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I always prefered those kinds of battles too. As much as I love the battles in DS9, they did seem just a little too Star Wars for me. I know its difficult to show with fleets of upto a thousand ships engaging each other, any 2 groups of ships that large and powerful should be pounding away at each other for a while, rather then taking each other down in one or two shots.

The TNG era ships just don't seem to have the same epic feel to them.

I will admit that the Reliant battle and the early TMP films did show the much more grand scale.

I respect the DS9 battles for the idea of bringing true war to trek, a bloody and dark one that we actually EXPERIENCE instead of hear of (ala Romulan war). And i like eye-candy =D

But TWOK is easily the best trek film for me.

Agreed, the battle in TWOK showed two ships that we could believe were space-faring warships designed to kick ass and take a tonne of punishment. TNG+ era battles were glorified dogfights.

I think the main problem of TNG+-ships is, that they were designed too strong. I mean, according to the blueprints and technical manual, nearly nothing should have been able to commandeer the Enterprise D (well, besides some ultra-strong vessels like the Borg or the Husnock vessel). Scenarios as seen in "Rascals" for example should be impossible. Stories where the Enterprise was captured by some 12 Ferengi. Or the abducation of officers from the Bridge. No way. Too much armament, too much personel to fight. But the Producers and writes wanted and wrote such stories, at the cost of the crews competence reputation. I mean, most TNG battles (including the Final battle in Generations) have a recurring pattern: The Enterprise shoots about one or two times at the opponent and lets them disable the shields at ease. Hardly we see the ship firing all she's got at the enemies. And when the Enterprise gets boarded, you hardly see any security action. Again, it should not be possible to get too far on board with all those force fields, bulkheads and officers on board. It was always thrilling to see, when the Security did put up a reasonable fight, like in "The hunted". But in most cases, the ships security systems and her crew looked rather stupid - writers fault completely!

I completely agree with the majority here. The battle between Enterprise and Reliant represented how I'd always seen those huge ship battles. We had the tinyest taste in the TOS, but Starships are LARGE ships and not overly manuverable. In DS9, it seemes like they were going for action, over epic battle sceens. BUT, I did reason out why, IMO. By the time we saw these battles, combat had been going on for a while. Power running low, ships had battle damage, and shields already weak. That would neatly explain ships blowing up with only a few shots.

The Galaxy had the wholw lunbering slow battleship thing going on but you never got a sence of real power from her.

Yeah, from what I remember it was always fire a few shots and then the other guy surrendered.

Or the other guy fires two shots and the E-D loses all shields and weapons.

Rochey wrote:Or the other guy fires two shots and the E-D loses all shields and weapons.

My all time biggest beef, though, with the way Star Trek battles operate (save perhaps out of many DS9 battles) is how someone can order "disable their weapon systems" or the like, as if there is a huge red "weapon systems" button on the hull and Worf or whomever just have to shoot it. If you look at any ship-Enterprises included-weapons are all over the vessel and not just in one concentrated spot. Just a very stoopid thing that irks me.

Exactly. The only way you should be able to disable the ship's weapon system is by litteraly blowing off each phaser strip and torpedo launcher.

The onyl way I can see you disabling the weapons system is to knock out the power supply, or to knock out every single weapons system.

Well, the power supply should be burried as deep in the hull as possible, and there should also be backups.

But this is Starfleet, where sanity was relegated to fetching the design team coffee.

Rochey wrote:Well, the power supply should be burried as deep in the hull as possible, and there should also be backups.

But this is Starfleet, where sanity was relegated to fetching the design team coffee.

You mean, like the bridge?

Exactly!

Can't just blame Starfleet here folks. It seems nearly every space faring race has just ONE power source for their weapons, and they all are powered through the SAME EPS junction. And wouln't blasting at torpedo launchers cause a misfire and detonation?

Doesn't make sense