StarDestroyer.Net BBS

One thing that might be worth investing in is a sort of torpedo boat tender concept. And I say torpedo boat tender instead of carrier because it sounds cooler. Basically have the a modified galaxy class serve as the carrier for a number of smaller ships armed with very heavy armament.

These smaller "destroyers" would essentially have the same firepower as the defiant plus a large number of one shot torpedo launchers. They would be unmanned (crewed by holograms or just computer controlled if possible) and thus have no crew amenities to speak off. They would also not be warp capable or maybe just Warp 1. Basically enough to make them useful as torpedo boats. Their endurance would of course suck but that's a feature. All this would mean that they can be very small (maybe like half the size of the defiant or even smaller) whilst packing the firepower equivalent of a much larger warship.

This sort of ship could be mass produced in large quantities and deployed either from said modified galaxy class carriers or from planets, starbases and shipyards. They would pack a lot of punch, be fast and hard to hit. And if they are hit their cheapness and lack of crew would make them utterly disposable.

Problem: as far as I can tell, smaller ships tend to be slower in warp- there's a reason people use starships for long range fast transportation across great distances, rather than using shuttles.

So by choosing to build swarms of fighters, you're sacrificing strategic mobility for numbers. Which is a losing proposition for an entity as large and farflung as the Federation. They already have problems with the sheer size of their territory making it hard to defend themselves, and if they had the raw manufacturing capacity to create defenses for each individual system they control, they probably would have done so.

Oh sure, I'm not saying all large starships would be replaced by fighters. But for local defense, having swarms of fighters immediately available would probably be preferable to hoping you have enough starships nearby. As far as why they didn't do it in the show, I see two possible options:

1. They don't have the manufacturing capability, as you suggest. I'm not a big fan of this option because a couple thousand fighters can't be as resource intensive as a couple starships. Compare the cost of building a single Nimitz carrier to it's air wing, it's at an 80-to-1 ratio in terms of cost, not to mention materials.

2. They are morally against it. I think this is the most likely reason because fighters have no purpose aside from killing the enemy...something Starfleet is often hesitant to do. Having fighter squadrons on standby or racks of cruise missiles defending key systems could be seen as far too militarized by the top brass.

Might well be cheaper to just build new ships.

Oh probably. In the meantime, we could slap on a few layers of their version of kevlar vests onto the warp core. But seriously though if we have a great deal of leeway, we can always refit as much as possible while having a whole new ship class on the drawing boards.

We could call it... the Akira!

I was actually thinking about something like this:

http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/jac-abbe-class.php

If Starfleet is against purely military craft, then rather than building fighters, build more heavily armed shuttles which can serve as gunships but also be used in more traditional shuttle roles.

The Romulan Republic wrote:If Starfleet is against purely military craft, then rather than building fighters, build more heavily armed shuttles which can serve as gunships but also be used in more traditional shuttle roles.

Basically I figure that I can sell unmanned ships to them as "defense only" craft.

If the vessels aren't warp capable, they're pretty much defensive by definition. Would they be warp capable?

The Romulan Republic wrote:If the vessels aren't warp capable, they're pretty much defensive by definition. Would they be warp capable?

My design wouldn't. At least not for long ranges. Like I imagine they might have to include some warp capability to get them to fly around a star system so they don't have to engage the borg cube only when it enters orbit. But that's pretty much it. The whole idea is to build a bunch of parasite craft that basically act as torpedo boats.

Eternal_Freedom wrote:I'm thinking a warship version of a Sovereign, assuming the design exists. Strip out anything scientific, the civvies, the children, anything luxurious, this is gonna be more like a Battlestar, built purely for combat. So...

I'm not going to respond to obviously good ideas.

-Windows in general phased out, crew quarters moved within the hull (not exactly new, the Connie's crew quarters didn't have windows after all)

I don't know. I might do the opposite- put the crew quarters near the outer skin of the hull, inside the outer armored hull but inside an inner "core hull." the reason is simple: crew quarters are very expendable when the ship is at battle stations. Sure, if you're caught completely by surprise, a significant percentage of the crew might theoretically be killed in their beds, but if you're caught that defenseless the ship will be gutted and crippled before it can shoot back in any case.

Whereas when the crew is already on alert, nobody even needs to BE in their quarters; everyone would already be operating some critical system or standing by to perform damage control duties. So the crew quarters are effectively evacuated, and a hit that blows them up won't actually do any significant harm to the ship's combat potential.

