211 replies to this topic

[King Arthur IV]

King Arthur IV, on 15 March 2014 - 05:57 AM, said:

death star and the force = op

i just though of something that might change my mind.

startrek are the only ones with teleporting tech right? that alone can turn the tides, the uses are endless. who needs to fight if i can port you into the void of space?

im going to leave Q out cause of a few reason:
-if Q is a "god" that chooses to interact, then we would have to include all the verses "gods"
-if Q is just a super high tech being, my biggest problem is; Q doesn't seem to want to do anything for anyone.
-Q is so vague that it is possible that Q exists in all the verses simultaneously.
-Q could easily help the under dog verse just because it was fun to watch the war rage on.

Q is just too unpredictable.

btw is everyone forgetting pacific rim verse has kaiju on its side? they have a massive army and the ability to open worm holes. not only can kaiju pick their teeth with mechs but they can also do big farts into space stations/ bases/ ships and knock everyone out.

how about transformers verse? what could the prime of cybertron do vs all of them?

Edited by King Arthur IV, 16 March 2014 - 05:28 AM.

[Linksdx]

...thats a important fact we keep fogettign who says the difrent factions will even work together i mean who says borg will even fight as allies with the rest of the startreck galixcy same as teh clans the rebels and the kaijuu

[Rogue Jedi]

Linksdx, on 16 March 2014 - 01:55 PM, said:

...thats a important fact we keep fogettign who says the difrent factions will even work together i mean who says borg will even fight as allies with the rest of the startreck galixcy same as teh clans the rebels and the kaijuu

quite simply the factions from any paticualr universe would not all work together, in a multi-universe war you would likely find new aliances would form, some of the Clans may team up with the Klinons or Romulans, the Draconis Combine for example may chose to team up with the Empire and the Romulan Star Empire. the United Federation of Planets would try to establish peaceful relations with all the major powers while the Borg are equal oppertunities assimilators who could likely attack everyone except posibly Pacific Rim's earth powers with technoligy 10 years in our future, the borg may decide they are unworthy, however the borg would quite happily assimalite the kaju.



with regards to the laws of physics,
very few works of science fiction have strictly obayed the laws of physics, however people have made some suggestions regarding Star Wars/Trek physics. ION drives are in use on real spacecraft, giving crediance to the Twin Ion Engine starFighters (TIE Fighters), the Warp Drive is being designed for use in future space craft, comunication devices small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and capable of reciving signals from miles away have been in common use for years, laser weapons exist today. people have landed on the Moon and we have people living on a space station alongsied robots. science fiction has often became fact at a later date.

the laws of physics as we know them are theories not laws. as they are theories they may be disproven. Even mainstream "laws of physics" that most people know and understand like general relitavity and evolution have yet to be proven.

concider the following,
if the universe is about 14,000,000,000 years old how can telescopes see Stars and galaxys 13,500,000,000 away? for it to be visable suggests we have been moving at the speed of light ever since, or else the light would have passed us long ago.

back on topic
I beleve there would be no clear winner, each side has advantages and disadvantages, it is totaly dependant on the scenario and its writers.

[Linksdx]

I always forget that part of science it's only a law till it's disproved such as the ye old wourld is flat theory oe exigen , virus and such other things that we couldn't see with bare eyes and of course one of my personally favourite,s the earth is the center of the universe XD

[Rogue Jedi]

Marack Drock, on 14 March 2014 - 06:53 AM, said:

. According to Wookiepedia there were 30 Star Destroyers, 1 Dreadnought, 1 Com Ship, and 2 Battle Cruisers and 1000+ Tie Fighters VS. 650 Rebel Starfighters, 30 Rebel cruisers (18 of which were as small as Corellian Corvettes). They were astoundingly outnumbered and still won. So close to 1 mil on Rebel side and close to about 2 or 3 mil on the Empire side (as a crew of a Star Destroyer is about 800 thousand).

