# Federation Warships **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 18, 2003, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348 "2003-01-18T00:47:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Psi\_Cop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c57346/32.png) [@Psi\_Cop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Psi_Cop)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2003, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/61 "2003-01-19T23:13:18Z")
Back for round three \. I’ll adopt your method of quote-and-response, I think. It’s loads easier to keep track of what point I’m responding to. > [@](#): > > What about 'em? The batmobile armor seemed a little more resilient, but not much more so (the Borg were eating through it at an accelerating rate, for instance… another two minutes and Voyager would’ve been dead). And the transphasic torpedoes… frankly, we don’t know much about 'em. They could be significantly more powerful, or they could be primarily designed to fight the Borg… dunno. …and… > [@](#): > > Yup. However, we don’t know if it accomplishes this by utilizing sheer firepower, or if it manages to automatically take advantage of the “Borg Cube Weakness” that Picard showed Starfleet in First Contact. Remember the scene where Picard had the fleet direct their attack on a certain, supposedly useless spot of the cube? The thing went up like a firework after a few shots. Well, let us consider a few points here. First, it’s a general torpedo weapon. Sure, it’s great against the Borg, but at the future timeline, the Dominion wars are only a few decades old, and I have no doubt that the Romulans and other races are still around. You want lots of firepower for anything, not just the Borg. Second of all, Picard knew about the weakness in the Borg ship from his experience as being part of the collective. Remember that Voyager was lost _before_ First Contact. Since the other ships didn’t know where to concentrate their fire in First Contact, I doubt it would be in Voyager’s computers either. I suspect it’s more of a “feel” that Picard has, rather than a specific hard point that’s vulnerable. Third, the First Contact cube was already heavily damaged. Fourth, I don’t really think that saying “Those weapons were designed to combat the Borg only, they’d be useless against other things” is really the way to go \. Remember that these universes have never encountered each other… those SW turbolasers might just sort of “splash” the Federation shields and not do anything else, if you want to take that viewpoint. Seriously, energy is energy, whether explosive or delivered via radiation. > [@](#): > > What Future Enterprise? You mean the future version of the ship that was destroyed in Generations? Nah, I think he was talking about the future Enterprise from “All Good Things” parts one and two. And tweapon that tore through two fully shielded Klingon battle cruisers. In all fairness, that Enterprise was destroyed in the rift. Not to mention that the entire timeline it was based upon sort of “vanished.” It’s already very different. Still, it _is_ a very nice weapon. > [@](#): > > I dunno, I saw the damage their weapons supposedly dealt to the Founder’s faux planet… but if 12% of the crust was destroyed, where was the glow of magma and superheated rock? Why did the cloud layer remain undisturbed, instead of dissipating from the heat of such blasts? Nah, what we, the viewers, saw was apparently different from what the Romulan sensors saw. I don’t know why, frankly. Hey, neither do I. Then again, I certainly don’t know about all the types of planets and all the types of weapons in the galaxy. Heck, maybe the 12% was on the other side of the planet. It’s called science fiction, emphasis on the fiction. Anyway, that’s what happened. You can’t just pick and choose which parts of the episodes to ignore and which to listen to \. Or shall I start pointing out discrepencies in spoken words and seen scenes in Star Wars? A series of small points, not bothering with the quotes… On isotons, it’s “Treknobabble.” They made up a term. Someone just didn’t think that people would try to match the prefix iso- with something. On ramming… dude, you’re talking about a ship longer and massier (so to speak) than the Enterprise D moving at another large ship, aceclerating by hundreds of meters per second. Think of surface area alone? That broad a face hitting another ship would easily cause all sorts of havoc. If you want to speak of ramming damage, shall I cite “Return of the Jedi?” A single A-Wing (Or Y-wing, I’ve forgotten) rams the bridge of the super star destroyer. Not only does this tiny mass blow out the entire bridge through the “tower,” the super star destroyer starts getting pulled down into the Death Star. It’s moving really slowly, comparatively, when it hits the surface and, well, destroys half the surface. Heck, I don’t know why the rebels still went for the power core after that little disaster. And you’re complaining about the Enterprise moving so much faster towards a target a little bigger than it? Please. \. On the asteroid thing… I suggest we just abandon that. I’m getting different info from you on that picture, and besides, we already know the antimatter-matter reaction energy. That’s really the only point to the whole thing… > [@](#): > > Eh. Style over substance, in my opinion. The