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Kelvin Star Trek 4 has a new writer/director

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  • phoenixc#0738 phoenixc Member Posts: 5,459 Arc User
    starkaos wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    khan5000 wrote: »
    I agree that he was being melodramatic but he’s kind of right. How long would it take Khan to replicate the genesis device and convert it into a weapon?
    Depends on how difficult it is to acquire protomatter in the 23rd Century. There are far more easier and cheaper methods to destroy a planet than a flawed terraforming device. The problem with the Genesis Device could have been due to it being used on a Nebula to create a planet and not terraforming an existing planet which is mentioned in the Genesis Wave novels.
    Yeah, Genesis as a one-use device is fantastically expensive. Realistically the best use is as the Klingon ambassador said. Take out as many defenses as you can from orbit and take out the populace with Genesis instead of enslaving or subjugating them. It's totally genocide, and faster than shooting everyone the old fashioned way. But a long range "tactical strike" using a single Genesis torpedo? Expensive and risky. It COULD work, but results can't be guaranteed.

    If someone wants to take out a populace, then introducing a virus that wipes out the populace or something similar to a neutron bomb would be far more effective. The Genesis Device would be more useful for extremely alien races that want to remove the populace and terraform the world to their specifications. Personally, I dislike the word terraform when it doesn't deal with turning an alien world into something similar to Earth, but turning Earth or an alien world into a different type of alien world.
    Sure, you can introduce a virus - but that can then mutate and affect you. (There's a reason we avoid biowarfare in the real world.) And you can use something like neutron bombs, but there's still all that pesky ionizing radiation to deal with afterward. Even thalaron weapons leave piles of ash to sweep up.

    Drop a Genesis Device, though, and not only is the planetary population eliminated and the mess cleaned up, but anything in the ecosystem that isn't right for you goes away. Planet's a little too heavy (or too light)? Atmosphere not quite right? Too many hostile animals/plants/combinations? No problem - we don't just cleanse the world of life, we replace that life with something more to our liking. It's like weaponizing Magrathea.
    Part of why bioweapons are frowned on IRL is how no one's found a way to prevent it from killing both sides and random bystanders other than building an immunity with stuff like vaccinations.

    An alien race with iron-based blood creating a virus that targets aliens with copper-based blood would certainly prevent the virus from killing both sides. So just because bioweapons used on humans have a very good chance of backfiring, doesn't mean the same can be said for using bioweapons on aliens.

    Not necessarily, especially with hybrids like Spock and others that bridge the gap providing an easy path for zoonosis to occur.
  • legendarylycan#5411 legendarylycan Member Posts: 37,276 Arc User
    bioweapons are bad, m'kay?

    nano-destroyers are far better, because nanotech can't mutate unless they've been programmed to do so​​
    Like special weapons from other Star Trek games? Wondering if they can be replicated in STO even a little bit? Check this out: https://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1262277/a-mostly-comprehensive-guide-to-star-trek-videogame-special-weapons-and-their-sto-equivalents

    #LegalizeAwoo

    A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
    An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
    A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
    A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"


    "It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
    "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
    Passion and Serenity are one.
    I gain power by understanding both.
    In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
    I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
    The Force is united within me.
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,231 Arc User
    bioweapons are bad, m'kay?

    nano-destroyers are far better, because nanotech can't mutate unless they've been programmed to do so​​
    Oh? I can glitch out and fail to follow it's programming properly due to damage.
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    My character Tsin'xing
    Costume_marhawkman_Tsin%27xing_CC_Comic_Page_Blue_488916968.jpg
  • jonsillsjonsills Member Posts: 10,354 Arc User
    starkaos wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    khan5000 wrote: »
    I agree that he was being melodramatic but he’s kind of right. How long would it take Khan to replicate the genesis device and convert it into a weapon?
    Depends on how difficult it is to acquire protomatter in the 23rd Century. There are far more easier and cheaper methods to destroy a planet than a flawed terraforming device. The problem with the Genesis Device could have been due to it being used on a Nebula to create a planet and not terraforming an existing planet which is mentioned in the Genesis Wave novels.
    Yeah, Genesis as a one-use device is fantastically expensive. Realistically the best use is as the Klingon ambassador said. Take out as many defenses as you can from orbit and take out the populace with Genesis instead of enslaving or subjugating them. It's totally genocide, and faster than shooting everyone the old fashioned way. But a long range "tactical strike" using a single Genesis torpedo? Expensive and risky. It COULD work, but results can't be guaranteed.

    If someone wants to take out a populace, then introducing a virus that wipes out the populace or something similar to a neutron bomb would be far more effective. The Genesis Device would be more useful for extremely alien races that want to remove the populace and terraform the world to their specifications. Personally, I dislike the word terraform when it doesn't deal with turning an alien world into something similar to Earth, but turning Earth or an alien world into a different type of alien world.
    Sure, you can introduce a virus - but that can then mutate and affect you. (There's a reason we avoid biowarfare in the real world.) And you can use something like neutron bombs, but there's still all that pesky ionizing radiation to deal with afterward. Even thalaron weapons leave piles of ash to sweep up.

    Drop a Genesis Device, though, and not only is the planetary population eliminated and the mess cleaned up, but anything in the ecosystem that isn't right for you goes away. Planet's a little too heavy (or too light)? Atmosphere not quite right? Too many hostile animals/plants/combinations? No problem - we don't just cleanse the world of life, we replace that life with something more to our liking. It's like weaponizing Magrathea.
    Part of why bioweapons are frowned on IRL is how no one's found a way to prevent it from killing both sides and random bystanders other than building an immunity with stuff like vaccinations.

    An alien race with iron-based blood creating a virus that targets aliens with copper-based blood would certainly prevent the virus from killing both sides. So just because bioweapons used on humans have a very good chance of backfiring, doesn't mean the same can be said for using bioweapons on aliens.
    In Star Trek, diseases that afflict a given species can explicitly infect other species, even when the microbiome is radically different - see Levodian flu, for example. AndEarth-Human and Vulcan biologies are sufficiently similar that offspring can be produced completely accidentally (Sela, for instance, the product of a Romulan sexually assaulting a Human, or that poor kid in TNG:"Drumhead" whose grandfather was a Romulan expatriate). So no, you can't rely on your genetically-tailored plague only affecting the guys with the blue blood, especially when you consider the possibility of mutation.