Sorry Marack but as useful as it can be if Wookiepedia told you all Star Destroyers had a crew of 800,000 it was wrong,
according to several Star Wars books the first Death Star had a crew of about 1 milion (I do not know wth crew size of the second Death Star), Vaders Super Star Destroyer had a crew of about a quater million and most other Star Destroyers at Endor would have had a crew of between about 8,000 and 37,000 depending on class, I estimate the Empire had between 1 and 2 million peoiple at Endor.

the biggest Rebel Alliance Ship was Ackbar's Home One, with about 7,000 crew and troops abord, most Aliance ships had less persional than this, the Rebels likely had between 30,000 and 100,000 people at Endor, but had powerful allies in both the Force and the Writers.

edit, spelling

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 17 March 2014 - 02:17 AM.

[Linksdx]

We'll thinking about it even if battle tech wins on the ground once the empire learns of this they will most likely delta base zero the planet since I quote "mounted primarily against targets that the Imperial Army had failed to gain control of by direct assault, judged a ground assault would incur too many Imperial casualties "

[990Dreams]

Anyone forgot that BT can blow you out of the sky (er, out of the space) with an Orbital Gun?

[Linksdx]

Guess it depends on how well shielded the orbitall gun is since as soon as that thing starts firming it will become target one and if it can be take a out from space it will be quickly and if not your gonna need a lot of mechs to stop the ground assault on another note it would also depend on the generals and admirals as we'll * cough* lots of lyran generals * cough*

[Nebfer]

Marack Drock, on 15 March 2014 - 07:46 PM, said:

Thing with saying they all act the way they do means only 1 can win and it will win no matter what. And that is Star Trek because of Q. If we are to say they all act the way they do then the series that follows the laws of physics and hense forth will obviously lose because they cannot break those rules. Star Wars is based on: Eastern Superstition, Lack of Physics, etc.

That is generally correct, do you really think that if we went back in time to fight the Romans (Cira 75 BC) we will suddenly find out that our technology will not work because from the Romans perspective we are using Magic? Or are you gonna say that once they see a Computer, Gun, Electricity, Modern Jet fighters, Radios, Fusion reactors and ect they are gonna instantaneously understand what the heck it is and understand how it works and be able to create their own in 2 years, exclaiming "quare qui non cogitamus?" ("Why didn't I think of that" in Latin, or at lest what the wiki translator says.)

Just because Star wars and just about every other Made up universe ignored various aspects of real life physics dose not mean we can simply throw them out the window just because it inconveniences you.

For example the Mass effect series invents a magic element that allows them to do lots of fun stuff, but according to you that element stops working the moment they meat a real life army.

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And again in the BT universe those ships would not work because of: Shape, Lack of Aerodynamic wings capable of producing thrust, Center of Gravity below Center of Pressure (I fly model airplanes and Rockets, if the CG is below CP then the plane/rocket will literally flip end of end until it hits the ground Personal experience).

And you thinks B-tech ships will operate just fine given their art work ? Have you done study's on these ships? And why are we obsessed about atmospheric operations any way? Battle tech warships do not operate in one (only Dropships do and not even all), so fights between warships will only take place in space. You do know that a Modern Fighter jet is aerodynamically unstable, and can only fly due to it having a computer right?

Might I ask do you know where the Center of Gravity of a ISD is? or a Lola III? and how do you know? The dynamics of space flight is slightly diffrent than what one needs for atmosphearic needs.

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Q could win hands down and only because ST is to lazy to tell us if he can die or not and don't bother to do anything but say he is all powerful.

Obviously Q is a major factor for Trek winning a particular what if debate, though that assumes Q wants to get involve, or in a number of cases I have seen Q is stated not to get involved. Heck for all we know Q might let the Federation lose and then wish it away leaving the memory of said defeat on some pore sods mind, that he's playing around with that week. Even so the fact that Q might not want the Feds to lose, dose not mean the Feds by it self can win, and that is the important part. Basically calling in "Divine" favors to bail you out is a pore way of saying you can not handle your opposing foe. Heck why did not Q help the Feds during the Dominion war if he's so willing to help them out?

