What happens when Starships become agile?

[Stravo]

Say we have a new director and creative team for Trek. They don't like the rather tub like movements of the starships and instead try to emulate B5 and BSG and make starships use Newtonian like moves, for instance a Galaxy rapidly spinning on its axis and unloading a can of whoop ass or rapidly changing vectors and such.

How do we handle that in terms of canon? By that I mean we have seen numerous instances of Galaxy class ships and most other of the big ships act like floating barges in terms of acrobtaics and manuevrability. Now we see them performing feats of agility never before seen on Trek. How would we reconcile this? I would understand a new class of vessel but if we see older ships like the Galaxies and Excelsiors acting like starfuries what do we do?

And more importantly for me, I intend to write a series of space battles as Starcrossed comes closer to a conlusion and I want to push the envelope on what we've seen starships do. Would that offend people's sensibilities in terms of "C'mon Stravo, an Excelsior spinning end to end and unleashing torpedo volleys? We've never seen that before. Its not possible."

Would it be a reasonable option to say, no one has ever had to push their starships to these kind of limits?

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I would guess that the ships move in a non-Newtonian fashion because warp drives (which also seem to be used for impulse power) do not behave like thrusters. To re-write them to maneuver like a real-life starship would an abuse of continuity.

[Junghalli]

(1)A new type of engine or thruster system that allows for faster manuevering.
(2) Widespread use of transphasic torpedos or some other weapon that renders shields useless. The best defense then becomes fighter aircraft tactics (don't get hit).
(3)Just say that the slow-moving ships of previous Trek were a visual deficiency that had to do with inadequate special effects technology.

[Chmee]

Well, they could dump nacelles and go with a structurally sound design for high-g maneuvering stresses .......

Of course, I kid. Such blasphemy would never occur.

[Chris OFarrell]

Trek ships CAN manouver far better then B5 ships. Don't confuse a Whitestar and ist ability to manouver with the real capital ships like Omeags, Novas, Sharlins, Hyperions, Vorlon Capital ships and so on. UFP ships CAN accelerate a curve like a bat out of hell.

Really define manouverability. ST ships can change direction with theri speed *intact* very rapidly. B5 ships can spin on their axis yes, but they can't simply turn 90 degrees perpendicular to their course and keep going at the speed they had. They have to decelerate, then reaccelerate.

[General Zod]

i'd imagine slight mods to the defiant would do the trick. it seems to be much more suited to such maneuvers than a ship with big bulky nacelles and awkward designs.

[Uraniun235]

Newtonian manuevers I can see. Hell, I could see rapid White Star-esque movement being pulled off in ships like Defiant and Voyager. But not the big starships. Certainly not a Galaxy.

These are capital starships, not starfighters. Really, the torpedos should be guided weapons. I realize they generally aren't, but if you're going to be giving them the ability to dance like that, modding the torpedos for your story isn't that farfetched.

The ships do have a forward bias with regard to firepower - but at the same time, ideally anything that is nimble enough to stay firmly planted out of range of the big fore phasers (which generally still have a pretty wide arc) is a) still going to have to contend with the rear torpedo launcher as well as at least a couple of phasers, and b) not likely to have the firepower or endurance to make staying motionless relative to the opponent starship a good idea for it's continued survival. Even if such a manuever did pose a threat, a quick hop into high warp should be able to put enough distance between the ships in order for the heavy cruiser to be able to haul it's ass around.

How would you handle high-manueverability manuevers without pissing completely over canon? Make them warp manuevers. TOS suggests that starships are more manueverable while at warp anyway, notably in Elaan of Troyius. This would seem to be corroborated in TNG by the course reversal in Encounter at Farpoint, as well as the stock footage of the Ent-D pulling a hard 90 degree turn while it's ramping up to warp speed. So as not to tread on the reviled "warp strafing", you could restrict such manuevers to basically evasion and repositioning moves - this has precedence in TNG Peak Performance.

Personally, I think pushing the envelope might be better accomplished with just having every phaser strip live, every photon tube spitting out torpedos as fast as it can, and the ship's still taking a hellacious beating. Sure, have it dance a little, keeping enemy ships between each other so they can't bring all their firepower to bear. I think DW did a pretty good job of pushing the envelope with his Romulan battle scene in Chapter 7 of Conquest.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

And more importantly for me, I intend to write a series of space battles as Starcrossed comes closer to a conlusion and I want to push the envelope on what we've seen starships do. Would that offend people's sensibilities in terms of "C'mon Stravo, an Excelsior spinning end to end and unleashing torpedo volleys? We've never seen that before. Its not possible."