    (For a more realistic take on the topic, if you're so inclined, check out James White's Sector General stories. Doctors at Sector General usually treat patients of species other than their own, because transmission of disease between products of different evolutionary trees seems to be pretty much impossible.)
    Lorna-Wing-sig.png
  • starswordcstarswordc Member Posts: 10,963 Arc User
    jonsills wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    khan5000 wrote: »
    I agree that he was being melodramatic but he’s kind of right. How long would it take Khan to replicate the genesis device and convert it into a weapon?
    Depends on how difficult it is to acquire protomatter in the 23rd Century. There are far more easier and cheaper methods to destroy a planet than a flawed terraforming device. The problem with the Genesis Device could have been due to it being used on a Nebula to create a planet and not terraforming an existing planet which is mentioned in the Genesis Wave novels.
    Yeah, Genesis as a one-use device is fantastically expensive. Realistically the best use is as the Klingon ambassador said. Take out as many defenses as you can from orbit and take out the populace with Genesis instead of enslaving or subjugating them. It's totally genocide, and faster than shooting everyone the old fashioned way. But a long range "tactical strike" using a single Genesis torpedo? Expensive and risky. It COULD work, but results can't be guaranteed.

    If someone wants to take out a populace, then introducing a virus that wipes out the populace or something similar to a neutron bomb would be far more effective. The Genesis Device would be more useful for extremely alien races that want to remove the populace and terraform the world to their specifications. Personally, I dislike the word terraform when it doesn't deal with turning an alien world into something similar to Earth, but turning Earth or an alien world into a different type of alien world.
    Sure, you can introduce a virus - but that can then mutate and affect you. (There's a reason we avoid biowarfare in the real world.) And you can use something like neutron bombs, but there's still all that pesky ionizing radiation to deal with afterward. Even thalaron weapons leave piles of ash to sweep up.

    Drop a Genesis Device, though, and not only is the planetary population eliminated and the mess cleaned up, but anything in the ecosystem that isn't right for you goes away. Planet's a little too heavy (or too light)? Atmosphere not quite right? Too many hostile animals/plants/combinations? No problem - we don't just cleanse the world of life, we replace that life with something more to our liking. It's like weaponizing Magrathea.
    Part of why bioweapons are frowned on IRL is how no one's found a way to prevent it from killing both sides and random bystanders other than building an immunity with stuff like vaccinations.

    An alien race with iron-based blood creating a virus that targets aliens with copper-based blood would certainly prevent the virus from killing both sides. So just because bioweapons used on humans have a very good chance of backfiring, doesn't mean the same can be said for using bioweapons on aliens.
    In Star Trek, diseases that afflict a given species can explicitly infect other species, even when the microbiome is radically different - see Levodian flu, for example. AndEarth-Human and Vulcan biologies are sufficiently similar that offspring can be produced completely accidentally (Sela, for instance, the product of a Romulan sexually assaulting a Human, or that poor kid in TNG:"Drumhead" whose grandfather was a Romulan expatriate). So no, you can't rely on your genetically-tailored plague only affecting the guys with the blue blood, especially when you consider the possibility of mutation.

    (For a more realistic take on the topic, if you're so inclined, check out James White's Sector General stories. Doctors at Sector General usually treat patients of species other than their own, because transmission of disease between products of different evolutionary trees seems to be pretty much impossible.)

    Yeah, in general when Star Trek gets anything about science right, it's the exception rather than the rule. Spock himself should be flatly impossible: you can't breed a human with a gorilla, two closely related sapient species from the same planet!
    "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"
    VZ9ASdg.png

    Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
  • starkaosstarkaos Member Posts: 11,556 Arc User
    edited December 2019
    starswordc wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    khan5000 wrote: »
    I agree that he was being melodramatic but he’s kind of right. How long would it take Khan to replicate the genesis device and convert it into a weapon?
    Depends on how difficult it is to acquire protomatter in the 23rd Century. There are far more easier and cheaper methods to destroy a planet than a flawed terraforming device. The problem with the Genesis Device could have been due to it being used on a Nebula to create a planet and not terraforming an existing planet which is mentioned in the Genesis Wave novels.
    Yeah, Genesis as a one-use device is fantastically expensive. Realistically the best use is as the Klingon ambassador said. Take out as many defenses as you can from orbit and take out the populace with Genesis instead of enslaving or subjugating them. It's totally genocide, and faster than shooting everyone the old fashioned way. But a long range "tactical strike" using a single Genesis torpedo? Expensive and risky. It COULD work, but results can't be guaranteed.

    If someone wants to take out a populace, then introducing a virus that wipes out the populace or something similar to a neutron bomb would be far more effective. The Genesis Device would be more useful for extremely alien races that want to remove the populace and terraform the world to their specifications. Personally, I dislike the word terraform when it doesn't deal with turning an alien world into something similar to Earth, but turning Earth or an alien world into a different type of alien world.
    Sure, you can introduce a virus - but that can then mutate and affect you. (There's a reason we avoid biowarfare in the real world.) And you can use something like neutron bombs, but there's still all that pesky ionizing radiation to deal with afterward. Even thalaron weapons leave piles of ash to sweep up.

    Drop a Genesis Device, though, and not only is the planetary population eliminated and the mess cleaned up, but anything in the ecosystem that isn't right for you goes away. Planet's a little too heavy (or too light)? Atmosphere not quite right? Too many hostile animals/plants/combinations? No problem - we don't just cleanse the world of life, we replace that life with something more to our liking. It's like weaponizing Magrathea.
    Part of why bioweapons are frowned on IRL is how no one's found a way to prevent it from killing both sides and random bystanders other than building an immunity with stuff like vaccinations.

    An alien race with iron-based blood creating a virus that targets aliens with copper-based blood would certainly prevent the virus from killing both sides. So just because bioweapons used on humans have a very good chance of backfiring, doesn't mean the same can be said for using bioweapons on aliens.
    In Star Trek, diseases that afflict a given species can explicitly infect other species, even when the microbiome is radically different - see Levodian flu, for example. AndEarth-Human and Vulcan biologies are sufficiently similar that offspring can be produced completely accidentally (Sela, for instance, the product of a Romulan sexually assaulting a Human, or that poor kid in TNG:"Drumhead" whose grandfather was a Romulan expatriate). So no, you can't rely on your genetically-tailored plague only affecting the guys with the blue blood, especially when you consider the possibility of mutation.

    (For a more realistic take on the topic, if you're so inclined, check out James White's Sector General stories. Doctors at Sector General usually treat patients of species other than their own, because transmission of disease between products of different evolutionary trees seems to be pretty much impossible.)

    Yeah, in general when Star Trek gets anything about science right, it's the exception rather than the rule. Spock himself should be flatly impossible: you can't breed a human with a gorilla, two closely related sapient species from the same planet!