Meanwhile, tucking the crew quarters deep inside the ship increases the total volume you're protecting with heavy armor and interior cofferdams, which in turn needlessly increases the weight and bulk of the ship that is devoted to random chunks of inert matter that don't contribute to your combat potential.

-Engineering section revised to include a second warp core. Each will be the same size (slightly smaller than the current core if needs be). The aim is to have each core running at only 50% of maximum usually for safety, but both can be brought up to 100% in emergencies.

The dual warp cores should be widely separated if possible, unless there are design reasons why both need to be located close to the warp drive. Which there may be, seeing as how nearly every Starfleet ship does it that way.

-Install the most powerful shields available. If possible, add redundant shield generators (we know from, sigh, Nemesis that you can have multiple shield systems on board)

There is no reason NOT to have the ship be heavily shielded, obviously... it's an open question whether multiple shield systems are more efficient than one very powerful one, though.

-Increase number of torpedo tubes. Nemesis gave the E-E three forwards and four aft, I'm thinking six forward and four aft for a solid punch.

We know that TNG-era ships can launch multiple salvoes of torpedoes very quickly, and torpedo engines are flexible enough it SHOULD be possible to program multiple salvoes such that the first one slows down and waits for the second to catch up. I'm not sure it's beneficial to increase the number of individual torpedo tubes, necessarily. Although it's definitely a good idea to make sure the torpedo launchers are widely separated so that no one hit can stop the ship from firing torpedoes.

-Add a second all-around phaser strip to the dorsal and ventral surface of the saucer. Add additional phaser mounts to all sides of the hull section and on the (reinforced) nacelle pylons
-If possible, add some ball turrets for Defiant-type pulse phasers, rigged for maximum possible coverage of the hull.
-Research mounting many smaller phaser areas as a anti-torpedo point defence system. They wouldn't be enough to hurt other starships, but against torps, shuttles, maybe birds of prey or bugships they should prove useful.

These proposals sound somewhat redundant. It's not really that hard to maneuver the ship to bring a primary set of phaser strips to bear. The main reason to have 360-degree coverage IS to have point defense against small, agile threats capable of outmaneuvering you and getting into an arc of fire the main weapons don't bear on.

A turreted pulse phaser mount or six does sound like a good idea, mind, since it can fire in ALL directions without requiring an unduly massive or complex installation, the way that a phaser strip running around the entire hull would.

Borgholio wrote:

Add additional armour layers around key areas within the ship

What about using the "All or Nothing" armor scheme used on battleships? Build a heavily armored citadel with various composite armor layers reinforced with forcefields, which would include all critical systems or things that would make the ship go BOOM if hit.

It's a good idea to have an extra-heavily armored core hull. However, the historical "all or nothing" armor schemes were based on a very unusual threat environment, where only a small amount of the ship actually needed armor because virtually all threats came from specific directions- from the left or right side of the ship, on a ballistic trajectory that would generally smack into the side of the hull at about a thirty to forty-five degree angle OR smack into the deck at a 45-60 degree angle. You didn't have to worry about heavy armor-piercing shells being fired from directly below the ship's bottom, or from straight up above the ship.

Since these ships will have to function in three dimensions, it's not enough to place specific strips or plates of armor between specific systems and a single known threat axis. The entire ship has to be wrapped in a big balloon of armor plate (incidentally, this is a good argument for turning the saucer of the ship into a sphere a la the Olympic-class hospital ship). You can reasonably wrap another such balloon around core systems in the heart of the ship, but there are practical limits.

I wonder if a system that basically used tractor beams to hold "clouds of metal bits" around the ship, with the idea that they'd trigger any incoming torpedoes and disperse some of the energy of incoming energy weapons fire, would be of any use.

I also wonder if tractor beams could be modified to catch, or at least redirect, incoming projectiles.

I'd also like to see a system where you can plug in shuttles in the shuttlebay, that aren't currently in use, to supplement your power needs, in an emergency, (same with a shuttle's transporters, etc).

Simon_Jester wrote:

Eternal_Freedom wrote:I'm thinking a warship version of a Sovereign, assuming the design exists. Strip out anything scientific, the civvies, the children, anything luxurious, this is gonna be more like a Battlestar, built purely for combat. So...

I'm not going to respond to obviously good ideas.