Personally, I'd let you do it, now you've told me. Just try and make the Imperials do it too, which would produce some nice scenes (for instance, a set of Rogue Squadron X-Wings do their X-Wing game stereotype 2km attack, and just before they reach it, the Executor they are targetting suddenly cuts its engines and since they were heading on an intercept assuming the ship will keep accelerating, would blow past clean.)

Just watch those structural limits. That last skid thing you did in Devastator versus Tarsi's ship was quite good (marred only by one critical error while you were spouting off nice sounding Order Phrases - one of the few bad writing habits on your part that I've occasionally reminded you about)

And try to be ingenious. You are probably going to lose marks due to the TA Angle multiplier anyway but don't let that stop you from using a brilliant move!

I've been on most of the Star Crossed chapters since the start. There were bumps and dips (and tilts), but I'm still reading. Don't let me down now!

Good luck and good writing.

[buzz_knox]

In the novel My Enemy, My Ally, Sulu takes the Enterprise through a variation of Cobra maneuver, flipping it up on its back, so pursuers end up facing the more powerful forward weapons rather than the weaker aft weapons they expected. The book indicates the stress on the vessel is significant and that position can't be maintained long.

If impulse is pure reaction based (which it can't be) then there's no problem with such a manuever (warp is another issue entirely). If impulse ends up being subspace field based (which I believe more likely), we have the issue of whether or not the generator of the field can rotate within that field and not lose stability of the field and, if so, how fast. The sweeping turns we see may be as much a function of the field being manipulated to turn the vessel as it is a function of stress on the ship's structure.

[Stravo]

My Enemy My Ally - best damned Star Trek novel EVER. Must have read it a dozen times.

Put my story aside, what if we do start seeing amazing manuevers from the old big boys in the series but no explanation, much like the Klingon ridges, its just there. Are we expected to throw out the 30+ years of canon over this unexplained phenomenon? I'm curious on how entrenched precedent is over new evidence in regards to canon.

[buzz_knox]

Forgot to add that the problem with "subspace impulse" (for lack of a better term) applies to warp drive manuevers. We see some manuevering at warp, but Voyager and other canon indicates that such manuevers can cause excessive stress, and thus are limited.

If there were some way of "decoupling" the subspace field from the ship, things could get interesting. What I'm thinking of is that the subspace field could be generated by a mechanism that could move independently of the ship (like a gyro). Thus, you could have the field being manipulated in one direction while the ship "pointed" to another. That would, of course, require a complete change in how warp drive is depicted, and would be best reserved for either a ST breakthrough of the week (and promptly forgotten like most their ubertech) or an alien species.

[Uraniun235]

I think what's really important is what purpose the manuevers are being used towards. If we saw an Excelsior pulling a viciously hard turn to escape collision, yeah sure, have the computer bitch it's fool head off over the SIFs being overloaded and don't overuse that little stunt.

If we saw that same Excelsior continuously twisting like a fighter to evade enemy fire, I'd probably go down to Paramount and burn the studio down. Then over to Foundation Imaging and burn their building down too.

If we start giving these starships too much manueverability, we have to ask ourselves why we're still going with a capital starship combat motif when it's clear the scenes are calling for the aesthetics of starfighter combat.

[Sidious]

If we saw that same Excelsior continuously twisting like a fighter to evade enemy fire, I'd probably go down to Paramount and burn the studio down. Then over to Foundation Imaging and burn their building down too.

Agreed completley. Emergency turns or evasive maneuvers are one thing. Doing barrel rolls or constant twists and loops is another.

The only ship we've seen perform this way in canon other than shuttles and fighters is the Defiant.

I have no idea how we would explain it if they just gave Starfleet cap ships these capabilities but I would absolutley hate it and my utter digust with recent Trek would be complete. It would be no different than trying to rationalize much of the crap we see on Enterprise that doesnt fit with established canon.

Trek ships are wallowing pigs with weapons covering every angle. What I would rather see is Starfleet ships actually utilizing their weapon arcs in battle, especially the Galaxy.

[SCVN 2812]

The compromise would be to have Trek ships use newtonian physics but not abuse them. I.e. give the ships the ability to rotate on all axis but with the speed of the turns dropping off noticeably as size increases.

Sort of like the PC game Nexus: The Jupiter Incident if anyone is familiar with it. All ships move in 3d with engines and thrusters mounted everywhere but big ships can't just stop or turn on a dime.

[Batman]

The compromise would be to have Trek ships use newtonian physics but not abuse them. I.e. give the ships the ability to rotate on all axis but with the speed of the turns dropping off noticeably as size increases.
Sort of like the PC game Nexus: The Jupiter Incident if anyone is familiar with it. All ships move in 3d with engines and thrusters mounted everywhere but big ships can't just stop or turn on a dime.

Sounds reasonable. Otherwise, I'm with Uraniun235.

