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Originally Posted by spcglider
Towards the end of the run of ST TNG we were "treated" to an episode where Wesley Crusher (shudder) is involved in a training exercise and a aerial display flying a one-man fighter-style craft. They discussed maneuvers that would have been impossible even for the Blue Angels. I'm sorry, but there is no way, from existing footage and if you suspend dis-belief to allow a Thunderbird to function in space like a Viper does (wings, jet intakes, braking flaps, etc.), that you'll convince me that Cylon Raiders can outmaneuver a Thunderbird. And Wesley's group was doing just that in their little Federation craft. If the Federation doesn't have highly maneuverable craft for combat (or otherwise), then why are the training vessels so superior to everything else we've seen? The existence of such training vessels would indicate that highly advanced and maneuverable fighter-style craft also exist. Either that or the Federation is wasting A LOT of valuable training time and money...
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...Except that Wesley and company were pilot-trainees, practicing for an air-show equivalent.
Using a one-person trainer would be a good way of training to fly shuttles and other small craft in isolation - but it doesn't predicate a doctrine of one-person fighters.
In fact, outside of fan-canon, I've never seen any evidence of any Alpha-Quad races/powers of any consequence using fighters. And, because of differing cultural values, I can only conclude that one-person fighters don't exist because they cannot carry weapons that are effective against ST-canon capitol ships...which would seem to be borne out by the ep where the crews' short-term memories were wiped - the E-D was attacked by a swarm of fighters from a minor state and easily destroyed them, suffering no damage.
BSG fighters (Colonial and Cylon), OTOH, have shown that they are fully capable of smashing enemy capships into spare parts, despite evidence of non-physical shields of some sort existing...granted, they take high casualties to do so, but then the USN's carrier strike groups at Midway also had a much-less-than-desirable survival rate.
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Originally Posted by spcglider
...Except that they couldn't hit a Ship Of Lights satellite ship. I think your estimation of Federation targetting is a little loose to suit your argument. Federation targeting is based on beam technology. Missed? Shift it while it's still firing to score a hit. Colonial energy weapons fire blobs of something that require them to be more accurate cuz they don't have the "fluff" factor of a beam. And frankly, I'd have to see a tally of hit/miss ratio culled and compared proportionally from both shows to accurately assess the efficiency of either targeting system.
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Well, the mis-rate is pretty high for forward-firing weapons shooting from a fast-maneuvering platform, which is why the Defiant uses a type of 'pulse'-phaser instead of beam technology. Still and all, while the beams do connect most of the time, even after the target's shields have collapsed, I don't see them doing the kind of damage indicated by the visuals of the Gator, Peg and Basestars in BSG.
Significantly, we have repeated visual evidence of small craft being completly vaporized in BSG from secondary-battery and fighter-battery hits, while that rarely happens within Trek, specifically after shields are gone. (ST:WoK, among others.)
Since we see fighters ramming ships in both BSG and DS9 (in the Dominion War arc), we can make some comparisons in the armor department, even given ambiguous Dominion fighter mass.
We see a Dominion "fighter" take out a good-sized chunk of the primary hull of a Galaxy-class (the Odyssey?); the subsequent destruction was not due to the direct actions of the fighter, but from the damage to the Fed-ship's warp core. I put quotes around "fighter", because the visual evidence at the point of impact indicates that the Dominion fighter is nearly as large as a Klingon BOP...See Below.
The other problem is that in BSG, when we see Cylon Raiders ramming Battlestars, even though they are packed with explosives and cause major damage, we have not seen large pieces removed off of the ships.
Conclusion: BSG capships are built a LOT sturdier than ST-'verse ships, and their power-on-target figures are far more advanced.
Also, you made mention of lack of transporters being a reason for the Borg to ignore the RTF. My question is: so what? Transporters have been shown repeatedly to be inefficient, easily-interrfered with power-hogs. Could the Colonials build transporters? Probably - their sheer raw-power output indicates that they have the energy, although their computer technology seems to lag significantly behind Trek - or
us, for that matter: the only advanced computer equipment I've seen on-screen in BSG in Colonial hands is the Viper's targeting sensors - and that's not even a holographic heads-up display, which we use on attack helo's. From what I've seen, my
cellphone has more capabilities than the average Colonial computer.
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Originally Posted by spcglider
Nope, I dont mean runabouts or shuttles.
See above.
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Both physically and tactically, runabouts, shuttles, BOPs and Dominion fighters - it's even possible to include the Defiant - fall into the "PT Boat" category of ships, rather than fighters. (Numerous movies, as well as ep's of TNG and DS9.)
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Originally Posted by Damocles
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Mmmmmm.....Project Rho *drrool*.........
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Originally Posted by Damocles
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You know, I could never get into OA...I don't know why, really, but I just couldn't seem to connect with any storyline. I think it suffers from the Trav-verse Syndrome: It's
SO huge, it's hard to get unifying story-arc to function...
