You hardly ever saw the non-planar shots, but they did occur occasionally.
I'm surprised nobody here has mentioned the Miranda class ships. They served all types of rolls, from frigate squadrons (DS9), to transport ships, medical ships, support ships etc. through multiple stories. If you go back to the Star Fleet Command games they were considered light cruisers and later 'new heavy cruisers' nearly on par with the Constitution-Rs. Also, they exemplify the retrofit/refit of a 'single' class (Including the Soyuz's with them) as they appeared with phaser canon, phaser beam arrays, and phaser lances plus their torpedo pods in different configurations throughout cannon and non-cannon sources alike.
Also, the sublight missiles from the SFC games made for interesting mechanics, as they were WAY more accurate than photons (which nearly never hit, but hurt when they did) but could be shot down/tractored, and the odd Excelsior variant that had a plasma torp launcher.
1) Gene Roddenberry, when he pitched TOS, described it as Horatio Hornblower In Space.
That was reflected in just about every fleet battle (see examples: DS9 episodes Sacrifice of Angels, and The Return) where the two sides would line up and stare each other down, each waiting for the other side to take the initiative and commit themselves to action.
In such battles sensors are USELESS. And I don't mean just "uh-oh they're jamming us" I mean "OMG!!! TARGET OVERLOAD!!!! TARRRRRGET OVVVVVEERRRRRLOAD!!!!" As in the computer system, in trying to process all those separate targets would quickly be overwhelmed. Especially in the anti sensor battlefield where they have to face countermeasures and decoys. The problem becomes an order of magnitude harder when the debris and remains of ships start flying around without IFF.
To say nothing of the danger posed to both sides by the remains of the destroyed or disabled vessels.
I'm pretty sure that under such conditions, any computer system would suffer near constant conniption fits.
After about 15 minutes of battle, both sides would have to disengage, more because friendly fire would be a bigger threat than enemy fire, and also because the two sides would be so intermingled as to be chaotic and uncontrollable. I'm sure that it would take the two fleets hours or days to withdraw, regroup and relocate to a new battlefield while their support assets would be left with the unholy mess of cleaning up the debris, and sorting the corpses.
have to disagree with you ironboy, we all know that trek is based in the future so obviously computer systems would be more advanced then.
When you consider what a massive achievement faster than light travel (and navigation!) would be,its reasonable to assume that it would take an immensely powerful computer to control this. i remember reading the NTG tech manual and it mentioning that the main computer takes up a sizeable portion of the ship,and that it operates with FTL computational speeds (quantum computing?)
which would be a massive speed boost.
You do raise an interesting point however,it would be nice to see a battle occur the way you described,as the battlefield got increasingly more cluttered with debris it may move to a more cat and mouse scenario, phasers would be only of use for fleeting seconds and the more accurate photon torpedoes which could steer round the debris would start to be limited mid battle :-)
I'd say it's less a question of Target Overload rather than Weapons Efficiency. A ships energy needs to be distributed to al it's internal systems (life support, gravity, lights, intertial dampeners, structural integity (latter two are most used and most power in battle situations)), as well as engines, shield, and weapondry.
Now, if you fire into all directions with an enemy like a wildman, you not only risk to burn out the phaser emitters very fast, or overheat them, and run out of photon torpedos half-way in the battle. You also waste much energy on other targets.
Focussing on one target at a time is far more efficient. It gives the ship time to replenish it's energy household between shots at least a bit, instead of steadily decreasing it.
Unless of course, you do it Defiant-style, trying to break through a blockade to prevent someone from detonating your safe-guard against even worse visitours.
There are several problems with the star fleets within Starfleet. This is the tip of the iceberg
1) Stop building tiny ships. The Sov looked like a kitten about to be eaten by a pitbull. The D'deridex is 1300 meters, a Borg Cube is 3040m, yet the largest ship is the Sov, not even 700 meters.
2) Stop building feeble ships. The Connie took hits from V-ger, yet a 20 year old warbird takes out the flagship of the fleet, a Galaxy class.
