> > I think that starship combat must be more
> similar to naval than arial warfare, but the Star
> Trek directors seem to continually disagree
> with me on that one. Oh well.
>
> I think it would be sort of a melding of the two,
> but with more similarities to air combat. I play
> (well, used to play; I hardly ever have the time
> anymore) a Trek-based game called Star
> Fleet Battles. If you've ever heard of the PC
> game Starfleet Command, that game was
> based on SFB. Anyway, the ships in SFB are
> designed a lot like fighter planes in that most
> of their weaponry is forward-facing and they're
> designed to fight that way. Quite unlike naval
> combat with the weapons facing out the sides.
>
> The designers of the game once decided they
> wanted to experiment with a traditional naval
> design for a starship, and came up with a
> boat-shaped ship that had the majority of it's
> weaponry facing out either side. It wasn't very
> popular.
>
> In naval warfare, combat is basicly restricted
> to a 2-dimensional plane, the surface of the
> ocean. Submarines being an exception of
> course. Combat in outer space seems like it'd
> be more like aerial combat, with 3 dimensions
> to move around in. However, because of the
> size of the ships and the great distances
> involved, a space battle would in that way
> resemble naval combat. It wouldn't be quite so
> fast paced.

I had SFB myself. I remember it well.

To be fair, space combat wouldn't be much like aerial or naval combat, but I think of the two, naval would be closer. The ships have a large crew, and are expected to spend months, or even years out of port. I always think of space combat as "submarine combat, with more directions you can travel".

The reason naval guns normally point sideways (I think) is because that is where there is the most room for them, and you are generally firing at things moving slowly, relative to you, and you have room to rotate the guns if you need to. On a jet fighter, by the time a gun has swung around more than a few degrees you've gone straight past the target.

Given that resistance is not an issue in space, you don't need the front of your ship to be pointy, so you can have all the advantages of naval guns at any position. Forward-firing seems as good as any, but unless they can swing around, these ships are only being saved by the fact that no-one ever shoots unless they are directly in front of their target.

I am always suprised to see Klingon or Romulan ships decloak immediatly ahead of the Enterprise, travelling backwards. It always made more sense to me that they would appear *behind* the enterprise.

winter"that kind of wanders around, but what the hey"mute