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The same way the Rebels did. According to Sarna and the Wookieepedia the Large Laser is within .2% the same as the X-Wing's laser cannon. The Ion Cannon (like the ones on Y-Wings that are capable of going through shields) are literally PPCs even in size. Weapons (other than the Death Star cannon) are the same. So now we take in consideration that BT ships are much smaller than Star Wars ships making them harder to hit.

Are you serious? Your going off the physical size? That's a pore way of doing things, you need to go off their achieved capability's, like what kind of feats are large lasers capable of doing? or the Blasters on AT-ATs for example. You keep saying a PPC will behave like a Ion cannon in Star wars, but you do not state why out side that their very smiler weapons, but B-tech ones do not produce much in the way of interference, so the task is now to you to prove that a PPC on a battlemech will function as a SW ion cannon, particularly a warship scale one. Heck as you say the Y-wing has a pair of Ion Cannons, if they where as dangerous as you say in star wars, then why did they not use them on the Death star attack? Where they could of shut down the various systems and made it much easier to attack, so obviously Fighter scale Ion Cannons have obvious limitations when dealing with targets much larger than they are. Also the burden of prof is on you to prove that a B-tech Naval PPC is any where as powerful as a Star wars Warship scale Ion Cannon (or turbolaser for that matter).

Also Star wars dose have huge numbers of smaller ships, like the 450 meter long Strike Cruisers, the 350 meter long Carrack class light cruisers, the 600 meter long Immobilizer 418 "Interdictor" cruiser (bad news for B-tech ships trying to jump out), or it's Heavy cruiser configuration the Vindicator class, or the equally long and more well known Dreadnaught class Heavy Cruisers. Keep in mid the Empire has over 20,000 Star destroyers but they also have easily 10 to 50 times that number in these smaller ships.

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The Rebels took advantage of the Imperials in Episode 4 by waiting for them to land on Yavin IV and then attacking while the forces were split in half. If BT were to use this same method, since we know the Empire is incapable of even hitting Ewoks (unless they have an AT-ST) we can assume 1 drop ships (at least) would land on the Death Star and unleash mechs. If even 10 mechs got on the Death Star it would spell instant destruction because the Star Destroyers would either have to shoot the Death Star's surface to kill them, or the Ties would (so they would blow themselves to bits). While that is going on they could have 2 or 3 dropships launch from the rear and land. If the Imperials had to go stop them then the forces are split into thirds and spreading damage to the Death Star. So in the end the Death Star would be pulverized and with (by my estimates by how many X-Wings and Y-Wings were destroyed) only about 50 to 60 mechs would be gone (and there are MILLIONS or 100s of MILLIONS of mechs). So Death Star Destroyed along with many Imperial ships. So now we have the Rebel forces (who by Episode 5 are still very weak). Battletech moves on Yavin 4 first where the Imperials are attacking to learn where the Rebels went. The Imps are being attacked not only by 30 foot tall mechs but also by Rebels. As Darth Vader has slow reflexes by this time he would most certainly not survive the attack (especially because he would only be able to block MGuns with his saber). Yavin IV taken.

Err what? I'm starting to think you know nothing about star wars, or battletech for that matter. You do know the Rebels ultimately lost at Yavin right? Also Why could not the Death star deploy it's own ground forces (all 25,000 some odd of them) or use it's own guns to defend it self?

Why would a company of battlemechs spell doom for the death star? The Death star I is bigger than the state of Connecticut, An entire Star league battlemech Division could not even destroy something that big.

Can you tell me where you get millions of battlemechs from? As for example the Armed forces Federated Suns as of 3062 only has ~87 regiments of battlemechs in it's standing army, with each regiment having around 132 mechs in it, So around 12,000 battlemechs, give or take a few, as theirs bound to be a bunch of small units not listed. And the AFFS is one of the stronger battletech militarys at that time.

Also why would the Rebels side with battletech? Heck how do we know that they might not side with the Empire to help with a out side threat?

