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Unread 25-05-2003, 18:23
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Star Destroyers have thosands of laser batteries all around the ship. The only way you can really "pull a menuever" on them is if you're either in a small fighter or running away :-p.

SSD is a class that is just beyond the Enterprise.

Anyway, heres some stuff from another forum I Frequent:

Federation Naval Tactics

Federation naval tactics are largely a hybrid between the tactics of ancient Rome and those of Horatio Nelson. Consider the following:
Roman-style boarding tactics are still used. Tractor beams and transporters are clearly analogous to Roman grappling hooks and boarding planks, and it isn't uncommon to use boarders in an attempt to overwhelm a target in the heat of combat. For example, in "Way of the Warrior", we saw Klingon warriors board DS9 and attempt to seize control of the station while it was still exchanging fire with the Klingon fleet. The Klingon warriors even fought using bladed weapons, just as their Roman legionnaire precedessors did. Contrast this with the era of Horatio Nelson and subsequent periods, in which the range and lethality of weaponry became such that it was virtually impossible to approach and board a ship without having to completely disable it beforehand.
Ramming is still the most powerful weapon available, albeit a weapon of last resort. In "Tears of the Prophets" (described on the Battles page as the Battle of Chin'toka), hopelessly outmatched Jem'Hadar attack ships (ships roughly 70-80% larger than the Falcon) eschewed energy weapons and torpedoes in favour of ramming attacks, which proved to be devastatingly effective against Martok's ships. Contrast this with the era of Horatio Nelson and subsequent periods, in which the range, accuracy and lethality of weaponry became such that the approach necessary for a ramming attack would be suicidal.
Missiles have not dominated the tactical landscape, in spite of their theoretically extreme range. Although they seem to be capable of accurately hitting targets from many thousands or even tens of thousands of kilometres away, fleets do not engage one another with long-range missile exchanges. Instead, they generally approach to gunnery range and then open fire with both energy weapons and missiles at the same time.
Battle lines are still in use, albeit modified for a 3-dimensional battlefield. In the fleet engagements of "Sacrifice of Angels" and "What You Leave Behind" (described on the Battles page as the Third Battle of Bajor and the Battle of Cardassia Prime, respectively), fleets formed up into a "wall o' ships" and faced off against one another at close visual range. Land engagement terminology such as "flank", "line", and "breakthrough" could be heard repeatedly from the command staff. The disruption of the enemy formation is a tactical imperative, as described by Captain Sisko in "Sacrifice of Angels". Contrast this with the battleship and aircraft carrier eras, in which the range, accuracy and lethality of weaponry became such that fleet formations lost their importance. Also contrast this with air combat, in which formations actually squander the advantage of maneuverability and are thus only used for slow, ungainly aircraft such as bombers.
Fleet firepower concentration is beyond their capabilities, as seen in "Sacrifice of Angels" and "What You Leave Behind." In those battles, tactics of attrition and the ruthless mathematics of the N-square law didn't apply because battle lines couldn't concentrate their firepower on individual ships. Each ship simply fired at the nearest ship in the opposing wall. Departure from the relative safety of the battle line was suicidal for a capital ship (as seen in "Sacrifice of Angels" because a ship would now be close enough to the enemy formation that multiple ships could concentrate their firepower on it. Only small ships such as fighters and Defiant-class ships could survive departure from the battle line, since the enemy ships could not accurately target them. Another example of their inability to concentrate firepower at long range was seen in "Tears of the Prophets", in which only the handful of ships closest to the "power generator moon" were able to fire on it.
The only examples of fleet firepower concentration occurred where encirclement (a ground combat term) was possible. For example, Klingon and Dominion fleets in "Way of the Warrior" and "A Call to Arms" fired on DS9 only after approaching to ~10km and encircling it.
Some would counter these statements by referring to technobabble theory, but when theory and reality fail to intersect, theory is wrong. Non-canon speculation about very long effective ranges (either for phasers or torpedoes) sound nice, but it fails to explain why the tactics of Federation starship combat invariably follow the tactics of short-ranged weapons. If these unsubstantiated claims about very long effective ranges were true, then one would be left with no alternative but to conclude that the naval officers of all the major Star Trek navies are either suicidal or certifiably insane for refusing to take advantage of those ranges.

