> IMDNSHO, The One Thing that I find in FT (otherwise a fine and
in
> the 'fact' that it plays out as a WW1/early PTO WW2 naval game without
You might enjoy the GURPS Transhuman Space setting then.
"In 2022 the USAF secured a hard-fought victory over its most
dangerous opponent and achieved control of deep space. The battlefield was
Washington; the enemy was the United States Navy and its powerful
congressional lobby."
Cheers,
On Fri, 12 Mar 2004 13:03:22 +1100 Hugh Fisher <laranzu@ozemail.com.au>
writes: <snip my rant>
> You might enjoy the GURPS Transhuman Space setting then.
Has merit. <grin> Sigh, yet _another_ book to search out and maybe
buy... <LOL!>
Gracias,
> Glen wrote:
> IMDNSHO, The One Thing that I find in FT (otherwise a fine and
I won't disagree with you.
<Geek> In original Trek the various fleets had the feel of a few individual,
might ships, rather than large fleets of hundreds or thousands. There were on
the order of 20 Constitution class vessels like Enterprise
during TOS setting, and they were the most powerful things in space -
the flagships of the Federation. I had the feeling that an Enterprise vs.
Klingon D7 was a "big deal" in the international incident scale.
The ep where the M-5 augmented enterprise takes on four other
Constitutions in "war games" had the feel of an unprecedented
concentration of force. This feel did _not_ continue past the first
couple movies or into TNG and beyond.
</Geek>
So this is how I was raised to think of space navies. That's not to say I
didn't (really) enjoy later ST, Star Wars or B5, or even BSG type
space combat. But IMO, FT _can_ emulate even TOS's feel of space
combat, without bogging down into SFB hairsplitting.
***
In original Trek the various fleets had the feel of a few individual, might
ships, rather than large fleets of hundreds or thousands. There were on the
order of 20 Constitution class vessels like Enterprise during TOS setting,
***
-geek-
In one episode, with the over-crowded planet, Kirk sez twelve...
Lost three(?) in the Ultimate Computer, one to The Doomsday Machine, I think
one to the amoeba. No clue to how many supposedly built over the period.
-/geek-
Hmm, can't be TOO geek if I can't remember the first episode title.
Of course, Roddenberry made the connection to Hornblower, so there's a
strong sense of 18th-19th century, and I know that stuck with me. Less
line battles and more frigate encounters, of course.
Rising tech has made the world smaller in the simple senses with which warfare
deals. The naval model feels closer to many of us of what we'd expect of
space, though the variations should be deliciously unexpected.
***
(...)they'd have to make up their own terms for destroyer, battleship, and so
on, or borrow the Navy ones...
***
I've seen where 'making up' has been done in sci-fi. For aliens, it
sounds artificial; for humans just weird. Natch, in B5, where the largest ship
the humans have is a 'destroyer', it's obvious, you can get away with fudge. I
was almost surprised the Vorlon planetary terminator wasn't abbreviated as
a PT. ;->=
The_Beast
> On Fri, Mar 12, 2004 at 08:08:46AM -0600, Doug Evans wrote:
> Natch, in B5, where the largest ship the
My understanding is that Straczynski and Ellison intended to use naval terms,
but didn't actually know them well enough to use them correctly and didn't
bother to hire an advisor.
I've always assumed that the Omega class "Destroyer" was named in the
same spirit as the British light carriers were called "through-deck
cruisers" to get the naval estimates through parliament.
> Roger Burton West wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 12, 2004 at 08:08:46AM -0600, Doug Evans wrote:
> Roger Burton West wrote:
Pretty much, yeah. And JMS even stated in one of his posts that he thought
"destroyer" sounded neater than "cruiser" (after all, it's meant to *destroy*,
not *cruise*).
Mk
***
> My understanding is that Straczynski and Ellison intended to use naval
Pretty much, yeah. And JMS even stated in one of his posts that he thought
"destroyer" sounded neater than "cruiser" (after all, it's meant to *destroy*,
not *cruise*).
***
And, to give credit, it did pull it out of the all-naval millieu. The
brass were almost all Generals, don't forget. If you go to Legends of Galactic
Heroes, it's Generals leading Armies.
