The Federation is an odd government. It asserts territorial control without asserting sovereignty over that territory.
Space, like open ocean, is not a territory that can be "held". You can only hold land, by occupying it with people, you can't hold ocean (or space) with ships. Planets (and starbases/outposts) are like islands in the ocean of space. You hold the planets, but the space in between is like open ocean.
I bet if you were to ask anyone actually in charge of canon, they would probably say that the ships in Star Trek work in this same way as current ocean-going naval vessels: A ship belonging to a sovereign state acts as an extended territory of that state when in the open ocean. All laws of the state the ship belongs to still apply while onboard that ship.
Under international Freedom of Navigation laws, aircraft carriers and other warships are recognized as sovereign territories in almost all of the ocean. As long as a ship doesn't get too close to any nation's coast, the crew can carry on just like they're back home. So, while the U.S. military would have to make special arrangements with a foreign nation to set up a land military base, it can freely move a carrier battle group (an assembly of an aircraft carrier and six to eight other warships) all over the globe, just as if it were a little piece of the United States.
It is important to note that there are two independent, but related bodies here. The United Federation of Planets, and Starfleet.
The Federation is like the UN. Each subsidiary nation (or world in this case) can, and likely does, still have it's own means of production, and it's own ships. (Vulcan, Andorian, Caitian, etc.).
However, Starfleet is like NATO, it's an intergovernmental military force. Unlike NATO, Starfleet is the military wing of the UFP. Starfleet ships are what we are used to seeing (all the enterprises, etc.), but they are not the only ships within the Federation.
I think Starfleet has always been described as something more integrated than NATO. Starfleet is a Federation organisation, while NATO is a military alliance. The UN is a diplomatic forum while the Federation is an actual state with a government and citizenship.
I think the better approach with the Vulcan and Andorian designs is just to regard them as Starfleet ships from a different aesthetic tradition. The show had a limited budget and homocentricity (and ease of storytelling) meant that we mainly saw the Human side of Starfleet. The game has the ability to show this differently.
The D'Kyr should just be by default a Starfleet ship made by Vulcan shipyards; the Kumari the same by Andorians.
It opens up the possibility of expanding the variety of existing Starfleet ships. You could put a ring-warp-drive on the Deep Space Science Vessels and they'd look pretty natural for example...
And if you argue that that's not what was shown on Trek... well the racial diversity of Starfleet in STO is about a million times higher than the show ever portrayed too, but nobody complains.
And with the weapons and replicators present, once a culture has that technology (and you can replicate a replicator or there'd be no self-replicating mines), I'd think traditional empires like the Klingons or Romulans would be very difficult as subjugating a world with replicators is nigh impossible.
Replicators are not magic; They take energy run and raw material to form into useful objects; And some objects are either too complicated to make (long chain molecules; the reason why replicated food doesn't taste quite like the real thing) or the stuff that makes it up can't be manipulated by a replicator (like latinum). Governments in Star Trek would work just like they do today: Organizations which live and die by the control of resources.
It has never been stated where the empires in Star Trek get their antimatter from. Good Fiction never breaks more rules (physics in Sci-Fi's case) than is necessary. Therefore it can be assumed star empires control antimatter production facilities which orbit stars and mine gas giants for fusion reactor fuel (and mine dead planets, asteroids, etc, for raw materials).
Having a replicator is nice, but all it does is shift around what work needs to be done. Most efforts will be shifted to resource gathering since you don't need Ford or Honda to make your car for you, but you still need the designers from Ford or Honda to make new car designs.
Replicators are not magic; They take energy run and raw material to form into useful objects; And some objects are either too complicated to make (long chain molecules; the reason why replicated food doesn't taste quite like the real thing) or the stuff that makes it up can't be manipulated by a replicator (like latinum). Governments in Star Trek would work just like they do today: Organizations which live and die by the control of resources.
Replicators do not require raw materials to function. They're matter-energy conversion units, not magic smelting machines.
Spock's ship in Star Trek 2009 (the jellyfish) was built by Vulcans and designed in large part by Geordi La Forge during a break he took from Starfleet and was, hence, not a Starfleet ship.
