Ramming drones.

[The Romulan Republic]

This has probably been discussed before (what hasn't been discussed before in Star Trek vs Star Wars debates?), but I've been thinking about a way for Star Trek forces to attack Star Wars vessels effectively (if they have to).

Build drones to ram enemy vessels. They should be effective since Star Wars ships are vulnerable to impacts (asteroids caused damage in The Empire Strikes Back). And they should be less expensive than regular star ships because they don't need life support, quarters, labs, transporters, cargo bays hangers, holodecks, or weapons.

A more desperate version is detaching the saucer part of a star ship and having one part flee while the other part rams an enemy ship (preferably using an autopilot or beaming the crew off it just before it's destroyed).

And ideally, the drones would be cloaked to minimize the risk of them being destroyed or evaded before they could reach their target and ramming would be followed by a volley of torpedoes and/or a fighter attack if the ramming wasn't enough.

Feel free to ridicule this idea. And apologies if I've unwittingly taken someone else's idea. Like I said, what hasn't been done before?

[madd0ct0r]

Star Wars has Ramships piloted by a suicidal droid brain. They're not small, but reasonalby effective. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Robot_ramship

[The Romulan Republic]

Interesting. I didn't know about that. Come to think of it, though, I saw a somewhat similar idea in a fanfic (Starcrossed to be exact). Though in that case it was using asteroids to ram an Imperial ships as opposed to producing a dedicated type of craft to ram them.

Edit: I wonder if anyone's tried to calculate what it would take to destroy a Star Destroyer, for example, by ramming it?

[Lord Revan]

well the crash of the Invisible Hand at the start of ROTS gives some indication as to the resilience of SW ships, the fact that wreck wasn't badly deformed (it seemed to looked most of the damage was from the re-entry and the battle before not the impact with the ground even though it hit large tower hard enough to cleave thru it with little to no resistance.

as for the TESB example we're missing 1 very important variable from the equation here, the time spent in the Hoth asteroid belt.

[The Romulan Republic]

The Invisible Hand is an impressive example of durability. On the other hand, the Invisible Hand wasn't rammed by something moving at the speed Federation ships can move at.

You're right about the time issue as well. But the star destroyers were probably in the asteroid field long enough to be hit a number of times. The drones would probably be faster but it could take multiple hits to do a lot of damage with them. Still, they could be built in large numbers.

[Lord Revan]

The Invisible Hand is an impressive example of durability. On the other hand, the Invisible Hand wasn't rammed by something moving at the speed Federation ships can move at.

You're right about the time issue as well. But the star destroyers were probably in the asteroid field long enough to be hit a number of times. The drones would probably be faster but it could take multiple hits to do a lot of damage with them. Still, they could be built in large numbers.

the problem with ST speeds is "mass-lightening" and the fact that we don't know how fast ST ships are with 0% mass lightening and that's just sublight speeds, FTL ramming is a totally different can of worms you don't wanna open.

this is probably why no major power in ST hasn't used drone ramships it's just not worth the effort.

[Eternal_Freedom]

They may not use drone ramships but the Dominion got a disproportionate amount of use out of having their fighters ram alliance ships. You would think that they, seeing how unusually effective this is (one Jem'Hadar fighter cuts a Vor'cha in half, for instance int he first battle of Chin'Toka) would have fielded cut-down fighters with small crews. Especially while they were on the retreat all the time in DS9's season 7.

[Lord Revan]

They may not use drone ramships but the Dominion got a disproportionate amount of use out of having their fighters ram alliance ships. You would think that they, seeing how unusually effective this is (one Jem'Hadar fighter cuts a Vor'cha in half, for instance int he first battle of Chin'Toka) would have fielded cut-down fighters with small crews. Especially while they were on the retreat all the time in DS9's season 7.

true but those Jemmie "fighters" (they're actually closer to corvette) also moved at rather low relative speeds even when dealing with essentially static objects like DS9 itself, certainly not really faster then what SW fighters have seen to move at during combat and we do know ISDs can target and hit SW fighters and the Jemmie craft are alot larger at about 100m or so IIRC and they're wider then they're long

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Well, don't forget the Invisible Hand broke in half during entry

I'm not sure about actual ramships, but the Cardassians did build AI-controlled missiles that would have had a very similar function. Presumably the kinetic detonator that it was equipped with was designed to go off only when it actually hit something.

[The Romulan Republic]

The Invisible Hand is an impressive example of durability. On the other hand, the Invisible Hand wasn't rammed by something moving at the speed Federation ships can move at.

