Star Wars has the most uninteresting selection of blobs with wings that are all trying to look like high-tech carrier aircraft. At least Macross was honest in ripping off the F-14 Tomcat and Thunderbirds in ripping off the BAC Lightning. Each Star Wars blob has an inspiration aircraft. TIE fighters are based on the Heinkel He111 and B-29 bomber cockpits with wings stuck on and so on.

Star Trek actually developed its own ship design architechure. From a technobabble viewpoint it makes design sense and Star Wars spent decades trying to catch up. On NCC-1701 The Saucer is the crew section, the body is support functions and the pods are the main power engines. Those silly little wings on Klingon ships are for weaponry and for looks as they are designed to look like birds like the original Romulan ships. Also the original design of the Bird of Prey was supposed to enter atmospheres and land. Everything has an explantion if you bother to look for it. As Kirk said "There's a reason why things work the way they do on a star ship."

As for the fighters in Star Trek they're diversionary and are more akin to corvettes and sloops. Star Trek battles are based on a mix of sailing war ships and military aircraft. You want to see where all this comes from just watch some classic military aviation movies. Want to see where all the Star Wars Imperial fleet stuff came from? Watch Tora, Tora, Tora, Zero and I bombed Pearl Harbor When the Japanese admiral shows up in the navy blue (nearly black) uniform just imagine Yamamoto in a mask and breathing heavy.




TIE fighter



B-29



Star Destroyer



Imperial Japanese Navy.

UUUUUUuuuugghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

I just had a wargasm... O_O


Heh, this recent Yamato movie poster is very like something from Star Wars.



One unfortunate thing about Star Trek ships is that they're (mainly the federation ones) covered with big pretty coloured light panels that make them look a bit like cheap toys.

I've seen bits of the Yamato movie. They built the entire center AA gun superstructure for the movie and there are brutally realistic battle scenes especially when all those Avengers and Helldivers and Hellcats blow the piss out of her. Real and CGI aircraft were used. For me that beats all heck out of all those silly Star Wars Blobs flying around.

They pretty much built most of it except for the tower, the guns on the forward turret and the back half... oh, and not much detail on one side. It was a massive set!
Wish I could've seen it!

ozoneocean
But you probably wouldn't rely an radar anyway, it's too slow and far too short range for the sorts of massive distances in space. For active sensing tech you want something faster like laser, which is optical and if you can see that target with your eyes... not jammed.

Short Range I'll give ya due to Inverse square law, but SLOW?!

Dude You might wanna brush up on what RADAR is. RADAR stands for RAdio Detection And Ranging. Radio waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation. It is also, more specifically, a form of LIGHT, so it travels at the speed of light and thus at the same speed as that LASER (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) you said was faster.

And just to add fuel to the fire I give you this . And more specifically, this !

So New Topic, Between a Star Destroyer, A Galaxy Class, a Homeworld Battle-cruiser (Pick any of them, They just about the same), and the Orion Battle ship concept, who'd win? (Assume we're in the real world and anything that is not allowed under the current laws of physics is not allowed)

Ready, set, ...




Oh and the last topic is a draw, Neither Darth Vader or James T. Kirk is the bigger badass. :(

Salsa
Short Range I'll give ya due to Inverse square law, but SLOW?!

I was thinking in terms of range and traditional equipment. You're right though :)
But other targeting tech is harder to jam than Radar...
And both "Laser and Radar" are words in their own right now. Have been for some time. Don't need to capitalise, not since the 1940s or something. ^_^

----------------
Um... the links you've given don't have any info on those craft. One is general news about the game project, and the other is just pics.

So... you'd have to say that the Star Destroyer is the clear winner, since it's the only one we all know about.

ozoneocean
So... you'd have to say that the Star Destroyer is the clear winner, since it's the only one we all know about.

No a thousand times no, Galaxy Class Star ship. (That's Enterprise-D) With the weapons beef-up done for the Borg and then Jem Hadar they are really badass dreadnaughts.

Nah, it's that damn fine ship USS Defiant!



Defiant is also the only one to have actual built in armor (ablat armor) We all know that one good shot at the bridge of a Star Destroyer and all control is gone and it will crash into the nearest Death Star.

bravo1102
No a thousand times no, Galaxy Class Star ship. (That's Enterprise-D) With the weapons beef-up done for the Borg and then Jem Hadar they are really badass dreadnaughts.