Just a side note as I've seen discussion on the point:
I believe the STO timeline for Geordi goes something like this and does deviate from the novels: Served on the Enterprise-E for around 6-7 years after Nemesis and married a widowed Leah Brahms, having three kids with her. Geordi took an assignment to resurrect Data by overwriting B4. This was an assignment at the Soong Institute that Bruce Maddox quit in disgust over because it violated B4's rights. Geordi was blinded by his desire to see his friend again. In the end they saved B4 by backing him up to a holodeck but Data was deeply upset with Geordi. Geordi, depressed, quit Starfleet and his marriage fell apart. He was pulled in by Spock to design the Jellyfish for the Vulcan Science Council. He decided to resume his Starfleet career and took command of the Galaxy-class U.S.S. Challenger, where he married his (still unnamed) chief engineer and they served together as husband and wife. He is theoretically still in command of the Challenger to this day after around 15 years of service there.
None of that is canon because it was in a comic book, even the writers of the movie have said this.
So based on what was seen in Star Trek XI, the Jellyfish is completely Vulcan.
And if you argue that that's not what was shown on Trek... well the racial diversity of Starfleet in STO is about a million times higher than the show ever portrayed too, but nobody complains.
As it should be. The shows had their own reasons for portraying a majority of human crewmembers. They also had some restrictions due to finances/technology to implement more diversity.
STO as a game is liberated of those restrictions and this is a good thing. I hope noone seriosely believes that a vast majority of Starfleet officers consists only of humans, while there are so many other worlds and civilizations that are members of the Federation.
Replicators are not magic; They take energy run and raw material to form into useful objects; And some objects are either too complicated to make (long chain molecules; the reason why replicated food doesn't taste quite like the real thing) or the stuff that makes it up can't be manipulated by a replicator (like latinum). Governments in Star Trek would work just like they do today: Organizations which live and die by the control of resources.
It has never been stated where the empires in Star Trek get their antimatter from. Good Fiction never breaks more rules (physics in Sci-Fi's case) than is necessary. Therefore it can be assumed star empires control antimatter production facilities which orbit stars and mine gas giants for fusion reactor fuel (and mine dead planets, asteroids, etc, for raw materials).
Having a replicator is nice, but all it does is shift around what work needs to be done. Most efforts will be shifted to resource gathering since you don't need Ford or Honda to make your car for you, but you still need the designers from Ford or Honda to make new car designs.
They kindof are in that they have eradicated scarcity.
There is no such thing as scarcity in the Star Trek universe except:
- Pre-warp cultures
- When the limitless resources (the only limited resources being time and latinum, basically) are somehow artificially withheld.
Replicators don't require finite resources to operate. This is one of the core problems with most attempts to depict war in Trek is that they constantly fudge this aspect of the universe.
In TOS, you had dilithium as scarce. But by TNG, dilithium was shifted to become infinitely replenishable because TNG was supposed to be completely devoid of resource scarcity.
I know some people think that's just silly and that Trek needs to stay more grounded in a modern mentality but I really think a key to strong sci-fi work is being forced to incorporate unreasonable or unrelatable ideas.
As-is, we do have modern theories of post-scarcity or scarcity-free economics... and I think warfare in Trek needs to incorporate the idea of scarcity free warfare. Which means, among other things, fights should not REALLY be over physical resources and doing so overrelies on the mcguffin that something can't be replicated.
They kindof are in that they have eradicated scarcity.
I've seen no evidence of that. While I'd like to believe the *ideals purported* by TNG, the sad fact is that TNG followed *one* ship which is supposed to represent the ideals of the Federation. But DS9 showed us that the Federation does run on a supply lines: Why are there *so* many cargo ships going to and from? Why does the Federation care if their worlds get cut off from most other worlds as the Dominion war rages?
In a peaceful situation, the Federation may have enough resources to adequately please most of its citizens, but its apparent it cant do that *and* fight a war.
Replicators don't require finite resources to operate.
They do; If you pay attention in DS9, its implied. Voyager outright stated it, but abandoned it later because Voyagers writers didn't seem to care.
In TOS, you had dilithium as scarce. But by TNG, dilithium was shifted to become infinitely replenishable
Because they learned how to reconstitute it after the Dilithium was worn out; This is similar to how thorium reactors today work; 95% of a "spent" fuel rod is still usable fuel, but because of how the reaction produces homogenized pockets non-fissionable material, a steady reaction can no longer be maintained in it. Part of thorium reactor design is to create a reaction chain which allows a fuel rod to be usable for a longer time before you have to resort to figuring out a way to separate out the non-fissionable material (Yay for longwinded examples).
