It is established that the Voth leadership has willingly surrounded itself with yes-men who will agree with any proposal or stance that they put forward. From the ingame cutscenes it is established that the Voth leadership are currently claiming sole ownership of the Sphere and everything within it, on the basis that only their ancestors would be smart enough to create something like this.
This rigid attitude means that the Federation would have no point of common ground to open negotiations. With the Voth's current propaganda fueled stance, opening negotiations would mean admitting that they aren't the true owners/creators of the sphere.
As for the battles, later cutscenes confirm that the Voth leadership wants to use the Omega Molecules as weapons to cripple spaceflight for anyone that challenges them. It is also established that they are fully willing to cut corners and disregard safety to accomplish this. This is more than enough reason for the Federation to be fighting against them. They are doing exactly what the Omega directive was intended to stop.
The Voth are in no way innocent bystanders in this.
Ever since I started playing this game, I have approached the issue like this:
The Federation of the 25th century has lost its moral compass. Besieged by war and strife in all directions, the militarized Federation has lost sight of the founding principles upon which it is based. The Federation no longer stands on the moral high ground and is just another of a long series of empires which rise and fall like so many have done in the past.
The greatest challenge to the Federation is not the Klingon Empire, the Borg Collective, the Dominion, or the Undine. The greatest challenge to the Federation is Planets is recuperating the moral compass that endowed it with greatness in the first place.
As for the battles, later cutscenes confirm that the Voth leadership wants to use the Omega Molecules as weapons to cripple spaceflight for anyone that challenges them. It is also established that they are fully willing to cut corners and disregard safety to accomplish this. This is more than enough reason for the Federation to be fighting against them. They are doing exactly what the Omega directive was intended to stop.
The Voth are in no way innocent bystanders in this.
This. So much.
The Voth know the dangers of the Omega molecule. The subspace-destroying properties of Omega are the very reason the Voth are harnessing it.
They intend to use it as their trump card against whatever enemy they're fighting on their borders.
The Klingons are much more straight forward and open in what they're doing.
1. The Klingons love war. We've got that in spades in STO.
2. The Klingons are aggressive. Doing the missions, doing the Academy lore missions of stuff leading into 2409 confirms this. Aggressive as they always had been throughout Star Trek.
3. The Klingons take action: When the Federation refused to acknowledge there was even an Undine threat, the Klingons said, "We'll do this on our own" and invaded the infiltrated Gorn, executing Undine as they went. Througout Star Trek, as one of the major powers of the region, they will take action, alone if need be, and everyone else will feel it to some degree or another.
4. Klingon Honor - Throughout Star Trek, esp. with all the episodes between TNG & DS9, you will find the Klingons having their own different, varying takes on honor. Klingon Honor, at the heart of it all, is success. And if success cannot be had in the performance of one's duties, then a good death in battle. How Klingons get their success is left to interpretation, and some will do whatever is required, some have a more restrained, upstanding way of doing this. Worf is an extreme example of one method. He takes the old histories, examples, teachings, etc. literally. Then you had the Duras, willing to take whatever measure was necessary to gain power as Chancellor, even working with their nemesis' the Romulans. Another extreme example was the BOP Captain for "The Search For Spock" and the stuff they were doing to get Project Genesis.
It's no different than the Samurai that some compare the Klingons to with their code of honor. Execution of their duties is paramount. Yet still some where good at it, some not so. Also, the Samurai were quite fond of what some people say are "dirty methods" of fighting: Night raids, ambushes, sneak attacks, attacking the enemy before they're ready or even sleeping, harassing attacks, deception of the enemy, trickery, whatever. You still had some seeking glory and honor by encountering a worthy foe, and killing him in battle. If it leads the army to success, then so be it.
It's not any different for the Klingons.
If you've watched Star Trek and followed what the Klingons have been doing, compare their actions and different ideals throughout the shows and what they're doing in STO, you will generally find this:
The Klingons are who they say they are.
They even have the rivalry between the different houses.
The Klingons in STO are the closest thing to Star Trek canon & lore than the much larger content designed with the Federation POV in mind.