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Hoth. Well this is easy. BT has already taken its toll on the Imps now (who now no longer would be able to find the Rebel Base as they didn't know Hoth was the destination because BT took Yavin IV). Rebels wouldn't stand a chance. If we sent Scout mechs in they would pulverize the rebels because they would not be able to get the Transports out before some missiles came through the hangars and blew everything up. Rebels defeated (including Luke and Leia and everyone else).

You do know that using standard operations Battletech would of likely taken the better part of a week* just to reach Hoth from their standard Jump points, then spend a few days trooping around Hoth to find what they need. The Rebels managed to find the man sized probe droids that was snooping on them. Why do you think a Lance or two of much larger 26-46 foot tall battlemechs are going to be any more stealthier than the man sized droids? Never mind that their dropship(s) is way bigger than the pods the droids used...

* Looks up the Star type of Hoth, hey it's a Spectral type B (Blueish white), looks up what B-tech says Transit times for that kind of Star is... Crap never mind a better part of a week, try 2 to 4 MONTHS at 1G! So no your idea will not work, well I suppose they could use a Pirate point (L1 point in real life), but that assumes they have a good deal of info on the system. So if Battletech tried attacking the Hoth System the Rebels would of noticed it long before they even reached the planet and be long gone.

The minimum distance the chart says for a B class star (spectral type) is 58.4 billion km or 390 times the distance of Earth to it's own sun (earths Jump point is just 10 AU or just past Saturn's orbit and takes 9.1 days at 1G), and would take a Dropship 56.5 days at 1G to reach planetary orbit (as battletech dose not have artificial gravity anything above 1G for a significant amount of Time (I.e. more than a day or two) will be bad for the occupants of said dropship).

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Episode 6- Well not much left to do now. Darth is dead, Imperial forces are fractured looking for a non existent rebel base. So BT attacks the in construction DSII and the Endor Base (poor AT-STs) and easily wins (if Ewoks can win with logs BT can win with NUKES). Shields down on DS... NUCLEAR MISSILE...

Given your already implausible scenario, this is equally worthless. Keep in mind the emperor him self leaked the location of the Death star II so he could crush the rebels (it did not work out unfortunately for him).
Using Nukes is not necessarily a good thing, by the way how many and of what yield?

Oh and how is the battletech forces gonna get past the Ewoks? They do not have a "golden God" to help them bring them to their side. And how are they gonna get past the Defensive cauldron to the planet and not be noticed? The Rebel Strike Team used the B-tech equivalent of a small craft (which has it's own FTL drive, something that is impossible to do in battletech), what your suggesting is a more larger force. Besides an AT-ST is more of a B-tech Ultra light battlemech, used as a scout and escort.

I'll tell you what. Here's a few questions I want you to answer me.

Acceleration rates/Sub light speeds: What is the acceleration capability's of battletech and Star wars ships? The faster the more capable they are. A ship can get to a location a lot faster at 10Gs than at 1G (that's 98.1m/s vs 9.81m/s or 321ft/s vs 32.1ft/s).

Military Size: How big is their military? How many warships, ground forces?

Fire power: What kind of fire power feats do their weapons display, both on ground weapons and on their capital ships. For example how long would it take for either side to reduce a planet to slag (I.e. level all city's, populations and anything of important) with a single ship? What kind of fire power dose a mechs Large laser have? a Blaster cannon on a AT-AT?

Industrial capacity: I.e. How fast could they replace a Warship? Say either sides lose 100 large ships how long will it take for them to make up for the loss?

FTL speeds: How long will it take either side to travel 100 light years using their faster than light drives?

Communications capability: particularly FTL based ones.

Number of controlled worlds/population: Which is bigger? Kinda hard to attack one side if it out numbers you by say 100,000 to 1

Defensive ability's: What kind of ability's do they have to defend them selves from attacks?

You can do this for a lot of other what ifs, and get a fairly good idea of who's gonna come out on top in a war.

Also do you know what Canon is? And how it relates to what we are talking about?

[Alaskan Nobody]

Marack Drock, on 25 March 2014 - 02:26 PM, said:

Star Wars ladies and gentlemen.

There are issues such as those that can be found in any movie - including Aliens.
(Massive note: not trying to pick on you)

Star Trek.... Pacific Rim.... all of them.