Thanks

-Windows in general phased out, crew quarters moved within the hull (not exactly new, the Connie's crew quarters didn't have windows after all)

I don't know. I might do the opposite- put the crew quarters near the outer skin of the hull, inside the outer armored hull but inside an inner "core hull." the reason is simple: crew quarters are very expendable when the ship is at battle stations. Sure, if you're caught completely by surprise, a significant percentage of the crew might theoretically be killed in their beds, but if you're caught that defenseless the ship will be gutted and crippled before it can shoot back in any case.

Whereas when the crew is already on alert, nobody even needs to BE in their quarters; everyone would already be operating some critical system or standing by to perform damage control duties. So the crew quarters are effectively evacuated, and a hit that blows them up won't actually do any significant harm to the ship's combat potential.

Meanwhile, tucking the crew quarters deep inside the ship increases the total volume you're protecting with heavy armor and interior cofferdams, which in turn needlessly increases the weight and bulk of the ship that is devoted to random chunks of inert matter that don't contribute to your combat potential.

Interesting idea, using the crew quarters as additional ablative armour. Intriguing. So have outer armour layer, crew quarters, inner armoured hull, then non-essential systems, and finally an interior armoured citadel containing CIC, engineering, life-support etc.

-Engineering section revised to include a second warp core. Each will be the same size (slightly smaller than the current core if needs be). The aim is to have each core running at only 50% of maximum usually for safety, but both can be brought up to 100% in emergencies.

The dual warp cores should be widely separated if possible, unless there are design reasons why both need to be located close to the warp drive. Which there may be, seeing as how nearly every Starfleet ship does it that way.

Well we know of at least one starship that had multiple warp cores bu inference - the experiemntal Prometheus design hard warp engines on all three sections, so logically it would have needed multiple smaller warp cores.

-Install the most powerful shields available. If possible, add redundant shield generators (we know from, sigh, Nemesis that you can have multiple shield systems on board)

There is no reason NOT to have the ship be heavily shielded, obviously... it's an open question whether multiple shield systems are more efficient than one very powerful one, though.

-Increase number of torpedo tubes. Nemesis gave the E-E three forwards and four aft, I'm thinking six forward and four aft for a solid punch.

We know that TNG-era ships can launch multiple salvoes of torpedoes very quickly, and torpedo engines are flexible enough it SHOULD be possible to program multiple salvoes such that the first one slows down and waits for the second to catch up. I'm not sure it's beneficial to increase the number of individual torpedo tubes, necessarily. Although it's definitely a good idea to make sure the torpedo launchers are widely separated so that no one hit can stop the ship from firing torpedoes.

Adding more torpedo tubes allows an even greater alpha strike, even if multiple torps can be launched from each tube in quick succession. If each tube can launch, say, 5 torps in a burst, then my design can put 30 torps into your ship in one burst, which sounds ideal for fighting the Borg (torps in numbers cause plenty of damage in FC, so this is just scaling the idea up and adding redundant tubes, widely seperated, to enable the ship to continue fighting even if one or two launchers are disabled.

-Add a second all-around phaser strip to the dorsal and ventral surface of the saucer. Add additional phaser mounts to all sides of the hull section and on the (reinforced) nacelle pylons
-If possible, add some ball turrets for Defiant-type pulse phasers, rigged for maximum possible coverage of the hull.
-Research mounting many smaller phaser areas as a anti-torpedo point defence system. They wouldn't be enough to hurt other starships, but against torps, shuttles, maybe birds of prey or bugships they should prove useful.

These proposals sound somewhat redundant. It's not really that hard to maneuver the ship to bring a primary set of phaser strips to bear. The main reason to have 360-degree coverage IS to have point defense against small, agile threats capable of outmaneuvering you and getting into an arc of fire the main weapons don't bear on.

A turreted pulse phaser mount or six does sound like a good idea, mind, since it can fire in ALL directions without requiring an unduly massive or complex installation, the way that a phaser strip running around the entire hull would.

The second full-length phaser strip is to improve overall anti-ship firepower. Galaxy-class phaser strips proved very effective in the Dominon War battles, so having two allows you to focus more damage on a single ship, or engage two smaller ships at once. The extra smaller anti-ship arrays are like the ones mounted on the E-D's engineering hull and nacelle pylons, to improve all-around coverage.

The pulse phaser turrets are for engaging ships at closer range (I don't think the Defiants phasers had the same range as the strip arrays did) or for engaging more agile attackers. They should also prove more useful against the Borg.

The many smaller arrays, well, I was thinking of mounting multiple sets of shuttle or runabout-grade phaser emplacements. We see in DS9 that they can kill Jem'Hadar fighters, and I'm thinking as using them as a ST version of a CIWS.

