Ground combat in Trek (2370s-2380s era)

[RX-178]

There's tons and tons of great starship designs on this forum, but I personally think that ground combat in Trek has been something that's practically unexplored. The closest thing to an exploration of the nature of ground combat is the non-canon Elite Force games, and even those are quite weak when you consider the potentials of Treknology.

I have written up many concepts for this in the past, but until I locate those long lost and buried files, I'd like to hear some thoughts from the others on the forum on their ideas of what ground combat in Trek is like.

Now, here's some things that I believe:


Ground vehicles are obviously not considered to be totally obsolete, judging by the Argo buggy. I personally lean towards it being a military buggy, rather than a recreational vehicle and think the intent was to have a forward facing weapon in the passenger side front seat (where Data fires his hand phaser forwards), just like current military Fast Attack Vehicles have, but it was removed, or never installed by the Enterprise crew in order to keep the field of view unobscured. The Enterprise crew chose to deploy it in an actual tactical situation, so they believed the vehicle had more than just recreational use.

Data described the small craft on the Scimitar as 'Scorpion Attack Fliers'. This leads me to concur with the webmaster's theory that they are designed for close air support of ground forces. Perhaps the top mounted disrupter is meant as a defensive air-to-air weapon, and air-to-ground munitions could be attached to the underside? The way the 'wings' seem to cradle the empty air beneath would support this from a design perspective.

The point of warfare even in the late 24th century is about power, influence, and to a lesser extent, resources and economy. Even when it's possible to completely destroy a planet, like the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar did when they were led into the Dominion trap, there will be many situations where such an action is counterproductive even to the most brutal races and empires in the galaxy. To truly control a planet, any faction will still need boots on the ground.

Transporters can be essentially security-locked to authorized frequencies(?, not sure if that's the correct technical term in this case), or even disrupted from functioning entirely. An actual entry of landing ships through the atmosphere, and onto the ground would be a necessary design.

From a purely visual design perspective, I can see the Cardassian Order using walking combat vehicles, with insect-like legs. If you look at the design of Terok Nor/DS9, and Empok Nor, the design of the curved docking spires would lend very well to be modified into a jointed leg design for a ground combat vehicle. The advantage I can see to this, is in the rocky, mountainous terrain on Cardassia Prime (and almost all other situations where you see Cardassians on the surface of a planet!), having jointed legs would enable these vehicles to stand up taller, to peek over hills, fire, then duck back down.

[Teaos]

Deep, Seafort and Rochey are gonna be all over this like a rash on a hooker.

[Graham Kennedy]

I wince every time I see a walking vehicle in sci-fi. Horribly, horribly impractical.

[Aaron]

Ground vehicles are obviously not considered to be totally obsolete, judging by the Argo buggy. I personally lean towards it being a military buggy, rather than a recreational vehicle and think the intent was to have a forward facing weapon in the passenger side front seat (where Data fires his hand phaser forwards), just like current military Fast Attack Vehicles have, but it was removed, or never installed by the Enterprise crew in order to keep the field of view unobscured. The Enterprise crew chose to deploy it in an actual tactical situation, so they believed the vehicle had more than just recreational use.

First off, the center of gravity on the Argo is way to high to make it an effective FAV, look at a RL life one and note how low they are. Besides the roll-over risk there's the fact that a FAV relies on it's speed and low profile to avoid being hit by enemy fire.

Secondly, if the original intention was to have a forward mounted weapon that was removed to improve the field of view, they still could have had a ring mount on the top of the roll cage.

Data described the small craft on the Scimitar as 'Scorpion Attack Fliers'. This leads me to concur with the webmaster's theory that they are designed for close air support of ground forces. Perhaps the top mounted disrupter is meant as a defensive air-to-air weapon, and air-to-ground munitions could be attached to the underside? The way the 'wings' seem to cradle the empty air beneath would support this from a design perspective.

The weapon is fixed, it can't be used in any direction but forward.

The point of warfare even in the late 24th century is about power, influence, and to a lesser extent, resources and economy. Even when it's possible to completely destroy a planet, like the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar did when they were led into the Dominion trap, there will be many situations where such an action is counterproductive even to the most brutal races and empires in the galaxy. To truly control a planet, any faction will still need boots on the ground.

All good points save for the fact that the planet wasn't destroyed nor did the visuals match the dialogue from a Dominion agent.

Transporters can be essentially security-locked to authorized frequencies(?, not sure if that's the correct technical term in this case), or even disrupted from functioning entirely. An actual entry of landing ships through the atmosphere, and onto the ground would be a necessary design.

Yes.

From a purely visual design perspective, I can see the Cardassian Order using walking combat vehicles, with insect-like legs. If you look at the design of Terok Nor/DS9, and Empok Nor, the design of the curved docking spires would lend very well to be modified into a jointed leg design for a ground combat vehicle. The advantage I can see to this, is in the rocky, mountainous terrain on Cardassia Prime (and almost all other situations where you see Cardassians on the surface of a planet!), having jointed legs would enable these vehicles to stand up taller, to peek over hills, fire, then duck back down.

