Federation Fleet Composition

[Captain Seafort]

No, It's Mark's mod green, he likes puke green for some reason...

I'd have thought you would like it - it's an identical shade to your av.

[Nickswitz]

Haha, Why yes it does, and I hate it, I'm gonna get into the DS9 avs now...

[Mark]

I'm a green lantern fan....gimme a break.

[Vic]

Uh-huh......which Green Lantern?

[Mark]

Hal Jordan of course.

[Tholian_Avenger]

2) you concentrate too much on the concept of a single knock-out blow and the defence of your core worlds (assuming thats what the 2nd Fleet is for). You instead need to consider the extension of you fighting forces along the entire line, and to assign considerable reserve forces to the 2nd echelon support of your offensive thrust(s), countering a potential enemy breakthrough at any point along the line, and to escort supply convoys from your industrial base to the front.

I have been thinking about this for a while.

My inclination is that the Sabre is a very efficient weapon, I know you have your doubts about Starfleet's aggressiveness but for deploying a combat fleet, I think it would be appropriate to include it. I also feel the same way about a counterstrike package. I like Deepcrush's use of raiders, though, I would use a strike group of Lakotas instead of New Orleans raiders and have them begin warfare. I accept that they will be fighting against military targets only (even if they might introduce Tribbles into Klingon farm worlds). I used a sparing amount of new ships and tried to keep to smaller ones for economy. Has this corrected some of the defense gaps?

Thinking to securing the space lanes I envisioned a general force of 60 ships:
20 Novas
40 Sabres

A rear guard, or something akin to the last line of 75 ships:
5 Galaxies
30 Akiras
10 Lakota Excelsiors
30 Nebula

A mobile heavy reserve of 86 ships:
20 Galaxies
26 Nebulas
40 Akiras

2 direct reserves, each one covering two and a half Screening Groups consisting of a total of 114 ships:
2 Nebula
5 Ambassadors
21 Novas
9 Intrepids
20 Sabres

A Counterstrike group of 25 Lakota Excelsiors.

5 Independently operating Galaxies. Here I am even thinking again to reconnaissance but it is just as well to have these random actors checking out the area.

And 5 Screening Groups of 27 ships for an entirety of 135 ships:
1 Lakota Excelsior
2 Nebulas
2 Ambassadors
8 New Orleanses
2 Intrepids
10 Sabres
2 Novas

30 Galaxies, 70 Nebulas, 20 Ambassadors, 40 Lakota Excelsiors, 70 Akiras, 40 New Orleanses, 72 Novas, 28 Intrepids, and 130 Sabres for a total of 500 ships.

If a spat of fighting had broke out, I can see where the Counterstrike Group would be very effective, but if this was a planned invasion, I can only see them rushing into a prepared territory and wrecking as much havoc as they could before being overwhelmed. Again I am thinking to a MAD raid. Due to the distance I imagine this would only be on mid range colonies at most.

*edit I added a 2nd tier reserve that I left out in this post.

[BigJKU316]

Your plan is riddled with issues.

1. The worst of which is the inclusion of the Nova in any sort of fighting fleet. Simply put every time you stick it with a group you drag that groups speed way, way down because the Novas are slow. You reduce the amount of space you can cover by a ton for no appreciable gain in any category. This is like making up a US Navy Carrier Battle Group and including a Coast Guard cutter. It makes no sense. Throw them all out.

2. You sound like you are dispersing everything in packets all over the place. That makes no real sesne. Particularly just having 5 Galaxy class ships roaming about by themselves. You want to concentrate your forces, not spread them out.

3. The screening group idea is solid enough but what in the world is with the mix of ships? Why teather you ultra fast Intrepids to the more pokey ships in the group (even excluding the Nova from that the rest of the ships are comparatively quite slow). This is a horribly inefficient plan.

4. If heavy fighting broke out why would you just throw away 25 ships like that for no real reason?


You are far better off, depending on how much space you have to cover, concentrating all your heavy and slower ships in one or two large groups and using just a handful of Intrepid types as scouts to figure out where the enemy is coming from and where he is going.

[Mark]

Can the Nova class (or any science ship really) add anything to a military fleet? Trek doesn't seem to use much in the way of ECM, (that being the only thing I can really imagine a science ship used for in a battle fleet).

Going STRICTLY by the DITL numbers, you could pull the Nova's and replace them with Nebulas or Galaxys at a rate of three to one or even four to one. Science ships strike me as cannon fodder.....................................but I've always held that notion

[BigJKU316]

Can the Nova class (or any science ship really) add anything to a military fleet? Trek doesn't seem to use much in the way of ECM, (that being the only thing I can really imagine a science ship used for in a battle fleet).

Going STRICTLY by the DITL numbers, you could pull the Nova's and replace them with Nebulas or Galaxys at a rate of three to one or even four to one. Science ships strike me as cannon fodder.....................................but I've always held that notion

None at all. The speed of the Nova's should tell you exactly what they are for which is basically freeing up bigger ships to do more important stuff. I always figured things kind of happened like this.

During the TOS movies it seemed like they basically expected a war with the Klingon's to happen at any point. Because of that they had built the Oberth ships to basically do all the science crap that had to be done but for which you did not wish to detach a major line unit for a long duration.