    Might be possible with extensive genetic engineering to make a Human/Vulcan hybrid or Human/Monkey Hybrid if Star Trek followed biology correctly, but it is certainly not possible with natural methods. Some of the Star Trek hybrids were created through genetic engineering while others were natural.
  • phoenixc#0738 phoenixc Member Posts: 5,459 Arc User
    starkaos wrote: »
    starswordc wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    khan5000 wrote: »
    I agree that he was being melodramatic but he’s kind of right. How long would it take Khan to replicate the genesis device and convert it into a weapon?
    Depends on how difficult it is to acquire protomatter in the 23rd Century. There are far more easier and cheaper methods to destroy a planet than a flawed terraforming device. The problem with the Genesis Device could have been due to it being used on a Nebula to create a planet and not terraforming an existing planet which is mentioned in the Genesis Wave novels.
    Yeah, Genesis as a one-use device is fantastically expensive. Realistically the best use is as the Klingon ambassador said. Take out as many defenses as you can from orbit and take out the populace with Genesis instead of enslaving or subjugating them. It's totally genocide, and faster than shooting everyone the old fashioned way. But a long range "tactical strike" using a single Genesis torpedo? Expensive and risky. It COULD work, but results can't be guaranteed.

    If someone wants to take out a populace, then introducing a virus that wipes out the populace or something similar to a neutron bomb would be far more effective. The Genesis Device would be more useful for extremely alien races that want to remove the populace and terraform the world to their specifications. Personally, I dislike the word terraform when it doesn't deal with turning an alien world into something similar to Earth, but turning Earth or an alien world into a different type of alien world.
    Sure, you can introduce a virus - but that can then mutate and affect you. (There's a reason we avoid biowarfare in the real world.) And you can use something like neutron bombs, but there's still all that pesky ionizing radiation to deal with afterward. Even thalaron weapons leave piles of ash to sweep up.

    Drop a Genesis Device, though, and not only is the planetary population eliminated and the mess cleaned up, but anything in the ecosystem that isn't right for you goes away. Planet's a little too heavy (or too light)? Atmosphere not quite right? Too many hostile animals/plants/combinations? No problem - we don't just cleanse the world of life, we replace that life with something more to our liking. It's like weaponizing Magrathea.
    Part of why bioweapons are frowned on IRL is how no one's found a way to prevent it from killing both sides and random bystanders other than building an immunity with stuff like vaccinations.

    An alien race with iron-based blood creating a virus that targets aliens with copper-based blood would certainly prevent the virus from killing both sides. So just because bioweapons used on humans have a very good chance of backfiring, doesn't mean the same can be said for using bioweapons on aliens.
    In Star Trek, diseases that afflict a given species can explicitly infect other species, even when the microbiome is radically different - see Levodian flu, for example. AndEarth-Human and Vulcan biologies are sufficiently similar that offspring can be produced completely accidentally (Sela, for instance, the product of a Romulan sexually assaulting a Human, or that poor kid in TNG:"Drumhead" whose grandfather was a Romulan expatriate). So no, you can't rely on your genetically-tailored plague only affecting the guys with the blue blood, especially when you consider the possibility of mutation.

    (For a more realistic take on the topic, if you're so inclined, check out James White's Sector General stories. Doctors at Sector General usually treat patients of species other than their own, because transmission of disease between products of different evolutionary trees seems to be pretty much impossible.)

    Yeah, in general when Star Trek gets anything about science right, it's the exception rather than the rule. Spock himself should be flatly impossible: you can't breed a human with a gorilla, two closely related sapient species from the same planet!

    Might be possible with extensive genetic engineering to make a Human/Vulcan hybrid or Human/Monkey Hybrid if Star Trek followed biology correctly, but it is certainly not possible with natural methods. Some of the Star Trek hybrids were created through genetic engineering while others were natural.

    Technically, Spock was a product of genetic engineering, in TOS that was the only way such hybridization could happen. It was not until TNG that the series went space opera enough for accidental hybrids. "Space elves" were a product of the 1970s in shows like "Mighty Orbots" and later "He Man" that mixed genres to various extents, and Vulcans sort of merged with them by TNG and lost that particular scientific limit (closely followed by the Klingons and practically everyone else).

    While Trek was never a hard sci-fi to begin with it still softened considerably over the years. In TOS the impulse engines were just what the name implies, a form of rocket (an extremely efficient and powerful matter-antimatter one, instead of chemical or conventional nuclear but still a rocket) and unlike TNG it was only meant as a secondary drive for when warp was unavailable (they spent whole episodes never once using impulse, just leaving orbit via warp drive and inserting themselves into orbit the same way).

    It was also what all the stalks were about (besides the original idea that the nacelles emitted dangerous radiation or fields of some sort while active, illustrated in part by Scotty being only able to crawl a short way up in the Jefferies tube without getting fried by the radiation), the fact that the ship had to balance the thrust from the back of the saucer against the very dense, heavy nacelles and the relatively light secondary hull so the ship would fly straight instead of just spin.

    After having it pointed out that such a rocket would be devastating to planets the ship left orbit from (its exhaust would be a dense gamma ray beam), but still wanting to use the Star Wars like break orbit in sublight drive setup the producers redefined it as a "gravity impulse" field effect drive. It worked out better anyway though since it also explains why Earth did not get singed in "Tomorrow is Yesterday".

    Likewise, in TOS the main deflector was just that, a deflector projected far out ahead of the ship to repel debris out of the way instead of the magical swiss-knife device it became in later series. In fact, that installation on the front of the secondary hull was two real world antenna types, not one, consisting of the dish on its stalk and an omnidirectional choke ring antenna behind it.

    Of course the movie/TNG "neon tube" deflector is essentially a plasma antenna so it is not as big a change as the impulse thing. They could probably even use phased panel arrays in place of the choke ring antenna for whatever it was used for in TOS which might explain why later ships do not use it (though the remastered ships should have had it, or at least the Federation ones anyway).

