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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) Starfleet Ship Design Bureau, Refit ("To Boldly Go...")
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OneirosTheWriter said:
All your fleet invasions. This comes up when you attack strongpoints of major powers, not in general open space fleet battles. It's come up recently because you have considerable power advantages over the Sydraxians and now the Arcadians, so they have to play it as defensive and asymmetrical as they can.
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My own thoughts were a little broader than this.

Ultimately, all naval wars are fought over something. We're not just climbing into our spaceships to go zoom around and fight enemy spaceships. Either they're trying to take something from us, or we're trying to take something from them. Or if the war is fought for reasons that have nothing to do with taking any place from anyone (like the Licori War), you still have to control places in order to compel an enemy to end the conflict.

It's certainly true that we may find ourselves fighting fleet battles where mines play no role- but almost every war is going to sooner or later involve us smacking into minefields. Or them smacking into minefields. Or both. How well various powers cope with mines, and how well they employ mines, is going to play a big role in all conflicts. There is almost no way to fight a war against an enemy with their own industrial base, while avoiding confrontations involving minefields- theirs, or ours. We can't make them avoid our strongly held places, and they have good reason to attack those places anyway. And sure, there are strategic concepts that prefer to avoid fighting at well defended enemy positions, but it's very limiting to be stuck to that constraint.

Mines are gonna matter. They're going to matter a lot, probably as much as cloaking devices would matter if we were fighting Klingons or Romulans. We have technologies that impact our performance against enemy cloaks. Assuming tech progression works for our rivals like it does for us, they presumably have corresponding technology to improve mine performance- and theoretically so could we.

So basically, I'm arguing that mine warfare is too important from a strategic perspective for mine warfare to not show up in the tech tree.

I might pad out Base Strike doctrine with extra anti-mine techs, something to help differentiate it with Decisive Battle and Wolf Pack.
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That would be extremely welcome.
 
yeah, I mean, we've seen mine fields mission kill battleships or wipe out most of a frigate screen. They are way too useful not to make at least limited use of. It's not like we have to leave them armed most of the time.
 
random_npc said:
yeah, I mean, we've seen mine fields mission kill battleships or wipe out most of a frigate screen. They are way too useful not to make at least limited use of. It's not like we have to leave them armed most of the time.
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I mean, even if we choose not to set up mine barriers around a lot of our star systems, we at least owe it to ourselves to understand mines, have good procedures for sweeping them, and be able to design functional, effective mines if we decide we need them.

SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
The scary part of that system would be its potential use as a siege weapon, if a version of it can be mobilized.
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There's reason to think that photon torpedoes have interplanetary range as it is. When fired from a ship traveling at high warp (e.g. Encounter at Farpoint) they can travel for a period of several seconds on 'warp sustainers' before detonating. This translates to a range measured in light-hours, at least in principle.

If I had to guess, I'd say Iron Hail has some kind of mutant warp-drive version of a railgun designed to accelerate the torpedoes and duplicate the performance there.
 
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Simon_Jester said:
There's reason to think that photon torpedoes have interplanetary range as it is. When fired from a ship traveling at high warp (e.g. Encounter at Farpoint) they can travel for a period of several seconds on 'warp sustainers' before detonating. This translates to a range measured in light-hours, at least in principle.

If I had to guess, I'd say Iron Hail has some kind of mutant warp-drive version of a railgun designed to accelerate the torpedoes and duplicate the performance there.
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Merely delivering the torpedoes to the target area isn't really sufficient though, especially against active opposition or prepared systems. The Iron Hail system has to at least have some kind of terminal guidance and targeting, and a siege version would have to break through jamming and may not be able to rely on just normal long range sensors. Obviously long range torpedo shots are a thing, heck, those Y'rillian mercenaries tried it on us in the GBZ, but there has to be a reason why they aren't used in normal system sieges. Whether Iron Hail bypasses this issue is important in its utility beyond defensive measures in a pre-prepared system.