Closest thing I have found to not having those issues are the books (not the movies mind you, the books) written by Michael Chrichton - but that dude put insane amounts of research into what he wrote - more than most people would be able to do, let alone have any interest in doing.

MST3K mantra is a Sci-Fi fans best friend sometimes. /

Edit: wrong Michael

Edited by Shar Wolf, 12 April 2014 - 06:50 PM.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Shar Wolf, on 25 March 2014 - 02:33 PM, said:

Michael Stackpole

Wrong Michael - meant Chrichton

Edit: link broke?!
better now!

Edited by Shar Wolf, 12 April 2014 - 06:52 PM.

[Onlystolen]

Thats no moon... Its a.. wait now its a pile of space rubble.

[Ilithi Dragon]

It's been reincarnated....


Nebfer's got the right approach, here, though not all of his information is accurate.

Assuming only official canon, not all of the EU fluff that clutters up some franchises, in a full-blown war scenario - for one reason or another politics have failed, conflict is inevitable, and barring the inclusion of any transcendent beings, like the Q, or the ascended Ancients from Stargate, etc. etc., Star Trek would win a war with any mentioned power, hands down.

Star Trek has, hands down, the superior space tech, and this is the most critical point.

By the end of the TNG run, Starfleet ships were capable of traveling a couple dozen times lightspeed through unexplored space, and considerably faster in zones where subspace had been mapped. In official canon, Star Wars ships have only shown comparable speeds, at best (though their sustained speed seems to be higher than Starfleet's), and Starfleet is on the verge of developing slipstream drive (the Voyager crew was able to get it almost working twice, even with their limited resources and expertise; if the tech was not already being deployed on at least some ships by Nemesis, it would have been shortly), which is matched by only a handful of sci-fi powers (such as the Ancients, Asgard, and late-series humans of Stargate, and the intergalactic powers of the Andromeda universe). Starfleet and the Empire/Republic are both lightyears ahead of the other listed powers, and Starfleet has at least roughly comparable strategic maneuverability to Star Wars, while being on the verge of a major leap past what Star Wars can achieve.

Tactically, in a ship-vs-ship fight, Star Trek ships' maneuverability is so far ahead of anything else, it's no contest. Star Wars ships have been observed pulling, at best, a couple dozen g's. Starlfeet ships have been observed accelerating at thousands, if not tens of thousands of g's, and have demonstrated incredible maneuverability. They can outrun at sublight anything any other franchise listed can put into space, and fly circles around them at will.

Star Trek also has incredible advantages in weapons range and accuracy - with Trek ships routinely firing on and accurately hitting targets tens and hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, where as Star Wars ships have trouble hitting targets mere kilometers away, and have repeatedly been observed to have weapons ranges significantly shorter than visual range.

Star Trek ships would be able to keep Star Wars ships from ever getting close enough to see them, and accurately hit them from those ranges. Battletech ships also outrange Star Wars ships, considerably so, though BT ships are limited to only a few g's of acceleration, as they lack any kind of inertial compensation system.

Weapons-wise, not only are Star Trek weapons extremely precise and accurate, they are also extremely powerful. Starfleet ships in the TNG era are equipped with photon torpedoes, with a standard yield of 1-1.5 kilograms of matter and 1-1.5 kilograms of anti-matter (depending on the warhead generation), generating a blast yield equivalent to 42-64 megatons of TNT, and their shipboard energy weapons have been observed to have yields in the high TeraJoule to low PetaJoule range, with an exotic particle effect that can magnify the effective yield a further 1000 times or more (in TNG "Q Who?", the E-D's first shot against the Cube vaporized a small hole, that then grew at least 1000 times in volume after the beam fired, and Romulan and Cardassian disruptors have been observed decimating entire continents with single volleys).

