In Starship Warfare,is the size matter ,bigger the better?

[ckwongau]

I know the Prometheus is big , but not as big as a mothership.
If 303 go up against a mothership ,one on one.Who has the advantage?

I mean smaller fighers like F302 has better manoeuvribility but the mothership has powerful shield ,so how many F-302 needed to do significant damage on a mother ship without using the tricks in "Fallen"

Asgard can no longer be confidence in victory when the Goa'uld got superior number



One thing about Sci-fi show that disappointed me is the Starship battles. most of the starship battle is just the same.May be With exception of Babylon 5, i mean B5 the series has the best realistic battle scene that actually move me.
All the other space battle from shows like , DS9, Voyage and Battlestar Galactica is pettery much just the same most of the time.

Two ship fire at each other until the shield of one ship can't take it any longer. The enemy ship unsally never win, because the ship either got away and retreat until their shield is at maximum again.
The bigger the ship , the more damage it can sustain before .
I mean the only other Star Trek strategy that has been use and over use is the one Commander Riker use in his academy stimulation, use a planet's gravity field to cloak the ship.

I wish the writer can invent something new .
Captain Sheridan was good at blowing things up, i mean the Earth destory were too ugly to be powerful,the Whitestarship just too fast and too manoeuvrable , starfury were too cool .B5's ship doesn't have shield, but the organic ship got automatic repair.But the best strategy they use were putting telepath with shadow implant on the enemy destoryer.

it was original when SG1 use an F302's hyperdrive to fly pass the Mothership 's shield.But how many time can they use that trick?


minor Prometheus unbound spoiler
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I know the Prometheus is big, the aliens mention it a few time in Prometheus unbound
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But just how big ?
is it bigger than the Titanic , or bigger than a few jumbo jet.
do u kow that the Romulan Warbird is about twice the size of the Entreprise.


At the end of the day ,does Size really matter? or the number of the fleet given the technological gap between Earth and Goa'uld.

[Erik Pasternak]

Size is not a major factor in my opinion. If you're intrested in Prometheus's size, click here.

[TechnoWraith]

Your ship's capabilities, as well as the capabilities of the ship's captain that count in a starship battle.

A good captain knows what his ship is capable of. Both offensively and defensively. He knows when he's outgunned, or when his ship's weaponry outguns his oponent's. He also knows how to use his ship in the best manner to achieve the maximum effect. And a good captain also knows when it's time to run.

In terms of the ship, there are myriad number of variables that determine how a ship will do in battle. The first being whether or not it was designed for combat in the first place. (A gao'uld cargo ship is by no means a warship of any kind. But an Al'kesh or a Hatak is ready to beat the snot out of just about anything). Among the variables (outside of design) that effect battle-readiness are weapons, shielding, maneuvering(sp?) capabilities, size, and whether or not the ship is accompanied by fighters (or capable of launching fighters).

Spoiler:

Asgard can no longer be confidence in victory when the Goa'uld got superior number.

The reason the Asgard can no longer guarantee victory is because the Gao'uld have adapted their technology to counter the Asgard weapons (mostly shielding).

Spoiler:

I know the Prometheus is big , but not as big as a mothership.
If 303 go up against a mothership ,one on one.Who has the advantage?

Near the end of Lost City (season 7), the Prometheus is seen flying toward Anubis's ship (where it is being fired at by lasers). From the angle of approach, it appears that Anubis's ship is much bigger than Prometheus. If Anubis's ship is a mothership, than I would have to agree with you in the assumption that Prometheus is indeed smaller than a Goa'uld mothership. So I would have to reluctantly say that the Gao'uld would have the advantage.

[aAnubiSs]

The single most important thing is reactors, without power one can't use anything. That's usually dealt with building bigger and bigger ships.

[TechnoWraith]

The single most important thing is reactors, without power one can't use anything. That's usually dealt with building bigger and bigger ships.

Absolutely essential for any ship, I might add. Power is the lifeblood of any ship, so with a puny power source, your ship's not gonna accomplish much.

[Beatrice Otter]

Absolutely essential for any ship, I might add. Power is the lifeblood of any ship, so with a puny power source, your ship's not gonna accomplish much.