Starfleet then sort of stopped doing that during a long era of peace because there was really nothing stopping them from just using the bigger ships, which lets face it are a lot more comfortable to sit around for a month watching a pulsar or some such nonsense in than a tiny, no frills science ship.

The emergence of the Dominion threat, the Borg and the re-awakening of the Romulan's in the 2360's forced them to re-evaluate and they put the Nova together basically to do all those pesky little jobs you can't spare a real ship for but need to have done.

[McAvoy]

Can the Nova class (or any science ship really) add anything to a military fleet? Trek doesn't seem to use much in the way of ECM, (that being the only thing I can really imagine a science ship used for in a battle fleet).

Going STRICTLY by the DITL numbers, you could pull the Nova's and replace them with Nebulas or Galaxys at a rate of three to one or even four to one. Science ships strike me as cannon fodder.....................................but I've always held that notion

None at all. The speed of the Nova's should tell you exactly what they are for which is basically freeing up bigger ships to do more important stuff. I always figured things kind of happened like this.

During the TOS movies it seemed like they basically expected a war with the Klingon's to happen at any point. Because of that they had built the Oberth ships to basically do all the science crap that had to be done but for which you did not wish to detach a major line unit for a long duration.

Starfleet then sort of stopped doing that during a long era of peace because there was really nothing stopping them from just using the bigger ships, which lets face it are a lot more comfortable to sit around for a month watching a pulsar or some such nonsense in than a tiny, no frills science ship.

The emergence of the Dominion threat, the Borg and the re-awakening of the Romulan's in the 2360's forced them to re-evaluate and they put the Nova together basically to do all those pesky little jobs you can't spare a real ship for but need to have done.

Makes sense. Though historically, navies of the world has always had economical ships within their fleet do certain jobs. The US Coast Guard ships is a good example. You don't want to use for example a battleship to do a USCG job. Overkill.

OAlso, the Oberths and the Novas to me seemed to fit well in the Federation's mission of exploration.

[Tholian_Avenger]

2. You sound like you are dispersing everything in packets all over the place. That makes no real sesne. Particularly just having 5 Galaxy class ships roaming about by themselves. You want to concentrate your forces, not spread them out.

I took heed of the Defense In Depth suggestion and made a cone pointing back to the Base:
Screening Forces impeding areas of the frontier, a Reserve at a distance to react to an incursion (bringing a concentration of forces), a Mobile Reserve countering a potential enemy breakthrough at any point along the line, Rear Area Defense (sneak attack), Base Defense, and Novas to escort supply convoys from the industrial base to the front. The roaming Galaxies provide more mobility to the set up and can supply a high level of ability to anything nearby instead of having to dispatch from a staging area.

4. If heavy fighting broke out why would you just throw away 25 ships like that for no real reason?

Discretion could be used by the Admiral, but wouldn't an immediate counteraction temporarily stammer the enemy's opertaional tempo (momentum?) to allow further mobilization by SF?

Why teather you ultra fast Intrepids to the more pokey ships

concentrating all your heavy and slower ships in one or two large groups and using just a handful of Intrepid types as scouts to figure out where the enemy is coming from and where he is going.

The idea was to have a combination of abilities: current ECM (I can hope at least), a robust anvil, a hammer, a racehorse, and a cloud of hornets. By DITL, if it were kept to Nebulas, Galaxies, Akiras, and Intrepids, a force could gain a light year of range in a 12 hour death race (sans Nova) though.

[BigJKU316]

A force should pick one or two ways to fight and stick to it. Trying to be all things is a recipe for disaster.

[McAvoy]

Why do you say that. Off of the top of my head, I can't think of anything in history at least in Naval history.

It seems that your fleet is based on being the inferior fleet going against the superior.

[BigJKU316]

Why do you say that. Off of the top of my head, I can't think of anything in history at least in Naval history.

It seems that your fleet is based on being the inferior fleet going against the superior.

Well Fleets and Military Forces in general are always designed around the way they wish to fight. Specifically you hardly ever see a fleet really built to fight in exact opposite manners (specifically refering to his idea of having a heavy anvil and a swarm of hornets). Those two ideas basically necessitate two totally different force structures, a totally different way of training your operators and a totally different way of planning. They really just don't go together.

[McAvoy]

The French did in the late 19th century. In response of no hope matching the British fleet ship for ship, they went to the torpedo boat where swarms would wittle down the fleet and then the main body of the French fleet would mop up. Of course the idea was bad because early torpedo boats were not thar seaworthy where they would find the fleet. Battleships also carried lighter and numerous weapons to counter the torpedo boats. Also the introduction of the torpedo boat destroyer pretty killed the idea off. The French also played with the idea of the armored cruiser which were basically pre-dreadnought versions of the battlecruiser but without battleship armament. In the end the French gave up the idea.

Every country in the beginning tries to build a swarm of these inexpensive weapons to sink another nations capital ships. The only reason why they never seriously suceee because of a single focus of sinking those ships which is a defensive posture.

The best kind of fleet at leas is a fleet with more or less common cruising speed with capital ships screened by lesser but nimble fleet with perhaps a few strike wings.