Well I didn't see that he included the Star Trek ships. :P

Yeah, well, Star Wars ships are made with primitive close range fighter tactics in mind.. I have no idea about the other ones salsa talks about... so yeah, Star Trek then.
But even those fight fairly close range... at least in the TV shows.
---------------------------------------------

Thinking seriously about space combat, to me it seems logical that the main crucial factors are the range, speed, and power of both your sensors and your weapons.
-how far out you can detect something, how long it takes that info to get back to you before it's changed its position, and how fast your shots can travel out to that spot while it's still there.

How easy IS it to see something out there? A LOT harder than it is an any SciFi show on TV since warships wouldn't be likely to have any windows letting out light randomly in all directions, big silly coloured light panels all over like in Star Trek, or have their sides constantly painted in full sun glare from whatever angle you look at them, like they are in all TV shows and all movies.
In a solar system of course they'd reflect the sun from one side, while the other would be just black, and they'd take care to stop that reflecting as much star-shine, secondary sun reflection (from planets, asteroids etc) and cosmic rays as possible. The only other thing is their energy emissions from their propulsion... which they'd probably always take care to keep facing away from the direction they believe their enemies are in... and perhaps try and make that look like cosmic rays or some other natural phenomena.

So how do you see them? Radar is fool-able in many, many ways and not so good at ultra long range. Light reflection isn't so great if you're not inside a solar system at the time. If you use lasers they're absolutely linear and directional so it's pretty hard... and may help them find you. So ...? Looking out for things that block out the expected background vista?

In any case, seeing something and the ability to hit it once you do seem most important.
Who out of the tships Salsa talks about excels in those characteristics?

Sorry about that, Oz.

Homeworld Cruisers:

BAttle crusier 1
BAttle crusier 2
BAttle crusier 3
BAttle crusier 4


This link has some images for the Orion Spacecraft. If you want more look here , here , here , and here .

There's also an index for the whole site to the right, that should have everything you need. And one more think just to make this clear .

If it's Unobtanium they can use it. If it's handwavium, or just a string of technobabble, then they can't

That means No hyperspace, no transporters, no sound, and no artificial gravity.

That Hiigaran Battlecruiser is sexy ^_^

Without artificial gravity manipulation all these ships fail.

-They'd all have to change shape to be round or something, stacked tiers of decks would be crazy in micro gravity, especially with the propulsion and manoeuvring. o_O

-Without the made up concept of "inertial dampening" these giant spacecraft would be limited to amazingly slow acceleration rates (considering the distances in space), and ANY sudden manoeuvres would be completely out of the question.

ozoneocean
That Hiigaran Battlecruiser is sexy ^_^

Without artificial gravity manipulation all these ships fail.

-They'd all have to change shape to be round or something, stacked tiers of decks would be crazy in micro gravity, especially with the propulsion and manoeuvring. o_O

-Without the made up concept of "inertial dampening" these giant spacecraft would be limited to amazingly slow acceleration rates (considering the distances in space), and ANY sudden manoeuvres would be completely out of the question.

Actually, the Orion concept still works, and has the advantage of having nuke resistant armor at the back.

Oh and I agree about the Hiigaran Battlecruiser, it is very smexy.

Gunner's Creed: If I can see it I will fire at it. If I can fire at it it will be destroyed.

However all vehicles used thus far have had running lights. A theoretical space ship would need something to broadcast it's presence to other ships so they wouldn't run into each other. To use an example night bombers in World War II had formation lights so other planes wouldn't run into them. (Subdued lights in the wings and tail) Night fighters weren't always able to track in on them for various reasons.

In Star Trek the running lights exist for this reason and they're not subdued because without cloaking technology any ship would always be seen every time so there's no reason to visually hide the ship. It is similar to natural metal military aircraft of late World War II to the 1970s. There was no way to hide the plane from radar so why hide the plane at all. The planes supposedly move too fast for the eye to track anyway but you always had something that could track it so hiding it was superfluous.

Except we learned you could still hide stuff just using paint. But you still needed formation lights. Why do all those helicopters keep crashing at night? No lights and poor nightvision.

So Star Trek is safe not sorry. Star Fleet ships used to be painted overall Grey (Classic TV series) Starting in ST:The Motion Picture ships were no longer painted and left in their natural multi hued metal alloy "aztec" scheme. You build models of these things you find this stuff out. Duralinium basically looks white and light blue from a distance.