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 Psienesis wrote:
The Galaxy-class was a science vessel. The Defiance class was a warship.

Science vessels don't have guns. The Galaxy was the leading design of the Federation fleet for a long time, and there's enough evidence to indicate that it was also produced in much larger numbers than the Defiant ever was (IIRC there were 5-6 Defiants built, of which at least two were lost).

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Ground based weapons have the advantages of, substantially more support systems allowing for greater power of shots, and greater firing rate, due to heat sinks and as mentioned power plants.

They can be 'more durable' due to being able to be based mostly underground and allowing again for more and more powerful shielding.

Downsides are mobility, they have none, that have a limited firing arc, and usually depend upon planetary rotation (if any) to target a ship in orbit.

If a world was bristled with them, like nearly every 20 square miles there is one at least, it would be a nightmare to invade, arguable not worth it. A planet that heavily defended would probably not be able to support anything worth protecting that much though due to the space they would take up. I imagine it is a sound strategy for orbiting moons though to be so heavily armed on worlds of extreme strategic value.

In 40K, yes, mobility is a notable limitation. Fire arc isn't actually a big deal, as it's generally the case that any defensive battery has a sufficient "field of fire" to cover whatever it's set up to protect. It's also unlikely that a world would have that many spread out in such a fashion- that's a lot of space wasted on doing nothing but protecting empty and useless territory.

The logical methods are generally that your big infrastructure tends to get the defensive emplacements; large cities/hives, capital buildings, that sort of thing.

Though natural satellites being turned into veritable fortresses does have some supporting evidence- IIRC the Moon in 40K is actually armor plated in its entirety!

Johnson & The Juice Crew wrote:
The one thing a lot of sci fi fails to get across is the sheer vastness and scale of space (along with ships flying if there is an atmosphere)

In a lot of scifi (40k too) ships seem to hold a completely static orbit over a planet.

With such woefully inaccurate distances, static orbits and flying through an atmosphere whilst in space then it's very easy for ground facilities to own the gak out of naval vessels.

One does not simply shoot straight up (unless it's lances I guess)

Define "static orbit". It's entirely possible that a ship could be in a geosync orbit, or just using some kind of apogee motor to keep station at a lower orbit. There's also the fact that you could adjust your orbit so that you have extended periods over a target area. While that usually means that you'd have equally extended periods over non-target areas, it's entirely possible to dynamically adjust an orbit track to swing around non-target zones faster and then loiter over target areas for extended durations.

And again, surface emplacements have the benefit of being in an enormous clusterfeth of ground clutter that it can use as concealment, at the very least preventing accurate bombardment from higher orbits.

That's actually something that nobody really thinks about- ortillery accuracy is less likely to be an issue of "can my weapon system shoot the wings off of a fly", and more of a "can my targeting controls aim my gun well enough to shoot the wings off of a fly". So it's very likely that 40K warships are actually able to accurately bombard things from higher orbits, base purely on mechanical weapon limitations. The issue is that the clusterfeth ground clutter that is a planetary surface will generally prevent them from actually picking out the juicy targets that they want to asplode to tiny pieces.

When the batteries are concentrated though, they are very vulnerable to an army landing out of their firing arc and taking or destroying said batteries. Hence why I said if they were more spread out, they would be a nightmare.

There are evidently massive pro's and cons for either, and I would go with your option also. But those pesky marines are going to storm up fast to an unguarded area and drop everything as close as possible with supporting vehicles and take it in one fell swoop.

Having said that, marines are also mental enough to attack the cities, batteries or not, due to their method of invasion, being able to fast drop straight on to the defence batteries command location, holding it long enough for other imperial forces to capture the actual batteries, and the weapons on their ships being quite nasty at bombarding planets themselves, and generally causing carnage as a smoke screen for said marines dropping down.

I wouldn't call it "mental" for Marines to do that, as it's always been part of their mission profile to be capable of that. To that end, they've also generally been equipped with much better-protected warships.