I know some people think that's just silly and that Trek needs to stay more grounded in a modern mentality but I really think a key to strong sci-fi work is being forced to incorporate unreasonable or unrelatable ideas.
As I stated before, Good Fiction only breaks as many rules as necessary. If the Federation was really post-scarcity, they could just build giant replicators, churn out as many ships as they need to kick whoever's TRIBBLE and be done with it. But that didn't happen in the Dominion war, or even the tensions that arose between the Klingons and Romulans in TNG. TNG purported the ideals and aspirations of the Federation, but that doesn't mean they were *there*.
If the Federation was really post-scarcity, they could just build giant replicators, churn out as many ships as they need to kick whoever's TRIBBLE and be done with it.
That assumes that their limitation is on replicable hardware, as opposed to, say, crew or antimatter generation, or whatever else.
Second, I think this is a very particular, and meaningless, definition of post-scarcity. Scarcity is simply the state of having finite resources, but it's not at all clear that it's possible to have infinite resources according to the laws of physics as we know them. It's not clear that it is in fact possible to be post-scarcity, by that 'hard' definition of the term.
It is certainly possible, however, to define "post-scarcity" as being a point where people's basic needs are met for everyone, and that does seem to be where the Federation exists.
It is certainly possible, however, to define "post-scarcity" as being a point where people's basic needs are met for everyone, and that does seem to be where the Federation exists.
That's not what I'm arguing. Replicators would simply shift farmers from farming and goods produces from produce to resource gathering.
What I'm arguing against is STOLevianthan's assertion that it would be impossible to subjugate a planet with Replicators; Replicators require resources. Anybody with a higher resource capacity and higher rate of resource use will be able to subjugate a planet with those abilities at a lower level. Replicators don't make whatever you want for free. They merely shift around what work is necessary.
Sure, a planet could easily turn all resources on hand into weapons, but anybody that wants to take you over would quickly take out the facilities which generate the resources for your replicators. They'll go into seige warfare, run dry the weapons you were able to make with on hand resources and energy, and then occupy your planet. This already happened once. The planet was Bajor.
Space, like open ocean, is not a territory that can be "held". You can only hold land, by occupying it with people, you can't hold ocean (or space) with ships. Planets (and starbases/outposts) are like islands in the ocean of space. You hold the planets, but the space in between is like open ocean.
Agreed that this is the best way to conceptualize it. On the in-game map, all Federation "territory" may be coloured blue, but it would be more accurate to have a series of blue circles around each Federation system against a black backdrop representing, er, "international waters."
I think Starfleet has always been described as something more integrated than NATO. Starfleet is a Federation organisation, while NATO is a military alliance. The UN is a diplomatic forum while the Federation is an actual state with a government and citizenship.
You're right, but there is no real-world equivalent to either the Federation or Starfleet. The Federation has its own government and citizenship, but it's also clear from the shows that each member state has its own government.
It'd be like citizens of countries who are UN members having "UN citizenship" in addition to the citizenship of their own nation, and all member states disbanding or combining their military into one multinational armed force under a UN flag. Although I think it's been established that UFP member states can and do handle their own internal security (oddly, Earth seems to be the exception to this - it's given pretty much everything over to the UFP).
Edit: Upon further thought, I suppose the USA is a reasonable analogue for the UFP.
...talking to players is like being a mall Santa. Everyone immediately wants to tell you all of the things they want, and you are absolutely powerless to deliver 99% of them.
Agreed that this is the best way to conceptualize it. On the in-game map, all Federation "territory" may be coloured blue, but it would be more accurate to have a series of blue circles around each Federation system against a black backdrop representing, er, "international waters."
You're right, but there is no real-world equivalent to either the Federation or Starfleet. The Federation has its own government and citizenship, but it's also clear from the shows that each member state has its own government.
It'd be like citizens of countries who are UN members having "UN citizenship" in addition to the citizenship of their own nation, and all member states disbanding or combining their military into one multinational armed force under a UN flag. Although I think it's been established that UFP member states can and do handle their own internal security (oddly, Earth seems to be the exception to this - it's given pretty much everything over to the UFP).
