Quote:*shakes head* A photorp is usually shown with a flight time of one or two seconds or so, right? Which is less time than it takes most ships to go to warp - but, assuming both target and launch platform are in normal space, I don't think that the warp timing is a fundamental limit - particularly for someone like the Borg. Flight time -is-.
The Aesir cutters are deployed in squadrons around Starbase and from starships modifed with expanded shuttle bays (usually Heavy Cruisers or Explorers) because they lack warp drives. The principal advantage is the ability to deploy several squadrons to generate massive barrages of photon torpedos against targets like a Borg Cube - firing at maximum rate 7 squadrons of 6 cutters can launch 3 volleys of over 500 photon torpedos in less than ten seconds. The effect on an enemy fleet or a Borg Cube is left to your imagination.
And, if you'll call the NG:TM to mind, torpedoes have no inherent warp capability - they can stay there if something else has already done the work, but -that's- -it-.
Keep your engines 'idling' at around Warp One and they can't touch you - but by no means vice versa.
Basically, if you want to be affect a warp capable target, you need that ability yourself. Also, I think that the way even the smallest fighter-equivalents we've seen - the Jem'hadar ships, and the Maquis raiders - have been of, er, -considerable- size says a lot about the minimum mass overhead needed to build an effective combat unit. Yes, if you were willing to accept a combat power no more than equal to a BoP or some such, you could cram it into something small enough to count as a beefed-up smallcraft - maybe twice or three times the mass of a Runabout. By that point, though, I think that the 'small craft' would be so massive that a carrier big enough to operate them internally would have to be Galaxy-sized or better... which, well, isn't the most cost-effective option, especially when you've swapped out for non-combat parasites in peacetime.
Ja, -n
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."