Walkers are incredibly wasteful and present a higher target profile than a wheeled/tracked vehicle or a skimmer. If they need to peek over hills they can use a sensor mast or a drone.

[Mikey]

Agreed on the idiocy of walking vehicles. In SW, at least, the first walkers were there for a psychological impact - on the audience - and they worked. Since they were already there, other offshoots and predecessors were bound to be developed.

As far as practicality, they're nuts. They make huge targets; they have a terribly high center of gravity/poor balance; the stresses on the support/motive parts (the legs) would be greater for the same vehicle weight than for a wheeled/tracked vehicle; and the legs themselves would make better targets than wheels or tracks - damage to which would, of course, immobilize the vehicle.

I think many people here agree that ground-pounding was both sorely neglected in 'Trek, AND presented badly when it was shown at all. But, RX, was there actually a question or something hidden in there?

BTW, welcome!

[RX-178]

Well, I have to say I do agree that walking vehicles are impractical.


That's why I thought they'd really fit the Cardassian Union. They seem to have a habit with impractical weapons (Dreadnought missile?), and I thought their design philosophies in terms of architecture lent themselves to walking vehicles pretty well. I then rationalized that with the terrain on Cardassia prime, and other worlds that they rule, the ability to not only peek over a ridge, but also FIRE heavy weapons, before ducking back down to avoid return fire, would be a practical advantage to an otherwise impractical design.

[Mikey]

I think you're actually describing the role of a helicopter.

Which may, in fact, be why the Cardies have the rumored "attack skimmers."

[Captain Seafort]

Agreed on the idiocy of walking vehicles. In SW, at least, the first walkers were there for a psychological impact - on the audience - and they worked. Since they were already there, other offshoots and predecessors were bound to be developed.

The AT-ATs also needed to be that height to give their weapons a decent range - the Empire (like all sci-fi armies for that matter) is in desperate need of an indirect fire artillery piece.

[Mikey]

Good point.

[RX-178]

Well, shuttles in the late 2370s have microtorpedoes and everything. They could fit the role of a close air support aircraft. But there's been enough episodes where shuttles were considered not to be an option that I thought someone would have experimented with an alternative. Again, the Cardassian Union is what I came up with.


As far as the Federation side, when it comes to my ground combat concepts, I did come up with a whole different class of weaponry than is seen in Trek, and /I/ think makes sense. I had sent a full promotional article on these weapons to the webmaster before this Forum existed, and hopefully he still has the emails so I can post them up here.

The idea is that while phasers are an incredibly versatile and useful technology, there's more than a few episodes where you see their shortcomings in combat. My design is a weapon that uses tractor beams to propel projectiles at high enough velocities that an inertial dampener is built into the stock of the weapon to absorb recoil. Under the projectile barrel, there's a phaser weapon mounted, to deal with shielding, and to basically be as versatile as phasers are.

It can shoot just about any projectile, although I designed a few especially nasty ones. I can't remember the technobabble terms for it anymore, but the premise was to take whatever it was that killed Spock at the end of Wrath of Kahn, and shoot a projectile of the stuff into your target.

[Mikey]

IIRC, it was acute and extreme radiation poisoning that killed Spock.

[SuperSaiyaMan12]

I wince every time I see a walking vehicle in sci-fi. Horribly, horribly impractical.

Impractical at times, yes. Kick ass in battle-hell yeah. AT-AT's, barring the manuevers *Rogue Squadron-THE BEST STARFIGHTER SQUADRON IN THE REBELLION/NEW REPUBLIC*, were practically unstoppable. Armor was too heavy for even heavy weapons to even *scratch it*.

[Mikey]

That should read "...for even REBEL heavy weapons to even *scratch it*."

The Rebel Alliance was, at the time, not the best-equipped group. In fact, that didn't really possess any anti-armor weaponry, did they?

[SuperSaiyaMan12]

That should read "...for even REBEL heavy weapons to even *scratch it*."

The Rebel Alliance was, at the time, not the best-equipped group. In fact, that didn't really possess any anti-armor weaponry, did they?

Actually they did. Don't you remember those 'Satillite Dish Cannons'? Those were anti-armor.

[Captain Seafort]

Actually they did. Don't you remember those 'Satillite Dish Cannons'? Those were anti-armor.

The Atgar 1.4 P-towers were "anti-armour" in the same way the LAW 66 is anti-armour - obsolete junk that's useful against a Humvee (or equivalent) at best.

As for RS vs AT-ATs, the Rogues were handicapped at Hoth by having to use glorified forklifts - their X-wings slagged a quartet of AT-ATs in under a minute in "Isard's Revenge", and the only reason they took so long was because they were saving their PTs for a possible space battle.