Edit: Upon further thought, I suppose the USA is a reasonable analogue for the UFP.
I think a better example might be the Russian Federation; a series of autonomous republics with their own cultures, traditions and governments.
How the Devs see Star Trek, apparently:
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
...talking to players is like being a mall Santa. Everyone immediately wants to tell you all of the things they want, and you are absolutely powerless to deliver 99% of them.
I know what you're arguing and I'm saying the definition of post-scarcity you're using is impossible.
A culture can still be "post-scarcity" and still not have enough ships to fight off any potential aggressor (to say nothing of the actual technical superiority or inferiority of those opponents).
The idea that "post scarcity" = "infinite warships capable of stopping any potential foe" is malformed on almost every level; it's not even wrong, it's fractally wrong.
It is important to note that there are two independent, but related bodies here. The United Federation of Planets, and Starfleet.
The Federation is like the UN. Each subsidiary nation (or world in this case) can, and likely does, still have it's own means of production, and it's own ships. (Vulcan, Andorian, Caitian, etc.).
However, Starfleet is like NATO, it's an intergovernmental military force. Unlike NATO, Starfleet is the military wing of the UFP. Starfleet ships are what we are used to seeing (all the enterprises, etc.), but they are not the only ships within the Federation.
By 2267, UESPA was the operating authority of the USS Enterprise's five-year mission, as Captain James T. Kirk informed John Christopher. (TOS: "Tomorrow is Yesterday") In 2266, Kirk reported to UESPA Headquarters after learning of the destruction of the Antares. (TOS: "Charlie X")
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
I know what you're arguing and I'm saying the definition of post-scarcity you're using is impossible.
A culture can still be "post-scarcity" and still not have enough ships to fight off any potential aggressor (to say nothing of the actual technical superiority or inferiority of those opponents).
The idea that "post scarcity" = "infinite warships capable of stopping any potential foe" is malformed on almost every level; it's not even wrong, it's fractally wrong.
I don't think you need starships to fight a starship.
You just need to use replicators in incredibly complex ways.
If you want to get right down to, this whole isn't and should never be governed by logic.
If you go by logic, as one poster used to argue, any one shuttle could be used to annihilate a planet with a warp impact.
The reason why that doesn't happen has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with writers who, if necessary, would invent rules to keep that from happening or make it an isolated occurrence because it would destroy dramatic storytelling if any ship with shuttles could destroy any target.
Likewise with the scarcity of replicators thing, which the writers have tried to have both ways on. Not for any kind of sound in-universe logic (replicators already violate mass-energy conversion routinely) but so they can have them just effective enough to be cool and just ineffective enough so that people can't just use replicators in place of shields to replicate physical barriers around ships to absorb kinetic weapon impacts. That is, until somebody with the budget thinks it will be a cool visual and then it will happen, consistency be doggoned.
At the end of the day, Star Trek is more allegory than simulation. But the boundaries and limits have always and will always bend to whatever somebody thinks would make a cool plot.
If a writer wants to say human beings or soong-type androids can't be replicated, they'll do that. If it advances a theme, it will suddenly be possible. And it might have horrible consequences in one episode (oh, no! defective copy!) and in the next be part of a mind bending twist ending where lovable crewman #1 dies but replicates his body at the last second.
Trek is governed by possibilities more than rules. And by and large, if it happens offscreen, nobody will mention replicators (without the ability to frabicate starships) as a means of fending off a hostile invasion force.
But take the recent news stories about 3D printers being able to create most of the materials needed to make 3D printers coupled with the news about 3D printers being used to make ammunition and I guarantee if Trek were on the air today, you'd have a whole episode where a culture gets replicators and manages to change the course of their history and pose a threat to warp capable species without even using the replicators to make starships. They'd just have to replicate viruses or living DNA or physical barriers that make their fortress replicate and regenerate faster than orbital bombardment can penetrate its walls.
And it'd be twice as likely if a Starfleet engineer who starred on the show came up with the idea.
Or you'd have someone hack the replicators on a ship and have them produce water continuously until it drowns all the crew on one deck of a ship.
And personally, I regard DS9 and Voyager as doing a lot of cheating to make future technology and future humans more relatable to modern audiences whereas TNG under Gene deliberately set out to make them difficult or impossible to relate to.