Course, that's also seemingly based on Napoleonic, but land warfare instead
of Roddenberry's naval. ;->=
The_Beast
On Fri, 12 Mar 2004 08:08:46 -0600 Doug Evans <devans@nebraska.edu>
wrote:
> In original Trek the various fleets had the feel of a few
> In one episode, with the over-crowded planet, Kirk sez twelve... <
And again in "Tomorrow is Yesterday" -- "There are only twelve like it
in the Fleet." Later, Roddenberry raised that to 14 -- or was that
Franz Joseph?
> Lost three(?) in the Ultimate Computer, one to The Doomsday Machine,
Only one in TUC. The other 3 were damaged, but in good enough shape to
destroy the Enterprise after the M-5 was covinced that it had killed
humans. But yes, having 5 starships was a major concentration of firepower and
must have left the borders a bit bare.
> Of course, Roddenberry made the connection to Hornblower, so there's
Less line battles and more frigate encounters, of course. <
More to the point, the idea of being out of touch with any higher authority
for long periods of time. It was very like Hornblower in the days when he
commanded the Atropos and the Lydia, except that the E was a capital ship
rather than a small one.
> I've seen where 'making up' [of naval terminology] has been done in
Oddly enough, it is possible to justify the B5 terminology by looking at naval
history. Why do we talk about "destroyers"? Because it's an abbreviation of
"torpedo boat destroyer", a new class of ship invented to defend capital ships
from the new threat of "torpedo boats"; then the new ship proved so useful
that it essentially took over the role of
Napoleonic frigates as general-purpose small ships, making "frigates"
even smaller and somewhat limited in their capabilities. These days, of
course, destroyers have grown in size and cost to the point where they aren't
being built much and most navies employ frigates for what destroyers used to
do...
So an Omega could have been originally postulated as a "Sharlin destroyer" or
a "capital ship destroyer" and the term was abbreviated to "destroyer" in
similar fashion. It makes a certain amount of sense, particularly when
comparing an Omega to its ancestor, the Nova DN, and to a Hyperion CA.
Phil
----
This.sig file provided by British Railtrack ISP PLC. Currently out of order
due to the wrong kind of bits on the net.
> Noam wrote:
> There
If I remember correctly, there were 12, according to the _Making of Star
Trek_. (I was a big ST geek as a kid.)
> Indy wrote:
> Pretty much, yeah. And JMS even stated in one of his posts that
He's got a point. What he doesn't know is that "destroyer" originally came
from the term "torpedo boat destroyer", a ship designed at the turn of the
20th Century to take on torpedo boats (and also carry out many of the same
functions as a torpedo boat). Eventually it was just shortened to "destroyer".
> Michael Llaneza wrote:
> I've always assumed that the Omega class "Destroyer" was named in the
Some of the extra background material in the B5W Earthforce books took that
line, saying that the Hyperion CAs were so expensive and full of teething
problems that when the EF wanted a bigger and better replacement, they quietly
called it a destroyer to slip it through Earthdome.
<snip>
> same spirit as the British light carriers were called "through-deck
Now, be honest, wasn't that a slick case of "We won't call it a carrier, you
won't have to admit you knew it was acarrier, we get the carrier we
want/need, and you can't say 'I was mislead' to your constituents..." as
you have seen recently?
Gracias,
> --- Phillip Atcliffe <Phillip.Atcliffe@uwe.ac.uk> wrote:
> DN, and to a Hyperion CA.
We always figured it was a "Fleet Destroyer". Same Difference. The really
annoying thing was that sometimes they would refer to them as "carriers" or
"carrier groups"
Re: frigates The term frigate hasn't even been consistent within the 20th c.
At the time of WW2, large destroyers (DL & DDL stand for Destroyer Leader, not
Destroyer, Light) were called frigates, while smaller, slower ones were called
Destroyer Escorts or Escort Destroyers (DE & DDE). At the same time the
British referred to US DEs & DDEs in RN service as "frigates". In the early
1960's all of the DLs, DLGs, and DLGNs were reclassified as Light Cruisers and
DEs and DDEs were reclassified as Frigates (FF). So frigates went from being
larger than a destroyer to being smaller (at least in the USN).
J