I know this may be a repeat or an extention of the “Who’d win? An Imperial Star Destroyer or the Enterprise?” but I am curious about this convention.
The Federation seems to only have big boats when it comes to their fleet. They lack aircraft carriers and the best they can come up with are measly peacenik shuttles named after geeky things. Somehow their ships are able to stand up against other races because other races seem to follow the same design of having big boats.
Whatever happened to the concept of aircraft carriers? Didn’t that carry over when man took his first tentative steps into space and discovered that all aliens weren’t friendly with pointy ears?
A Star Destroyer on the other hand has serious armament despite being slow but it can afford to be slow because it can unleash hordes of tie fighters as a diversion while it builds up an attack with its weaponry.
There’s Babylon 5 which is a starbase with a hangar full of fighters in addition to maintaining some decent emplaced weaponry on the station itself.
I’m certain that the Enterprise would be seriously owned if it was surrounded by fighters while the other ship was powering up its yamato cannon. Yes, the Enterprise could just jump to warp and run away most nobly and dignified for a cup of Earl Grey. Hot.
Can someone please find some sense in this?
A few thoughts:
Firstly, it’s important to bear in mind that the Star Destroyers in the movies (I make no claim regarding the books, video games etc.) are at a serious disadvantage to the Enterprise in one significant respect: they have no shields! The Death Star had 'em, but the smaller 'Wars ships don’t seem to. Hell, they can’t even ward off asteroids, let alone photon torpedoes!
The presence of shields would also severely compromise the advantage of a large number of fighters, since they would probably be too weak to punch through the Enterprise’s shields in the first place. In fact, we may postulate that this is part of the reason for Star Trek’s seeming dearth of fighter craft: it’s not possible to attack a larger, more powerful ship because of its shields.
Lastly, we must not ignore the presence of the transporter. It does no good to send out wave upon wave of fighters if your pilots can be immediately transported into Ten-Forward, to be bludgeoned into unconsciosness by Whoopi Goldberg. Again, Advantage=Federation.
Of course, the Empire could just construct a fleet of Death Stars (they seem to like building them). But the Federation could counter with the Genesis device… and on, and on…
The question is meaningless, as we are dealing with two entirely different made-up technologies here. Frankly, I think a 100-ton assault Battlemech could give both ships some serious trouble.
There were fighters in DS9 during the war (Peregrine-class). The Maquis also used them (Nemecek variation). plus a Galaxy class ship would have a bigger warp core to power the phasers with (=stronger weapons), and more energy and space for shield generators
Correction:
According to the Star Wars Encyclopedia and the Star Wars Guide to Weapons and Technology, Imperial Star Destroyers DO have shields. In fact, they have two kinds of shields:
(1) Particle shields, which are the equivalent of Star Trek’s “structural integrity field”. They make the hull tougher against getting pounded by physical objects. And:
(2) Ray shields (also called “deflectors”), which are similar to, but not identical to, the Shields on Star Trek. They are a sheet of force that lies a few feet (or a few inches) outside the outer surface of the hull, wrapping around the entire starship. They block and/or dissipate energy weapons, but are worthless for stopping physical objects (like asteroids).
Note that the Star Wars tech-geek supplements say that the “proton torpedoes” Luke used to blow up the Death Star were physical missiles that detonated on impact, not energy weapons, and were thus able to pass through the Death Star’s ray shields and enter the exhaust port.
Yes, but they would all fall before the Horde of Green Martians!!!
Barsoom Pride!!1
I forgot to mention: One big advantage Star Trek shields seem to have over Star Wars ray+particle shields is that the Star Trek variety appear to be much, much stronger. A direct hit with an energy weapon against an Imperial Star Destroyer’s ray shields, even with the shields at maximum, always seems to have a little of the damage “leak through” to the protected ship. In Star Trek, the worst damage a hit to the shields seems to do is weaken the shields and made the bridge crew lurch from side-to-side for a couple of seconds.