By comparison, Star Wars weapons have shown gigajoule-range weapons yields for shipboard weapons, at best. Star Wars capital ships typically have a great many of these gigajoule-range weapons that are brought to bear on a target at a time, which maintain a steady output, so actual sustained firepower across the ship is probably in the high gigawatt to low terawatt range, but when a single Trek matter/anti-matter warhead can deliver 268 PETAJoules, or 268,000 TeraJoules of energy in a single, near-instantaneous detonation, well, "One photon torpedo oughtta do..." Even small Starfleet ships would be able to decimate the largest Star Wars ships with a handful of shots, at most, while Star Wars ships, assuming they could even score return hits, would take hours to break through a single Starlfeet ship's shields, let alone its armored hull.

Throw in Starfleet's ability to engage sublight targets while at warp, and Starfleet would decimate anything the Empire or Republic could throw at it before it could even fire a shot in return.

From there, everything else is gravy, because once you have control of the orbital space, it doesn't matter how many mechs or tanks you have; they can all be effortlessly wiped out in precision orbital bombardments.

Once all the heavy equipment has been knocked out, and any large concentrations of troops, the rest is just security, and with Starfleet's sensors, computers, and other technologies, insurgent forces from any of the other franchises would easily be found out and neutralized.

Or, if there is absolutely no reason to preserve the planet itself, a small fleet of twenty capital ships can blast the planet down to its nickel-iron core in approximately five hours.

[990Dreams]

Good lord.

BT- Not enough JumpShips, they'd defend the crap out of what they have but that's it. They'd have trouble attacking.
Star Wars- Tons of ships and weapons, no shields on their ships.
Star Trek- Quite a few ships with pretty awesome technology, but small and frail when the shields breach.
Pacific Rim- They have no space travel. They'd defend the territory they have, but that's it.

The reason I exclude the possibility of making new tech? Because that'd invoke actual physics and would be a debate of who can do what with this or that, etc. etc. etc.

[Alaskan Nobody]

DavidHurricane, on 16 April 2014 - 06:58 AM, said:

Star Wars- ................no shields on their ships.

Only for TIE and other dirt-cheap ships.
X-wings and Star Destroyers have shields (just not any that stop ballistic forces )

[Strum Wealh]

Frankly, none of the Star Trek powers have any meaningful place in the conversation because none of them field any piloted ground combat mecha.

[Ilithi Dragon]

Strum Wealh, on 16 April 2014 - 10:49 AM, said:

Frankly, none of the Star Trek powers have any meaningful place in the conversation because none of them field any piloted ground combat mecha.

If you're going for a purely ground combat fight, this is true, though Trek would probably still win a ground fight if included, given their advanced technology; they do have significant ground forces (heavy infantry weapons, armored cavalry units, artillery, etc.), we just never really see them much because the show focus is almost exclusively on the starship crews.

[Strum Wealh]

Ilithi Dragon, on 16 April 2014 - 04:30 PM, said:

If you're going for a purely ground combat fight, this is true, though Trek would probably still win a ground fight if included, given their advanced technology; they do have significant ground forces (heavy infantry weapons, armored cavalry units, artillery, etc.), we just never really see them much because the show focus is almost exclusively on the starship crews.

Such as...?
That is, what are some of the specific types/classes/specs of these armored cavalry units?

Also, from the TVTropes page on "Hollywood Tactics":

• "No one even seems to understand body armor; even simple stab resistant suits would have saved the lives of dozens of security personnel. And there is a substance that can stand up to phasers and is light enough to make decent body armor: an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, "Blaze of Glory," mentioned barrels made of phaser-proof material, and said barrels were light enough to be jostled around by people. They weren't rare or expensive either, as said barrels were strewn all over the place. How come no one ever thought to make armor from those?"
  
• "This trope is even more glaring in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine since the series is far more militaristic than other Star Trek series. A list of all of the poor tactics would take up a page of its own, but one of the worst examples has to be the Jem'Hadar. Having the ability to shroud themselves from the naked eye and sensors they, naturally, close to close quarters and make themselves visible before attacking whereas the smart way to use such an ability would be to keep oneself shrouded and move invisibly along the battlefield wreaking havoc unseen."
  
