- The Akira is really like a strike ship, however, only in the way that it has the potential for an overwhelming torpedo strike.

- Federation troop ships are actualy canon, in DS9 they were mentioned as carrying Federation troops. It's also true that there don't seem to be any unarmed vessels either, even the cargo ships in Enterprise are well armed for their tech level. A troop ship should definatly have phasers for defense against light warships, not necesarly any torpedoes, and to offer ground support if they can spare the time. Keep in mind that real Star Trek ground battles can consist of hundreds of thousands of ground personel on either side.

- Planetary shields seem to be what were intended in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. In TOS there is also a planetary shield around an insain asylum, although with artificial gravity and no image of the horizon, there is no telling how large the planetary body was. In later Treks, a few large shields were seen around asteroids or instalations, and in DS9, the damage of San Fransisco is indicitive of a theater shield, indicating that cities, towns, and important instalations are protected by non-planet size shields. Also ground batteries are mentioned, as well as the Cardasians being seen to have an orbital defense platform system, and Betazed was mentioned as having an outmoded defense network of somesort.

It stands to reason that "Theater Shields" should be a buildable option for system (systems will still be managed as a whole, instead of indivigual planets still, right?), as should "Ground Batteries" that would consist of extremely heavy ground based phasers and torpedo launchers with their own shields. Any space station should act like an orbital defense grid but not have the same coverage. An actual "Orbital Defense Grid", which would consist of orbital defense stations, should be buildable for a system. It just so happens I designed some only a few weeks ago.

I have top views of the larger stations in another image for the purpose of modeling.

And here is the argument for their size.
http://www.scifi-meshes.com/forums/show ... ostcount=4

I seriously never imagined the defense stations to be that big! I'd never have been able to work out the relative sizes like that either, MajorDiarr - you must be a genius! (The Star Empire could use people like you...)

I never even noticed the torpedo launchers before - they are most definitely the same as the ones used on DS9.

I always imagined the shields to be exactly as SOM stated - they are not intended to protect an entire planet, because this would be massively costly in energy - something that would be hard to get in times of war - and it would be wasteful. Why employ a massive shield generator to cover an entire planet, when you can employ a smaller one that can just protect the important areas? (Like a city)

Smaller shields would actually be more powerful, because the energy is spread less thinly. Shield power is decreased by the area covered, afterall. This also explains why starships have several shield grids.

MajorDiarr, i'd let Jigaly know that you have come up with such orbital stations - he might be intrested by you ideas. They could well make it into the game, if you are lucky.

...

Right then, I agree that there shouldn't be Strike Cruisers in the game either. We opened up a thread about naming ships, in there I put up a list about actual naval classes of ship. Several of those are actually more suitable as classes of ship, than a Strike Cruiser would be, anyway.

...

SonOfMogh is the authority on the Klingons. He is our resident Klingon afterall. What he says should have some merit. I do however believe the Klingons could have some small weapons research bonus. The increased XP is also a must for them, and it could also be applied (To a lesser extent) to the Jem'Hadar as well. They are bred for battle, afterall.

...

I attempted to mod my own troop transport to have weapons in BOTF, but it didn't turn out very well. I think there was a problem with the accuracy and defence ratings. Anyway, I certainly think that they should have a few low-powered phasers, but no torpedoes. (Except maybe the Klingons one)

As mentioned before, we have seen in Enterprise a few cargo ships that are quite heavily armed, considering they tech level. These weapons did have several drawbacks, however, because they were a big drain on energy, and they had a relatively small firing arc. Perhaps similar limitations could be put on them, if people are worried they would be too powerful?

I also agree that they should have an above-average armour rating. Ships that have to go down to a Planetary surface whilst under fire need to be strong, to be able to actually get their troops down in the first place.

Their shields should also be respectable, but they shouldn't be able to take punishment from anything bigger than a Destroyer though.

There then, that's my catching up done in a single post. 17,000-word essays on how to make a sandwich safely is not a pleasant way to spend your time!

Those are interesting ideas for the orbital platforms Diarr. I read your explantation for why they are so big, but they still seem too big. Nice big target... if a ship could make it to it to fire, that is.

I agree with the thought that their should be no true 'Strike' cruiser, but that doesnt mean that their should be no ships that should boast a large ammount of trops and the tubes to fire them. I dont know if there is anywhere that has TRUE cannon stats for the Akira, but from everything I've heard about it, it is essentially a 'torpedo boat'. If we go with these stats for the construction of the Akira, then there should be some other ships in other empires lineups that could also be designed with a high torp load in mind.