author may be quite free with the insults, but in my opinion, he’s withstood the test of criticism of his actual work. His character is irrelevent to his findings. To you maybe, sure. Not to me \. I have serious doubts about his true scientific method, so to speak. > [@](#): > > One: Because the ships didn’t have full loads of torpedoes (I believe it was the ANH novelization that mentioned that material was so tight for the Rebellion that Luke’s fighter only had two torpedoes), and two, the station was 160 kilometers wide and quite heavily armored even without its shields. You’d need thousands of missiles to even begin digging through all the outside mass to hit the core. Where did I mention hitting the core? I was talking about hitting the dish, and the beam emitters. The biggest gun in the world can’t do you any good if the muzzle is stopped up. So it would take thousands of missiles to even begin digging into the surface of the death star? Impressive armor… or maybe that’s just pathetic weaponry? [quote] There WERE a few shots taken in passing. At one point, Luke says, “This is Red 5, I’m going in!” He then takes a nice strafing attack of the Death Star surface, vaporizing a nice chunk of metal, and creating an explosion that nearly engulfed his fighter. Biggs then says, “Are you all right?” to which Luke replies, “I got a little cooked, but I’m okay.” [quote] The problem with quoting is that bits and pieces of what I’ve said are mixed. Maybe it’s partially my fault for not being clear enough, though. I was speaking of shots in passing at the beam emitters. That “jammed muzzle” theory again. On the TIE squadrons… well, the number out there seemed adequate to me. I mean, you don’t send thousands of fighters out to take out a few squadrons. Their missed shots impact the station too, you know. And scratch the paint and so on. The number of TIEs out there seemed adequate to me, really. > [@](#): > > Because the Kessel Run involved a black hole cluster. The closer you got to the cluster, the shorter the run was… but it also meant you had to be going faster in order to avoid the gravitational pull. Remember, velocity is a measure of both time and distance. Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard this several times. My thought is that Lucas didn’t know what he was talking about when he wrote the lines, and then made up an explanation afterwards. But, as pointed out, in the Star Wars universe, galaxies can be crossed in a day. A mere matter of a few parsecs shouldn’t matter more than a few minutes. Oh, and velocity is indeed a measure of both time and distance. Miles/hour or parsecs/minute, whatever you want. I fail to see how that matters in this case… On the Aldaraan and Death Star thing… yes, I had forgotten it was still in the system. Oops. My mistake. On the other hand, the death star was well clear of the debris field when they arrived. Considering that moon-sized chunks of matter were flying out, I don’t think they could have maneuvered out with sublight speeds in the time between Obi-Wan sensing the disturbance, and arriving. I mean, even if it does have shields and armor, you don’t want your moon-sized station running into a chunk of moon-massed rock… let alone several of them. My guess is that they’d do a miniture hyperjump to get out of the way, into the outskirts of the system. Just a random thought involving speeds, too… at the rate they travel, I have to wonder how many pairs of parents and children there are in the galaxy, in which the children are older than the parents. The distances they seem to travel at sublight speeds must give rise to horrendous relativity problems. > [@](#): > > And, of course, the technology seems to have been lost or suppressed (perhaps those pesky 29th-century time-travelling Feddies took it away), since it was totally absent in the entirety of Nemesis, even though it took less than a week to equip Voyager with the technology… Why would the 29th century ones take it away? That technology was only from a few decades hence, after all. I have no doubt Starfleet is still busy studying the new technology and figuring out the best way to put it on new ships. After all, it’s still relatively untested stuff. Starfleet is already the baddest organization out in that range of the galaxy, so they don’t need to scramble to get new stuff on their ships. It’s one thing for Voyager to use it in desperation, it’s another thing to apply it haphazardly. When the US Navy went to nuclear powered ships (carriers), they didn’t rip out the power plants of all the old ones. They took the new ships being built, and put nukes in them. Same with Starfleet I’d imagine. New generation will be designed for it, old generation can stay as they are. Besides, if it really does only take a week or two to fit, they can do it in time for any major conflict. Still no need to randomly go equipping ships with experimental weapons and armor when they’re not at war. -Psi Cop ---
**Author:** ![Psi\_Cop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c57346/32.png) [@Psi\_Cop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Psi_Cop)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2003, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/62 "2003-01-19T23:15:39Z")
Oh, just as an aside, someone should start a general science fiction duke-it-out thread one of these days. As no doubt some people have noted from my username, I’m a B5 fan. I’d love to go pitting the Vorlons against the Borg against the Ringworld Engineers against the Empire against the… and so on. -Psi Cop ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2003, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/63 "2003-01-19T23:18:29Z")