The Voth do not view themselves as equals, but superiors. This is the same way, Khan, the Tal Shiar, the Borg, the Undine, the Iconians, ...do I need to go on?...view themselves.
The United Federation of Planets is beset on all sides by enemies who would remove it from the Galaxy. Not defeat. Not conquer. Not negotiate an agreeable peace treaty with. Remove. As in eradicate. Make extinct. As in utterly destroy.
Who among you would not fight at your fiercest when you are the most desperate? When the survival of your family, your home is the prize?
Who among you truly believes the Federation and Starfleet would not exercise the option of a negotiated settlement, given the opportunity?
The Voth, by claiming the Sphere and the Omega Particles, have in effect declared genocide, not war. Even if they did have some leaders disposed to listen to reason, Doctrine would call for the immediate removal of these same leaders.
This is most definitely not your Daddy's Starfleet we have here in STO. But then again, how many of us would be playing STO if it were?
As to the KDF. We understand negotiation perfectly. Which is why the Mogh class battlecruiser is now here.
37,500 Hull Points of 'Diplomacy'.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
The Voth, by claiming the Sphere and the Omega Particles, have in effect declared genocide, not war.
Actually it'd be bigger than genocide. That involves wiping out one specific race.
The federation, KDF, and the New Romulans are made up of many races. Their cargo messages even refer to them as "the mammals" instead of "the humans/Klingons/Romulans".
They're attempting Genuscide, sounds like they would want to kill/dominate all mammals.
I mean I don't blame them, but they can work on their tact.
While I may not have used the exact correct word, the idea still got across didn't it?
As to the mammals, there are numerous avian, piscine, reptilian, and other types of species in all of the player factions aren't there? Wasn't there a TNG episode where the command crew devolved and Worf regressed to something like a Komodo Dragon?
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
While I may not have used the exact correct word, the idea still got across didn't it?
As to the mammals, there are numerous avian, piscine, reptilian, and other types of species in all of the player factions aren't there? Wasn't there a TNG episode where the command crew devolved and Worf regressed to something like a Komodo Dragon?
There's no Avians in the Trek universe. None that are still alive, anyway.
Also they'd probably kill the other kinds of races merely for being "traitors" and working against them.
As for the devolution thing, if you were to devolve enough you'd become some kind of reptile/amphibian, too. That doesn't make humans a reptile.
It is quite awful actually.
Here we are the mighty knights in silver spaceships roaming the universe, exploring.
Lo and behold! A sphere! Let's explore! Oh, wait. There are dinosaurs here with frikkin lazors on their heads. Let us shoot them. They want Omega molecules. No need to ask them why, who their mighty enemy might be. Let us shoot down their non-attacking supportships. Let's suit up in their armours, so they can't pick us out that easily...
Scientists? Bah. Shoot them. Medics? Bah. Shoot them. Shoot them ginormous cityships out of the sky. Let us not speak of all the dinosaurial females and children. Oh, wait. Good idea. Let us use their children as pets!
I'm going by the STO universe, they only acknowledge the Xindi, whose Avians are extinct.
STO has not denied the existence of the avians from Jihad or others. As Nimbus III shows us, STO takes the route of "if it was on screen and covered by our license, it's a thing," rather than the more common treatment of, "Bad movies are bad and should be quietly ignored or retconned through bizarrely tortured logic."
Just because their occasionally long reach for fanservice references hasn't touched them yet doesn't mean that they've been written out of existence.
Pardon? When did we arm medics? I have relatives that earned medals because they were unarmed medics that performed underfire by picking up the weapon of one of his fallen squadmates and using it to eliminate an aggressor shooting at them. So at least to Vietnam we did not arm medics.
However the general rule of thumb is, if they are shooting at you, you may shoot back.
Let the courts decide if they were legitimate after the fighting is over.
Delayed response: I served in the US Army for 8 years, my second deployment to Iraq was with a medical command unit and my general assignment location was a combat support hospital. Guess who had weapons and was expected to be able to use them? Everyone. The difference is that medics aren't issued anything larger than a sidearm or rifle, they are generally never assigned to larger weapons such as squad machine guns or heavy emplacement guns. But if the situation calls for it, a medic will take up such a weapon to save his/her life and the lives of his unit.
