Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek or Star Wars, nor BSG old or new, nor do I own the Harringtonverse, or any of the dozens of different science fiction literary works, tv series and fanfiction works which I mention and/or use in this my personal work of fiction. More's the pity, I could certainly use the money.


Star Trek: Way of the Battlestar

Preface

Due to the incident between the U.S.S. Kelvin and the mysterious Romulan ship, and after a series of heated deliberations, Starfleet determined their current style of ship design was overly optimistic. Already preoccupied by the early experiences of the NX-01 Enterprise and United Earth's near-destruction at the hands of the Xindi, Starfleet came to the conclusion their ships were unable to meet the challenges the universe continued to present the Federation with and were incapable of protecting the lives of either Starfleet personnel or Federation citizens in any meaningful way. Therefore, in order to correct these deficiencies in design, a project to exponentially improve every facet of Federation ship design and construction was chartered by the Federation Council, Starfleet Command and Starfleet's Office of Shipbuilding.

A general cry went out to all astronautical engineers to come forth and contribute to the next phase in the defense of the Federation.
Inspired by 20th century military history, specifically by the naval aircraft carriers and super-carriers, and their ability to project a wide radius of dominance around themselves, the project was thus named: Project Carrier. Very soon however, military historians pointed out that while able to project and maintain a wide area of sea-air dominance and threat, these battleships were woefully vulnerable to attack. This prompted project engineers to search for a solution to this apparent weakness while keeping the inherent concepts of asymmetric warfare of the proposed carrier analogs.
One such R&D team came across the early 20th century television science fiction drama Battlestar Galactica and its 21st century re-imagination. Intrigued, they continued scavenging ancient audiovisual records and discovered a series of films about a Galactic Empire and its opponent, the Republic Alliance; the members of the research team were awed by the technological wonders imagined by their ancestors and portrayed throughout the films: a form of FTL capable of traversing a galaxy in one day, planetary shields, hyperspace capable space superiority fighters, incredibly powerful weapons, etc.
Fascinated by the concept of the Colonial Battlestars and the Cylon Basestars both for their durability, offensive capacities, space superiority and recon crafts as well as their decidedly unconventional FTL drive and the latter models' production facilities, Starfleet Command pushed for a parallel research project intended to see whether these concepts were viable and whether they could be duplicated (and possibly improved) by Federation technology; for the idea of a Battlestar or Basestar built to modern specifications was incredibly appealing and would mean a quantitative jump in force projection and defensive capabilities for Starfleet.

Curious about what other innovative technologies could be found amongst ancient literary texts and audiovisual records, a great interest developed within the scientific community and more and more science fiction novels and entertainment shows were recovered and scrutinized for any technological “discoveries”. One particular theme, Space Opera, became fertile ground in which to find new lines of research. A series of novels dealing with the space fleet engagements between several warring star nations and empires proposed a truly interesting missile doctrine, with long distance engagements and astronomical yields, which resulted extremely attractive to the strategists within Starfleet. That, along with groundbreaking point defense systems, intel platforms and drones, quickly became a line of research considered worth pursuing.
It took some time at first, but with modern understanding of mathematics and physics, and with all member races contributing to the endeavor, the first fruits of the new research saw the light of day within a few years. New ceramic alloy battle-steel with off-the-charts resistance levels and ablative armor, capable of withstanding weapon yields well above anything being able to be brought to bear by any Federation member or any of its known hostile neighbors.
That one dual engineering breakthrough, achieved thanks to an audiovisual entertainment series more than two hundred years old, was the opening salvo of the technological race which would cause the rebirth of the United Federation of Planets and Starfleet. From that moment on, no idea, however farfetched, was beyond the pale as far as Federation scientists were concerned. After all, it might have been a cheap gimmick in its day, but who would turn their eye away from a ship's engines which could simply be recharged by dipping into the nearest star, with no worry for its passengers for the ship's shields could withstand a star's heat and ignore its magnetic field? It was a free for all, and although for every success there were an exponential amount of failures, by 2258 Starfleet was a whole different animal.
To reflect the Federation's new policy, Starfleet revised its motto:
Αν θα έχουμε ειρήνη, προετοιμαστείτε για πόλεμο. Μίλα απαλά και να φέρουν ένα μεγάλο ραβδί.
{An tha échoume eir-ín-i, proetoimasteíte gia pólemo. Míla apalá kai na féroun éna megálo ravdí.}
(If you would have peace, prepare for war; speak softly and carry a big stick.)