And as far as the cargo/troop tranport ships, I agree with what matress said. They should be able to defend themselves, but even a group of these ships should not be able to defend against anything bigger than a destroyer, without some kind of backup.

I heard the Akira was pretty much a 'torpedo boat' as well. It certainly has many tubes. I heard that the Akira has at least nine tubes in the roll-bar pod alone!

It also has sideways-facing tubes - I heard that this is a relatively rare configuration in Starfleet vessels, but it allows the Akira to keep firing whilst maneouvering, increasing their combat effectiveness considerably.

For the Romulans, the only ship that I can think of as a torpedo boat, would be the D'deridex - bit of a size advantage there.

By my count the Akira has 12 to 15 tubes in the role bar pod, four to eight side tubes, and 1 to 4 under the saucer. The Saber Class also have side firing torpedo tubes, in First Contact you can this.

Both of these classes of ship are relatively 'new'.

Perhaps this shows a change in the Federation's design philosophies? It was likely a decision made to increase the combat capability of those ships, like I said about the Akira.

In my opinion a really defended starbase is obviously capable of having greater range firestrikes than the opponent's ships. Just think of DS9's fight against the whole klingon fleet (DS9[4]: Way of the warrior).

The Combat System is going to be totally new, 100% built from scratch by Gavin.

He isn't even going to release it to the testers until he is satisfied that there aren't any major problems with it.

This means that any problems will likely/hopefully be tiny, unoticable things.

The combat will be far better than in BOTF, and you'll be able to get your ships to fly in formations, perform tactical maneovers, etc. Hell, the Prometheus even has multi-vector assault mode!

You will have far more control over the ships, so I don't think people will be dissappointed.

...

As for the Akira, I have the box for Armada 1 in front of me. Whilst this obviously isn't canon, I can see at least 8 torpedo launchers on the pod, and possibly another two, but it is harder to tell exactly what these two things are.

I can also see at least 6 rear or side-facing launchers on the saucer section.

I can't even see the front or underneath of the ship, so I assume there are even more of them than that!

I know this again isn't a canon source, but there are also Micro-Photons. These are smaller-than-normal Photon torpedoes, designed to be fitted onto small craft like Runabouts and Scout vessels.

Obviously, they do far less damage and aren't as accurate as normal Photons, but they represent the possibility that Torpedo technology could be shrunk down.

I also imagine that having all the torpedo launchers in the same place would be very efficient. You wouldn't need to have separate storage facilities for each launcher, and they might even run off the same power supplies etc.

This would mean that you actually save on space, making multiple launchers a possibility.

We also know the Federation has changed it's design philosophy during/since the Dominion War. They build ships with far greater offensive/defensive capability than they did - and when you think about it, even the Enterprise-D only used her torpedoes for defensive reasons or otherwise.

Her systems weren't effectively designed to be used in large-scale wars and battle, since there hadn't been any large-scale wars and battles in 70 years. There wouldn't have been a sense of a real need for this.

By the time you get to the Akira though, ships that can fire weapons in many directions as fast as possible whilst performing evasive/tactical maneovers would be invaluble to the Federation. This is why I imagine the Akira would have many weapons.

Since I totally agree with you Matress I even remember to have read something about pulse-firing micro-tubes on the akira. I'm really looking forward to seeing what gavin's TBS has for us

Edit: When warping out... will Intrepids put their nacelles up? I mean... if we have the multi-vector mode...

I think you're being pretty unfair to Matress's post Mark - He highlighted advantages for all races and you've conveniently left out those advantages when talking about how the Federationw ill beat them.

The technology bonus isn't going to be so great when the Romulans/Cardies blow up your research labs and steal your data and the Prometheus isn't going to be wildly imbalanced otherwise it really would screw up gameplay. One of the massive advantages to this game is that it's being made by true fans who know how finely balanced things need to be to satisfy everyone.

There will certainly be limitations to the Federation to stop them being all powerful - Their intel isn't great, their morale is a pain, they can't build as fast as the Dominion and they're not going to be as good in combat as the Klingons.

The different characteristics of the races are important but no one said we were reducing Klingon technology or intel to nothing. All the empires have people behind the scenes working on routine things but the emphasis will be on something different for each race.