Flagship Escorts

The Federation is not technically military. While they do have dedicated warships during the DS9 series, the Enterprise is meant for exploration and diplomacy. They don't intend for it to get into a battle with an alien fleet.

>>34014759
Because no one else's flagship travels with escorts (except mine in Stellaris)

In your case... Starfleet is not a military organization, and its starships are primarily for peacekeeping and exploration, not intimidation.

Not to mention they are insanely powerful on their own.

>>34014759
in space things are different very different.
>propulsion efficiency grows with mass.
>there is no horizon to limit your sensors.
>in soft sci-fi you have shields (also more efficient and powerful with more mass usually) which is better than having escorts

so the only reason for a soft sci-fi capital ship to have escorts is to chase down multiple small craft which it would be incapable otherwise. basically capital ships can't effectively picket or do anti-pirate ops unless they have fighters or cutters to detach.

>>34014782
We don't intend for our carriers (or any ship for that matter, barring Somali patrols) to ever get into fights. They're just there to wave the British flag or whatever and say that we're the top dog. We still protect them with other forces with supplies and different weapon load outs.

>>34014759
A Galaxy class does not need an escort, the Odyssey took on 3 Dominion sips without shields and only went down when they Kamikaze'd it, they are tanky as fuck.

>>34014824
But the express purpose of carriers is militancy, whether through show of force, or actual force through air superiority. The Enterprise is *strictly* an exploratory vessel, it has weapons for defense only.

>>34014759
The problem is the Federation is very much "We aren't a military" and prefers to present themselves as such

The Federation has a slight technological edge overall that they feel allows them the freedom to fly large ass ships on their own all over space. This is why Klingon purpose built warships are an even match at best for a Galaxy Class, which is literally a jack of all trades science / exploratory / apartment building / a few phaser banks

If the Federation wasn't so comfortable with their technology level they'd likely be doubling up on space ships, or creating more purpose built ships (instead of 1 ship thats everything, it's 3 ships, 2 fighters and 1 science vessel)

>>34014759
because plot armor

>>34015033
How can you say the Federation has a technological edge when they don't even have cloaks and disruptors like others?

>>34015056
The Federation clearly has the technological ability to have cloaking tech, but they signed a treaty saying they can't have it as a condition of peace with the Romulans.

Not having cloaking tech has not really impacted the Federations ability to fight their adversaries.

>>34015056
The federation DO have cloaks and disruptors. They do not use cloaks because of a treaty with the Romulans, they do not use disruptors because phasers are just as powerful but more versatile. Phasers can cut metal, burn through rock, you can change the beam settings and even use it to stun, the disruptor just makes things dead.

>try star trek online
>excited to be captain of starship
>"captain" is actually helmsman
>can't even input coordinates on beige consoles
>can only fly in manually in third person
>capital ships are confused about their role and think they're fighter planes

>>34014759
Deflector shields, 12 phaser banks, and two photon torpedo launchers each capable of burst firing up to five independently targeted torpedoes.

>>34015021
It really helps that most of the space in a Galaxy is used for non-combat purposes. With the Odyssey having disembarked all non-essential crew and staff large portions of the ship could be punched through by enemy fire without it mattering.

>>34015068
The Galaxy class is a Battleship/Carrier/Cruiser/Troop Transport/ELINT/Hospital Ship/Cargo Ship all rolled into one. It is the Iowa dressed up in cruise liner drag.

>>34015056
They have a technological edge because of internal issues with their primary rivals. The Klingon's cultural obsession with war and focus on honor through martiality has hampered their scientific development. The highly competitive and frequently deadly nature of Romulan politics and bureaucracy means that internal sabotage and theft along with factionalism and cronyism means that acumen and results take a backseat to who you know.

>>34015062

Lets not forget Section 31 exists and The Federation probably uses stealth.

How else do you spread a genocidal weapon do another quadrant of the galaxy

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>>34015110
Forget section 31, we all know who is really pulling all the strings.

>>34015120

Maybe Ferengi are the n-dimensional beings Alex Jones talks about

>>34015129
Also I'm not joking.

>>34015120
>>34015129
>yfw the Space Jews are some of the least duplicitous people in the Star Trek universe

Caveat emptor, but you always know what you're getting into when dealing with a Ferengi.

>>34014824
>our carrier
>>34014824
>the British flag
What carriers does britain have lmao

>>34014824

Those are warships, dude. The Federation is not a military, its fleet is not considered a navy. They're not there as a show of force.

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>>34015064
>Buy and play at launch in Escorts
>Get to lower Admiral ranks
>jack shit to do anymore
Fare thee well, USS Verthandi-D.

>>34014824
>We don't intend for our carriers (or any ship for that matter, barring Somali patrols) to ever get into fights. They're just there to wave the British flag or whatever and say that we're the top dog.

wtf are you even smoking

>>34015120
Does that mean Space Jews are the reason the Space Nazi haven't killed off humanity as an affront to nature?

>>34015396
Nah, the Space Nazis get along well enough with the Space Jews. The Space Nazis were assholes to the Space Indians.

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>>34015177
You should come back, we got TOS shit now.