Non-human societies had often commented imagination was humanity's greatest weapon; they were finally using it.

OK, so when do we see characters? Plot? Anything other than a sort of dry mock-encyclopedia entry?

I'm writing, I'm writing!!

Sheesh, I only thought this up last evening. I'm still processing. I'm hoping to be posting chapter 1 sometime later today or tomorrow morning at the latest.

So demanding!

I've seen several very bad writers show up and post big blocks of poorly formatted "this happens, then that happens" accounts of whatever-the-hell happening in their story... and think that's actually a story.

So when you led with an omniscient third-person history tract, particularly one like "and then the Federation cast aside its lame peacefulness in favor of ubertech" (to paraphrase in an uncharitable way)... yeah. That rings alarm bells.

Hmm, okay...

First of all, thank you for even reading my post.

I acknowledge it is a very bare bones beginning to the story but in all honesty I posted the chapter as soon as I finished writing it. And as I mentioned before, I had only gotten the inspiration a couple of hours before, so I'll admit I'm making it up as I go along. Please keep that in mind.

As for your concerns about "übertech", I am not at all advocating for any such development; the way I thought about it is a massive push for breakthroughs in R&D, using ideas gathered from 20th/21st century scifi shows and literature. Somethings will work, many more won't and some will work in ways no one expected or are even sure they can use.
Whatever does work, will be incorporated into new ships being constructed and/or be retrofitted into older and newer vessels.

I hope my answer addresses you concerns, alleviates some of your rampant sarcasm and keeps you sufficiently interested to wait for the next installment. I welcome all constructive reviews and criticism.

Here's the thing... what you posted isn't really a chapter. It's more of a fluff piece, like an appendix or codex entry.

Most writers, professional or otherwise, will work up their backstory first, so what you wrote isn't entirely unusual. However, said writers also usually keep their backstory, plot summary, and other supporting information in the background as an internal reference -- think of it as the story bible. Since it tends to be rather dry and chock full'o technical info, not many readers are that interested in seeing the bible until the story has been completed -- hence the appendices and codex entries that often follow after a finished story.

I did notice that your entry sparked quite a discussion on Spacebattles's creative writing forum, which is fine. We don't really have an issue with such entries being posted here, either, except that as Simon_Jester said, we had a few cases of people brainstorming plots (usually ridiculous in nature) and making multiple threads discussing them. And they thought those "story bibles" equated to a real story. It was like reading Wikipedia entries.

As you might have noticed, we have a much smaller writing community here than on Spacebattles. We also strive for quality, not quantity. So if you have questions about the direction you're thinking of taking the story, feel free to post it. Just don't expect many responses until you actually have a normal chapter posted.

In fairness to Redlocque, he did title it a "preface" rather than chapter 1, and I personally see no problem with such a thing if it explains the setting and the broad changes made in the xover. Overall, I tihnk you have an interesting concept, and I'm particularly interested/amused by the idea of the 23rd century Fed's drawing inspiration from sci-fi. Quite apt I think, although FYI I don't think the new BSG woudl have happenned in the Trek universe since 2003 was the post-atomic horror or something simliar.

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You are standing on a 4.5 billion year old complex, self-sustaining organic spacship, which is orbiting a power source a million times larger than your ship. There are 200 billion other power sources, many of them with ships like yours, in your fleet. There are 40 other fleets in the immediate neighbourhood and your entire neighbourhood is moving at two million miles per hour towards an object 150 million light years away. Welcome to life, it's a lot more exciting when you think on larger scales.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, I'll do my best to justify it.

Actually, WWIII didn't start until 2026, and although the Eugenics Wars had already happened, I am considering whether delaying somewhat the timeline would be at all detrimental. Say for example, 25 to 30 years. I refuse not to have some of my rabid Farscape madness influence "my" Federation. ;D

To stay on topic, while I think you certainly have an interesting concept, the main issue I see with the preface as it stands is physics.

