This topic applies to both TNG and DS9, but more so with DS9 as we see large fleets of starships in DS9 far more than in TNG.

Has it struck anyone else how haphazard and random large fleet formations as shown in Trek are? Back on Earth, there are definite naval formations, such as line ahead, line abreast, carrier-centred and convoy escort. These formations are designed to optimize offense or defense or whatever. We see these scenes in Trek with massive fleets designed to look impressive, but the actual number of ships in position to start shooting when the fighting starts is actually quite small. Most of them have their firing solutions blocked by other ships. Nor do they seem to concentrate their firepower on specific targets (except against solitary Borg cubes) but instead duke it out one on one, except in rare circumstances. In other words, they're not acting as a fleet, but as a jumble of individual ships. And it's not just Starfleet - it's the Klingons, the Romulons, the Cardassians and the Dominion who do this as well (ok, not quite - Klingon Birds-of-Prey seem to attack with some semblence of order, but only when it's only Birds-of-Prey. Throw them in with the heavy cruisers, battlecruisers and battleships and they fight like the rest of them).

If someone had thought of this they might have come up with some interesting formations. Such as a vertical line of starships; it presents as small a target area as possible but maximizes the forward phaser and photon firepower (of course, whoever designed these ships with only forward and aft firing torp tubes should be shot as most battles involving multiple ships on each side will be side-to-side rather than nose-to-nose battles, but I digress). So in a real fleet encounter you'd have several squadrons of ships in such formation working together, coming and going in "waves" (I'm thinking with Starfleet ships in mind, but the same should apply to the others as well). One wave approaches the target, firing full phasers and photons on the way in with forward shields fully energized, turns away or passes the target, firing lateral phasers and then heads out with a several volleys of torpedoes to cover their retreat and the next wave's approach, and so on. Of course if both sides did this then you'd actually have quite a dynamic battle on your hands, where strategy and tactics would be just as important as brute firepower.

Admiral, I suspect that the intent of the "duke it out one on one" is to simulate aerial dogfights rather than naval battles.

Dogfights work well with for fighters, Birds of Prey, and Defiant-class ships, but not so well for huge warships. For comparison, see Return of the Jedi, where we see one or two shots of cruisers side-by-side firing at each other while fighters zip around. (And the Imperials are in a nice formation.)

I must confess I've never seen a well-organized fleet battle on Star Trek. It'd be a nice thing to see in Star Trek 10.

Maybe...but I'd rather watch Star Trek : The Motion Picture than any of the Star Wars movies. Talk about...BOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGG.

Hm, I like the subject of battle tactics and have actualy thought about this myself. If I may make a suggestion, Admiral. I like your idea of a verticle line. I would take a moment to adjust the idea into a verticle X. But, as we are dealing with space, the X would not be flat. From the side it would look like this >. If the word "this" is the enemy, otherwise it would point the other way. The smaller ships such as Birds of Prey ,Defiant class ships and others that could engage in dog fights would be positioned on the extremities of the X. The ships would get larger towards the cross or the back of the formation. This would allow the formation to engage the enemy on four fronts while moving in to surround them.

I have a better question. All the time in DS9 we hear mention of "enemy lines". While this makes sense in a 2-dimensional plane like on a planet, how is this to make sense in space? And surely with space as large as it is and ships as fast as they are, breaking through an enemy "line" should be quite simple. These battles certainly don't look like they're taking place over a very wide area, relatively speaking.

With Space so vast and empty, there would only be strategic points (Planets, nebulae, etc.). Fighting would be like early Naval battles (only in three dimensions, not two), where you could only force an enemy to engage if you were both faster and more powerful, or you had him backed up against the shoreline or bottled in a harbor. Otherwise if he didn't wish to fight,he would just sail away. You could persue, but you couldn't be sure he wasn't leading you into a trap.

Borders like the Romulan Neutral Zone could only exist during peace time, or at worst "cold war." "Enemy lines" during wartime would be restricted to defensive grids around important targets.

Picard's sensor grid along the Klingon-Romulan border during the Klingon Civil War could only work if there was some compelling reason why the Romulans could only use a narow corridor along the border to infiltrate. It would not have been hard to invent some techno-babble reason for this, but without one, it should probably be considered a nit.

Of course today in navel battles and fighter jet dogfighting they can fight while to far away to see oneanother visualy. In space with beam wepons like phasers the same would be true but it looks more visualy interesting for them to be in frame at the same time.

Personal comments deleted!

Anita,

Nice idea! I only just floated a suggestion - pretty much anything would be better than what we've seen. Anyway, you'd have to make sure that the firing arcs weren't restricted too much for the inner ships in your "bent X" formation. The only other point is that the 4 point ships would bear the brunt of the enemy fire and therefore should really be much heavier.


When speaking of "lines", are you refering to an actual line? I had the impression that in Trek when they refer to lines in this context it's more like a plane in space. Just that refering to "enemy planes" doesn't sound very good.