Simon_Jester said:
I mean, even if we choose not to set up mine barriers around a lot of our star systems, we at least owe it to ourselves to understand mines, have good procedures for sweeping them, and be able to design functional, effective mines if we decide we need them.
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UbeOne said:
Our own mines could be from modified torpedoes.
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I'm pretty sure we have good mines. We are actively using them right now too. Canonically, Starfleet was able to develop self-replicating mines eventually, which sounds like a nightmare to fight.
 
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SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
Merely delivering the torpedoes to the target area isn't really sufficient though, especially against active opposition or prepared systems. The Iron Hail system has to at least have some kind of terminal guidance and targeting, and a siege version would have to break through jamming and may not be able to rely on just normal long range sensors. Obviously long range torpedo shots are a thing, heck, those Y'rillian mercenaries tried it on us in the GBZ, but there has to be a reason why they aren't used in normal system sieges. Whether Iron Hail bypasses this issue is important in its utility beyond defensive measures in a pre-prepared system
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Agreed. Long range targeting is going to be the killer here, which is probably why Iron Hail only seems to engage targets already fighting a battle elsewhere in the system. They're probably using the sensors and resources

...Correct me if I'm wrong, but Iron Hail wound up engaging Thuir's task force during this round of the battle, right? And getting stiff-armed by Sarek's SCIENCE!?

Stiff-arm... hm. I'm hoping that's what happened, because Oneiros might appreciate my picture of how that went:

Picture a slim Vulcan woman trying very, very hard to not look smug, with more success than one would normally think possible... but not complete success.

Sarek, to Iron Hail:

"Don't argue."
I'm pretty sure we have good mines. We are actively using them right now too. Canonically, Starfleet was able to develop self-replicating mines eventually, which sounds like a nightmare to fight.
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Well, they were enough to make the Dominion, a polity with two thousand years' starfaring combat experience, go "NOPE NOPE NOPE" until they finally figured out a way to technobabble their way through. :D
 
According to memory alpha, "the range of Federation photon torpedoes was slightly below 300,000 kilometers" in 2367. Which is less than the distance between Earth and Luna.

However, the article also states:

"The propulsion system of the torpedoes is a warp sustainer engine. The engine coils of the torpedo grab and hold a hand-off field from the launcher tube's sequential field induction coils. A miniature matter/antimatter fuel cell adds power to the hand-off field. When launched in warp flight, torpedo will continue to travel at warp, when launched at sublight, torpedo will travel at a high sublight speed, but will not cross the warp threshold."

Implying a clear distinction between photon torps in warp and sublight, so the above 300,000km figure could just be the sublight max range.

Iron Hail probably involves long-range M/AM missiles that are to photon torpedoes like modern ICBMs are to Tomahawks.


As for making Iron Hail a siege weapon... it could be possible that the system requires a very substantial sensor net around the whole system to so accurately hit targets from so far away. That could preclude more offensive use.

Like, maybe even Federation long-range sensors are insufficient to narrow down targets, and starships would have to get into combat range for short-range sensors to lock on for such artillery. And a scheme where you have to split your force to send some into combat range and some to protect the Mobile Iron Hail siege weapon may simply be less effective than replacing that siege weapon with a torpedo boat and sending the whole fleet into combat range.
 
Meanwhile on the Sarek: "The station is trying to broadcast an encrypted datastream on subspace."

"Jam that and keep it nonfunctional. Tactical, coordinate with communications and pinpoint their antenna. I want it destroyed."

And that's how Sarek broke the Iron Hail system without even realizing it was important, because there really isn't anything good that can come from letting your enemies communicate with each other.
 