Best. Thread. Ever. \ ---
**Author:** ![Estilicon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Estilicon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Estilicon)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2003, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/64 "2003-01-20T00:22:21Z")
SAURON WILL KILL YOU ALL BASTARDS. ---
**Author:** ![Macka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Macka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Macka)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2003, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/65 "2003-01-20T01:04:51Z")
Wow. This is like arguing religion, you can yell till you’re blue in the face and, well, nothing happens. This is not Dungeons and Dragons people, you cannot start throwing numbers around in a topic like this one!!! It’s 2 different universes!! Do the Star Destroyers use laser cannon, because if they do, I believe that they would not be able to punch thru Fed shields. I remember in _Conundrum_ that the Enterprise crew were surprised that their “enemies” were armed with laser cannon only as this tech was many years behind their own. Cripes I have fallen into the trap and become one of you 😃 ---
**Author:** ![wolf189](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c67d28/32.png) [@wolf189](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolf189)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2003, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/66 "2003-01-20T01:58:33Z")
…how about including some stuff from the anime side of things? The SDF-1 from Robotech was possessed of a main weapon which could generate an energy blast that resulted in TOTAL DESTRUCTION of anything within it’s path (don’t have the max range numbers handy right now but as I recall the range was sufficient to allow for the destruction of several attacking ships in lunar orbit while the SDF-1 was resting on the Earth’s surface. Admitted that blast would then leave the ship all but powerless for several minutes afterwards while the ship’s systems recharged but as long as you hit your target with the first shot then that wouldn’t matter too much i guess. And if you’re dealing with a larger group of more dispersed targets then the omni-directional barrier defense system could be brought into play (position self at the heart of the enemy fleet, turn on barrier system, watch as the enemy ships waste salvo after salvo on your shields until the barrier system has absorbed too much energy, overloads, and dumps all that energy (and then some!) back out into the surrounding attacking ships annihilating most and crippling the rest…) Throw in the quite capable secondary weapon systems and point defense shields as well as a nifty space fold system for getting across the galaxy in one heck of a big hurry and you’ve got yourself one heck of a tough ship which would definitely be quite capable against anything from either the Star Wars or the Star Trek universe’s. wolf189 (MY ship is cooler than YOUR ship) ---
**Author:** ![Sock\_Munkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Sock\_Munkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sock_Munkey)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2003, 10:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/67 "2003-01-20T10:13:14Z")
So far, the only advantage ST ships have over SW that I feel certain of (based on direct visual evidence) is the ability of ST ships to quickly and drop in and out of warp at any time without any preperation or great stress on the ship even through unknown and unmapped territory. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2003, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/68 "2003-01-21T03:06:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Tuckerfan \* > \*\*Bah! Fred Saberhagen’s _Beserker_’s would make mincemeat of everybody! Giant robotic ships who’s sole purpose is to kill _everything!_ \*\* Oh yeah? Then why are each of the robots in the _Berserker_ wargame about equal in hand-to-hand combat ability to a **single human soldier**? ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2003, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/69 "2003-01-21T03:35:09Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by tracer \* > \*\*Oh yeah? Then why are each of the robots in the _Berserker_ wargame about equal in hand-to-hand combat ability to a **single human soldier**? \*\* Hmm, maybe because the game designers were idjits? Since there’s nothing that I can recall about human soldiers engaging planet sized killing machines in any of the _Bezerker_ stories I read. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2003, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/70 "2003-01-21T18:28:57Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Tuckerfan \* > **Hmm, maybe because the game designers were idjits?** I’ll grant you that! I only found out about the _Berserker_ wargame from the _Murphy’s Rules_ collection: “Flying Buffalo’s **Berserker** features a giant robot ship three times the size of Earth … It may contain a maximum of 18 robots, each of which is roughly equal to one man in hand-to-hand combat.” The picture shows an enormous Artoo-Detoo-shaped robot cowering in fear as two ancient-Greek-looking soldiers armed with shields\* and swords charge at it. \*) Not “shields” like in _Star Trek_, “shields” as in wooden discs strapped to the soldiers’ arms. ---