Also, while it's true that quality is better than quantity, sometimes quantity has a quality all its own. A squadron of F-302s is far more effective than a single one, as a fleet of motherships is more effective than a single one. This applies on an individual scale as well. The larger a ship is, the more batteries (as in, weapons emplacements) it can hold. Which affects the rate of fire it can maintain and (possibly) the number of targets it can engage at once.

Size also affects damage control--the same hit to a smaller ship will do more damage than to a larger one, simply because it hits a larger proportion of the shi's systems. Also, larger ships tend to be able to fit better armor/protective systems aboard. It's like the difference between a destroyer and a battleship--a battleship not only has more (and bigger) guns, its armor is thick enough that it will simply shrug aside hits that would sink a destroyer.

Technology matters, of course. An Asgard ship the size of an F-302 could undoubtedly kick the ass of a ship several times the size of the Prometheus, built solely with human tech (or tech we've reverse-engineered). But once you have roughly similar tech levels, a larger ship will almost always be able to take out a smaller one.

[ckwongau]

One more advantage for a bigger ship , is that it has room to add new stuff onto it as SGC discover new technologies.

Remember the Hebredan Ion drive , Carter wanted it so much, and i was wondering , if they are going to add the ion drive onto Prometheus,we saw General Hammond order the crew to use emengcy thruster in "Lost City pt 2"
And retro rocket.We were never told much about the Goa'uld sub light engine,only without the sub-light engine, the mothership will lost control as it exit the hyper space, F302 use aerospike eengine and rocket booster in space for sub-light speed.

The Hebredan doesn't use Stargate until now, they must have good sub-light engine for long distance travel.

I think there is room for the Prometheus to add an ion drive engine.

And what about the ship from Nightwalkers, the unfinish superstructure look advance , and since only the Earth government US, Russia has access to Naquadah at the time , how did those cloned Goa'uld expect to power the ship without naquadah? They were building a big ship to transport a town full of Goa'uld.I think the Goa'uld was building a ship using only Earth material , if the military can adopt that technology and use it on Prometheus, it could solve the BC303 program's dependence on Naquadah and other non-earth material.

My point is that X303 with an X means experimential , the ship is still growing and improving. It's size allow rooms for improvment.

[DownFallAngel]

All I have to say is 'Remeber the Defiant'. That little ship kicked ass!

[BackStageJim]

LOL

"Size is not a determing factor of intelligence" Spock, TOS

[po134]

sure that you have to get a ship with a certain size, to carry all your device ... but a bigger ship is not better, you just have to get a very small power device, as a ZPM and a very small and powerfull hyperdrive engine and you could even put it in a puddle jumper ! But the thing is, if you carry weapon as the puddle jumper do, you don't have enough supply ... so it depends on your technology, for the tau'ri size is important to carry their weapon and their F-302 !

[1138]

Given the same level of technology, I'd say a larger ship would be able to carry more weapons, have a more powerful reactor and generally take more damage before it can be destroyed. But with vastly different levels of technology, it's much harder to compare. But if the ships are ramming each other, mass wins.

[Sela]

In ships as in life, I have always gone on the assumption that bigger is always better.

However, I do like the relatively smaller ships like the Defiant, the Millienium Falcon and any number of Alkeshes. (Alkesh-i?)

[BackStageJim]

A cargo ship with ZPM powered shields, weapons, and population could be a dame fine fighting vessel. Again, the size issue is carrying staff, and none system integrated weapons (human design, thus inferior to Gou’ald).

Now if I could only get a captains chair installed, and perhaps seat-belts.

[Daryl Froggy]

If this discussion is assuming that all tech for all races is virtually the same then yes size does matter but only to a point. At this point the power it takes to move the ship and shield it will become more expansive than the ship has room to expand.

A medium sized craft can do twice the amount of things at half the cost in both lives lost per-ship and in resources lost per-hip. Thus is my belief, bigger may look cooler but smaller can stay around longer.

P.S. correct me if you think I'm wrong.

[the fifth man]

Size means nothing. IMO, shields and weapons capabilities are all that matter. A fighter vessel (let's say an F-302), for example, with superior shields and weapons could easily take out a much bigger ship (like a Goa'uld Ha'Tak).