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Briefvoice said:
Reinforced Outpost 1 - Combat 9, Shield 15, Hull 15 - Crew 1-0-1/2-4-1
Reinforced Outpost 2 - Combat 9, Shield 15, Hull 15 - Crew 1-0-1/2-4-1
Reinforced Station - Combat 5, Shield 7, Hull 9 - Crew 1-0-1/1-2-1
Research Station 1 - Combat 2, Shield 4, Hull 6
Research Station 2 - Combat 2, Shield 4, Hull 6
Research Station 3 - Combat 2, Shield 4, Hull 6
AHS Foresight - Combat 7, Shield 8.00/80, Hull 16.02/20 - Crew 3-4-2/3-4-2
AHS Pierce - Combat 4, Shield 4.00/40, Hull 10.00/10 - Crew 1-2-1/1-2-1
AHS Signifier - Combat 5, Shield 6.00/60, Hull 20.00/20 - Crew 1-2-2/1-2-2
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to be fair, we should in no way have to fight all of this at once. wanting to totally secure orbit does not allow for dense groupings of stations and outposts. the worst we should expect to fight at once is an Outpost and a Research Station next to each other along with the enemy fleet.

still bad, but not nearly so hard to overcome.
 
lbmaian said:
According to memory alpha, "the range of Federation photon torpedoes was slightly below 300,000 kilometers" in 2367. Which is less than the distance between Earth and Luna.

However, the article also states:

"The propulsion system of the torpedoes is a warp sustainer engine. The engine coils of the torpedo grab and hold a hand-off field from the launcher tube's sequential field induction coils. A miniature matter/antimatter fuel cell adds power to the hand-off field. When launched in warp flight, torpedo will continue to travel at warp, when launched at sublight, torpedo will travel at a high sublight speed, but will not cross the warp threshold."

Implying a clear distinction between photon torps in warp and sublight, so the above 300,000km figure could just be the sublight max range.
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Has to be. If you fire a torpedo at TNG-scale Warp Nine (and that was the first thing the Enterprise-D ever did as a combat maneuver, as far as I can recall)... well, the time from launch to detonation at a range of three hundred thousand kilometers is something like a millisecond. If that.

Iron Hail probably involves long-range M/AM missiles that are to photon torpedoes like modern ICBMs are to Tomahawks.
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Very possible. Maybe some kind of two stage missile, with the first stage being built to the same scale as a shuttlecraft and having (like a shuttlecraft) low-warp flight capability... and the second stage basically just being a photon torpedo.

As for making Iron Hail a siege weapon... it could be possible that the system requires a very substantial sensor net around the whole system to so accurately hit targets from so far away. That could preclude more offensive use.
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I'd bet on it.

Night said:
Meanwhile on the Sarek: "The station is trying to broadcast an encrypted datastream on subspace."

"Jam that and keep it nonfunctional. Tactical, coordinate with communications and pinpoint their antenna. I want it destroyed."

And that's how Sarek broke the Iron Hail system without even realizing it was important, because there really isn't anything good that can come from letting your enemies communicate with each other.
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Sarek, to Licori:

"My apologies. I did not realize you were attempting to science me."
 
DarknessSmiles said:
to be fair, we should in no way have to fight all of this at once. wanting to totally secure orbit does not allow for dense groupings of stations and outposts. the worst we should expect to fight at once is an Outpost and a Research Station next to each other along with the enemy fleet.

still bad, but not nearly so hard to overcome.
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I'm pretty sure those stations can all fire torpedoes around the planet's orbit.
 
To be fair, if Iron Hail can launch torpedoes from somewhere around the equivalent of the orbit of Saturn and hit us with targeting data from the local platforms... the platforms on the opposite side of the planet may be able to do the same and 'dog-leg' out to hit us.
 
They're in planetary orbit over a civilization. I'd give good odds there's ground relay stations feeding the entire defense network targeting data in realtime or as close to it as they can get.
 
Maybe, maybe not. It depends on how capable torpedo targeting gear is. It's fairly easy to attack a target where you can lock it right out of the tube with all your targeting data dialed in based on the much more capable sensors of the launch platform. It is quite another thing to go out cold with no lock and successfully acquire and engage a target on your own.

