There shouldn't be any issue over which ships are the most maneuverable onscreen. Clearly, the majority of Star Wars ships under Star Destroyer size have the Trek ships beat easily in this contest. Ah, but the true VS Trekkie rarely accepts evidence from the Star Wars side without twisting and maiming it beyond recognition!
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There is no SW ship that can keep pace with ANY Trek ship. They are just too slow at combat speeds. Their turning arcs indicate that at attack speeds, they take about three or four seconds to turn 180 degrees, whereas a Fed shuttle or runabout could simply use its control thrusters (say, starbord forward and port aft) to turn completely around on its axis much as the B5 Starfuries do. |
There isn't one single instance of any Trek ship performing such a maneuver. Star Wars fighter ships, the Slave-1, and the Millennium Falcon outmaneuver ANY Star Trek ship at sublight. The only Trek craft that comes close to the maneuverability that Star Wars ships routinely perform is the Delta Flyer
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A Federation starship wouldn't need bother chasing a SW ship down. A phaser lock will tag one easily. Not to mention a photon torpedo or two. |
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Ships like the Millennium Falcon actually EVADE enemy fire, unlike Federation ships. They'd never get a phaser lock on the Falcon, unless it was a dead hulk in space. The Breen couldn't even tag the dead hulk of the Defiant without missing it a few times in DS9:"The Changing Face of Evil". And as VGR:"Dragon's Teeth" showed, a highly maneuverable ship like the Falcon can make a phaser lock difficult to accomplish. A torpedo can also be easily avoided. |
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How do you dodge a torp traveling at 0.5c? By the time the sensor officer scans the attack and says "They..." the torpedo has already hit! |
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Characters can say "To be or not to be" before the torpedo hits, as in ST6. They can look around the room at their crewmates and mumble for a while as in ST7. They can also say "Warp speed now!" and escape a torpedo that was fired at them, as was done in ST5. |
When the Defiant engaged the modified Lakota in DS9:"Paradise Lost" it was running circles around it and performing what appeared to be strafing runs on the larger, slower moving ship thanks to its small size. So what happened to the awesome maneuverabiliy of UFP starships in that scene? Or the ability to jump in and out of warp to avoid just such strafing tactics? Chalk up yet another one for the list of Trek tactics that the fans say are possible but which aren't seen or used in actual onscreen combat.
Maneuverability is tactically useful in Trek, therefore targeting systems can't be as immune to fast-moving sublight targets as Trekkies suggest. If a Federation ship could effortlessly target a fast-moving sublight target regardless of its speed or maneuverability, why would Worf bother with evasive maneuvers in the Defiant? Is Worf so stupid that he would waste precious energy resources in useless maneuvering, when he could have been diverting them to shields or weapons? Or that he would deliberately limit his use of his high-powered main forward-firing pulse phasers (by maneuvering which limits the time that those guns are directed at the target) without gaining any tactical advantage in return? In "Generations", the Enterprise-D wasn't even BOTHERING to avoid the Bird of Prey's fire, yet the Klingon ship missed the 600 meter long starship 4 TIMES!
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The length of the Lakota as stated by a few Trek websites such as Ex Astris Scientia is 469 meters. Defiant at best, is 120m across. So the Defiant, against a bigger and stronger foe, is doing roughly 100 meters per second or so. Or about 360 kilometers per hour, or about 216 miles per hour. This isn't much faster than a Ferrari.
The Defiant is much larger than an X-wing fighter, or the Falcon, or a Corellian Corvette and yet it was maneuvering. It was getting hit, of course, but again: why would they be maneuvering AT ALL if they weren't either causing SOME misses, or slowing down the Lakota's refire rate due to the need to constantly regain the lock?
The Millennium Falcon has been referred to as "The fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy". Lucid fans know that may be true at hyperspace speeds, but even as Han Solo acknowledges, this doesn't hold true at sublight speeds. Star Destroyers in STAR WARS and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK had no trouble keeping up with the Falcon.