3) Stop sending out ships alone. Lunacy. Every ship should at LEAST have a wingman of equal strength or in the case of the big boys, ESCORTS. What a concept. If I remember correctly, the Defiant was originally meant to operate in wings similar to how fighter wings do. One Defiant is a problem, twelve is a solution.
4) Stop sending out ships that "operate best" alone. There is a reason ships specialize. A jack of all trades is a master of none.
1 & 2: Well, that's rather an out-of-universe thing. The creators thing that Starfleet is already pretty amazing, but to make sure that the watchers don't get delusions of grandeur, they need to make opponents bigger, stronger, more dangerous. It's kind of a reverse-psychology trick. Make opponents stronger and more dangerous than one ship can handle, and they demand bigger, better, and more powerful ships. That way, Star Trek could easily turn into Star Wars by size and weapon-usage...
In-universe, you could also blame their economical situation for that (see my thoughts on 4), at least about your First issue.
3: True, I always found it strange that the Enterprise happens to be the only ship in range/in the sector. Take for instance the Nexus-Incident with the Enterprise-B. Captain Harriman said they're just going around Pluto, just making a small tour around the block. And yet they're the only ship in the system when the Nexus hits the refugee-vessels? IN OUR OWN SOLAR SYSTEM?!?!?!?!?!?!
4: Well, look at the Federation. Within just 2 decades, they had: Skirmishes with the Marquis Raiders hassling their supply-lines; the Dominion War destroying large fleets, taking over planets and exploiting them, straining their ressources thinner and thinner; the Borg Invasion crippling solar-systems defence (twice even, if we count both cubes, as both have destroyed many ships and killed many people); skirmishes with the Cardassians, Romulans, and Breen; and I doubt piracy doesn't exist anymore at that time. They barely have ships, so building ships that can do the jobs they're designed for without any assistance, escort, or help, is the most feasible conclusion, at least until ressources are more common again.
Links from EAS do never work. Bernd banned the use of hotlinking, rather give us the link to the page with the graphic.
I'm sure the federation could build a "battle control" ship, a modified galaxy (they are modular already, so who says some of those galaxies weren't already modified) that removes most weapons and adds more computers, sensors and interfleet communication systems to control battle operations, sort of like we have on carriers now.
you raise a good point Falin,the galaxies were multi mission capable ships but as far as i know we never saw a galaxy that looked any different to enterprise <series budget contstraints etc> but its easy to start adding hypothetical ships into the fleet,we already have lots of ships as it is and we cant really say for certain what these variants would be <unless the ship builders made some but just never used?> a flagship of the fleet would no doubt be equipped as you say, to monitor overal fleet strategy and communications.
Aresius' point about the federation enduring multiple conflicts,some long lived would also account for the lack of the bigger more modern ships and the fact we keep seeing the older ships pressed into fleet too
Posts
I'm surprised nobody here has mentioned the Miranda class ships. They served all types of rolls, from frigate squadrons (DS9), to transport ships, medical ships, support ships etc. through multiple stories. If you go back to the Star Fleet Command games they were considered light cruisers and later 'new heavy cruisers' nearly on par with the Constitution-Rs. Also, they exemplify the retrofit/refit of a 'single' class (Including the Soyuz's with them) as they appeared with phaser canon, phaser beam arrays, and phaser lances plus their torpedo pods in different configurations throughout cannon and non-cannon sources alike.
Also, the sublight missiles from the SFC games made for interesting mechanics, as they were WAY more accurate than photons (which nearly never hit, but hurt when they did) but could be shot down/tractored, and the odd Excelsior variant that had a plasma torp launcher.
1) Gene Roddenberry, when he pitched TOS, described it as Horatio Hornblower In Space.
That was reflected in just about every fleet battle (see examples: DS9 episodes Sacrifice of Angels, and The Return) where the two sides would line up and stare each other down, each waiting for the other side to take the initiative and commit themselves to action.