The only personnel in the military who do not carry weapons are Chaplains. Under the Geneva Convention they are considered non-combatants and are not to be harmed. However, given the proper circumstances a Chaplain may have to grab a weapon and return fire, especially if fighting against an enemy that does not recognize or respect the Convention. And under the Convention, the moment he/she took up arms then became a combatant and no longer benefits from the immunity offered by the Convention. You have a weapon, you are a valid target.
As to the unarmed Voth support ships, I believe those are unmanned drones? Shouldn't be a problem shooting them if there are no lifesigns aboard. The Geneva Convention exists to ensure non-combatants aren't harmed in combat (among other reasons) but I doubt it extends to a non-sentient device that has no cultural value and is providing a tactical advantage to the enemy.
The universe has a wonderful sense of humor. The trick is learning how to take a joke.
Pardon? When did we arm medics? I have relatives that earned medals because they were unarmed medics that performed underfire by picking up the weapon of one of his fallen squadmates and using it to eliminate an aggressor shooting at them. So at least to Vietnam we did not arm medics.
However the general rule of thumb is, if they are shooting at you, you may shoot back.
Let the courts decide if they were legitimate after the fighting is over.
I do not know if Voyager is the worst, that is rather subjective. But the Omega protocols are poorly thought out to say the least. Only the captain knows about them and the moment any scan finds them the whole ship locks up? Say what happens if in the middle of battle the scanners find a particle? The ship stops flying and gets creamed.
So, yeah rather poorly thought out.
I was an airborne infantry medic during the Gulf War and not only was I armed with an M-16, it also had an M203 grenade launcher mounted on it. At least by that time medics were no longer wearing the white armband with a red cross on it saying "shoot me first". As a previous poster mentioned (at least in the U.S. Army) we are all considered soldiers first, with our specialities coming in as needed. I am proud to say that in my case I at least saved more lives (on both sides) than I ever took.
The Voth know the dangers of the Omega molecule. The subspace-destroying properties of Omega are the very reason the Voth are harnessing it.
They intend to use it as their trump card against whatever enemy they're fighting on their borders.
An enemy indicated by the cutscenes to be the Borg. So again, why do I care?
And if they blow up subspace and trap themselves? They're victims of their own gorram stupidity and I still don't care.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
The implication is that their form of transwarp travel is not affected.
Even if they trap themselves, the amount of Omega in the Sphere isn't just enough to trap them and their immediate foes - it's explicitly stated that the amount of Omega present in the Sphere is enough to disrupt warp travel in all four quadrants of the galaxy. Even against the Borg, this is the equivalent of threatening global nuclear armageddon to deter a minor regional power.
Even if they trap themselves, the amount of Omega in the Sphere isn't just enough to trap them and their immediate foes - it's explicitly stated that the amount of Omega present in the Sphere is enough to disrupt warp travel in all four quadrants of the galaxy. Even against the Borg, this is the equivalent of threatening global nuclear armageddon to deter a minor regional power.
It's the equivalent of us at the end of the Cold War saying we have enough nukes to depopulate Earth twenty times (or whatever the number was; it's not important). What this really means is we could smash every populated area on the planet twenty times (i.e. there's enough destructive power that it's redundant to itself). It's not saying that the effects are cumulative, that more molecules = bigger radius of effect.
So again, why should I give a damn that some random one-shot species blew themselves out of warp capability?
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Omega molecules detected: Prime directive temporarily rescinded- Standing orders see Omega protocol:
Destroy Omega molecules, technology, related research and all related materials by any means necessary, see General Order 24 Section 33. Nullify threat to the Federation and all warp capable species.
Omega molecules detected: Prime directive temporarily rescinded- Standing orders see Omega protocol:
Destroy Omega molecules, technology, related research and all related materials by any means necessary, see General Order 24 Section 33. Nullify threat to the Federation and all warp capable species.
Just quoting the Omega directive at me isn't going to convince me that it isn't the second-stupidest idea VOY ever came up with (behind Neelix, obviously). Try again, because "A starship captain's most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive." I respect Kirk far more than I respect Janeway.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Right, our justification for not acting like Starfleet is a random never-referred-to-again piece of technobabble from the worst show in the canon.