>>34015068
>two photon torpedo launchers
they could fit 200 on one and don't notice the difference. starfleet confirmed for being retards.

>>34016307
We're talking about burst firing five superluminal capable tactical warheads with a range that would allow them to hit the moon from Earth with a maximum yield of almost 65 megatons.

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>>34015094
So basically this picture?

>>34016439
Technically they were only superluminal if launched while the ship's at warp. They had warp sustainers but not full drives.

But yeah, don't forget the dial-a-yield and high precision homing capabilities that can be modified in minutes.

>>34014759
Because American snowflake syndrome.

Back in the 60's, Kirk was just one of a dozen captains boning his way across the galaxy. By the time the 80's rolled around, that wasn't good enough. The captain of the Enterprise had to be special, whether it made any sense or not. Now, you have what is essentially John Connor from T2 as protagonist. Star Trek should have died with Roddenberry.

If you want decent military Trek, look into Federation & Empire, Star Fleet Battles, and the novels that came out in the 1970's.

>>34014759
I always found it slightly odd too, but I think the Enterprise is more similar to a submarine than a surface ship. Long deployments with no support and (in theory) self sufficient.

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>>34016439
How about a saucer mounted dual photon torpedo machine gun turret with a thousand count magazine?

>>34016522
The modifications from this alternate future (the "Galaxy X dreadnought" of STO) work just fine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhRwAAbrtt4

>>34016522
Because unless you match frequencies torps aren't as good as phasers/disruptors for getting through shields. Torps are for finishing the fight.

>>34016597
That's why transphasic torpedoes are OP. They go through even Borg shields like they're not even there... because they aren't.
>torpedo fired
>torpedo goes out of phase with reality until it passes through shields and hull
>torpedo comes back in phase
>kaboom
Thanks, Voyager.

>>34016597
Eh, modifying the envelope frequencies or some shit lets the torpedoes through enough. Besides, brute force will work eventually.

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This is just the best sci Fi thread.
Nobody knows the federation /star trek Universe is pretty much the most OP and /k/ universe there is.

>Why don't they just mount a thousand torpedo launchers
Dramatic tension obviously.
In fact, the way combat was shown, there's literally no reason not to create a giant ramming ship/torpedo and kill an enemy ship with near certainty (and in fact, the writers eventually caught up to that and made it happen... once).

>>34016793
>the most OP
Maybe

>the most /k/
Lmao no fucking chance, federation is basically space hippies.

>>34014759
Im gonna go hard science here and igore scifi or unconfirmed theories. So no FTL and no "force fields."
Any ship traveling at a percentage of C is going to mount extremeley powerful weapons to vaporize debris along with crazy powerful sensors and incredibly fast reaction times.

Ideally this weapon system would be powerful enough to ionize the gas cloud so a magnetic field could defect it away from the vessel. A mixture of options for differing matierials is ideal, so I anticipate railguns to hit big shit and lasers and particle beams to deal with smaller shit. You cant get EVERYTHING however, so you also need to armor the fuck outta the ship. Since you already gotta build it big to accomodate the weapons, sensors, and power supply you might as well go all out and put a couple dozen meters of ablative armor on everything. (Another dumb trope in scifi is tiny starships, in reality economy of scale is needed and so all starships utilizing real world cofirmed physics would be massive).

But essentially this means that there would never be such a thing as an unarmed unarmoured starship. The very systems needed to destroy or survive the impact of an object you are moving towards at a percentage of the speed of light would need to be so big, powerful, and tough that even peaceful colony ships would be packing firepower measured in megatons of energy output. Additionally theyd need to survive potential high energy impacts just in case the defense network fails to detect or shoot down a piece of debris at relatavistic speeds. So EVERY ship would be armed and armored to an impressive degree.

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>>34017438
Eh, Star Trek has a more elegant solution that just nudges everything out of the way.

>>34017621
You might notice I said hard science. Star trek's "elegant solution" is some writers using techno-word salad.

Im focussing on tech that is real that we already have enough scientific understanding to be reasonably certain of it working. That solution is fuckhuge mass drivers to deflect or break up big shit backed up by fuck huge lasers and particle beams to vaporize and then ionize smaller shit so that a magnetic field can redirect it. If you hit a particle the size of a grain of sand at say, 20% the speed of light its going to hit you like a MOAB. So just in case these weapons systems fail you put a fuckton of armor on your vessel. Youd need to anyways to deal with interstellar radiation.

For star ships to work using current physics they will be kilometers long, heavily armed, heavily armored, and have incredibly powerful sensors, probably all overseen by an AI.

In scifi you can just write "the exothermic flux capacitors are firing stay-the-fuck-away quantum particles through the gravitronic emitter to form a defector beam."

In science you need real world solutions, thus far the method I mentioned is the most plausible way of doing it utilizing the current understanding of physics.

>>34017744
By the current physics we know we can barely explore our own solar system with robots.

>>34017869
Correction, the small scale by which we exploit our current understanding of physics leaves us hardly able to explore our own solar system.

Bigger is better with space travel. More reaction mass = bigger reactors = bigger engines = higher top speeds and longer ranges.

Were just not building things big enough to properly harness the forces we know about yet.