• "Star Trek: Nemesis: Enterprise security is fighting a Reman boarding party - both sides ducking behind conveniently-placed pylons and only coming out of cover to take a few pot-shots at the general direction of the opposing side. Even if they don't have anything equivalent to grenades in the future, they could use, say, an overloaded phaser."
  
• Star Trek in general: "Hey, let's send a ship captain, a medic and a security chief on a dangerous, secret and politically dicey mission instead of commandos who are actually trained for such operations. Let's also make sure the ship captain we send has information the enemy wants. Nothing bad is going to happen because of this, at all. While we're at it, let's send bridge officers on away and combat missions instead of purpose-trained marines like every other navy in history."
  
• "Star Trek: Enterprise: Though the main characters in the series constantly use classically bad Hollywood Tactics, the M.A.C.O.s actually used real small-unit military tactics. Which makes sense as the Starfleet personnel were mainly civilian pilots and scientists, while the M.A.C.O.s were a combat-trained Space Marine unit."

I would not have much faith in TNG/DS9/Nemesis-era Star Trek ground forces (what there is of them, anyway), given the above...

[Ilithi Dragon]

Oh, TNG/DS9 certainly did suffer from a fair bit of campiness that came along with the '80s and '90s, and they also suffered the limitations of the series formatting of the day - the main characters were ship's senior officers, but they wanted to do something that wasn't on the ship/that senior officers wouldn't do (such as the commando mission in TNG "Chain of Command", though that was more of a poorly-engineered excuse to have Picard captured than anything else...), but they didn't have any commandos/non-senior-officers on the cast, so they shoehorned the existing cast into the role, sometimes painfully so. VOY and ENT had slightly more flexible casts, but were severely hampered by the outmoded formatting vision that their exec producers had, and other producer/writer problems.


We do know that Starfleet does employ armor for security and combat forces, we do see it on occasion, but we rarely focus on those situations. Most of the time we see security personnel, they're performing standard Military Police/Master-at-Arms operations. Even today's militaries don't give such security personnel armor during their routine duties, and even though stab-resistant clothing is relatively easy to manufacture today, modern military duty uniforms are not stab-resistant.

In addition to seeing Starfleet employ body armor on occasion, we do hear mention of additional heavy equipment, such as personal shield generators, and we have occasionally witnessed various man-portable heavy weapons, from tetryon pulse launchers (shoulder-fired energy weapon capable of at least temporarily neutralizing energy weapons) to photon grenades (kiloton-range m/am mortars), with mention made of others. We are also given a few brief mentions of combat vehicles, from 'hoppers' (some kind of personnel transport) to 'assault skimmers.'

Then there's the fact that the standard Type-III phaser rifle is capable of putting out energies comparable to the main gun of a modern main battle tank. Modern sabot rounds for the M256 gun on the Abrams have kinetic energies of ~12 MJ, and a Type-III phaser rifle has been observed discharging continuously at an unspecified setting for over a minute at over 1 MW of output, with a fair probability that the weapon could fire in short bursts at much higher direct wattage, if not higher effective wattage due to the NDF effects of phaser weapons.

Other, non-Federation infantry weapons are reportedly capable of penetrating 4.6 gigajoule shields, though that particular Breen weapon was implied to be a heavier, anti-armor weapon, not a standard sidearm.

A more in-depth overview of what few details we have on Star Trek ground forces can be found here: http://st-v-sw.net/S...ml#Mobilization

EDIT: Besides, Trek's Hollywood combat tactics problems are hardly unique to that franchise. Pacific Rim, Star Wars, and Battletech all suffer similar problems (all mech weaponry, for example, would be out-ranged by every single modern artillery weapon, from tank guns to rockets, and many of their weapons would be out-ranged by some man-portable anti-armor weapons).

Edited by Ilithi Dragon, 16 April 2014 - 05:56 PM.

[990Dreams]

Marack Drock, on 16 April 2014 - 10:29 AM, said:

They'd get a nuke dropped on them and then that is the end.

Now now, they have anti-nuke systems (shoot lots of missiles and hope one hits).

Now, more than one nuke is another story.