    Ironically, it was needed more when under impulse drive than warp since in warp the ship actually only moved at whatever velocity it had before going into warp, in warp the space in the bubble just slipped along FTL without any actual velocity so debris probably would not be as much of a problem.
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,231 Arc User
    starkaos wrote: »
    Might be possible with extensive genetic engineering to make a Human/Vulcan hybrid or Human/Monkey Hybrid if Star Trek followed biology correctly, but it is certainly not possible with natural methods. Some of the Star Trek hybrids were created through genetic engineering while others were natural.
    In DS9 when Worf and Jadzia were getting married, Bashir basically said that he would have to create their children in his lab.
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    My character Tsin'xing
    Costume_marhawkman_Tsin%27xing_CC_Comic_Page_Blue_488916968.jpg
  • jonsillsjonsills Member Posts: 10,354 Arc User
    starkaos wrote: »
    starswordc wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    khan5000 wrote: »
    I agree that he was being melodramatic but he’s kind of right. How long would it take Khan to replicate the genesis device and convert it into a weapon?
    Depends on how difficult it is to acquire protomatter in the 23rd Century. There are far more easier and cheaper methods to destroy a planet than a flawed terraforming device. The problem with the Genesis Device could have been due to it being used on a Nebula to create a planet and not terraforming an existing planet which is mentioned in the Genesis Wave novels.
    Yeah, Genesis as a one-use device is fantastically expensive. Realistically the best use is as the Klingon ambassador said. Take out as many defenses as you can from orbit and take out the populace with Genesis instead of enslaving or subjugating them. It's totally genocide, and faster than shooting everyone the old fashioned way. But a long range "tactical strike" using a single Genesis torpedo? Expensive and risky. It COULD work, but results can't be guaranteed.

    If someone wants to take out a populace, then introducing a virus that wipes out the populace or something similar to a neutron bomb would be far more effective. The Genesis Device would be more useful for extremely alien races that want to remove the populace and terraform the world to their specifications. Personally, I dislike the word terraform when it doesn't deal with turning an alien world into something similar to Earth, but turning Earth or an alien world into a different type of alien world.
    Sure, you can introduce a virus - but that can then mutate and affect you. (There's a reason we avoid biowarfare in the real world.) And you can use something like neutron bombs, but there's still all that pesky ionizing radiation to deal with afterward. Even thalaron weapons leave piles of ash to sweep up.

    Drop a Genesis Device, though, and not only is the planetary population eliminated and the mess cleaned up, but anything in the ecosystem that isn't right for you goes away. Planet's a little too heavy (or too light)? Atmosphere not quite right? Too many hostile animals/plants/combinations? No problem - we don't just cleanse the world of life, we replace that life with something more to our liking. It's like weaponizing Magrathea.
    Part of why bioweapons are frowned on IRL is how no one's found a way to prevent it from killing both sides and random bystanders other than building an immunity with stuff like vaccinations.

    An alien race with iron-based blood creating a virus that targets aliens with copper-based blood would certainly prevent the virus from killing both sides. So just because bioweapons used on humans have a very good chance of backfiring, doesn't mean the same can be said for using bioweapons on aliens.
    In Star Trek, diseases that afflict a given species can explicitly infect other species, even when the microbiome is radically different - see Levodian flu, for example. AndEarth-Human and Vulcan biologies are sufficiently similar that offspring can be produced completely accidentally (Sela, for instance, the product of a Romulan sexually assaulting a Human, or that poor kid in TNG:"Drumhead" whose grandfather was a Romulan expatriate). So no, you can't rely on your genetically-tailored plague only affecting the guys with the blue blood, especially when you consider the possibility of mutation.

    (For a more realistic take on the topic, if you're so inclined, check out James White's Sector General stories. Doctors at Sector General usually treat patients of species other than their own, because transmission of disease between products of different evolutionary trees seems to be pretty much impossible.)

    Yeah, in general when Star Trek gets anything about science right, it's the exception rather than the rule. Spock himself should be flatly impossible: you can't breed a human with a gorilla, two closely related sapient species from the same planet!

    Might be possible with extensive genetic engineering to make a Human/Vulcan hybrid or Human/Monkey Hybrid if Star Trek followed biology correctly, but it is certainly not possible with natural methods. Some of the Star Trek hybrids were created through genetic engineering while others were natural.

    Technically, Spock was a product of genetic engineering, in TOS that was the only way such hybridization could happen. It was not until TNG that the series went space opera enough for accidental hybrids. "Space elves" were a product of the 1970s in shows like "Mighty Orbots" and later "He Man" that mixed genres to various extents, and Vulcans sort of merged with them by TNG and lost that particular scientific limit (closely followed by the Klingons and practically everyone else).

    While Trek was never a hard sci-fi to begin with it still softened considerably over the years. In TOS the impulse engines were just what the name implies, a form of rocket (an extremely efficient and powerful matter-antimatter one, instead of chemical or conventional nuclear but still a rocket) and unlike TNG it was only meant as a secondary drive for when warp was unavailable (they spent whole episodes never once using impulse, just leaving orbit via warp drive and inserting themselves into orbit the same way).

    It was also what all the stalks were about (besides the original idea that the nacelles emitted dangerous radiation or fields of some sort while active, illustrated in part by Scotty being only able to crawl a short way up in the Jefferies tube without getting fried by the radiation), the fact that the ship had to balance the thrust from the back of the saucer against the very dense, heavy nacelles and the relatively light secondary hull so the ship would fly straight instead of just spin.

    After having it pointed out that such a rocket would be devastating to planets the ship left orbit from (its exhaust would be a dense gamma ray beam), but still wanting to use the Star Wars like break orbit in sublight drive setup the producers redefined it as a "gravity impulse" field effect drive. It worked out better anyway though since it also explains why Earth did not get singed in "Tomorrow is Yesterday".

    Likewise, in TOS the main deflector was just that, a deflector projected far out ahead of the ship to repel debris out of the way instead of the magical swiss-knife device it became in later series. In fact, that installation on the front of the secondary hull was two real world antenna types, not one, consisting of the dish on its stalk and an omnidirectional choke ring antenna behind it.

    Of course the movie/TNG "neon tube" deflector is essentially a plasma antenna so it is not as big a change as the impulse thing. They could probably even use phased panel arrays in place of the choke ring antenna for whatever it was used for in TOS which might explain why later ships do not use it (though the remastered ships should have had it, or at least the Federation ones anyway).

    Ironically, it was needed more when under impulse drive than warp since in warp the ship actually only moved at whatever velocity it had before going into warp, in warp the space in the bubble just slipped along FTL without any actual velocity so debris probably would not be as much of a problem.
    Just wanted to note: Everything above is fancanon. There's no mention of it in TOS, and in fact there are a couple of episodes that seem to conflate standard reaction drives and FTL. (My particular favorite is when Scotty claims that the Romulan ship they're chasing in "Balance of Terror" doesn't use warp drive, but mere "ion propulsion" - which is a thing in the real world, used for satellite station keeping and recently for some robotic space probes, notably Deep Space 1 and Dawn.)