A civilisation is always going to be limited by their understanding of physics. That is why, even though we've conceived of so many different science fiction universes, there has been a limited number of cases where we've developed technology after it was conceived in sci-fi.

While the Federation is at a higher level of technology than we are, any ideas they attempt to implement from fiction are fundamentally going to be based on their knowledge of physics, and limited by the basic technology available. This means that while they might get tactical inspiration from fictional accounts, any warp-driven vessels are still going to be built on "Roddenberry's design rules" (minus the ridiculous rule about the position of the bridge). They shouldn't be able to develop General Products monomolecular hulls because it simply doesn't match their knowledge of physics. And the industrial base to build even an Executor-class Star Destroyer, much less a Dahak-style battle planetoid, doesn't exist and won't exist without a completely absurd level of industrial development that many critics would refer to as "wanking."

If you want to actually bring other technology in, rather than just using designs inspired by fiction, it would be very easy to do so by making the story a fusion. Almost any universe you can think of can be written this way, combining the elements of both universes' histories to make a coherent whole.

For example, the early drafts of Star Wars made reference to the Journal of the Whills, which was supposedly an ancient manuscript discovered and translated by George Lucas. While this influence was written out before the final script, you could have the Federation historians rediscover Lucas's copy of the Journal in its original form... and presto, fiction becomes reality.

Similarly, Battlestar Galactica's intro of "life began out there" dovetails neatly with the in-universe progenitor races of ST, who seeded the Milky Way with humanoid DNA. All it takes to tip the scales is for a remote Federation exploration mission to discover, say, Kobol... and the TV series could be explained by Glen Larson having found an ancient Kobollian manuscript. The discrepancies between our fossil record and the TV series then become a simple matter of Larson taking creative license.

So, anyway, that's my two cents' worth. Take it as you will...

Thank you for your opinion, and for your input. I truly appreciate it.

And I see your point. But as you said, merging universes has been done before. And although I could very well be over my head here, I am trying to keep it interesting and have fun.

To answer several of your points, what I ma trying to accomplish is for the Starfleet to go looking for a technological edge and look for it amongst the many and varied ideas postulated by science fiction. The whole point is for them to try and recreate such things as Battlestars and Space-Fold technology, or planetary shields, impeller wedges or any of dozens of imaginary technological wonders humans have thought up in the past, but doing it within the limitations of Federation technology. Which is not to say any such research could not revolutionize 23rd/24th century technological theory; could, not will. Again, it's more a case of "this is a really cool idea, let's see if we can make something similar" than a "we should have one of these; prest-o, change-o, tadaa! there you have it" situation. They will run into walls their current tech level just won't let them barrel through.

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/design.htm

Nacelles can be in pairs, so as long as there is an even number of them, the nbsg battlestars would still work, you could put a deflector in under the chin, If the engines were actually just armored nacelles, the top two still have fifty percent line of sight on each other, the bottom two could just be redundant engineering sections or impulse engines or something. the forward visibility, with the battlestars, they are at LEAST as visible as the example given.

The Mercury works too, except that one pair of "nacelles" is not visible, but they all have visibility relative to each other.

You really just have to be willing to accept that the engines on a battlestar could be TOS style nacelles with armor. I don't really see an issue with letting fiction inspire technology, it already happens, the flip phone has been considered to be inspired by the star trek communicator, the tablet could be considered inspired from PADDS in star trek, what's the difference if it goes both ways?

My hero!!

Uhm, wasn't there a long discussion on how fighters make no sense given how ST warp drives and phasers work only a few years ago?

Seriously, there are reasons that fighters and bombers were such an effective naval weapon in IRL surface combat, but they mostly had to do with airplanes being *in the air* as opposed to in the sea with the ships they are attacking or defending.

Manned space fighters are an idiotic brainbug, with a few exceptions for when you have special circumstances that give them some sort of advantages over a larger, more efficient hull.

ST does not have those special circumstances. ME and Starfire really don't either, though we can tolerate the excuses they make, because they sort of make sense on paper at least. It's only series like Ringo's Marching-verse or Card's Enderverse that have a real excuse for "space fighters."