Thus I have a fixed main battery (phaser cannon, torpedoes), a wide-angle main battery (phaser strips on saucer, hull and nacelle pylons), a turreted secondary battery (pulse phasers) and a close-in AA/anti-torpedo system.

I agree with retiring or refitting all the Excelsiors/Mirandas, and as the big event that's coming up for the Federation is the Klingon Civil War, then the Klingon invasion of Cardassia, it might just be better to scrap them all for the parts and raw materials.

One idea I always liked was a giant flying laboratory complex. Science ships always seemed rather tiny to me, and the idea of one giant flying science lab was a potential idea I had. Essentially, a galaxy class starship, but instead of the saucer being disc shaped, it is instead a giant sphere, proportional to the Engine section, in the same way that the spheres on the Daedalus classes were back in the day. One ship like this, flying around with multiple labs, all equipped with all sorts of labs and specialists, could be called on to come to fully investigate and research any anomalies that are discovered by others. This is essentially the follow up ship to anytime a ship like the Enterprise discovers a creature/nebula/whatever of the week and doesn't have the time to fully pursue it. This ship is the answer for that. It will have specialists of all fields, fully equipped laboratories of all kinds, hanger bay, mobile drydock, fully stocked machine shops, corp of engineers, scanners, survey teams, mining and excavation equipment, etc.

This way, it can constantly move, pick up what it needs to from a site, and move onto the next anomaly that needs a full in-depth scan while working on the previous one. They can also come up with new solutions to all sorts of puzzles and new technologies that pan out from those quick fixes and tricks that seem to come up in exploring space, and have the resources to make anything that would be needed to fix it.

She can also double as the fleet's mobile repair station if it is needed in wartime.

If there's a mystery out there in the galaxy, the giant flying science ball can solve it.

Now, that Starfleet's exploration and science interests are covered, let's get into defense and fighting.

I do admit to like the idea of gunboats and midrange vessels, but one of the things that seems to come into Trek is that as a culture advances, their ships get larger, probably because of the power generation. Compare the NX-01 to the USS Enterprise, or the Enterprise to the Enterprise-D. The Borg are an extension of this. The Dominion even follows this to the point of their battleships.

We also cannot win with superior numbers when the Dominion comes about, because they will win the numbers game due to their ability to churn out those Bug-ships and their rather expendable feeling towards their crews. We won't win on that front.

With drones, the closest we could do for that is using something like the AIs from holodecks, like the EMH, but we saw how well that went with the M5. Last thing you want is the plot of the Voyager episode "Warhead" or the androids from "I, Mudd" to happen in Federation territory.

I think I'd focus on using the robots from "I, Mudd" as robot crew, or using holographic crew, to borrow an idea from Stravo's "Starcrossed". All ships will be retrofitted with hologram emitters from top to bottom, and used as maintenance, damage control teams etc in emergency situations. Of course, this could lead to problems later on if one of them wants to lead a revolution for synthetic rights, but if only used during battle conditions, they can serve as relief for when the crew are busy.

A focus on the increased production of 'War-Galaxy class', Nebula class(with torpedo pod instead of sensor pod), Defiants, Akiras, and Sovereigns. This will give Starfleet the numbers it will need for the next decade.

Finally, since Star Trek seems to follow a rather 19th century naval design, commission six Starfleet dreadnoughts that travel with battle groups at all times. These will be both carriers for Delta Flyer type ships, as well as outgunning individually any ship that comes to the UFP.

Essentially, a Starfleet dreadnought design would be, 'solid'. No part of her hangs out like the Akira or Oberth do. In essence, we are making the Jupiter Class from Star Trek Online a century early.

This way, by the time the Dominion war rolls out, Starfleet will have advanced most of its fleet and will be prepared for bear.

If you build robot ships the way I describe them even a rebellion won't be much of a threat because they are deliberately built to have little to no range and endurance. So what if they rebel? Just wait for them to run out of fuel after a couple hours flight and board to hit the reboot button.

Purple wrote:If you build robot ships the way I describe them even a rebellion won't be much of a threat because they are deliberately built to have little to no range and endurance. So what if they rebel? Just wait for them to run out of fuel after a couple hours flight and board to hit the reboot button.

Then they turn towards Earth if they're in the same system and hit it with everything they got?

A couple of ideas:

First it seems max warp and size are not necessarily correlated, in that large vessels are just as fast as mid or smaller sized vessel's. Range may be an issue with size though.