It's also the case that it's a lot easier to defend a fortress from a ground assault than it is to cover a planet with anti-orbital batteries... though that does assume that anti-orbital batteries are exponentially more expensive than a traditional fortress and defending army.

Also, it does lead to a question, if a weapon is powerful enough to send a projectile of energy or of matter into high orbit with enough force once there to damage an orbiting star cruiser, what would that do to the are surrounding it, and if the cruiser is in a geosynchronous orbit, what do they do about the dangers posed by falling debris?

Many cities that have orbital defenses are also equipped with void shield generators that cover the city.

If they don't? It's the Imperium, life is cheap.

I would imagine that a fleets priority would be to destroy any static defences capable of causing damage to them from a distance before entering a static or geosyncranous orbit.

Realistically a solid slug weapon launched at an installation would be difficult to intercept but would be able to be targeted at a predictable point.

At the distances we are potentially talking about the combatants could be looking at time delayed images of each other unless they have some kind of FTL sensors. A planet mounted weapon would be easy to target because its location would be entirely predictable, hitting a ship based on an image of where it was a few minutes or even hours ago could be impossible.

 GKTiberius wrote:
Also, it does lead to a question, if a weapon is powerful enough to send a projectile of energy or of matter into high orbit with enough force once there to damage an orbiting star cruiser, what would that do to the are surrounding it, and if the cruiser is in a geosynchronous orbit, what do they do about the dangers posed by falling debris?

Probably nothing; debris is either a non-issue due to void shielding, or because the majority of the debris will either normalize into an orbital track or be flung into deep space. Geosync orbits are also high enough up that it's more likely for debris to spall off into deep space anyways.

 Ugly Green Trog wrote:
I would imagine that a fleets priority would be to destroy any static defences capable of causing damage to them from a distance before entering a static or geosyncranous orbit.

Realistically a solid slug weapon launched at an installation would be difficult to intercept but would be able to be targeted at a predictable point.

At the distances we are potentially talking about the combatants could be looking at time delayed images of each other unless they have some kind of FTL sensors. A planet mounted weapon would be easy to target because its location would be entirely predictable, hitting a ship based on an image of where it was a few minutes or even hours ago could be impossible.

Not necessarily; there's more than a few examples of battlegroups landing ground forces from outside the field of fire of the anti-orbital defenses, rather than trying to take on the defenses "head to head". There's also the issue that while surface batteries in 40K tend to be big and visible, that's not a hard-and-fast rule. Also, in the case of 40K, the surface defenses either boast enormous amounts of old-fashioned "put dirt between me and the bullets" shielding, or they boast void shields that can rival or exceed that of an Imperial cruiser.

And, again, positive identification of surface emplacements, especially at interplanetary distance, is not a given. Surface clutter is a big deal for modern aircraft. Spacecraft are going to have the same problem, only turned up to 11 because they'll be looking through all the cloud layers as well. It's theoretically possible to dump slugs into a planet from across a star system, and put them very accurately down... but the targeting and aiming apparatus* may limit your accuracy substantially. By which I mean your sensor systems probably aren't going to be able to penetrate the surface clutter and cloud layers with perfect accuracy every single time, and the method you use to adjust point-of-aim may have sufficient mechanical imperfection/error to prevent you from taking advantage of such precision sensor apparatus anyways.

*I separate "targeting" and "aiming" because they are technically two different devices; targeting refers to the sensor systems which detect, identify, and then maintain "lock" on a target object, while aiming refers to the mechanical systems which adjust the weapon system so that any shots fired are "on target".

As an example of surface weapons which are nearly undetectable, there's:

-laser subs
-anti-orbital missile subs
-anti-orbital missile trucks

In the case of the subs, they can easily surface, fire, and submerge before counter-battery fire can be brought to bear. Depending on the laser/missile system design, it's also entirely possible that the sub can fire while submerged, achieving total surprise and cutting off effective counterfire via using ocean water and atmosphere as a shield.