**Author:** ![Tars\_Tarkas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Tars\_Tarkas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tars_Tarkas)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2003, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/71 "2003-01-21T18:53:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by wolf189 \* > \*\*…how about including some stuff from the anime side of things? > \*\* That’s it, i’m uncrating the Gundums now!!! ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2003, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/72 "2003-01-21T19:38:36Z")
> [@](#): > > Well, in my opinion, one thing the Star Wars series did very poorly was distinguishing between fighters and bombers. It always seemed like the X-wings (fighters) were more powerful, useful, versatile, and the like, compared to Y-wings (bombers). Actually, the X-Wing was a space-superiority fighter. The Y wing is also a fighter. Its more of a fighter-bomber, though. Given the environment, the difference betweeen a dedicated bomber and a fighter is more of concern of specialization than an absolute role. In any event, the Y-Wing was much older and rather out of date. However, for the particular mission in “Star Wars”, the difference was academic. In any event, the rebels had so few fighters and ships available at that time they had little choice but to use them all. > [@](#): > > As I see it, there’d be two major classes of “fighters” in any space-faring civilization… one dedicated specifically to carrying very heavy missile weaponry for the purpose of taking out capital vessels (bombers), and then a dedicated interceptor, smaller and lighter, that’s designed primarily to take down the bombers, freeing up the defensive guns on capital ships to be used against other capital ships. Star Wars has these: A-Wing -\> Light Attack Fighter. USed for fast rading and slashing attacks. B-Wing -\> Heavy Fighter-Bomber. Used for pinpoint assaults on larger ships. X-Wing -\> Space Superiority Fighter. Crush your enemies. Y-Wing -\> Aging design, but still sturdy. The Empire went with another philosophy. They used heavy ships that fighters couldn’t hit easily, at least not without taking down the shields first. (Notice that the A-Wing that took out the bridge of the Super Star Destroyer did so long after Ackbar ordered the Rebel fleet to fire upon it exclusively.) This meant they could use TIE fighters almost totally as fighter defense: they were counting on their big iron to kill capitol ships. Later Tie models matched the X-Wing for space superiority duty. > [@](#): > > Large vessels have the volume to hold the equipment that would allow them to be versatile. Fighters would need to be dedicated, mission-oriented vessels. SW has always tried to tell us that the reverse is true, which I find silly. They can’t afford to be that specialized. They’d get blown away. Unlike the US of A, no one in Star Wars has the technological superiority capability to launch stealth pinpoint bombing missions. It simply isn’t an option for them. > [@](#): > > The Shadows and Vorlons would make mincemeat out of the Federation and most likely the Empire because they are older races whose technology borders on being considered magic even by those advanced civilizations. Who could only engage several small, weak primitive civilizations by guerrilla tactics and deception. And their engineering sucks. Have you seen that peice of refuse the Shadows call warships. In any event, this is the “technology level” myth. It does not matter how old, advanced, or cool it looks. the question is, “How well does it function?” In this case, how much energy is being imparted to the target, and in what time and what manner? The “advanced” Shadows and Vorlons have puny fleets and are easily defeated by a wise enemy with “inferior” technology. ---
**Author:** ![Estilicon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Estilicon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Estilicon)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2003, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/73 "2003-01-21T19:56:50Z")
If we are talking of Robotech, those ships weren’t that fancy. It took 4 million Zentraedi ships to devastate Earth. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2003, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/74 "2003-01-21T21:28:13Z")
I know that the topic has shifted somewhat, but in short term engagements, one would, in fact, expect space fighters to be “faster” (meaning higher accelerations) and more maneuverable than capitol ships, so carriers would be potentially useful. The thrust produceable by a ship can be assumed to be approximately proportional to the area of engine nozzle (or equivalent) exposed on the outside, whereas the mass of a ship (assuming a fixed density) would be proportional to its volume. For structural integrity reasons, one would expect most ships to be approximately the same shape (approximately spherical). What this means is that while a large ship can mount more powerful engines, it’s more massive by an even greater amount. A 100 meter long fighter would have a maximum acceleration a hundred times greater than a 10 km long capital ship. Of course, total fuel supply would be proportional to volume, as well, so a small fighter wouldn’t be very good for long missions, or for flying to the theater from home base. That’s why you want the carrier, to bring them along on the long haul. ---