If the torpedoes are not designed for that, then their hit rate would go way down and friendly fire would become a serious possibility. Many of the more hackish methods of fixing the problem, such as distinctively "painting" targets or using some kind of telepresence to help the torpedo guide, are vulnerable to being spoofed or jammed.
 
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2315.Q1.M3.F2 - By Your Twisted Lights Pt 2
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    • By Your Twisted Lights
    Part 2

    "On approach, Captain," announces the helm officer. "Everything nominal."

    Straak nods as he maintains his calm presence in the centre of the bridge. "Very well, Lieutenant."

    "Huh, actually ... not quite nominal, Captain," adds in his First Officer, Commander Straite, who is busy-bodying over the new Chief Science Officer, much as she had since her reassignment from that role.

    The Captain stands up and walks to lean over the railing by the science station. "What do you have, Commander?"

    "I am picking up ... unusual energy waves," explains the Commander, not looking up from her consoles. "The source is unclear, but they appear to be artificial in nature."

    "Excuse me, Captain, there's an urgent message from engineering," interrupts the Andorian at Comms. Straak gives her a brief nod and the ambient sound changes pitch slightly.

    "Bridge here."

    "Captain, are you good folks running any unusual experiments I haven't been told about?" comes the voice of Kanyth ta'Shamand. Kanyth was his Chief Engineer, an Andorian from the wild and woolly glacial highlands of southern Andoria. "Particularly anything that might be touching on particle physics, or subspace induction?"

    "No, Commander, we are not," replies Straak.

    "Then I'd say we've got ourselves a wee anomaly, Captain," says Kanyth.

    -

    Kaylee Straite ducks beneath the mounting for a plasma coolant loop as she makes her way around the third-level catwalk. To her right, the warp core thrums with a sickly note hiding in its normal dulcet tones. "Do you know when it started?" she yells ahead.

    "Not sixty seconds before I reported it," yells back Kanyth. "This great ugly rod is my de facto firstborn, which my kids aren't thrilled about, but they understand. If it starts purring the wrong way, I know."

    "So can we just throttle back on the injection?" asks Kaylee as up ahead Kanyth stops at a panel and begins tapping at controls. A series of clicks precedes the panel partially extending from the wall. He quickly picks begins to set it aside.

    Kanyth looks up from the panel and shakes his head. "No, no, it won't do. See here; it's one of the thirty-six warp core pressure regulators. I'm having to push these things to within an inch of their lives to keep the warp core from breaching right here, right now. The plasma pressure keeps going up, but we're not getting any more power. If we throttle off, I can't give you the juice you'll need." Kanyth pulls the pressure regulator out of the alcove, and begins to work on it.

    "I'm still trying to figure out what the nature of this threat is."

    Kanyth turns, tool in hand, and points at the warp core. "Some wild-eyed mentat has come up with a tool that is letting them change fundamental physical constants within my warp core, that's what's going on."

    Kaylee rubs at her temples. "I'd say that's impossible but, well, welcome to Ixaria."

    "I'm doing everything me and my engineers can think of to keep pace," explains Kanyth, buried in his work again. "But you need to start trying to dampen the effect, because some rotten mentat is tilting the whole table against me."

    "We can't call off the battle..." mutters Kaylee. "I need to find a way to neutralise those energy waves."

    -

    Red Alert klaxons sound throughout main engineering as the bloody light burns through the billows of smoke. Engineers race through the catwalks, frantic as they try to keep their warp core operational. It is not in the face of battle damage, but in the face of an invisible fist that reaches out from the depths of space, twisting the laws of physics itself within their most sacred inner chambers.

    "But Commander, the computer says-"

    "Don't listen to that computer, dammit, Cerkan!" bellows ta'Shamand. "Listen to me, and enter the figures as I told you!"

    "What makes you think the computer is wrong and you're right!?" asks the J.G. in exasperation.