    In particular, I'd like to draw attention to the description of warp bubbles in the last paragraph. That isn't Star Trek warp drive, that's Alcubierre-White warp theory. Miguel Alcubierre was inspired by Star Trek, but didn't finish working up his theory until 1994; White didn't refine the theory until 2011 (Alcubierre's concept required a mass of exotic matter equal to that of Jupiter, while White's refinement reduced that to 700 kilos - it's still basically unobtainium, but if we ever figure out how to make matter with a negative energy density, the refined drive would need a lot less of it). The standard assumption before that was a variation on the old sci-fi standby of "hyperspace"; the idea was that the ship would access a subspace domain with differing physical laws so that "the speed of light" would be much higher, while dragging along a bubble of normal space so the crew can survive. The show itself just handwaved the entire thing, and never really defined what warp speed even was other than really really fast.
    Lorna-Wing-sig.png
  • angrytargangrytarg Member Posts: 11,001 Arc User
    edited December 2019
    jonsills wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    starswordc wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    khan5000 wrote: »
    I agree that he was being melodramatic but he’s kind of right. How long would it take Khan to replicate the genesis device and convert it into a weapon?
    Depends on how difficult it is to acquire protomatter in the 23rd Century. There are far more easier and cheaper methods to destroy a planet than a flawed terraforming device. The problem with the Genesis Device could have been due to it being used on a Nebula to create a planet and not terraforming an existing planet which is mentioned in the Genesis Wave novels.
    Yeah, Genesis as a one-use device is fantastically expensive. Realistically the best use is as the Klingon ambassador said. Take out as many defenses as you can from orbit and take out the populace with Genesis instead of enslaving or subjugating them. It's totally genocide, and faster than shooting everyone the old fashioned way. But a long range "tactical strike" using a single Genesis torpedo? Expensive and risky. It COULD work, but results can't be guaranteed.

    If someone wants to take out a populace, then introducing a virus that wipes out the populace or something similar to a neutron bomb would be far more effective. The Genesis Device would be more useful for extremely alien races that want to remove the populace and terraform the world to their specifications. Personally, I dislike the word terraform when it doesn't deal with turning an alien world into something similar to Earth, but turning Earth or an alien world into a different type of alien world.
    Sure, you can introduce a virus - but that can then mutate and affect you. (There's a reason we avoid biowarfare in the real world.) And you can use something like neutron bombs, but there's still all that pesky ionizing radiation to deal with afterward. Even thalaron weapons leave piles of ash to sweep up.

    Drop a Genesis Device, though, and not only is the planetary population eliminated and the mess cleaned up, but anything in the ecosystem that isn't right for you goes away. Planet's a little too heavy (or too light)? Atmosphere not quite right? Too many hostile animals/plants/combinations? No problem - we don't just cleanse the world of life, we replace that life with something more to our liking. It's like weaponizing Magrathea.
    Part of why bioweapons are frowned on IRL is how no one's found a way to prevent it from killing both sides and random bystanders other than building an immunity with stuff like vaccinations.

    An alien race with iron-based blood creating a virus that targets aliens with copper-based blood would certainly prevent the virus from killing both sides. So just because bioweapons used on humans have a very good chance of backfiring, doesn't mean the same can be said for using bioweapons on aliens.
    In Star Trek, diseases that afflict a given species can explicitly infect other species, even when the microbiome is radically different - see Levodian flu, for example. AndEarth-Human and Vulcan biologies are sufficiently similar that offspring can be produced completely accidentally (Sela, for instance, the product of a Romulan sexually assaulting a Human, or that poor kid in TNG:"Drumhead" whose grandfather was a Romulan expatriate). So no, you can't rely on your genetically-tailored plague only affecting the guys with the blue blood, especially when you consider the possibility of mutation.

    (For a more realistic take on the topic, if you're so inclined, check out James White's Sector General stories. Doctors at Sector General usually treat patients of species other than their own, because transmission of disease between products of different evolutionary trees seems to be pretty much impossible.)

    Yeah, in general when Star Trek gets anything about science right, it's the exception rather than the rule. Spock himself should be flatly impossible: you can't breed a human with a gorilla, two closely related sapient species from the same planet!

    Might be possible with extensive genetic engineering to make a Human/Vulcan hybrid or Human/Monkey Hybrid if Star Trek followed biology correctly, but it is certainly not possible with natural methods. Some of the Star Trek hybrids were created through genetic engineering while others were natural.

    Technically, Spock was a product of genetic engineering, in TOS that was the only way such hybridization could happen. It was not until TNG that the series went space opera enough for accidental hybrids. "Space elves" were a product of the 1970s in shows like "Mighty Orbots" and later "He Man" that mixed genres to various extents, and Vulcans sort of merged with them by TNG and lost that particular scientific limit (closely followed by the Klingons and practically everyone else).

    While Trek was never a hard sci-fi to begin with it still softened considerably over the years. In TOS the impulse engines were just what the name implies, a form of rocket (an extremely efficient and powerful matter-antimatter one, instead of chemical or conventional nuclear but still a rocket) and unlike TNG it was only meant as a secondary drive for when warp was unavailable (they spent whole episodes never once using impulse, just leaving orbit via warp drive and inserting themselves into orbit the same way).

    It was also what all the stalks were about (besides the original idea that the nacelles emitted dangerous radiation or fields of some sort while active, illustrated in part by Scotty being only able to crawl a short way up in the Jefferies tube without getting fried by the radiation), the fact that the ship had to balance the thrust from the back of the saucer against the very dense, heavy nacelles and the relatively light secondary hull so the ship would fly straight instead of just spin.

    After having it pointed out that such a rocket would be devastating to planets the ship left orbit from (its exhaust would be a dense gamma ray beam), but still wanting to use the Star Wars like break orbit in sublight drive setup the producers redefined it as a "gravity impulse" field effect drive. It worked out better anyway though since it also explains why Earth did not get singed in "Tomorrow is Yesterday".

    Likewise, in TOS the main deflector was just that, a deflector projected far out ahead of the ship to repel debris out of the way instead of the magical swiss-knife device it became in later series. In fact, that installation on the front of the secondary hull was two real world antenna types, not one, consisting of the dish on its stalk and an omnidirectional choke ring antenna behind it.

    Of course the movie/TNG "neon tube" deflector is essentially a plasma antenna so it is not as big a change as the impulse thing. They could probably even use phased panel arrays in place of the choke ring antenna for whatever it was used for in TOS which might explain why later ships do not use it (though the remastered ships should have had it, or at least the Federation ones anyway).