It's kind of an interesting problem of how one would implement borders in space. For instance, would you be able to claim the space between two of your systems as your own "space" or would it be more like the open sea on Earth. Star Trek seems to tend toward the former whereas B5 tends to the latter from what I can tell. In "reality", you'd probably have something between the two, with control becoming more tenuous the farther out from a system you get (kind of like in the North African desert, for example). If you controlled two or three adjacent inhabited star sytems then you'd probably be able to control the space between them, but if they were separated by many uninhabited/uninhabitable star systems that would not be so easy simply because of a lack of resources (both in ships/bases/equipment and manpower).
In many ways we've got no basis to conclude which way it would go... if Earth were a planet of many islands (like the size of Britain or Ireland or Iceland or those of Indonesia, for example) and few if any continents we'd have a far better historical precedent for postulating what would happen in space...

Good point, Admiral. Four heavier lead ships at the tips would be good.
There is another advantage of the "bent X" formation. If it is impossible to surround the enemy due to sheer size of the the target fleet, the X can be used as a claw that could sever the target fleet at a strategic point, breaking it down into managable units. Picture the enemy scattering to fight on four fronts.
There is a reason I thought perhaps smaller, more manouverable vessels would be good at the tips. My plan is to draw the enemies heavier battle cruisers into the X where they would engage ours. Meanwhile, the more manouverable ships are positioned above, below, port and stern where they have a far better surface area to target, this being in three dimensions of space. However, one of these days Starfleets enemies (and Starfleet itself) will discover the third dimension.
That's actually how I thought this thing up. My biggest pet peeve with Star Trek has always been the fighting on one plane thing. Even one on one, how many times do ships meet their foes head on or side to side? There is no up in space, yet ships are consistently meeting in the same orientation. I'm hoping they might actually show three or four ships surrounding the Enterprise heads up, heads down, "upside down" in the new movie, as this also applies to peace time rendezvous in space.

The orientation in space used to be a pet peeve of mine as well, but I just gave up worrying about it. It's not like Star Trek is the only sci-fi show to do this either - Star Wars does it, B5, and Battlestar Galactica (love that name Galactica), among others. They obviously do this for visual effect. I just assume that when one ship meets another the latter just adjusts its orientation to that of the one it's encountering. The writers of Star Trek (or someone) are aware of the third dimension as the course bearings they specify are in 3 dimensions.

There's probably no great advantage in fighting in different orientations as most Star Trek ships (of all powers) seem to have a fairly balanced dorsal and ventral weapons distribution (unlike the Star Destroyers in SW for example) even if the dorsal and ventral surfaces are quite different to each other. If anything, the complete lack of upper/lower balance (especially on Starfleet ships - the Defiant being an exception) is more of a pet peeve than orientation, for me at least...

Actully the "dogfight" doesn't exist. It never really did after WWI. A single plane is just too easy to pick off. Stratagies like "The Thatch Weave" proved that. Thats why fighters have "wingmen." Hmm, actually the Thatch Weave would still be perfectly viable in the Star Trek universe. MUCH better then this Attack pattern Delta thing that keeps failing over and over.
I can think of MANY advantages to choosing to fight in different orientations. FAR too many to list here.
I have no problem, per say, with a ship having only aft and forward photon tubes. As we saw in ST:VI these things are homing.

My point about the photon torpedo tubes is not so much when the ship is by itself, but if it's in line or formation with other ships where firing torpedoes has the risk of hitting friendly ships (or requiring 90 degree turns after firing). I don't suggest replacing them, just adding in more tubes on the sides. As a sort of comparison, the alignment of missile and torpedo launchers on warships today (and indeed, far into the past as well, when one considers the alignment of ships' guns) is to the side.

As for different orientations in battle, I don't see how this is of much use for the larger ships that employ energy weapons. These things dot the hull to provide all around coverage anyway so changing the orientation doesn't serve much of a purpose, unless it were to bring more emitters to bear on the target (which is possible). In the show, I seldom see the Enterprise or any other ship employ anything other than the "usual" emitters (dorsal and ventral saucer emitters for the Enterprise, the "beak" emitter for the Warbird, etc). An exception to that was in BoBW where the Enterprise was actually firing from its nacelle pylon emitters. However, given that the amount of power available for phasers is finite at any given time, firing from multiple emitters would presumably decrease the power available to any one emitter. This is unlike, say, the SDs of Star Wars where the cannons seem to have their own power supply.

Of course none of the above apply to ships like the Defiant or the Klingon Birds-of-Prey, whose weapons are more-or-less fixed in a forward firing position.


I can however see one big benefit from altering orientation - it might serve to minimize the target area presented to the enemy. I'm just not sure how much of a practical benefit this is when it comes to computer-guided weapons.

"it might serve to minimize the target area presented to the enemy."

-- this is the key. Notice that all the ships we've seen have their smallest profile at the front, so that when you're pointed at something they're least likely to be able to hit you. As for computer-guided weapons, I'd like to know where these are considering all the missed shots we see of the Defiant etc.