[Patrick Degan]

Just have a look at the Star Trek: New Voyages fanvid "In Harm's Way" to get an idea of what these ships would look like with some agility to them (courtesy of Max Rem Effects).

[Knife]

Say we have a new director and creative team for Trek. They don't like the rather tub like movements of the starships and instead try to emulate B5 and BSG and make starships use Newtonian like moves, for instance a Galaxy rapidly spinning on its axis and unloading a can of whoop ass or rapidly changing vectors and such.

How do we handle that in terms of canon? By that I mean we have seen numerous instances of Galaxy class ships and most other of the big ships act like floating barges in terms of acrobtaics and manuevrability. Now we see them performing feats of agility never before seen on Trek. How would we reconcile this? I would understand a new class of vessel but if we see older ships like the Galaxies and Excelsiors acting like starfuries what do we do?

And more importantly for me, I intend to write a series of space battles as Starcrossed comes closer to a conlusion and I want to push the envelope on what we've seen starships do. Would that offend people's sensibilities in terms of "C'mon Stravo, an Excelsior spinning end to end and unleashing torpedo volleys? We've never seen that before. Its not possible."

Would it be a reasonable option to say, no one has ever had to push their starships to these kind of limits?

Exterior-

Excelcior Class Starship Fearless dodges weapons fire, while slowly working her way into the center of the enemy formation.

Interior-

Captain- "Helm. Disable Subspace Manuvering Protocals and Newtonian Safties on the thrusters."

Redshirt-"Aye Captain."

Captain-"Initiate Photon Death Blossom, authorization one, delta, four, six, alpha, eight, ninner, theta, gamma, one, one, three, eight!"

[Uraniun235]

Just have a look at the Star Trek: New Voyages fanvid "In Harm's Way" to get an idea of what these ships would look like with some agility to them (courtesy of Max Rem Effects).

Holy shit. I just noticed they actually got the guy who played Matt Decker.

[Patrick Degan]

Just have a look at the Star Trek: New Voyages fanvid "In Harm's Way" to get an idea of what these ships would look like with some agility to them (courtesy of Max Rem Effects).

Holy shit. I just noticed they actually got the guy who played Matt Decker.

That isn't all. Take a good look at Veronica and the Klingon commander (not Mr. Kargh). You might also want to look at who's credited as "supervising producer".

[brianeyci]

SPOILER (Not that you'd care, unless you watch Enterprise)















Just saw the an episode of Enterprise. We see a Romulan Maurader, and it gives us this conundrum -- it moves like nothing we've seen before, including USS Defiant. It dodges photon torpedoes by rolling to port and starboard. It moves so fast that NX-01 can't hit it with phasers and photons (once it disengages its holographic cloak. Yes, that's right, a Romulan ship that is hundreds of years the ancestor of Warbirds and Plasma Torp ships which have only impulse somehow have an advanced holographic cloaking system).

So, this "agile ship" thing already exists.

And there are inconsistencies within Star Trek too. Ships are already incredibly agile, yet we see them form up in a wall like ancient waterborne vessels rather than using their maneuverability and speed to their advantage.

Brian

[Aaron]

SPOILER (Not that you'd care, unless you watch Enterprise)















Just saw the an episode of Enterprise. We see a Romulan Maurader, and it gives us this conundrum -- it moves like nothing we've seen before, including USS Defiant. It dodges photon torpedoes by rolling to port and starboard. It moves so fast that NX-01 can't hit it with phasers and photons (once it disengages its holographic cloak. Yes, that's right, a Romulan ship that is hundreds of years the ancestor of Warbirds and Plasma Torp ships which have only impulse somehow have an advanced holographic cloaking system).

Are you smoking crack? The "only have impulse" myth has been throughly discredited.

The reason why the ship could manouver like this is that it doesn't have a crew. Therefore it''s free to manouver in a fashion that would make a crew smears on the bulkhead if it had one.

[brianeyci]

Are you smoking crack? The "only have impulse" myth has been throughly discredited.

Yes you should try some.

The reason why the ship could manouver like this is that it doesn't have a crew. Therefore it''s free to manouver in a fashion that would make a crew smears on the bulkhead if it had one.

I didn't think of that. But ships have inertial dampeners. Also, in the M5 episode, M5 didn't start flying around like that (although perhaps the Ent wasn't built to maneuver that way). And, why not wear a special suit like fighter pilots wear to deal with the acceleration?

At the very least, they should have pilotless ships in TNG/DS9 then to take advantage of this maneuverability. If they can make Data, they should be able to program a computer to do combat like this -- M5 proved it, although M5 was erratic, why not have a computer combat system that was not sentient but just dodged phaser/photon fire and fired back?

Brian

[Aaron]

Yes you should try some.