    "Because the Computer is expecting to deal with a Starfleet warp core, and we have just gone and rewritten entire volumes of the Block IV's operating manual. And at the same time, Straite upstairs has had to rewrite the Expanded Vulcan Academy Model of Physics on the fly. Now listen to me and set that injector throughput to point three three seven!"

    "Aye, Commander!"

    Abruptly the sound coming from the warp core goes almost deathly quiet, and Kanyth spins on a heel. "It's stopped! Retract the regulators! Hurry you lazy mammals! Set for regular pressure, now! That pressure is dropping like a rock, we'll drain the EPS conduits dry if we don't hurry!" He strides through the smoke, arms waving, voice thundering like a man possessed. He hammers the intercom button on the main console. "Straite, did you manage the cancel it out entirely!?"

    A voice comes back quickly. "No, we just dumped a torpedo spread into the research station's dorsal cylinder, it looks like whatever was causing the warp core instability was in there!"

    "Alright, well things are looking healthier in here, but you may see a dip in power - some of the stuff we had to do to keep that warp core operation at 150% maximum rated pressure doesn't come undone easily!"

    -

    Admiral Tenokh, the commander of the Ked Paddah forces now in Ixaria, is visibly shaken as he appears on the viewscreen in Commodore Thuir's battle bridge. Thuir has seen the reports. The loss, through destruction or mission-kill, of over half of the Ked Paddah's frigates was a gruesome blow. But despite being down to three frigates, there were still three battleships. With five explorers or capital ships on hand, plus two cruisers, and seven frigates all up, they had the force necessary to break their way into Ixaria orbit, at least as things stood now.

    "Admiral, my condolences for the losses of the Ked Paddah," greets Michel.

    Tenokh lips thin in a sepulchral smile, tight with pain. "Appreciated, Commodore. We were victorious, but I confess that I feel sick at heart at the cost, and asking myself whether this was prudent."

    "There was a general, in the past of my home planet, who once said that nothing but defeat could be half so melancholy as victory," replies Michel. "But what would certainly not be prudent is to tarry. We must take non-essential crews off the crippled ships, leave them behind, and make our next move."

    "Yes, you are right, Commodore," says Tenokh with a nod. "We have destroyed all three targets. The sensor shadow has cleared from the system, and we can see the three House Ixaria ships, plus the non-interstellar auxiliaries. Now e must decide, are the costs associated with assaulting further research stations worth the disadvantage we will suffer assaulting Ixaria Prime orbit? I do not dare divide my forces a second time. I wonder if it would be fool's prudence to attempt to clear all their assets."

    "If we suffer badly at one of the research stations, this whole operation may be for nothing, I agree," says Thuir. "But I'm really not looking forward to facing that orbit with their research bases still operational. However, what we can do, is use the curvature of the planet to our advantage. Get as close as possible to the planet's atmosphere, and isolate either the outpost protecting the capital, or the outpost protecting the shipyard. From there we can swiftly advance to the next outpost as well."

    "We have to move quickly, though. If the Imperial Fleet arrives before we have taken that orbit, we'll need another one of your fleets to join us."

    [ ] Attack Ixaria Orbit
    [ ] Attack Further Research Stations (Maximum of 2)
    -[ ] Attack Ixira's Scalpel
    -[ ] Attack Iron Hail
    -[ ] Attack Iron Dome
    -[ ] Attack High-Intensity Beam

    -

    Crippled:
    KPS Protective, Egillah-class Battleship - 1 O, 2 E, 2 T
    KPS Vigilant, Almud-class Light Frigate - 1 E, 1 T

    Disabled:
    KPS Alert, Orah-class Heavy Frigate - 2 E, 1 T
    KPS Steady, Orah-class Heavy Frigate - 1 E, 1 T

    Destroyed:
    KPS Wary, Orah-class Heavy Frigate - 1 T
    KPS Thoughtful, Orah-class Heavy Frigate - All Hands