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Imperial Naval Tactics

Imperial naval tactics are largely based on the battleship era, with some hint of tactics from the early aircraft carrier era. Consider the following:
Boarding is not a useful combat tactic, and only occurs after the target vessel has already been disabled (as seen in ANH), or has already surrendered.
Ramming is not a useful combat tactic, and is never used or even attempted in any of the canon films. Three ISD's accidentally rammed the Executor while decelerating from hyperspace (ref: SWE), but they merely exploded against its shields. Official literature describes "robot ramships", but these weapons (essentially huge guided missiles) are designed for deceit and piracy rather than wholesale warfare, and were used once in battle, against a light cruiser.
Battle lines are not used. Fleets travel in formation which break up when combat is joined, as seen in ROTJ. The Rebel and Imperial fleets began exchanging long-range fire without any regard for formation, although Emperor Palpatine's decisions ultimately led to an Imperial defeat despite what was probably superior firepower. Piett's ships engaged long-range fire with the Rebel fleet as described in the ROTJ novelization, but they apparently targeted smaller ships before larger ships for the purpose of prolonging Palpatine's dramatic demonstration. Even Jerjerrod chose his targets in the same manner, aiming the first superlaser blast at the Liberty rather than the far more massive and heavily armed Rebel flagship Home One. On the other hand, Ackbar wisely concentrated his fleet's firepower on the Imperial flagship Executor first..
Tactics of maneuver are non-existent. Capital ships simply exchange fire with enemy capital ships, without regard for formations or "flanking", "encirclement", or "breakthrough" maneuvers.
Torpedoes are not used in capital ship combat. Despite apocryphal descriptions to the contrary, there are no canon sightings or descriptions of any capship missiles. Capital ship combat seems to be conducted exclusively with turbolasers, which isn't surprising given the lack of damage caused by proton torpedoes in ANH (Red Leader's torpedoes barely scratched the DS exhaust port surface structure) and TPM (Naboo torpedoes were ineffective against the TradeFed battleship).
Fighters exist but they are incapable of carrying the fight to the enemy unaided, so a fighter attack can only complement the big guns, rather than replacing them. This was seen most strikingly in the beginning stages of the Battle of Endor, when hordes of Imperial fighters and bombers attacked without support and swarmed over the Rebel fleet, but were unable to destroy or seriously damage a single warship. It was seen again in TPM, when the Naboo fighter squadron fought a hopeless battle to destroy a TradeFed battleship (a battle that Qui-Gon obviously expected them to lose) despite having the element of surprise (the battleship didn't launch its own fighters until the attackers were already within naked-eye visual range).
Combat can occur at very long visual ranges (made longer by the sheer size of Imperial warships, which makes them easier to see at a distance), as seen in TESB when the Rebel ground defenses engaged Imperial ships in orbit. It was seen again in ROTJ when Rebel and Imperial warships exchanged fire at long visual range and then closed to less than 10 km ("point-blank range" as the battle intensified.
Again, some might counter these arguments with technobabble theory, but again, what you see is what you get. They have fighters, but they can't use them the way terrestrial navies used them. They have torpedoes, but as anyone can see from ROTJ and TPM, they're obviously not ship-killers the way they were for submarines. They have guided missiles, but those missiles didn't turn space combat into long-range affairs of duelling missile platforms, the way they did for terrestrial navies and aircraft. It's not enough to affix a label to a particular weapon and assume it's precisely analogous to terrestrial equivalents; you must look at the way it's used, before you can begin to guess what it can do.
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