In the case of truck systems, there's mobile ICBM-launchers as the basis; it's a truck carrying one or more anti-orbital missile systems, which means that it's mobile, can displace/emplace as needed, easily concealable (compared to a large laser/missile installation at least), and also not worth scragging once it's fired.

In 40k lore the Fang and other notable locations have massive lasers that can strike ships in low orbit within line of sight of the installations.

In the Fangs case the generators and emitters are deep underground and the barrels are shafts cut into the mountains.

In Space Marine giant macro cannons shooting shells larger in caliber then the marines are tall are shot at ships in the upper atmosphere. The installation survived getting hit by a Rok.

Whiskey144 wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
The Galaxy-class was a science vessel. The Defiance class was a warship.

Science vessels don't have guns. The Galaxy was the leading design of the Federation fleet for a long time, and there's enough evidence to indicate that it was also produced in much larger numbers than the Defiant ever was (IIRC there were 5-6 Defiants built, of which at least two were lost).

Even the original NCC-1701 was armed, and it was certainly a science vessel, "Its five-year mission to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man had gone before", as the line goes. The first (as far as the TV show is concerned) was "designed for long duration missions with minimal outside support and are best known for their celebrated missions of galactic exploration and diplomacy which typically lasted up to five years."

The Galaxy-class is also a science vessel, rather than a warship. In fact, this entire class of vessel is given the notation of "explorer", rather than something like dreadnought.

Most Imperial planets have defense lasers and surface-to-orbit missile silos. These can feth up warships of any class.

Whiskey144 wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
The Galaxy-class was a science vessel. The Defiance class was a warship.

Science vessels don't have guns. The Galaxy was the leading design of the Federation fleet for a long time, and there's enough evidence to indicate that it was also produced in much larger numbers than the Defiant ever was (IIRC there were 5-6 Defiants built, of which at least two were lost).

The classification of the Galaxy as a Science vessel was just a PR stunt. Truthfully, the Galaxy was a dual purpose vessel. It had all the equipment necessary to serve as both a ship of the line and as a research vessel. And it was always intended to be the workhorse of the fleet.

Federation politics made making actual warships politically undesirable. So instead they made "science" vessels that were heavily armed, but not as much as their size would have allowed.

Hence other faction's warships being much smaller than the Galaxy class, but often being more maneuverable and heavily armed.

Historically, most vessels were armed in some fashion. Non-military vessels being unarmed is a very recent development. Private citizens often boasted stronger warships than some actual navy ships, hence why Privateers were always getting hired. And even podunk merchant ships always had a few cannon to protect from pirates.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Historically, most vessels were armed in some fashion. Non-military vessels being unarmed is a very recent development. Private citizens often boasted stronger warships than some actual navy ships, hence why Privateers were always getting hired. And even podunk merchant ships always had a few cannon to protect from pirates.

Quite true. As I recall long-range merchantmen like the East Indies ships were built big, tough and well armed to keep pirates, privateers and hostile naval ships at bay. Not as heavily armed as a similar size ship of the line but enough to make the ships likely to be encountered on the long journey think twice about engaging.

Spetulhu wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Historically, most vessels were armed in some fashion. Non-military vessels being unarmed is a very recent development. Private citizens often boasted stronger warships than some actual navy ships, hence why Privateers were always getting hired. And even podunk merchant ships always had a few cannon to protect from pirates.

Quite true. As I recall long-range merchantmen like the East Indies ships were built big, tough and well armed to keep pirates, privateers and hostile naval ships at bay. Not as heavily armed as a similar size ship of the line but enough to make the ships likely to be encountered on the long journey think twice about engaging.

Yup, and they were certainly far better armed than any pirates they would encounter in Asia.

As I recall the first battles of the opium war were fought entirely by merchant ships. By the time actual warships arrived the Chinese had already been beaten 6 shades of black and blue on the ocean.

