimensional evasive manuvers (season 1 or 2 IIRC) but mostly they're as sluggish as the starships..

I'd alos like proof that Starfuries are consistently faster than photorps, much less any velocity that this would make a difference given the size disparity between a massive fighter and a tiny photorp.

Yes, because Starfuries always move in a straight line, like photon torpedoes usually do. Why don't you compare the number of Starfuries shot down by the Minbari with the number of torpedoes shot down by Trek forces.

Watch Severed Dreams. They moved in straight lines quite a bit in that battle (aside from rotation) Ivanova even makes comments about 'going about for another run' which sounds like they were doing nothing but making straight line strafing attacks over the targets.

At which point, pray tell, would the Earth Defense Grid missiles in Endgame have needed to maneuver? They were already heading straight for their targets anyway.
If you're referring to them not being intercepted despite of their apparently slow speed, the number of Minbari ships involved in that operation was zero.

NOONE intercepted them. They just sat there and took hits from incredibly sluggish, slow moving missiles. Fuck the Agamemnon took REPEATED missile hits and never once intercepted them. I guess all those tiny guns they mount along the length of the ship are utterly useless, or something.

And I would suggest you recheck Endgame, there WERE minbari ships and fighters present destroying the defense grid.

Not more than a few kilometers. In space, I'd still consider that 'practically on top of'.

What proof is there that 'few km' is an upper limit, exactly? What's more, at 3 km the intensity of a nuke is rather pathetic (at least relative to a universe that claims multi-TW energy weapons) - something like 70 MW per square metre, IIRC. According to the Atomic Rockets website, a nuke has to be within a km to do any damage reliably.

Of course given the allusion to megawatt weapons I already mentioned, this may or may not actually be a problem. It's all in the interpretations you take and how liberal you are in interpreting (and ignorin gthe inconvenient shit.) Of course, turnabout is fair play....

For the yields displayed in Trek, I don't see any advantage M/AM has over fission/fusion other than the fact that they're carrying the reactant anyway. We have 'dial-a-yield' warheads today. The main advantage of M/AM is energy density and apparently they're not making use of that.

And what examples from Trek are you basing your massive generalization on? I dont recall us having extensive knowledge of the internal workings and configurations of photorps.

Proof of what? That they still damned near got exterminated?
Sheridan obviously took it for a given that they'd have nukes aboard. Unless you want to insinuate they knew he'd have to stage that ambush beforehand I'd say that's a pretty good indicator that EarthForce vessels routinely carry a supply of nukes.

You claimed EA had a ton of nukes. I don't recall anything specifically saying how many they ever had. Fuck if nukes were so plentiful in B5 you'd think they'd be hurling them about routinely when they needed to (like against Shadow vessels) rather than using them as infrequent 'suprise attack' superweapons. B5 does a rather good job of showing nukes being doomsday uber weapons more often than not.

[streetad]

They don't seem to have a reliable way of delivering the nukes - we generally see them used as mines or delivered in another 'surprise attack' kind of way (z'Hadoum, Thirdspace). Presumably the chance that nuclear missiles will be intercepted/avoided is too great to make them a viable weapon.

[Themightytom]

(you can check out the Federation vs Minbari video at scifights.net for relevant episodes and quotes), but hyperspace navigation is a matter of following a string of beacons to your destination. If you get out of range of the beacon, you are lost and gone forever, because hyperspace has absolutely no features to get you back on course.

Um can you provide a source I don't have to download blindly?