In such battles sensors are USELESS. And I don't mean just "uh-oh they're jamming us" I mean "OMG!!! TARGET OVERLOAD!!!! TARRRRRGET OVVVVVEERRRRRLOAD!!!!" As in the computer system, in trying to process all those separate targets would quickly be overwhelmed. Especially in the anti sensor battlefield where they have to face countermeasures and decoys. The problem becomes an order of magnitude harder when the debris and remains of ships start flying around without IFF.
To say nothing of the danger posed to both sides by the remains of the destroyed or disabled vessels.
I'm pretty sure that under such conditions, any computer system would suffer near constant conniption fits.
After about 15 minutes of battle, both sides would have to disengage, more because friendly fire would be a bigger threat than enemy fire, and also because the two sides would be so intermingled as to be chaotic and uncontrollable. I'm sure that it would take the two fleets hours or days to withdraw, regroup and relocate to a new battlefield while their support assets would be left with the unholy mess of cleaning up the debris, and sorting the corpses.
When you consider what a massive achievement faster than light travel (and navigation!) would be,its reasonable to assume that it would take an immensely powerful computer to control this. i remember reading the NTG tech manual and it mentioning that the main computer takes up a sizeable portion of the ship,and that it operates with FTL computational speeds (quantum computing?)
which would be a massive speed boost.
You do raise an interesting point however,it would be nice to see a battle occur the way you described,as the battlefield got increasingly more cluttered with debris it may move to a more cat and mouse scenario, phasers would be only of use for fleeting seconds and the more accurate photon torpedoes which could steer round the debris would start to be limited mid battle :-)
Now, if you fire into all directions with an enemy like a wildman, you not only risk to burn out the phaser emitters very fast, or overheat them, and run out of photon torpedos half-way in the battle. You also waste much energy on other targets.
Focussing on one target at a time is far more efficient. It gives the ship time to replenish it's energy household between shots at least a bit, instead of steadily decreasing it.
Unless of course, you do it Defiant-style, trying to break through a blockade to prevent someone from detonating your safe-guard against even worse visitours.
1) Stop building tiny ships. The Sov looked like a kitten about to be eaten by a pitbull. The D'deridex is 1300 meters, a Borg Cube is 3040m, yet the largest ship is the Sov, not even 700 meters.
2) Stop building feeble ships. The Connie took hits from V-ger, yet a 20 year old warbird takes out the flagship of the fleet, a Galaxy class.
3) Stop sending out ships alone. Lunacy. Every ship should at LEAST have a wingman of equal strength or in the case of the big boys, ESCORTS. What a concept. If I remember correctly, the Defiant was originally meant to operate in wings similar to how fighter wings do. One Defiant is a problem, twelve is a solution.
4) Stop sending out ships that "operate best" alone. There is a reason ships specialize. A jack of all trades is a master of none.
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/schematics/alien-huge-chart.jpg
In-universe, you could also blame their economical situation for that (see my thoughts on 4), at least about your First issue.
3: True, I always found it strange that the Enterprise happens to be the only ship in range/in the sector. Take for instance the Nexus-Incident with the Enterprise-B. Captain Harriman said they're just going around Pluto, just making a small tour around the block. And yet they're the only ship in the system when the Nexus hits the refugee-vessels? IN OUR OWN SOLAR SYSTEM?!?!?!?!?!?!
4: Well, look at the Federation. Within just 2 decades, they had: Skirmishes with the Marquis Raiders hassling their supply-lines; the Dominion War destroying large fleets, taking over planets and exploiting them, straining their ressources thinner and thinner; the Borg Invasion crippling solar-systems defence (twice even, if we count both cubes, as both have destroyed many ships and killed many people); skirmishes with the Cardassians, Romulans, and Breen; and I doubt piracy doesn't exist anymore at that time. They barely have ships, so building ships that can do the jobs they're designed for without any assistance, escort, or help, is the most feasible conclusion, at least until ressources are more common again.
Links from EAS do never work. Bernd banned the use of hotlinking, rather give us the link to the page with the graphic.
Aresius' point about the federation enduring multiple conflicts,some long lived would also account for the lack of the bigger more modern ships and the fact we keep seeing the older ships pressed into fleet too