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Given the respective degrees of vulnerability to mental and physical force, annoying the powers of chaos to the point where they try openly to kill them all rather than subvert them is probably a sound survival strategy under the circumstances. -Eleventh Century Remnant

yeah yeah, just write stories with people in it, i want to see Sulu fly a viper with phasers

@ Crazy and in defence of the general idea I played a pc game years ago where they had fighters in the startreck universe.

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"He either fears his fate too much,
Or his desserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all."

James Graham, 1st Marquess and 5th Earl of Montrose, 1612-1650
(Common Paraphase: "He Who Dares Wins")

They may also conclude (correctly) that some of what they have is better than what fiction contains. For example, if the 'Enterprise' shape of a big saucer hull and two engine nacelles is genuinely an efficient shape for building ships, the Feds might not be doing themselves any favors if they decide to make their ships look like the missile-launching... things of the Honor Harrington setting.

Manned space fighters make most sense as:

-A reusable missile bus firing ordnance, if ships are designed such that fuel and reaction mass only take up a small percentage of a craft's mass, so that being able to bring back the 'bus' counts for more than the terminal velocity of the bus.

-A mobile defense platform against same (to expand your point defense envelope; effective range against an agile maneuvering target in space is not really that long, so being able to preposition a defensive weapon half way between the launcher and the target can really simplify your defense problem.

-A mobile sensor platform, one which can be left behind to watch things, or ordered to move away from the 'carrier' to get parallax on a distant object, or sent to get a close look at a big dangerous target.

All these roles are arguably better left to automation in 'hard' SF, where we take for granted that in the future computers will be much smarter and better than human beings that take up the same amount of space. Of course, once you take that argument to its logical conclusion you start to run short of reasons for your characters to do anything dangerous, strenuous, or complicated. So a lot of series deliberately ignore that.

Note that "dogfighting" and "multirole" are simply not in the cards here; also that none of the roles I just described inherently work better with one or two man crews in your parasite craft than they do with ten or twenty in a much larger parasite.

Given that we see in St that ship shields tend to be vulnerable to multiple attacks at once (the whole point of the Prometheus and that multi-vector thing IIRC) lots of smaller fighters blasting away at once may well be more effective. And if each of them can deliver photorps, then they aren't going to have a noticeably lower firepower either. Consider, the E-D would take a while to fire off all 250 torpedoes, but 50 fighters carrying 5 each could do it a lot faster, capitalising on shield penetrations.

Plus, we know at least one major spacefaring power in Trek uses "fighters", those Jem'Hadar bugships. And the similarly sized Birds of Prey work pretty good too. I see no problem with Trek fighters, as long as they arent just "WWII carrier battles in SPAAAACE" type thing, it should be ok. I would say how it's written is more important than the concept itself.

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You are standing on a 4.5 billion year old complex, self-sustaining organic spacship, which is orbiting a power source a million times larger than your ship. There are 200 billion other power sources, many of them with ships like yours, in your fleet. There are 40 other fleets in the immediate neighbourhood and your entire neighbourhood is moving at two million miles per hour towards an object 150 million light years away. Welcome to life, it's a lot more exciting when you think on larger scales.

So, basically, in the ST setting missile boats or gunboats make more sense than true fighters. Which makes sense, given that a missile boat or gunboat is probably the smallest vehicle you could actually mount a compact warp core in; a fighter is going to be limited to fusion power only, which puts a severe crimp in its maximum phaser output.

So don't bother giving it phasers, just have it mount photorps for that missile-boat edge.

OR...write it up so that they carry phasers but only have a limited number of shots from a pre-charged capacitor. Then you can have a whole set of drama from pilots trying to avoid persuit while "out of ammo."

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You are standing on a 4.5 billion year old complex, self-sustaining organic spacship, which is orbiting a power source a million times larger than your ship. There are 200 billion other power sources, many of them with ships like yours, in your fleet. There are 40 other fleets in the immediate neighbourhood and your entire neighbourhood is moving at two million miles per hour towards an object 150 million light years away. Welcome to life, it's a lot more exciting when you think on larger scales.