    Ironically, it was needed more when under impulse drive than warp since in warp the ship actually only moved at whatever velocity it had before going into warp, in warp the space in the bubble just slipped along FTL without any actual velocity so debris probably would not be as much of a problem.
    Just wanted to note: Everything above is fancanon. There's no mention of it in TOS, and in fact there are a couple of episodes that seem to conflate standard reaction drives and FTL. (My particular favorite is when Scotty claims that the Romulan ship they're chasing in "Balance of Terror" doesn't use warp drive, but mere "ion propulsion" - which is a thing in the real world, used for satellite station keeping and recently for some robotic space probes, notably Deep Space 1 and Dawn.)

    In particular, I'd like to draw attention to the description of warp bubbles in the last paragraph. That isn't Star Trek warp drive, that's Alcubierre-White warp theory. Miguel Alcubierre was inspired by Star Trek, but didn't finish working up his theory until 1994; White didn't refine the theory until 2011 (Alcubierre's concept required a mass of exotic matter equal to that of Jupiter, while White's refinement reduced that to 700 kilos - it's still basically unobtainium, but if we ever figure out how to make matter with a negative energy density, the refined drive would need a lot less of it). The standard assumption before that was a variation on the old sci-fi standby of "hyperspace"; the idea was that the ship would access a subspace domain with differing physical laws so that "the speed of light" would be much higher, while dragging along a bubble of normal space so the crew can survive. The show itself just handwaved the entire thing, and never really defined what warp speed even was other than really really fast.

    I'd like to add that Spock always was portrayed and understood of being the biological child of his parents, as was the case with B'elana Torres. Nobody thought about genetic impossibilities back then, it just worked. And later in the TNG era there was the explanation of all humanoid species in Star Trek being related since they were 'seeded' on planets by the ancient progenitor race.​​
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  • phoenixc#0738 phoenixc Member Posts: 5,459 Arc User
    jonsills wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    starswordc wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    khan5000 wrote: »
    I agree that he was being melodramatic but he’s kind of right. How long would it take Khan to replicate the genesis device and convert it into a weapon?
    Depends on how difficult it is to acquire protomatter in the 23rd Century. There are far more easier and cheaper methods to destroy a planet than a flawed terraforming device. The problem with the Genesis Device could have been due to it being used on a Nebula to create a planet and not terraforming an existing planet which is mentioned in the Genesis Wave novels.
    Yeah, Genesis as a one-use device is fantastically expensive. Realistically the best use is as the Klingon ambassador said. Take out as many defenses as you can from orbit and take out the populace with Genesis instead of enslaving or subjugating them. It's totally genocide, and faster than shooting everyone the old fashioned way. But a long range "tactical strike" using a single Genesis torpedo? Expensive and risky. It COULD work, but results can't be guaranteed.

    If someone wants to take out a populace, then introducing a virus that wipes out the populace or something similar to a neutron bomb would be far more effective. The Genesis Device would be more useful for extremely alien races that want to remove the populace and terraform the world to their specifications. Personally, I dislike the word terraform when it doesn't deal with turning an alien world into something similar to Earth, but turning Earth or an alien world into a different type of alien world.
    Sure, you can introduce a virus - but that can then mutate and affect you. (There's a reason we avoid biowarfare in the real world.) And you can use something like neutron bombs, but there's still all that pesky ionizing radiation to deal with afterward. Even thalaron weapons leave piles of ash to sweep up.

    Drop a Genesis Device, though, and not only is the planetary population eliminated and the mess cleaned up, but anything in the ecosystem that isn't right for you goes away. Planet's a little too heavy (or too light)? Atmosphere not quite right? Too many hostile animals/plants/combinations? No problem - we don't just cleanse the world of life, we replace that life with something more to our liking. It's like weaponizing Magrathea.
    Part of why bioweapons are frowned on IRL is how no one's found a way to prevent it from killing both sides and random bystanders other than building an immunity with stuff like vaccinations.

    An alien race with iron-based blood creating a virus that targets aliens with copper-based blood would certainly prevent the virus from killing both sides. So just because bioweapons used on humans have a very good chance of backfiring, doesn't mean the same can be said for using bioweapons on aliens.
    In Star Trek, diseases that afflict a given species can explicitly infect other species, even when the microbiome is radically different - see Levodian flu, for example. AndEarth-Human and Vulcan biologies are sufficiently similar that offspring can be produced completely accidentally (Sela, for instance, the product of a Romulan sexually assaulting a Human, or that poor kid in TNG:"Drumhead" whose grandfather was a Romulan expatriate). So no, you can't rely on your genetically-tailored plague only affecting the guys with the blue blood, especially when you consider the possibility of mutation.

    (For a more realistic take on the topic, if you're so inclined, check out James White's Sector General stories. Doctors at Sector General usually treat patients of species other than their own, because transmission of disease between products of different evolutionary trees seems to be pretty much impossible.)

    Yeah, in general when Star Trek gets anything about science right, it's the exception rather than the rule. Spock himself should be flatly impossible: you can't breed a human with a gorilla, two closely related sapient species from the same planet!

    Might be possible with extensive genetic engineering to make a Human/Vulcan hybrid or Human/Monkey Hybrid if Star Trek followed biology correctly, but it is certainly not possible with natural methods. Some of the Star Trek hybrids were created through genetic engineering while others were natural.

    Technically, Spock was a product of genetic engineering, in TOS that was the only way such hybridization could happen. It was not until TNG that the series went space opera enough for accidental hybrids. "Space elves" were a product of the 1970s in shows like "Mighty Orbots" and later "He Man" that mixed genres to various extents, and Vulcans sort of merged with them by TNG and lost that particular scientific limit (closely followed by the Klingons and practically everyone else).

    While Trek was never a hard sci-fi to begin with it still softened considerably over the years. In TOS the impulse engines were just what the name implies, a form of rocket (an extremely efficient and powerful matter-antimatter one, instead of chemical or conventional nuclear but still a rocket) and unlike TNG it was only meant as a secondary drive for when warp was unavailable (they spent whole episodes never once using impulse, just leaving orbit via warp drive and inserting themselves into orbit the same way).

    It was also what all the stalks were about (besides the original idea that the nacelles emitted dangerous radiation or fields of some sort while active, illustrated in part by Scotty being only able to crawl a short way up in the Jefferies tube without getting fried by the radiation), the fact that the ship had to balance the thrust from the back of the saucer against the very dense, heavy nacelles and the relatively light secondary hull so the ship would fly straight instead of just spin.

    After having it pointed out that such a rocket would be devastating to planets the ship left orbit from (its exhaust would be a dense gamma ray beam), but still wanting to use the Star Wars like break orbit in sublight drive setup the producers redefined it as a "gravity impulse" field effect drive. It worked out better anyway though since it also explains why Earth did not get singed in "Tomorrow is Yesterday".