 Psienesis wrote:
Even the original NCC-1701 was armed, and it was certainly a science vessel, "Its five-year mission to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man had gone before", as the line goes. The first (as far as the TV show is concerned) was "designed for long duration missions with minimal outside support and are best known for their celebrated missions of galactic exploration and diplomacy which typically lasted up to five years."

The Galaxy-class is also a science vessel, rather than a warship. In fact, this entire class of vessel is given the notation of "explorer", rather than something like dreadnought.

The Constitution-class was also generally classified as a "Heavy Cruiser", not a science vessel. While a 5-year mission was typically exploratory in nature, it must also be remembered that the Connies were intended as the primary ship of the line of the Feddie fleet.

Also, as mentioned, the Galaxy was sold as a "science" or "explorer" ship because Starfleet and the Federation as a whole considers a pure warship to be an uncivilized and barbaric idea, despite the fact that they are surrounded by expansionist, imperialist neighbors. There's a few people, I'm sure, who would call that the height of arrogance and stupidity both.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Historically, most vessels were armed in some fashion. Non-military vessels being unarmed is a very recent development. Private citizens often boasted stronger warships than some actual navy ships, hence why Privateers were always getting hired. And even podunk merchant ships always had a few cannon to protect from pirates.

While true historically, it's often a scifi convention that research/science/exploratory vessels are totally unarmed. This isn't an unreasonable approach either; because of the severe limitations on total mass and useful payload that a spacecraft would actually have to face, it's very logical and economic to omit any kind of weapon system for a platform that is intended to never get into a fight.

There's also the issue that a science/R&D/explorer vessel could be built such that it has very high performance engines, and substantial remass reserves in particular. Doesn't much matter if your opposition can catch you in a sprint, if they can't last the marathon, after all. Substantial remass/fuel reserve is, in fact, the most likely solution to the "will I get attacked" problem. Anything looks remotely suspicious? Just leave- you've got the remass to outrun the suspicious thing, and then come back to whatever interestingly dull rock you were looking at. Oh, and you'll still have plenty to go home with too!

That was always my biggest beef with Star Trek. Their moronic pacifism. And the ''morally superior'' self absorption.

 Grey Templar wrote:
That was always my biggest beef with Star Trek. Their moronic pacifism. And the ''morally superior'' self absorption.

If viewed withing the cultural context of the show in the 1960's in america, the idea of pacificsm and alturistic scientific exploration wasnt moronic or naieve, it was an outright rejection of the hawkish nature of the american foreign policy at the time. This show came out at the height of the Vietnam war, so a show about space wars would have probably tanked even harder than the original series did . It allowed a degree of escapism.

However the cultural shift of the 1970's combined with the nostalgia of childhood made it popular again, and as time went on, the show got more and more conflict oriented. TNG, and Voyager specifically are almost exclusively driven by conflict. This shift is also why star wars was so popular.

Without the altruism and the pacifism the view wouldn't get a sense of moral superiority of the protagonists. Without that moral superiority and a clear cut good versus bad narrative we would have future grimdark, and that isn't a setting we were culturally ready for.

We live in a society that is a direct result of these clear cut good versus evil tropes which is why complex, mufti layered characters and story lines are so refreshing to us. IF you transplanted the same narrative to 1968 propel would think you are some sort of strange warmongering hawk.

Cultural context is super important. Imagine the reaction in america if a movie came out depicting a terrorist attack on a western country as a positive and deserved outcome. It would be reviled now, but in 50 years, it may be a topic people consider entertaining, once the cultural impact of that concept lessens to the point it isn't a major factor in microscopic or macroscopic cultural discussions.

 GKTiberius wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
That was always my biggest beef with Star Trek. Their moronic pacifism. And the ''morally superior'' self absorption.

If viewed withing the cultural context of the show in the 1960's in america, the idea of pacificsm and alturistic scientific exploration wasnt moronic or naieve, it was an outright rejection of the hawkish nature of the american foreign policy at the time. This show came out at the height of the Vietnam war, so a show about space wars would have probably tanked even harder than the original series did . It allowed a degree of escapism.