Thats quite allright, you've had enough for the both of us.

I didn't think of that. But ships have inertial dampeners. Also, in the M5 episode, M5 didn't start flying around like that (although perhaps the Ent wasn't built to maneuver that way). And, why not wear a special suit like fighter pilots wear to deal with the acceleration?

The dampners on the Rommie ship were off. And there must be a limit to them or we would see ships manouvering like that all the time. There must be a point where the dampners will be overwhelmed and the crew become stains on the deck.

A note about that episode. Even though Trip and Reed had their magnetic boots, wouldn't the ships wild manouvering have broken their legs given that they would be fixed to the deck and their bodies were being tossed around like dolls.

At the very least, they should have pilotless ships in TNG/DS9 then to take advantage of this maneuverability. If they can make Data, they should be able to program a computer to do combat like this -- M5 proved it, although M5 was erratic, why not have a computer combat system that was not sentient but just dodged phaser/photon fire and fired back?

Brian

The M5 debacle probably turned SF off of computer controlled ships, given that M5 killed hundreds of people. And it may simply be cheaper for SF to train a pilot than to make a computer that can perform the same as a pilot in combat. One of the limitations of computers is that they don't have unpredictability of a human pilot.

[brianeyci]

The dampners on the Rommie ship were off. And there must be a limit to them or we would see ships manouvering like that all the time. There must be a point where the dampners will be overwhelmed and the crew become stains on the deck.

Not necessarily. I've proposed an alternate hypothesis before -- that maneuvering all the time takes away power from the shields and weapons, and therefore ships form up in a wall in fleet combat, fighter craft like Peregrines and Defiant being the exception because they are maneuverable enough to dodge weapons fire. A Galaxy isn't maneuverable enough to dodge photon torpedoes for example, so might as well sit, but a Defiant/Peregrine can.

But Peregrines and Defiants don't move like that Romulan Maurader.

A note about that episode. Even though Trip and Reed had their magnetic boots, wouldn't the ships wild manouvering have broken their legs given that they would be fixed to the deck and their bodies were being tossed around like dolls.

Maybe their spacesuits have inertial dampeners built into them, or at least some way to deal with the acceleration?

The M5 debacle probably turned SF off of computer controlled ships, given that M5 killed hundreds of people. And it may simply be cheaper for SF to train a pilot than to make a computer that can perform the same as a pilot in combat. One of the limitations of computers is that they don't have unpredictability of a human pilot.

Training a pilot seems to be incredibly painstaking in ST -- it takes years. Think about their touch-screen display systems and how hard it must be to fly a runabout/ship in a combat situation. Where's the joystick, where are the tactile keyboards so you can feel the buttons? Without them you would be slow as shit, relying on your eyes all the time. There's a reason why it sucks to type on a LCD. Its like how it takes years to get good at firing a banana phaser (if ever).

Sure you don't have to pay them, but we know SF computer systems are plug and play. It is not a matter of computation -- we hear the specs of a computer in Voyager one time. Its a matter of programming. Anyway it seems to be one thing SF does right -- having a person at the controls is always a good idea no matter how advanced your tools.

Brian

[Aaron]

Not necessarily. I've proposed an alternate hypothesis before -- that maneuvering all the time takes away power from the shields and weapons, and therefore ships form up in a wall in fleet combat, fighter craft like Peregrines and Defiant being the exception because they are maneuverable enough to dodge weapons fire. A Galaxy isn't maneuverable enough to dodge photon torpedoes for example, so might as well sit, but a Defiant/Peregrine can.

Given the bizarre designs of Federation ships, it's possible that they can't manouver like the Rommie Maurader without causing undue hull stress. They could conceivably snap those nacelles right off. Or in the case of the Connie, the saucer right off that skinny neck.

But Peregrines and Defiants don't move like that Romulan Maurader.

That is true, and the simplest answer seems to be that it's because they have no crew and the dampners are off. Both off which are stated in the episode.

I'd use the Occams Razor thingy, but I have no idea how it works, just that it's got something to do with the simplest answer being correct.

Maybe their spacesuits have inertial dampeners built into them, or at least some way to deal with the acceleration?

Where the hell are they going to put a dampner in a spacesuit. The ones on Enterprise don't seem to have much to them. Although I have no idea how big a dampner would have to be.

Training a pilot seems to be incredibly painstaking in ST -- it takes years. Think about their touch-screen display systems and how hard it must be to fly a runabout/ship in a combat situation. Where's the joystick, where are the tactile keyboards so you can feel the buttons? Without them you would be slow as shit, relying on your eyes all the time. There's a reason why it sucks to type on a LCD. Its like how it takes years to get good at firing a banana phaser (if ever).

Thats pretty much in line with what a modern pilot takes to train.