I say again, the Omega molecules do not present an evident threat. Omega molecules only damage subspace if they detonate. They don't detonate if stable. The fact that warp and subspace-using boff powers and so forth work inside the sphere means that subspace still works inside the sphere, and therefore the molecules are stable and not a threat. And if the Voth blow themselves up with them? Good riddance. One less random one-shot species to worry about.
And no, I don't consider Janeway's actions sufficient precedent, because she's a flaming hypocrite.
@Cryptic: Next time you bring in random one-shot pieces of technobabble, think them through better. And that's just one of the problems with the scenario.
True, they only damage subspace. The problem is, if that happens, warp-drive travel and every single race's ability to travel in space is done for, forever.
So that's exactly why they must be destroyed, whether they're stable or not: one accident, one malicious attack, and they could go off. Even a small amount can destroy an entire sector's area of subspace. The Dyson Sphere has enough for the galaxy, if not more.
They're essentially a WMD in space, and there's no safe way of fooling around with them. So this is why the Federation fears them; they could destroy their ability to do anything, as well as everyone else's ability. So it doesn't surprise me that the Omega directive overrides the Prime Directive.
Was named Trek17.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
True, they only damage subspace. The problem is, if that happens, warp-drive travel and every single race's ability to travel in space is done for, forever.
So that's exactly why they must be destroyed, whether they're stable or not: one accident, one malicious attack, and they could go off. Even a small amount can destroy an entire sector's area of subspace. The Dyson Sphere has enough for the galaxy, if not more.
They're essentially a WMD in space, and there's no safe way of fooling around with them
"Done for, forever", IN THAT LOCAL AREA. They have demonstrated the ability to destroy subspace on a small scale (a system, not a galaxy). As I pointed out already, that does not automatically mean that they can destroy it on a large scale. A galaxy is several orders of magnitude larger than a star system.
Are you blindly parroting that demonstrably incompetent hypocritical psychopath Janeway, or did you actually stop and think about whether what you saw on screen actually matched up with eminently fallible characters' knee-jerk reactions?
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
"Done for, forever", IN THAT LOCAL AREA. They have demonstrated the ability to destroy subspace on a small scale (a system, not a galaxy). As I pointed out already, that does not automatically mean that they can destroy it on a large scale. A galaxy is several orders of magnitude larger than a star system.
Are you blindly parroting that demonstrably incompetent hypocritical psychopath Janeway, or did you actually stop and think about whether what you saw on screen actually matched up with eminently fallible characters' knee-jerk reactions?
What I'm saying is, the Federation will not take that chance (that the Omega particles could be used to destroy warp travel forever, small or large). They haven't since VOY. Janeway has nothing to do with it
And I don't blame them, really
Was named Trek17.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
It is quite awful actually.
Here we are the mighty knights in silver spaceships roaming the universe, exploring.
Lo and behold! A sphere! Let's explore! Oh, wait. There are dinosaurs here with frikkin lazors on their heads. Let us shoot them. They want Omega molecules. No need to ask them why, who their mighty enemy might be. Let us shoot down their non-attacking supportships. Let's suit up in their armours, so they can't pick us out that easily...
Scientists? Bah. Shoot them. Medics? Bah. Shoot them. Shoot them ginormous cityships out of the sky. Let us not speak of all the dinosaurial females and children. Oh, wait. Good idea. Let us use their children as pets!
:eek:
I agree wholeheartedly! In all of the best Science Fiction I've read or watched over the years, including some episodes of ST:TOS, the shining examples were those that gave me hope of a future where humanity would have outgrown primitive concepts such as Government and Religion. A future where we would have at least begun to grow beyond the barbaric fears and paranoia that stem from our animal origins. The original Vulcans were excellent examples of many of these ideals realized as were most of the humans in ST:TOS.
I still have hopes for that future. As you can see from many of the responses here... we ain't there, yet! :P... but that don't mean we won't get there!
The Science Fiction author L. Neil Smith believes we are at the beginning of the end of the Age of Authority... I can't wait!
*STO*Its mission: To destroy strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations... and then kill them, to boldly annihilate what no one has annihilated before!