    Operational:
    KPS Defender, Aggadah-class Battleship
    KPS Cautious, Aggadah-class Battleship
    KPS Shrewd, Egillah-class Battleship
    KPS Guarded, Orah-class Heavy Frigate
    KPS Foresight, Orah-class Heavy Frigate
    KPS Watchful, Almud-class Light Frigate


    ====================================

    Ixaria System & Known Defences

    Ixaria Star
    - Ordinary G-Type Star
    None

    Ixaria I
    - Rocky, Barren, Uninhabitable
    "Iron Dome" : Research Station in Orbit, capable of giving up to three Arcadian ships x2 L

    Ixaria II
    - Ammonium-Sulphur Atmosphere, Hell Planet, uninhabitable
    Industrial Platforms: Starship Components
    One Station

    Ixaria Prime (3rd Planet)
    - Habitable, Glacial World apart from thin strip of arable land around equator
    Two heavily reinforced Outposts
    Logistics Station, Reinforced
    "Subspace Wavefront System" : Three Research Stations capable of disrupting travel in-system and causing ships to arrive at the wrong destination (Rec-T test for ships to arrive together)
    Shipyard (Ixaria House Yard - 1x750kt)

    -Moon: Lux
    None

    Ixaria IV
    - Rocky, Barren
    "High Intensity Beam" : Research Station capable of giving +2 C to up to three Arcadian ships in system

    Ixaria V
    - Gas Giant, large rings
    In-system Shipyard
    Defensive Station
    "Iron Hail" : Long-Range Torpedo defence system

    -Moon: Muhiit
    - Ocean, partially terraformed, important aquaculture food supply
    Logistics Station, Reinforced
    Trading Station

    Ixaria VI
    - Gas Giant
    Trading Station - Safe harbour of heavy minefield where transports can take shelter

    Ixaria VII
    - Icy Rock Ball
    "Ixira's Scalpel" : Double the S boost to Burnthrough Chance given by the Tech Ship Doctrine to Arcadian ships in-system


    - And of course there are minefields just about everywhere -
     
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    • A couple of questions.

    1. Is there any way to know how long until the Imperial fleet arrives? No long range sensors spotting warp signatures or anything? Best/worst case estimates and probabilities?

    2. Where have the three ships in-system positioned themselves? Are they huddled around Ixaria Prime, or are they deployed to defend research stations?
     
    Briefvoice said:
    1. Is there any way to know how long until the Imperial fleet arrives? No long range sensors spotting warp signatures or anything? Best/worst case estimates and probabilities?
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    Commodore ka'Sharren has parked herself on the direct Gammon=>Ixaria route, so ships cannot come through there uncontested. However, any fleet moving from Morshadd or Gesseria to Ixaria is difficult to identify, and it is always difficult to track warp signatures inside of another entity's claimed space. Worst case, your Underway Intelligence detachments believe you may have only hours of forewarning.

    If pressed for an estimate, they'd rate it between a 25% to a 50% likelihood that reinforcements would arrive before a third set of operations could be mounted. They will almost certainly arrive before a fourth operation could be mounted.

    Briefvoice said:
    2. Where have the three ships in-system positioned themselves? Are they huddled around Ixaria Prime, or are they deployed to defend research stations?
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    Yes, they are in Ixaria Prime orbit now. AHS Foresight is at the shipyard undergoing emergency repairs.
     
    [X] Attack Ixaria Orbit

    Yes, they are in Ixaria Prime orbit now. AHS Foresight is at the shipyard undergoing emergency repairs.
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    This is the deciding factor for me. The Foresight is their Cruiser. If we can hit them while it's still in the shipyard then they'll only have two frigates to benefit from those research stations.

    @OneirosTheWriter to confirm, the 2xL and C+2 benefits from the research stations apply only to ships, right? They can't double the shield strength of their Outposts?
     
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