However the cultural shift of the 1970's combined with the nostalgia of childhood made it popular again, and as time went on, the show got more and more conflict oriented. TNG, and Voyager specifically are almost exclusively driven by conflict. This shift is also why star wars was so popular.

Without the altruism and the pacifism the view wouldn't get a sense of moral superiority of the protagonists. Without that moral superiority and a clear cut good versus bad narrative we would have future grimdark, and that isn't a setting we were culturally ready for.

We live in a society that is a direct result of these clear cut good versus evil tropes which is why complex, mufti layered characters and story lines are so refreshing to us. IF you transplanted the same narrative to 1968 propel would think you are some sort of strange warmongering hawk.

Cultural context is super important. Imagine the reaction in america if a movie came out depicting a terrorist attack on a western country as a positive and deserved outcome. It would be reviled now, but in 50 years, it may be a topic people consider entertaining, once the cultural impact of that concept lessens to the point it isn't a major factor in microscopic or macroscopic cultural discussions.

I'm well aware of the context. It was still moronic and naive.

Besides, the smugness and preachy moral superiority didn't really come to the front till Next Generation. Well after the Vietnam war. The original series was less preachy.

I still like NG better as the superior show.

TNG had Picard, what I found most stupid there was that the senior officers and NCO's always were beaming down and solving crisis. But I'm a Gater, not a Trekkie.

SG>ST for sure.

[youtube]

 Grey Templar wrote:
SG>ST for sure.

Nice.

 Beaviz81 wrote:
TNG had Picard, what I found most stupid there was that the senior officers and NCO's always were beaming down and solving crisis. But I'm a Gater, not a Trekkie.

I am more of a SG fan myself, but flinging a Colonel in a new and unknown doesn't seem smart, either. Might make more sense during late episdoe, where having the weight of the rank be useful for represneting the US army. Just like its kinda weird having such a young Lt-Colonel (in Atlantis)

 Bobthehero wrote:

 Beaviz81 wrote:
TNG had Picard, what I found most stupid there was that the senior officers and NCO's always were beaming down and solving crisis. But I'm a Gater, not a Trekkie.

I am more of a SG fan myself, but flinging a Colonel in a new and unknown doesn't seem smart, either. Might make more sense during late episdoe, where having the weight of the rank be useful for represneting the US army. Just like its kinda weird having such a young Lt-Colonel (in Atlantis)

I always thought that to be Hollywood wanting someone beautiful there, and ain't the minimum age like 29? It can happen, but not that often.

For a lieutenant-colonel? Minimum 15 years cumulative time-in-service, so absolute youngest one could be is 32 (assuming they enlisted at 17 with a parent's authorization and then went green-to-gold).

Wasn't his rank a result of politics? IIRC the military wanted to replace him with someone of appropriate rank but Weir said no, they eventually relented and gave him appropriate rank instead.

 GKTiberius wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
That was always my biggest beef with Star Trek. Their moronic pacifism. And the ''morally superior'' self absorption.

If viewed withing the cultural context of the show in the 1960's in america, the idea of pacificsm and alturistic scientific exploration wasnt moronic or naieve, it was an outright rejection of the hawkish nature of the american foreign policy at the time. This show came out at the height of the Vietnam war, so a show about space wars would have probably tanked even harder than the original series did . It allowed a degree of escapism.

However the cultural shift of the 1970's combined with the nostalgia of childhood made it popular again, and as time went on, the show got more and more conflict oriented. TNG, and Voyager specifically are almost exclusively driven by conflict. This shift is also why star wars was so popular.

Without the altruism and the pacifism the view wouldn't get a sense of moral superiority of the protagonists. Without that moral superiority and a clear cut good versus bad narrative we would have future grimdark, and that isn't a setting we were culturally ready for.

We live in a society that is a direct result of these clear cut good versus evil tropes which is why complex, mufti layered characters and story lines are so refreshing to us. IF you transplanted the same narrative to 1968 propel would think you are some sort of strange warmongering hawk.