    Likewise, in TOS the main deflector was just that, a deflector projected far out ahead of the ship to repel debris out of the way instead of the magical swiss-knife device it became in later series. In fact, that installation on the front of the secondary hull was two real world antenna types, not one, consisting of the dish on its stalk and an omnidirectional choke ring antenna behind it.

    Of course the movie/TNG "neon tube" deflector is essentially a plasma antenna so it is not as big a change as the impulse thing. They could probably even use phased panel arrays in place of the choke ring antenna for whatever it was used for in TOS which might explain why later ships do not use it (though the remastered ships should have had it, or at least the Federation ones anyway).

    Ironically, it was needed more when under impulse drive than warp since in warp the ship actually only moved at whatever velocity it had before going into warp, in warp the space in the bubble just slipped along FTL without any actual velocity so debris probably would not be as much of a problem.
    Just wanted to note: Everything above is fancanon. There's no mention of it in TOS, and in fact there are a couple of episodes that seem to conflate standard reaction drives and FTL. (My particular favorite is when Scotty claims that the Romulan ship they're chasing in "Balance of Terror" doesn't use warp drive, but mere "ion propulsion" - which is a thing in the real world, used for satellite station keeping and recently for some robotic space probes, notably Deep Space 1 and Dawn.)

    In particular, I'd like to draw attention to the description of warp bubbles in the last paragraph. That isn't Star Trek warp drive, that's Alcubierre-White warp theory. Miguel Alcubierre was inspired by Star Trek, but didn't finish working up his theory until 1994; White didn't refine the theory until 2011 (Alcubierre's concept required a mass of exotic matter equal to that of Jupiter, while White's refinement reduced that to 700 kilos - it's still basically unobtainium, but if we ever figure out how to make matter with a negative energy density, the refined drive would need a lot less of it). The standard assumption before that was a variation on the old sci-fi standby of "hyperspace"; the idea was that the ship would access a subspace domain with differing physical laws so that "the speed of light" would be much higher, while dragging along a bubble of normal space so the crew can survive. The show itself just handwaved the entire thing, and never really defined what warp speed even was other than really really fast.

    No, it isn't "fan canon" (or "fanon"), it is what was in the internal documentation given to writers and talked about by Roddenberry and others from the production end of the show. In fact, Roddenberry had to repeat the hybridization thing so often he put it on an LP record along with other background and behind the scenes stuff which sold fairly well in record shops (for a non-music recording anyway). Just because they did not stop and explain every bit of technology explicitly onscreen (Roddenberry had fits about all the unnecessary technobabble in TNG, btw) does not mean it is something else, those were still the ideas the show was based on.

    It is also not precisely the Alcubierre-White warp theory either, the series bible says the ship is driven by a bubble of warped space that moves faster than light and takes the ship with it, and has an emergency impulse drive that cannot go faster than light. It was not exactly a new idea (except maybe for Hollywood), in novels various sci-fi drives that worked in that way at that level of abstraction existed right along with the hyperdrives, the subspace drives, the fold drives, and the ones that simply ignored Einstein's theory altogether. The show makes it fairly plain that the bubble is small (sort of like the shield bubble) rather than the fairly wide ranging distortions of the A-W drive in fact.


    Also, unless the remastered version changed Scotty's line somehow he did not say the warbird had "ion drive", he looked a bit confused and said it used "simple impulse" (the "advanced ion drive" line was about Kara's ship in "Spocks Brain" and was probably based on a very flawed interpretation of Feinberg's exotic matter theory and imaginary mass that he was writing about back then, just like the show used a warped version of the cryonics that he also wrote about for the suspended animation chambers in "Space Seed" even though they were more a hibernation thing than a cryonic one).

    The fanon about the warbird comes from the fact that in order for it to be where it was without taking years to get there it had to have some form of FTL (the old "writers have no sense of scale in space" thing) and someone took the singularity powerplant of the D'deridex to theorize that the Romulan "warp" drive was based on gravity control instead of subspace fields and Scotty did not recognize it. STO even uses that fanon concept for their singularity cores without people jumping all over them for it which shows how widespread it is.
  • starswordcstarswordc Member Posts: 10,963 Arc User
    edited December 2019
    angrytarg wrote: »
    I'd like to add that Spock always was portrayed and understood of being the biological child of his parents, as was the case with B'elana Torres. Nobody thought about genetic impossibilities back then, it just worked. And later in the TNG era there was the explanation of all humanoid species in Star Trek being related since they were 'seeded' on planets by the ancient progenitor race.​​

    C.f. above comment about gorillas and humans. We're more closely related than humans and Vulcans could possibly be* even with the progenitors' program, but we still can't interbreed.

    Convergent evolution doesn't produce interbreeding species, divergent evolution does (and not reliably: Atlantic and Pacific salmon species can't interbreed despite having a common ancestor).

    * That's right: we now know that humans and gorillas are more genetically similar than humans and chimpanzees. We also share 85% of our DNA with mice, 61% with fruit flies, and 41% with bananas.

    375full-marco-hietala.jpg
    Pictured: probable human/banana crossbreed.
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  • rattler2rattler2 Member Posts: 57,973 Community Moderator
    Personally... the debate about the TOS BoP, along with stuff seen from Enterprise, leads me to one conclusion regarding the TOS BoP. It was a prototype. Basically... she was the Red October, with experimental First Strike capability. In Enterprise, we saw that the Romulans had cloak tech, and their ships were still able to get around on their own. The reason could be that they had been experimenting with cloak tech as far back as the 22nd Century. The mines could be seen by Enterprise using that beacon that could pierce Suliban cloaks, but the two BoPs may have had a more advanced version, or even was able to draw more power from the ships themselves allowing for higher output of the cloak.

    Now... if we look at some other material, we see that those ship based cloaks weren't totally safe, so they may not have been fielded to the entire fleet. Just certain small, easily replaced ships used to scout out new territory. So the Earth-Romulan War wouldn't have involved heavy use of cloak capable ships. As for the use of Nuclear Weapons... it could be a combination of Starfleet using some of their old spacial torpedos (no idea what the warheads were so I figure maybe they were nuclear based) and maybe tactical use of old fusion powered mining stations ala Star Trek Legacy that could explain nukes being used in a time where matter/antimatter warheads were starting to be more common. (I actually like the concept that the Romulans didn't have EM shielding where Starfleet did due to humanity's experience with nuclear weapons and EMP. Tactical EMP detonations of old Vulcan mining stations disabling large portions of a Romulan attack fleet did feel like a very Trek solution for the 22nd Century.)