ANH
LUKE: Why don't you outrun them? I thought you said this ship was fast!LUKE: Are you kidding? At the rate they're gaining?
TESB
Han Solo acknowledges the situation as Star Destroyers quickly converge on the Falcon
HAN: Well, we can still out-maneuver them!
Leia also refers to the approaching Star Destroyers:
LEIA: They're getting closer!
And in the TESB novelization, Han Solo says:
"At sublight, they may be faster, but we can still out-maneuver them."
Trekkies usually miss this distinction between "sublight" and "hyperspace", and make incorrect assumptions based on this error, so its important to point it out to them.
As for its maneuverability, the Falcon displayed its amazing maneuverability and deceleration power when it stopped and latched immediately onto the Avenger's command tower in TESB
Brian Young estimated that the Falcon was moving at least 1km/s as it flew over the Avenger's hull, and came to a dead stop in a second. That would mean the deceleration of the Falcon was at least 3x10^3 m/s^2, which is still just a lower limit. The Falcon had to turn more than 90 degrees "down" and probably 45 degress port as it stopped and hopped over the tower. Then, the engines had to be cut before the bridge officer reported that the ship had vanished.
This entire maneuver, including Solo engaging the Falcon's landing claw, took less than 5 seconds; from the frame of the Falcon appearing in the Avenger's bridge windows, until we see the face of the officer informing Captain Needa that, "The ship no longer appears on our scopes!" By this time, the Falcon had to be powered down too, as it was running at full thrust, and this amount of power would show up like a lighthouse on the sensors, regardless of any sensor blind spot.
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This is all wild conjecture, not canon fact! We never actually "see" the Falcon stop and attach to the Avenger's bridge tower immediately after it passes over the bridge! In fact, we don't see it attached to the bridge tower until several scene-changes later! Han Solo might have flown back into the asteroid field and attached to the Avenger hours later when the Imperials were no longer looking for him! This "incredible maneuvering" is nothing more than wishful wanking on your part! |
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Ah, right. Because we don't actually see Luke's proton torpedoes hitting the Death Star's main reactor in ANH we can't actually say they in fact did hit the reactor, correct? That's a special kind of stupid that is prevalent in most VS Trekkie arguments. Thankfully, The Empire Strikes Back Radio Drama proves that in fact, Solo didn't fly off to the Tatooine cantina for a cold one before attaching to the Avenger |
The Falcon was also flying at a significant upward angle as it passed the bridge windows. There MUST have been at least a short period after it flashed by the bridge windows that it was still in sensor range—the bridge operators may have been distracted for long enough to allow the Falcon to slip into the blind spot, or it's possible that they caught a flicker of it and then it disappeared off their scopes (which could have looked like it went into hyperspace).
The final orientation of the Millennium Falcon on the Avenger suggests a simple trajectory, where it hugged close to the surface of the tower. This would be a fairly simple "flip" over the top, in a plane slighty tipped to the starboard of Avenger. They come from the port side, pass in front of the bridge windows (headed to starboard), end up on port side of bridge, facing down. This speaks of a fairly uncomplicated flight path. Had they turned, chased, and then alighted, the Falcon would be facing UPWARDS!
This maneuver also silences any conjecture about massive blind spots behind the command tower, because the Falcon never flew far behind Avenger to turn around. Again, TESB Radio Drama clears this up quite nicely:
The Empire Strikes Back Radio Drama
HAN: Nope. We're on their upperworks, see? A blind spot. We came in so fast, they lost track of us.The Avenger also cut speed when the Millennium Falcon made its attack run:
"The Empire Strikes Back Radio Drama"
THREEPIO: The Imperials have their deflectors at full power; they've cut their speed!This makes sense. If the Avenger was at maximum thrust, (in pursuit of the Falcon) Solo wouldn't have caught up with the tower, since the Star Destroyer's maximum sublight thrust is greater than that of the Falcon's sublight thrust. Too large a loop runs risk of SEVERE damage from the Avenger's engine wash, not to mention detection. The evidence shows that the Falcon stopped "on a dime", a RADICAL maneuver involving hard acceleration and possibly HARDER deceleration. The turning circle would have to be about forty meters or less. This radius kept them within the shadow of the scanner globe.