**Author:** ![Tars\_Tarkas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Tars\_Tarkas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tars_Tarkas)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2003, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/75 "2003-01-21T21:43:48Z")
Your facts have no place in this discussion! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![zem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/4491bb/32.png) [@zem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zem)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2003, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/76 "2003-01-22T05:02:07Z")
Of course, the problem with the Empire building too many Death Stars is that the Vogon construction fleet would likely destroy a vast majority of them, just to make room for the hyperspace bypass … ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2003, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/77 "2003-01-22T05:45:38Z")
> [@](#): > > Do the Star Destroyers use laser cannon, because if they do, I believe that they would not be able to punch thru Fed shields. I remember in Conundrum that the Enterprise crew were surprised that their “enemies” were armed with laser cannon only as this tech was many years behind their own. Actually, Star Wars uses laser blasters, which is a sublight energy packet wrapped around an explosive Tibanna gas core. So while ST shields might stop the laser, the explosive gas would still cause damage. I blame **SPOOFE** for me knowing that. ---
**Author:** ![DOOM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a587f6/32.png) [@DOOM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DOOM)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2003, 8:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/78 "2003-01-22T08:31:48Z")
One thing I never understood about the mealy mouthed Federation’s battle tactics is… they’re just not very creative. If I had to command, say, the Enterprise in battle I’d do things like use the transporter to teleport a golfball sized lump of antimatter onto the bridge of the ememy ship. There, battle over. Or even just transporting their bridge crew into space would do the trick. And what about a Federation Special Forces unit? Why don’t they have that? The Star Trek universe has some pretty ruthless people in it, you’d think somebody would have thought of that somewhere along the way. And what’s with those wimpy assed guns? Pathetic. ---
**Author:** ![Fugazi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f08c70/32.png) [@Fugazi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fugazi)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2003, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/79 "2003-01-22T08:34:47Z")
I’m sure \*\* SPOOFE \*\* can answer this, but I’ve always been curious about one thing in ST. Why can’t they seem to hit the side of a barn? Seems to me you’ve got these turbolasers blasting away at the fighers, but not hitting a damn thing. Any kind of decent targeting system and computer should be, one shot - one hit. Back to the OP about fighter carriers in space. IMO there won’t be any because fighters will be obsolete before we ever get to building one in space. Once we have a laser powerful enough to destroy a figher, fighters will be obsolete here on Earth. They’ve already worked on a system that tracks where your eye is looking and aims the weapon. The only way fighters will survive is if they can absorb or redirect the laser. ---
**Author:** ![Sock\_Munkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Sock\_Munkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sock_Munkey)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2003, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348/80 "2003-01-22T15:14:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by DOOM \* > \*\*One thing I never understood about the mealy mouthed Federation’s battle tactics is… they’re just not very creative. If I had to command, say, the Enterprise in battle I’d do things like use the transporter to teleport a golfball sized lump of antimatter onto the bridge of the ememy ship. There, battle over. Or even just transporting their bridge crew into space would do the trick. > \*\* Shields in ST ships are made to BLOCK transporters specifically to prevent anyone from pulling that trick. It was stated in many episodes “We can’t beam you aboard with our shields up.” Even after battering a foe’s shields down you still have to lower your OWN shields and come well within weapons range to transport anthing aboard their ship, leaving you vulnerable to that same trick. Therefore, before attempting anything of the sort one has to totally disbale an enemy ship before one can board safely and by that time you don’t have to blow it up. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/federation-warships/149348.md?page=5)