Well, there is no answer to your question because… well because it’s fiction 
but considering that I am a geek I will try to answer. Be advised I am not that geek so I won’t answer things like: Enterprise has a 1234 megamegawatts phaser so it can roast earth and a couple of star destroyer without breaking a sweat
The short answer is this, the writers of that overrated series (of series) lack originality. Yes Star Trek sort of got me into the sci-fi universe when I was little, fortunatley I am a grown man of 22 and can recognize quality when I see it. I don’t see it anymore not in Voyager and most certainly not in Enterprise.
Let’s take David Weber’s “Honor Harrington” books, although they are of different quality you can see in them that someone has pay attention to it’s history, warfare evolves and what was true a hundred years ago can’t be false today and perhaps be valid again in a hundred years. More if an state of war exists (WWII is great example, in 6 years new weapons were developed that up to that moment were considered sci-fi).
Harringtons books are a great example of “realistic war”, weapons, tacticts and strategies change when new technologies are availabel. Not so in Star Trek universe, we always get the same big clumsy ship with a big laser and slow torpedos. In the U.S.S Exterminator thread, lot’s of people came with a lot of bright ideas (my favourite using the trasnportator as a weapon).
I don’t know if this is an anwer or a rant, but I want someday that thing change a bit in Star trek.
Here’s why we will never, realistically, see “aircraft carriers in space”:
With a real, “wet navy” aircraft carrier, the ship travels through the water while its fighters and reconnaisance planes travel through the air. Air has a much much much lower drag coefficient than water does. The top speed of a supersonic jet fighter is over 25 times the top speed of an aircraft carrier (or any other non-hydrofoil ship of the ocean). Advantage: aircraft.
With a “space navy” aircraft carrier – heck, let’s call it a “spacecraft carrier”; there’s no reason to keep “air” in its name any more when its out in deep space. With a spacecraft carrier, the ship travels through the vacuum of space, while its fighters and reconnaisance craft travel through … the vacuum of space. The ship is travelling through the same physical medium as the smaller craft it’s carrying. The smaller craft won’t have any speed advantage over their carrier, unless Federation technology stumbles across a super-powerful sub-miniature engine that can only be built into fighter-sized spacecraft for some bizarre reason. Advantage: none.
Modern aircraft carriers are the most powerful, intimidating ships on the modern ocean, precisely because the aircraft they carry can travel faster than any ship. The fighters carried by “Spacecraft carriers” will have no such advantage over other space ships. So, why bother to build them?
Well Tracer, I imagine that spaceships of the future will need, armament, fuel, maitenance, etc. Thus the idea of carrying small ships in a bigger one that can provide all those “services” is not that dumb IMHO.
Well, again, I don’t know from the books. It’s been some while since I played the RPG, for that matter. But, yeah, if they DO have shields then it’s hard to understand why they bother with them. I’m thinking here of that one scene in… was it Jedi? I think so… Where that Rebel ship takes out the conning tower of the Super Star Destroyer. Seems to me that’s where you would want your absolute strongest shields. And, again, you never actually seem to see any ray beams being blocked or deflected–just big holes appearing in the hull.
Another big plus the Enterprise seems to have on Star Destroyers is sheer maneuverability. She can warp, she can jink, she can do the twist and the funky chicken; Star Destroyers just sort of wallow.
What you say is all true Tracer; but another advantage of the aircraft carrier is that it allows you to attack with relatively little exposure to your own capital ship, in essence extending the range of the ship with out putting the ship at risk. Also, there is the targeting issue, it is much more difficult to deal with 100 fighters than a single carrier. However, maybe the fact that the big guys can move as fast as the fighters means that the capital ships would close to close range quickly and the extended range that fighters offer would be nullified. Personally, I always thought space battles would be more like an old sailing navy battle, two ships pull up next to each other and hammer away until one is sunk.