If the Falcon's initial velocity was 1000m/s, the acceleration during the loop would be about 2500g (Earth g), without decelerating to a stop. A straight-line deceleration over a similar distance would have an acceleration of about 400g. The estimate assumes that they turn downwards in a short semi-circular arc once they pass the tower, and the canon Radio Drama supports this.
The Falcon takes approximately six frames to fly past the Avenger's bridge windows.
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The Falcon was flying a very curvy course to be sure, so it is difficult to tell just how far they traveled in this scene. From the point where the Falcon enters the screen from the left side, Avenger in background, to the time where the bridge officers stand back up, is about 8.634 seconds. How far did the Falcon fly during that time? Started out way off the port bow, and ended up on the rear port corner of the bridge tower, after traveling around that tower. Three times Avenger's length? Difficult to tell, but seems reasonable to me. In that case, the Falcon traveled ~4800 meters in ~9 seconds, for an average velocity of about 535 meters per second. The problem is figuring out just how far the Falcon actually traveled in that time. |
The scene in question from the Radio Drama provides us a canon source illustration just how fast Solo's maneuver really was. The Falcon is stopped and affixed to the Avenger in ONE SECOND. At :31 seconds, Han says "Hang out the landing claw, Chewie!" At this point, we hear the roar of the Falcon flying over the tower. Han then asks if the landing claw is secure, and C-3P0 answers him. At :34 seconds, Han says "kill the engines!" That means that between the roar of the Falcon flying over the tower (:32 seconds) and his order to "kill the engines!" (:34 seconds) the Falcon is STOPPED AND AFFIXED to the Avenger at :33 seconds. And if there's any doubters left out there, anyone who has ever operated a motor vehicle can tell you it's rather difficult to jokey a vehicle in any position if its engine is shut off...
At :39 seconds, all systems on the Falcon are off
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In DS9:"Shattered Mirror", you can see just how maneuvrable the Defiant is. With bare meters to spare it effortlessly spins and weaves it's way through the various nacelles and projections on that Negh 'Var Klingon cruiser, blasts around DS9's pylons in VERY tight turns matching anything I have seen the Falcon do in the movies. |
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Riiiight. The Defiant was moving slower than an Earth-bound glider when doing these maneuvers, and didn't come CLOSE to performing anywhere near the maneuvers the Falcon is famous for, even at those slow speeds. |
The Falcon is far more maneuverable than biased and lazy counter claims make it out to be. Here are a few more examples:
*In falconturn1, the Falcon turns 180 degrees and twists 180 degrees in about 3 seconds.
*In falconturn2, the Falcon turns 180 degrees in about 2 seconds, and twists 180 degrees in about 1 second.
*In falconturn3, the Falcon turns 90 degrees in about 1/2 second.
*Falconturn4 is self explanatory.
*In falconturn5, the Falcon twists 180 degrees, while dodging 2 asteroids, and initiating a dive of about 45 degrees, all in about 3 seconds.
*In falconturn6, the Falcon turns 90 degrees and exits the camera's wide field of view in about 1.5 seconds. Ackbar orders evasive action, and the ~2 mile long Home One turns more than 180 degrees in less than 16 seconds (you can see it behind the Falcon).
*In falconturn7, the Falcon destroys a TIE Interceptor, twists 180 degrees, flies a 270 degree circle around the "medical frigate" while destroying another TIE Interceptor, dives, destroys a third TIE Interceptor, and twists 90 degrees while turning starboard, all within 11 seconds.
*In falconturn8, the Falcon climbs to clear the railing, twists 90 degrees while turning >90 degrees (2/3 second), and barrel-rolls, all in less than 3 seconds.