You're right about the time issue as well. But the star destroyers were probably in the asteroid field long enough to be hit a number of times. The drones would probably be faster but it could take multiple hits to do a lot of damage with them. Still, they could be built in large numbers.

the problem with ST speeds is "mass-lightening" and the fact that we don't know how fast ST ships are with 0% mass lightening and that's just sublight speeds, FTL ramming is a totally different can of worms you don't wanna open.

this is probably why no major power in ST hasn't used drone ramships it's just not worth the effort.

The mass-lightening could be left off, I presume.

I don't know how that would effect speed, but I would assume that any space craft is likely to be faster than the Invisible Hand's impact. I wish I could give precise numbers, but I admit I can't.

As for FTL, it could be useful for closing the distance to the target quickly so it can't evade or destroy the drone.

[Eternal_Freedom]

They may not use drone ramships but the Dominion got a disproportionate amount of use out of having their fighters ram alliance ships. You would think that they, seeing how unusually effective this is (one Jem'Hadar fighter cuts a Vor'cha in half, for instance int he first battle of Chin'Toka) would have fielded cut-down fighters with small crews. Especially while they were on the retreat all the time in DS9's season 7.

true but those Jemmie "fighters" (they're actually closer to corvette) also moved at rather low relative speeds even when dealing with essentially static objects like DS9 itself, certainly not really faster then what SW fighters have seen to move at during combat and we do know ISDs can target and hit SW fighters and the Jemmie craft are alot larger at about 100m or so IIRC and they're wider then they're long

You...do realise I wasn't commenting on if they'd be effective against SW ships, don't you? You said no major powers in ST use robot ramships, I pointed out that the Dominion (apparently routinely) have their fighters ram targets. They might not be robots or drones but given the cloned crew they clearly don't care.

[The Romulan Republic]

Ramming is used frequently in Star Trek and Star Wars. Examples include:

Jem Hadar ramming in Deep Space 9 (which has already been discussed in this thread).
Riker in Best of Both Worlds and Worf in First Contact preparing to ram a Borg ship.
Janeway ramming at least one enemy with Voyager.
Anakin ramming a Trade Federation ship with a star destroyer in The Clone Wars.
The fighter that took out the Executor's bridge (if that collision was intentional).
The ramming ships in Star Wars that madd0ct0r mentioned near the beginning of this thread.

The problem is that this usually involves throwing away a ship, possibly with people on board. A dedicated ramming drone seems preferable.

[Borgholio]

I have often wondered why nobody else fielded their own versions of the Cardassian Dreadnought missile. According to the dialogue, it had a warhead big enough to shatter a small moon. Why the Feds didn't think to use something like that against the Borg is beyond me. Even a cube couldn't adapt to something that powerful. Why the Cardies only seemed to use them against terrorists is also beyond me. These things seem like the ST version of an ICBM, so if one hostile power has them, then everybody who is capable of building them should have done so for deterrence.

Now with that said, if it can literally crack open a small moon (say something the size of Charon), then it would certainly be able to harm a Stardestroyer.

[Purple]

My guess would be that it's probably too easy to intercept. Voyager had issues tackling one of course but a Borg cube is orders of magnitude more capable. And so is a focused defense made up of spaceships. After all the thing is just an unmanned suicide starship. The best warhead in the world won't help you if your enemy can just shoot the missile down.

[Borgholio]

Well of course a single drone might be easy to intercept but what about 20? Or 50? Just like the point defense on a modern warship, one or two incoming missiles might be intercepted but if you spam 20 of them, you're pretty much guaranteed to sink the fucker. The Borg are such a nasty threat that it would be fully justifiable to launch a few dozen missiles at them while they're still hours or days away from their target.

[Batman]

Charon is pretty 'big' for a 'small' moon though. Wouldn't Phobos or Deimos be better candidates?
Besides, same said dialogue also gives the M/AM payload as a total of two metric tons, meaning the missile can't have a yield of more than 43GT.

[Purple]

Well of course a single drone might be easy to intercept but what about 20? Or 50? Just like the point defense on a modern warship, one or two incoming missiles might be intercepted but if you spam 20 of them, you're pretty much guaranteed to sink the fucker. The Borg are such a nasty threat that it would be fully justifiable to launch a few dozen missiles at them while they're still hours or days away from their target.

Thing is that thing was the size of a starship. So unless crew amenities on a warship are really that expensive it's not going to be that much of a cost saving vs just building a proper warship to do your fighting. Especially not once you include the AI, warhead and all sorts of things you need to keep the thing going without a crew to run maintenance. And a proper warship is many times more flexible and useful.

I'd honestly much rather have a bunch of BOPs that I can use than a one shot missile.

[Borgholio]

Charon is pretty 'big' for a 'small' moon though. Wouldn't Phobos or Deimos be better candidates?

I thought of those, but they are actually captured asteroids...so it depends on how you choose to interpret it. I've always considered a big moon to be something like Ganymede...which is actually larger than Mercury. So compared to Ganymede, Charon is puny.