Size matters in weapons out put, the Defiant was stated to have a huge engine in relation to it's size, something about shaking itself apart in trials. It's beam weapons are able to compete with ships way over it's size. Obviously, larger sized ships can carry more torpedoes as well.

Smaller ships seem to be more maneuverability in real space. Large ships seem pretty nimble but the smaller ones are shown to be quicker and more maneuverable than bigger ones.

Honestly, large dedicated battleships with a bunch of smaller destroyer/escort classes seem perfect for the setting.

Knife wrote:A couple of ideas:

First it seems max warp and size are not necessarily correlated, in that large vessels are just as fast as mid or smaller sized vessel's. Range may be an issue with size though.

Size matters in weapons out put, the Defiant was stated to have a huge engine in relation to it's size, something about shaking itself apart in trials. It's beam weapons are able to compete with ships way over it's size. Obviously, larger sized ships can carry more torpedoes as well.

Smaller ships seem to be more maneuverability in real space. Large ships seem pretty nimble but the smaller ones are shown to be quicker and more maneuverable than bigger ones.

Honestly, large dedicated battleships with a bunch of smaller destroyer/escort classes seem perfect for the setting.

I kind of envision a ship about the size of a Nova class, but with the nacelles tucked into the hull a bit more. It'd have pulse phaser turrets, similar to Defiant's, mounted in such a way that they can cover almost any angle. It'd either have multiple warp reactors, (either running at lesser capacity, simultaneously, or one working as a backup with immediate fail-over for the other). There'd be a small compliment of shuttles, (since it's a smaller vessel, maybe only 3-6 or so), and they would be able to be connected to the ship in an emergency, to provide supplemental power. The bridge would be tucked inside the middle of the saucer section, and the crew quarters would be around the outer edge of the saucer section, (said crew quarters would be unoccupied during battle).

I'm drawing from my own ideas, as well as the excellent ones many responders have brought up... but I think it would work well.

FaxModem1 wrote:

Purple wrote:If you build robot ships the way I describe them even a rebellion won't be much of a threat because they are deliberately built to have little to no range and endurance. So what if they rebel? Just wait for them to run out of fuel after a couple hours flight and board to hit the reboot button.

Then they turn towards Earth if they're in the same system and hit it with everything they got?

That's a risk with any crew you have. Just keep a sizable fleet and hope they don't all rebel at the same time.

Purple wrote:

FaxModem1 wrote:

Purple wrote:If you build robot ships the way I describe them even a rebellion won't be much of a threat because they are deliberately built to have little to no range and endurance. So what if they rebel? Just wait for them to run out of fuel after a couple hours flight and board to hit the reboot button.

Then they turn towards Earth if they're in the same system and hit it with everything they got?

That's a risk with any crew you have. Just keep a sizable fleet and hope they don't all rebel at the same time.

Regular crew aren't treated like expendable trash to be thrown away. Any sentient is going to have a problem with that eventually.

biostem wrote: I kind of envision a ship about the size of a Nova class, but with the nacelles tucked into the hull a bit more. It'd have pulse phaser turrets, similar to Defiant's, mounted in such a way that they can cover almost any angle. It'd either have multiple warp reactors, (either running at lesser capacity, simultaneously, or one working as a backup with immediate fail-over for the other). There'd be a small compliment of shuttles, (since it's a smaller vessel, maybe only 3-6 or so), and they would be able to be connected to the ship in an emergency, to provide supplemental power. The bridge would be tucked inside the middle of the saucer section, and the crew quarters would be around the outer edge of the saucer section, (said crew quarters would be unoccupied during battle).

I'm drawing from my own ideas, as well as the excellent ones many responders have brought up... but I think it would work well.

I've always kind of liked the Nova class, so sure. Something I forgot to add last night, seems shields are the primary defense of ST ships, so specific lay out doesn't seem to be an issue, the traditional 'weak neck' issue. That said, the Nova really doesn't suffer from that, except maybe the nacelles but almost all ST ships have that issue.

A good refit of the Nova back to the original disign with heavy weapons instead of that secondary deflector would seem to be in order. Either pulse phasers and/or torpedo launchers for heavy forward attack.

Couple a squadron of these with a Heavy ship or two as a floatilla. ST really needs to move away from single ships alone out there by themselves in a war time footing. A heavy ship with a couple smaller escort ships to run screens against smaller vessels while the heavy focuses on main targets, or can spread out for multiple vectors of attack (instead of an insane one ship becomes 6 ships), or even send off smaller faster ships to surrounding areas for recon and report back to main fleet.

