Lithose
Buzzfeed Editor
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Yeah. I liked Original Trek's combat a lot better. Was based on submarine/battleship combat and starships being major assets. Getting a fleet of 40 together was a HUGE deal.
And it really made sense. If you're using particle weapons that move at the speed of light, and are fighting within X range, the idea of a fighter becomes absurd. Fighters only exist in modern navies because our munitions are slow, and can be evaded but also have greatly outpaced other defenses outside of avoidance. But in Star Trek, shields really even up the offense/defense disparity, while the high speed of weapons lowered the ability to avoid. I always liked the idea in Star Trek where shields were really the only answer to more survival, and thus ships got bigger and better shielded to tank hits instead of dodging everything. (I know there were plenty of misses in Star Trek combat but the general rule of thumb was it was submarine combat until the shooting started, battleship type combat after).
Adding fighters who can't possibly have the ability to generate shielding enough to take a hit ruins the aesthetic. Because if beam weapons somehow aren't accurate enough to hit a majority of the time, and the fighters produce enough power to do damage, then the idea of big ships with shields becomes silly--fighters would dominate everything, like they do today in modern naval combat. But if they are accurate enough, then the fighters should do about this well vs a large ship.
Shit was a huge mistake when they started adding corvettes in DS9, wrong way to go. The battleship/submarine aesthetic was really unique.
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