What you say is all true Tracer; but another advantage of the aircraft carrier is that it allows you to attack with relatively little exposure to your own capital ship, in essence extending the range of the ship with out putting the ship at risk. Also, there is the targeting issue, it is much more difficult to deal with 100 fighters than a single carrier. However, maybe the fact that the big guys can move as fast as the fighters means that the capital ships would close to close range quickly and the extended range that fighters offer would be nullified. Personally, I always thought space battles would be more like an old sailing navy battle, two ships pull up next to each other and hammer away until one is sunk.
There’s one good reason that Star Fleet does not seem as battle-ready as the Empire. Although they manage to get into a lot of battles, Star Fleet is not a military organization; they’re explorers, and as such their weaponry is primarily for defense.
Another reason for this discrepency, which has been (tragically) eroded in later Star Trek shows, is that physics in ST didn’t originally seem to allow for fighters. Up until DS9, one of the few scientific facts ST got right was that jet fighter-type space craft are physically impossible in a vacuum. There’s no air resistance to allow for thos sharp, banking turns. A fighter would basically be a manned missile with reduced firepower: you get one pass on the enemy, followed by a lengthy wait after you overshoot the target while you try and get turned around for another pass.
I used to like Star Trek for their capital ship battles, and Star Wars for their fighter battles. If you want the old iron juggernauts, standing off from each other and pounding away, you’d watch Wrath of Khan. If you wanted small fighter in massive “Battle of Midway” style engagements, you watched Return of the Jedi. Now, every sf show is about the little fighters. Which is cool, but I want my juggernauts back.
BTW: the rebels took out that conning tower in RotJ only after their shields had been pounded down by concentrated firepower of the entire rebel fleet. Star Destroyers most certainly have shields. Right before the Super SD is taken out, I believe you even hear one of the bridge officers mention that their forward shields had just gone down.
First off…
Last I heard, the Akira-class starships were supposed to be designed to either act as missile boats or carriers for tac-fighters (or both at once, depending on who you listen to).
Now, for Tracer…
I disagree vehemently, and not just because I’m a Star Wars nut. It’s a very common sight in Star Trek episodes to hear Worf, in the middle of a battle, say something like, “Shields at 80%, damage on decks 12 and 13.” We’ve never seen anything of the sort happen to an Imperial vessel…
Besides… the most recent Star Wars sourcebook puts the shield capacity of heavy warships in the teraton range… meaning they can stave off multiple teratons worth of damage (per second, no less). The most powerful weapon on a Federation ship would be its photon torpedoes… which have a maximum capacity of dealing 64 megatons worth of damage. You do the math. 
The most powerful weapon on a Federation ship would be its photon torpedoes… which have a maximum capacity of dealing 64 megatons worth of damage. You do the math.
Wrong… Star Trek is much different to Star Wars insofar that it does not try to explain its technology’s affects, inner workings, etc. There are exceptions like the Technical Manuals and while they are written by Michael Okuda (the person responsible for the aesthetic aspects of treknology), the books are not canon. So while you can rattle off numbers for what SW technology can dish out, take, and so on, any such numbers you give for Star Trek are totally arbitrary unless you got the information specifically from one of the episodes.
Again with the books! --Of course, one could just as reasonably argue that the reason you don’t hear Star Wars characters announcing that the shields are down is simply because they don’t tend to survive long enough to do so, whereas Star Trek vessels remain formidable and spaceworthy even with severe structural damage.
And, of course, Federation starships carry multiple banks of torpedoes, so multiple teraton damage per second is quite likely, especially considering that they’re firing on such a (relatively) slow target.
Ooh, ooh… I forgot to mention that your photon torpedo comment is severely dated too! Nowadays, they’re quantum torpedoes. Other than the former being red and the latter being blue, I don’t know what the new word means either but I assume it’s a good thing.
By the way, a D’deridex class Warbird can kill 'em all.
Sigh.-- What I meant to say above, of course, was that you don’t tend to hear Star Wars characters announcing structural damage.
Post in haste, repent at leisure.