Ahem... Let me just say a few things about everyone who say that the Federation is a force of "good" and about the whole "holier than thou" attitude.
While Picard and Sisko are the peak of morality the Federation as an institution is not.
How many times did Picard or Sisko go against the Federation to do the right thing?
How many colonies has the Federaion leave at the mercy of the other forces of the Alpha quadrant?
Section 31 anyone?
How many times did you actually see the Federation doing the right thing out of morality and not out of interest or to preserve it's own security?
Archer committed the Valakian to extinction by not giving them a warp drive.
Another morality issue, the federation didn't lift a finger to liberate Bajor for 50 years, never mind that 15,000,000 Bajorans died in that time, until Cardassians tried to annex Minos Korva. Than since they touched a Federation planet they decided to act.
So please the Federation as a whole is far cry from benevolent.
Comments
This rigid attitude means that the Federation would have no point of common ground to open negotiations. With the Voth's current propaganda fueled stance, opening negotiations would mean admitting that they aren't the true owners/creators of the sphere.
As for the battles, later cutscenes confirm that the Voth leadership wants to use the Omega Molecules as weapons to cripple spaceflight for anyone that challenges them. It is also established that they are fully willing to cut corners and disregard safety to accomplish this. This is more than enough reason for the Federation to be fighting against them. They are doing exactly what the Omega directive was intended to stop.
The Voth are in no way innocent bystanders in this.
The Federation of the 25th century has lost its moral compass. Besieged by war and strife in all directions, the militarized Federation has lost sight of the founding principles upon which it is based. The Federation no longer stands on the moral high ground and is just another of a long series of empires which rise and fall like so many have done in the past.
The greatest challenge to the Federation is not the Klingon Empire, the Borg Collective, the Dominion, or the Undine. The greatest challenge to the Federation is Planets is recuperating the moral compass that endowed it with greatness in the first place.
The Voth know the dangers of the Omega molecule. The subspace-destroying properties of Omega are the very reason the Voth are harnessing it.
They intend to use it as their trump card against whatever enemy they're fighting on their borders.
KILLl them all...including their women and children.
The Klingons are much more straight forward and open in what they're doing.
1. The Klingons love war. We've got that in spades in STO.
2. The Klingons are aggressive. Doing the missions, doing the Academy lore missions of stuff leading into 2409 confirms this. Aggressive as they always had been throughout Star Trek.
3. The Klingons take action: When the Federation refused to acknowledge there was even an Undine threat, the Klingons said, "We'll do this on our own" and invaded the infiltrated Gorn, executing Undine as they went. Througout Star Trek, as one of the major powers of the region, they will take action, alone if need be, and everyone else will feel it to some degree or another.
4. Klingon Honor - Throughout Star Trek, esp. with all the episodes between TNG & DS9, you will find the Klingons having their own different, varying takes on honor. Klingon Honor, at the heart of it all, is success. And if success cannot be had in the performance of one's duties, then a good death in battle. How Klingons get their success is left to interpretation, and some will do whatever is required, some have a more restrained, upstanding way of doing this. Worf is an extreme example of one method. He takes the old histories, examples, teachings, etc. literally. Then you had the Duras, willing to take whatever measure was necessary to gain power as Chancellor, even working with their nemesis' the Romulans. Another extreme example was the BOP Captain for "The Search For Spock" and the stuff they were doing to get Project Genesis.
It's no different than the Samurai that some compare the Klingons to with their code of honor. Execution of their duties is paramount. Yet still some where good at it, some not so. Also, the Samurai were quite fond of what some people say are "dirty methods" of fighting: Night raids, ambushes, sneak attacks, attacking the enemy before they're ready or even sleeping, harassing attacks, deception of the enemy, trickery, whatever. You still had some seeking glory and honor by encountering a worthy foe, and killing him in battle. If it leads the army to success, then so be it.
It's not any different for the Klingons.
If you've watched Star Trek and followed what the Klingons have been doing, compare their actions and different ideals throughout the shows and what they're doing in STO, you will generally find this:
The Klingons are who they say they are.
They even have the rivalry between the different houses.