Besides, same said dialogue also gives the M/AM payload as a total of two metric tons, meaning the missile can't have a yield of more than 43GT.

That's still pretty damn impressive though if you think about it, especially compared to a photon torpedo with a "paltry" 32MT yield. A 43GT blast ought to be useful against a Borg cube and could heavily damage a Stardestroyer too.

Thing is that thing was the size of a starship. So unless crew amenities on a warship are really that expensive it's not going to be that much of a cost saving vs just building a proper warship to do your fighting.

It's more about how much of a punch you can pack into a hull. A proper warship would certainly be more flexible under most circumstances, but when fighting the Borg or an enemy just as capable of wasting an entire fleet of warships, why waste the lives and just hit them with a dozen expendable flying bombs instead?

I'd honestly much rather have a bunch of BOPs that I can use than a one shot missile.

See that would be a great idea as well. The whole point is to hit the Borg or a Stardestroyer with more firepower than they can resist. A Dreadnought has a max yield of 43GT. If your fleet of BoPs or other small ships (such as Defiants) can carry one or two 5GT missiles, that would have the same effect too. Whichever way you choose, the question as to why neither solution was ever used needs to be answered.

[The Romulan Republic]

Charon is pretty 'big' for a 'small' moon though. Wouldn't Phobos or Deimos be better candidates?
Besides, same said dialogue also gives the M/AM payload as a total of two metric tons, meaning the missile can't have a yield of more than 43GT.

You know, I wonder why they both with warheads. A chunk of metal the size of a small starship ramming something at the kind of speed Federation spaceships can presumably travel at (even when not using warp drive) should do a massive amount of damage on its own.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well of course a single drone might be easy to intercept but what about 20? Or 50? Just like the point defense on a modern warship, one or two incoming missiles might be intercepted but if you spam 20 of them, you're pretty much guaranteed to sink the fucker. The Borg are such a nasty threat that it would be fully justifiable to launch a few dozen missiles at them while they're still hours or days away from their target.

Ideally you would send a swarm at an enemy. And ideally they'd also be cloaked and use warp to close the distance quickly, which I already mentioned.

[Borgholio]

You know, I wonder why they both with warheads.

Good question. A drone stuffed full of depleted uranium traveling at 100 times the speed of light would probably exceed even the warhead of a Dreadnought. Anybody care to do the math on that?

[Lord Revan]

Once you go FTL things go really wierd, I don't think we've ever had any indication as to how kinetic energy works with warpdrive and our standard fomula don't work if v>c where v=velocity.

That said I can't remember any single instance of an impact of an object moving at warp speeds with a target that was subluminal.

Also the fact that Dreadnaught had a warhead dispite being warpcapable suggest there's a reason why putting a warhead on a missile and having it drop to sublight to hit its target is better then simply having a solid mass ram the target at warp speeds

[Ted C]

What you're basically talking about is an oversized photon torpedo: a torpedo with the mass and propulsion of a starship to deliver a bigger impact and a larger antimatter payload.

While it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect these to inflict damage on Imperial warships, the main problem is going to be expense. It takes the Federation months or years to build a single decent-sized starship. Even stripped of all the systems needed for a crew, it will still probably take a month or more to build just one of these drone ramships. They'll be like the V2's of the second World War: effective, but an incredibly inefficient way to deal damage to the enemy.

[Borgholio]

Even stripped of all the systems needed for a crew, it will still probably take a month or more to build just one of these drone ramships.

I doubt it'd take that long if they decide to mass produce these things. They could cobble one together by building a large torpedo shell, fit a warp drive from a probe or shuttle, fit a basic targeting / navigation computer, and fill the rest of the empty space with explosives. I think Dreadnaught was so big because it fit defenses intended to fight off ships that may attempt to intercept it. If you just build a large guided missile, it could be made far more compact.

[Ted C]

Even stripped of all the systems needed for a crew, it will still probably take a month or more to build just one of these drone ramships.

I doubt it'd take that long if they decide to mass produce these things. They could cobble one together by building a large torpedo shell, fit a warp drive from a probe or shuttle, fit a basic targeting / navigation computer, and fill the rest of the empty space with explosives. I think Dreadnaught was so big because it fit defenses intended to fight off ships that may attempt to intercept it. If you just build a large guided missile, it could be made far more compact.

You still need the biggest and probably most expensive parts of a starship: hull, warp coils, warp core, antimatter pods, deflector dish, and navigation system. You probably want it fully shielded to keep it from being shot down on approach, so add that expense, too. Even making it just the size of a runabout and using an assembly line, you're probably going to need weeks per missile, once you add up the time needed for all the components.