    It wasn't until TOS where the Romulans got the cloak tech stable enough for regular use. The BoP was the test platform, and until Kirk outsmarted the Commander, the test was highly successful. Also it is possible that Scotty was trying to detect anything like a standard Matter/Antimatter reactor like the Federation and Klingon Empire uses. If the Romulans were testing something new, like say... a Singularity Core, Scotty wouldn't know what the hell was powering it. Meaning the BoP WAS warp capable. However due to the power drain from both the Cloak and the Plasma Torpedo... it still wasn't effecient enough to run multiple high demand systems at once.
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  • phoenixc#0738 phoenixc Member Posts: 5,459 Arc User
    rattler2 wrote: »
    Personally... the debate about the TOS BoP, along with stuff seen from Enterprise, leads me to one conclusion regarding the TOS BoP. It was a prototype. Basically... she was the Red October, with experimental First Strike capability. In Enterprise, we saw that the Romulans had cloak tech, and their ships were still able to get around on their own. The reason could be that they had been experimenting with cloak tech as far back as the 22nd Century. The mines could be seen by Enterprise using that beacon that could pierce Suliban cloaks, but the two BoPs may have had a more advanced version, or even was able to draw more power from the ships themselves allowing for higher output of the cloak.

    Now... if we look at some other material, we see that those ship based cloaks weren't totally safe, so they may not have been fielded to the entire fleet. Just certain small, easily replaced ships used to scout out new territory. So the Earth-Romulan War wouldn't have involved heavy use of cloak capable ships. As for the use of Nuclear Weapons... it could be a combination of Starfleet using some of their old spacial torpedos (no idea what the warheads were so I figure maybe they were nuclear based) and maybe tactical use of old fusion powered mining stations ala Star Trek Legacy that could explain nukes being used in a time where matter/antimatter warheads were starting to be more common. (I actually like the concept that the Romulans didn't have EM shielding where Starfleet did due to humanity's experience with nuclear weapons and EMP. Tactical EMP detonations of old Vulcan mining stations disabling large portions of a Romulan attack fleet did feel like a very Trek solution for the 22nd Century.)

    It wasn't until TOS where the Romulans got the cloak tech stable enough for regular use. The BoP was the test platform, and until Kirk outsmarted the Commander, the test was highly successful. Also it is possible that Scotty was trying to detect anything like a standard Matter/Antimatter reactor like the Federation and Klingon Empire uses. If the Romulans were testing something new, like say... a Singularity Core, Scotty wouldn't know what the hell was powering it. Meaning the BoP WAS warp capable. However due to the power drain from both the Cloak and the Plasma Torpedo... it still wasn't effecient enough to run multiple high demand systems at once.

    The dialog in "Balance of Terror" and "The Enterprise Incident" makes it more likely that they did not have full warp drive before they traded tech with the Klingons for it.

    They probably had the equivalent of the old style warp like what Travis's family ship had at most, possibly in the form of a gravity manipulation that reduced the pseudo mass buildup problem from relativity theory and allowed the impulse drive to push up to limited FTL speeds. Warp as a standalone field effect drive using subspace fields like most other races use probably never occurred to them since they put their main research into cloaking and plasma torpedo technology instead of intensive research in FTL drive tech.

    In fact, in Balance of Terror they did not have anything like phasers or disrupters that could hit a fast moving ship like the Enterprise, the only FTL weapon they had was the torpedo that sucked up so much fuel that after killing those outposts they only had one or two shots to deal with the Enterprise before they would be forced to stay decloaked if they were to make it back home.

  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,231 Arc User
    In Balance of Terror Kirk plots the course of the Romulan ship on his star chart and it's plain to see that it has moved several light years. So it was moving at FTL speeds. HOW it did so may be debatable, but it definitely wasn't limited to sublight travel.
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  • jonsillsjonsills Member Posts: 10,354 Arc User
    In DS9, we learned that the Romulan capital is about a day's flight at high warp from the Cardassian border. In order for there to have been an Earth-Romulus War in the 22nd century, it would be necessary for Romulans to have FTL; I can only conclude that Scotty was looking for evidence of a matter/antimatter reactor, as that was the only way the Federation knew to generate the power needed for warp drive, and failed to find it because the Romulans use an artificially-generated quantum singularity as a power source. (Just drop garbage in, and capture the resulting energies from its annihilation at the event horizon, especially as the fact that they can generate singularities implies that they should be able to capture the gravitic energies released as well.)

    The Romulan ship wasn't escaping with the knowledge that its warp drive worked; that was easy to demonstrate. Even the function of its cloak was shown well enough in the attacks on border outposts. (Neat little callback in TNG:"The Neutral Zone", as everyone assumes the loss of the outposts along the border was Romulan attacks again.) No, what they were trying to take back to the Empire, and what the Enterprise sought to keep them from telling about, was how effective their new plasma torpedoes were against Starfleet ships.
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  • mustrumridcully0mustrumridcully0 Member Posts: 12,963 Arc User
    jonsills wrote: »
    In DS9, we learned that the Romulan capital is about a day's flight at high warp from the Cardassian border. In order for there to have been an Earth-Romulus War in the 22nd century, it would be necessary for Romulans to have FTL; I can only conclude that Scotty was looking for evidence of a matter/antimatter reactor, as that was the only way the Federation knew to generate the power needed for warp drive, and failed to find it because the Romulans use an artificially-generated quantum singularity as a power source. (Just drop garbage in, and capture the resulting energies from its annihilation at the event horizon, especially as the fact that they can generate singularities implies that they should be able to capture the gravitic energies released as well.)

    The Romulan ship wasn't escaping with the knowledge that its warp drive worked; that was easy to demonstrate. Even the function of its cloak was shown well enough in the attacks on border outposts. (Neat little callback in TNG:"The Neutral Zone", as everyone assumes the loss of the outposts along the border was Romulan attacks again.) No, what they were trying to take back to the Empire, and what the Enterprise sought to keep them from telling about, was how effective their new plasma torpedoes were against Starfleet ships.

    I always figured it was more about showing ow effective the cloak was- because it was. They could destroy multiple outposts without getting caught. If they try that again, with a fleet of ships, sending one of the only 12 Constitution class starships to deal with it won't be enough.
    Though it is possible the plasma torpedo was also important, because it really made short work of those outposts, in hindsight I have to agree there. If the outpost had more time to respond to the attack, they might have been able to do similar things as the Enterprise and be able to lay down its own photon torpedo or phaser barrages to damage the ship. But they couldn't evade the Plasma weapon, unlike the Enterprise, so a direct hit was unavoidable and proved devastating.
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  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,231 Arc User
    Well, Spock expressed amazement at how the weapon was powerful enough to basically one-shot the entire outpost...
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