The Klingons in STO are the closest thing to Star Trek canon & lore than the much larger content designed with the Federation POV in mind.
The United Federation of Planets is beset on all sides by enemies who would remove it from the Galaxy. Not defeat. Not conquer. Not negotiate an agreeable peace treaty with. Remove. As in eradicate. Make extinct. As in utterly destroy.
Who among you would not fight at your fiercest when you are the most desperate? When the survival of your family, your home is the prize?
Who among you truly believes the Federation and Starfleet would not exercise the option of a negotiated settlement, given the opportunity?
The Voth, by claiming the Sphere and the Omega Particles, have in effect declared genocide, not war. Even if they did have some leaders disposed to listen to reason, Doctrine would call for the immediate removal of these same leaders.
This is most definitely not your Daddy's Starfleet we have here in STO. But then again, how many of us would be playing STO if it were?
As to the KDF. We understand negotiation perfectly. Which is why the Mogh class battlecruiser is now here.
37,500 Hull Points of 'Diplomacy'.
Actually it'd be bigger than genocide. That involves wiping out one specific race.
The federation, KDF, and the New Romulans are made up of many races. Their cargo messages even refer to them as "the mammals" instead of "the humans/Klingons/Romulans".
They're attempting Genuscide, sounds like they would want to kill/dominate all mammals.
I mean I don't blame them, but they can work on their tact.
Omega Particles are to be eliminated at all costs.
The Voth are willfully standing in the way of that objective.
Therefore, we remove that obstacle in order to carry out the mission.
Simple as that.
As to the mammals, there are numerous avian, piscine, reptilian, and other types of species in all of the player factions aren't there? Wasn't there a TNG episode where the command crew devolved and Worf regressed to something like a Komodo Dragon?
There's no Avians in the Trek universe. None that are still alive, anyway.
Also they'd probably kill the other kinds of races merely for being "traitors" and working against them.
As for the devolution thing, if you were to devolve enough you'd become some kind of reptile/amphibian, too. That doesn't make humans a reptile.
So much for I.D.I.C. So Vulcans and Andorians and Bolians are now traitor races? :rolleyes:
No it doesn't. But the TNG episode I am referring had humans devolving into small fearful tree inhabiting social mammals. Quite tasty as well.
I'm going by the STO universe, they only acknowledge the Xindi, whose Avians are extinct.
The Vorn would consider them so, they're working with their enemy.
Hypocrite, stop playing the game then!
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10052253
Why are you not rejoicing?
STO has not denied the existence of the avians from Jihad or others. As Nimbus III shows us, STO takes the route of "if it was on screen and covered by our license, it's a thing," rather than the more common treatment of, "Bad movies are bad and should be quietly ignored or retconned through bizarrely tortured logic."
Just because their occasionally long reach for fanservice references hasn't touched them yet doesn't mean that they've been written out of existence.
The Banean would disagree with you.
Attention! The distinguished gentleman from South America has raised a motion before the forum. Will anyone second this motion?
Delayed response: I served in the US Army for 8 years, my second deployment to Iraq was with a medical command unit and my general assignment location was a combat support hospital. Guess who had weapons and was expected to be able to use them? Everyone. The difference is that medics aren't issued anything larger than a sidearm or rifle, they are generally never assigned to larger weapons such as squad machine guns or heavy emplacement guns. But if the situation calls for it, a medic will take up such a weapon to save his/her life and the lives of his unit.
The only personnel in the military who do not carry weapons are Chaplains. Under the Geneva Convention they are considered non-combatants and are not to be harmed. However, given the proper circumstances a Chaplain may have to grab a weapon and return fire, especially if fighting against an enemy that does not recognize or respect the Convention. And under the Convention, the moment he/she took up arms then became a combatant and no longer benefits from the immunity offered by the Convention. You have a weapon, you are a valid target.
As to the unarmed Voth support ships, I believe those are unmanned drones? Shouldn't be a problem shooting them if there are no lifesigns aboard. The Geneva Convention exists to ensure non-combatants aren't harmed in combat (among other reasons) but I doubt it extends to a non-sentient device that has no cultural value and is providing a tactical advantage to the enemy.