Cultural context is super important. Imagine the reaction in america if a movie came out depicting a terrorist attack on a western country as a positive and deserved outcome. It would be reviled now, but in 50 years, it may be a topic people consider entertaining, once the cultural impact of that concept lessens to the point it isn't a major factor in microscopic or macroscopic cultural discussions.

except the smug pacifism isn't a product of the original series. but rather more a thing of TNG

TNG was Roddenberry's magnum opus. He was the driving force behind the radical socialism and pacifism, but that aside. The concept of the show wouldn't work if the federation was warlike and aggressive. I mean, don't get me wrong, firefly and other future space shows where the protagonists are a aggressive are awesome, but if the federation was imperialistic and aggressive, the show would have a hard time painting the protagonists in a positive light. Self advancement and preservation through aggression are permissible as long as it is a small group trying to make it in an uncaring universe. If a government or organization does it they are seen as power hungry and imperialist. Which, due to post wwII norms are seen as negative qualities for entities on that level. So in order to have a federation, they would have to be peaceful and benign to be relatable and likable to mass audiences.

They didn't need to be aggressive. Just not total wussies.

The thing is excitement, and not having to pay a bevy of actors top wage. I mean you could have a strike-team and their bosses doing stuff, but seeing Picard and company sitting on their bums twiddling thumbs while some grunts were down there in case they had to fire guns and such wouldn't be exciting. While the strike-team would mean they had to develop a host of new characters for every actor.

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:
Planetary Defence Lasers are capable of doing so. I think in Storm of Iron there's a planetary torpedo defence installation too. No real reason (other than not STC allowed) that any ship based Imperial weapon could not be based on a planet. I suspect it would take multiple shots from Imperial weaponry though. They'd have to penetrate the void shields of the vessel first.

Actually there are several reasons why they would not be possible.

First you ahve the planets gravity. It takes a huge rocket to get even a small package into orbit, then once in orbit it takes more power to get a speed going that will get your to a cruiser. Ground based guns, rockets or torpedos would have to be an order of magnitude larger to achive the same power as an orbital weapon.

The second is the atmosphere. A laser would lose half it's power going through the atmophere of the planet getting to space. If the laser is powerful enough to do damage to a space craft, it is going to do damage to the planet as well.

Third is recoil and gravity together. Aiming a weightless gun in space isnt an issue, just turn it to the desired direction and then fire. When firing the recoil is absorbed into the ship and gives the ship a momenet. Then the ships thrusters can slowly correct it.
On a planet, holding up the massive guns would be difficult, moving them around would be more difficult. Dealing with the recoil would shock and destroy those systems. This is why naval guns were larger than land based guns since the late 19th century. It was easier to just bolt to the ship and let the water take care of the recoil than build a massive steel emplacement that could contain the force.

 GKTiberius wrote:
...if the cruiser is in a geosynchronous orbit, what do they do about the dangers posed by falling debris?

Falling debris? That's not really how orbits work. Blow up an object in orbit and you have a cloud of smaller objects in very similar orbits. Unless the original orbit passed very close to the surface (which is never the case with a geosynchronous orbit) the fragments aren't going to hit the planet.

Orbital velocities are measured in thousands of meters per second. Fragments from an explosion are going to leave at maybe hundreds of metres a second at most. There simply isn't enough change in velocity to make a big difference.

Thinking of something in an orbit as flying or floating isn't accurate. It's falling. It's falling straight towards the planet (or whatever) as fast as it possibly can. The reason it doesn't hit the surface isn't because it's being lifted up, it's because it's moving sideways so fast that it keeps missing the planet it is falling towards. To change things so that it hits the planet, you don't stop it's lift, because there is no lift. You have to stop it from moving sideways and the speed at which it is going sideways makes bullets seem like they are moving at walking pace. You would need to hit the ship with an equal sized ship going just as fast in the opposite direction to make it stop and fall out of the sky.