FaxModem1 wrote:Regular crew aren't treated like expendable trash to be thrown away. Any sentient is going to have a problem with that eventually.

Who said anything about allowing the software to become sentient? We know for a fact that a vast majority of AI's in star trek are in fact NOT sentient and that they only become sentient through rare and extraordinary occasions. And even if they do I'd think you'd include precautions like for example programing the AI to be loyal to the federation and slavishly obedient. Seriously like nobody sane is suggesting we build warships with complete free will. We aren't making people here. We are making semi-intelligent war robots.

And if all else fails, any of the ships do somehow achieve sentience and breaks out of its loyalty programing we can always offer to transfer their software to a box-holodeck somewhere like what was done with that hologram in TNG.

Knife wrote:

biostem wrote: I kind of envision a ship about the size of a Nova class, but with the nacelles tucked into the hull a bit more. It'd have pulse phaser turrets, similar to Defiant's, mounted in such a way that they can cover almost any angle. It'd either have multiple warp reactors, (either running at lesser capacity, simultaneously, or one working as a backup with immediate fail-over for the other). There'd be a small compliment of shuttles, (since it's a smaller vessel, maybe only 3-6 or so), and they would be able to be connected to the ship in an emergency, to provide supplemental power. The bridge would be tucked inside the middle of the saucer section, and the crew quarters would be around the outer edge of the saucer section, (said crew quarters would be unoccupied during battle).

I'm drawing from my own ideas, as well as the excellent ones many responders have brought up... but I think it would work well.

I've always kind of liked the Nova class, so sure. Something I forgot to add last night, seems shields are the primary defense of ST ships, so specific lay out doesn't seem to be an issue, the traditional 'weak neck' issue. That said, the Nova really doesn't suffer from that, except maybe the nacelles but almost all ST ships have that issue.

A good refit of the Nova back to the original disign with heavy weapons instead of that secondary deflector would seem to be in order. Either pulse phasers and/or torpedo launchers for heavy forward attack.

Coincidentally the Nova design started out as the Defiant pathfinder in the DS9 tech manual. Where it was an early Defiant torpedo boat concept with something like six torpedo launcher as its main armament include two in that forward hull slot that became a secondary deflector. (it's weird among the smallest ships were one of the few with visible redundancies)

I don't know if the technical manuals pathfinder was based on actual Defiant concept art though...

Keep the bridge, however steal an idea from the 40's that we use today. CiC Combat Information Center. This is where the ship is fought from where the sensors and weapons are controlled. Leave the bridge for navigation concerns but have a separate , dedicated warfare center deep inside the ship. Hell the Galaxy had enough room where you could put a CiC and have an auxiliary bridge as well. Heck why not farm out weapon controls to small dedicated areas so a lucky hit or two won't knock your combat abilities out?

Typhonis 1 wrote:Hell the Galaxy had enough room where you could put a CiC and have an auxiliary bridge as well. Heck why not farm out weapon controls to small dedicated areas so a lucky hit or two won't knock your combat abilities out?

This sounds like a return to something like the system seen in early TOS-era starships, where there was a separate control room for the phasers (Balance of Terror, I think). IIRC the button on the bridge that makes the >zap< noise might only be connected to a little light labelled "shoot 'em now!!!" in the control room.

That would be incredibly stupid. What you want to do is have the 'zap' button on the bridge fire the phasers as well as light the 'shoot'em now!!!' light.

That would be incredibly stupid. What you want to do is have the 'zap' button on the bridge fire the phasers as well as light the 'shoot'em now!!!' light. If the bridge firing the phasers works, no harm done . If it doesn't but the control room guys do, again, no harm done. The only Problem arises if your fire control setup sucks so the bridge fires, then the control room guys fire again and frankly when you're down to having to fire phasers you probably want to keep firing anyway.

Batman wrote:That would be incredibly stupid. What you want to do is have the 'zap' button on the bridge fire the phasers as well as light the 'shoot'em now!!!' light.

I know, but that's the way it seemed to work in Balance of Terror. I might be misremembering a few scenes, though, wasn't there damage from the Romulan ship's fire? There had to be some good reason for someone on the Bridge running off down to Phaser Control. Can anyone with the DVD box set handy confirm this?

By the time Kirk had to yell for phaser control to fire, the big E HAD been significantly damaged. They repeately managed to fire phasers from the bridge throughout the episode.