The universe has a wonderful sense of humor. The trick is learning how to take a joke.
I was an airborne infantry medic during the Gulf War and not only was I armed with an M-16, it also had an M203 grenade launcher mounted on it. At least by that time medics were no longer wearing the white armband with a red cross on it saying "shoot me first". As a previous poster mentioned (at least in the U.S. Army) we are all considered soldiers first, with our specialities coming in as needed. I am proud to say that in my case I at least saved more lives (on both sides) than I ever took.
An enemy indicated by the cutscenes to be the Borg. So again, why do I care?
And if they blow up subspace and trap themselves? They're victims of their own gorram stupidity and I still don't care.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Even if they trap themselves, the amount of Omega in the Sphere isn't just enough to trap them and their immediate foes - it's explicitly stated that the amount of Omega present in the Sphere is enough to disrupt warp travel in all four quadrants of the galaxy. Even against the Borg, this is the equivalent of threatening global nuclear armageddon to deter a minor regional power.
It's the equivalent of us at the end of the Cold War saying we have enough nukes to depopulate Earth twenty times (or whatever the number was; it's not important). What this really means is we could smash every populated area on the planet twenty times (i.e. there's enough destructive power that it's redundant to itself). It's not saying that the effects are cumulative, that more molecules = bigger radius of effect.
So again, why should I give a damn that some random one-shot species blew themselves out of warp capability?
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Omega molecules detected: Prime directive temporarily rescinded- Standing orders see Omega protocol:
Destroy Omega molecules, technology, related research and all related materials by any means necessary, see General Order 24 Section 33. Nullify threat to the Federation and all warp capable species.
Just quoting the Omega directive at me isn't going to convince me that it isn't the second-stupidest idea VOY ever came up with (behind Neelix, obviously). Try again, because "A starship captain's most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive." I respect Kirk far more than I respect Janeway.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
So that's exactly why they must be destroyed, whether they're stable or not: one accident, one malicious attack, and they could go off. Even a small amount can destroy an entire sector's area of subspace. The Dyson Sphere has enough for the galaxy, if not more.
They're essentially a WMD in space, and there's no safe way of fooling around with them. So this is why the Federation fears them; they could destroy their ability to do anything, as well as everyone else's ability. So it doesn't surprise me that the Omega directive overrides the Prime Directive.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
"Done for, forever", IN THAT LOCAL AREA. They have demonstrated the ability to destroy subspace on a small scale (a system, not a galaxy). As I pointed out already, that does not automatically mean that they can destroy it on a large scale. A galaxy is several orders of magnitude larger than a star system.
Are you blindly parroting that demonstrably incompetent hypocritical psychopath Janeway, or did you actually stop and think about whether what you saw on screen actually matched up with eminently fallible characters' knee-jerk reactions?
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
And I don't blame them, really
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
I agree wholeheartedly! In all of the best Science Fiction I've read or watched over the years, including some episodes of ST:TOS, the shining examples were those that gave me hope of a future where humanity would have outgrown primitive concepts such as Government and Religion. A future where we would have at least begun to grow beyond the barbaric fears and paranoia that stem from our animal origins. The original Vulcans were excellent examples of many of these ideals realized as were most of the humans in ST:TOS.
I still have hopes for that future. As you can see from many of the responses here... we ain't there, yet! :P... but that don't mean we won't get there!
The Science Fiction author L. Neil Smith believes we are at the beginning of the end of the Age of Authority... I can't wait!
While Picard and Sisko are the peak of morality the Federation as an institution is not.
How many times did Picard or Sisko go against the Federation to do the right thing?
How many colonies has the Federaion leave at the mercy of the other forces of the Alpha quadrant?
Section 31 anyone?
How many times did you actually see the Federation doing the right thing out of morality and not out of interest or to preserve it's own security?
Archer committed the Valakian to extinction by not giving them a warp drive.
Another morality issue, the federation didn't lift a finger to liberate Bajor for 50 years, never mind that 15,000,000 Bajorans died in that time, until Cardassians tried to annex Minos Korva. Than since they touched a Federation planet they decided to act.
So please the Federation as a whole is far cry from benevolent.