But take the recent news stories about 3D printers being able to create most of the materials needed to make 3D printers coupled with the news about 3D printers being used to make ammunition
A 3D printed car takes fifty times as long to make, costs a hundred times as much, and is significantly inferior to one produced the conventional way.
More to the point, this isn't economically surprising and there's no good reason why it would change. Replicators suffer all of the disadvantages and advantages of 3D printing- that is to say they're useful for rapid prototyping and building a wide variety of objects and totally useless for actually building stuff that you want in any reasonable quantity.
Quite frankly that's something that Star Trek got quite right about the replicators, both physically and story-wise; they won't solve all problems.
Ultimately, though, they have nothing to do with the original argument I made.
It is important to note that there are two independent, but related bodies here. The United Federation of Planets, and Starfleet.
The Federation is like the UN. Each subsidiary nation (or world in this case) can, and likely does, still have it's own means of production, and it's own ships. (Vulcan, Andorian, Caitian, etc.).
However, Starfleet is like NATO, it's an intergovernmental military force. Unlike NATO, Starfleet is the military wing of the UFP. Starfleet ships are what we are used to seeing (all the enterprises, etc.), but they are not the only ships within the Federation.
I think that the UFP is more like the Federal Government of the United States than the UN.
The UN is a treaty that nations sign. The UN can pass resolutions, but it cannot create laws. It has no military forces.
On the other hand, the Federation Charter seems more like the US Constitution. The US Constitution explicitly lays down which authorities are the domain of the States (or by analogy Planets) and which authorities belong to the Federal Government (or UFP by analogy). Unlike the UN, the Federal Government can pass laws and has military forces. The States have their own local military forces too (National Guard), but they can be called into active federal service and use the same ranks, uniforms, equipment, et cetera (for the most part).
In the show, it is shown that some Starfleet vessels are manned by a specific race (such as Vulcans) but it is never shown that other Federation societies have their own military warships.
My suspicion is that Andorians would not have their own military vessels but rather Starfleet officers on Starfleet vessels permanently attached to the UFP equivalent of the Andorian National Guard.
A 3D printed car takes fifty times as long to make, costs a hundred times as much, and is significantly inferior to one produced the conventional way.
More to the point, this isn't economically surprising and there's no good reason why it would change. Replicators suffer all of the disadvantages and advantages of 3D printing- that is to say they're useful for rapid prototyping and building a wide variety of objects and totally useless for actually building stuff that you want in any reasonable quantity.
Quite frankly that's something that Star Trek got quite right about the replicators, both physically and story-wise; they won't solve all problems.
Ultimately, though, they have nothing to do with the original argument I made.
Um, that simply is not true.
Typically, prototyping on a 3-D printer is much more cost effective than "conventional" prototyping, which is why 3-D printers are becoming so popular.
Sure, if you are comparing the cost of manufacturing 100 million items at an industrial facility to the cost of manufacturing 100 million items using current 3-d printers, the industrial facility will be more cost effective, but only because the tremendous cost of the traditional facility is negligible at a certain scale.
But there is going to be a price-point where it becomes more cost effective to use a 3-d printer and you better believe that industrial facilities are more-and-more using designs that can be rapidly retooled.
The replicators on Star Trek are made up technology with little basis in fact but it is pretty clear from the show that they have taken the place of many traditional manufacturing centers, hence the importance of "industrial replicators", devices which presumably can be used to quickly and efficiently manufacture everything from shuttles to significant parts of a large spacecraft.
If you go by logic, as one poster used to argue, any one shuttle could be used to annihilate a planet with a warp impact.
You can. You don't even need to go to warp. Just release the antimatter.
The reason why that doesn't happen has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with writers who, if necessary, would invent rules to keep that from happening or make it an isolated occurrence because it would destroy dramatic storytelling if any ship with shuttles could destroy any target.
Alpha quadrant species don't do that for various reasons: Its unethical to the UFP, the Klingons probably view it as dishonorable, the Romulans might find it overt or lacking finesse (or something), the Cardassians don't do it because it doesn't fit with their Machiavellian mindset. The Dominion probably would do that (they *did* try to blow up Bajor's Sun), but that they didn't was probably an oversight.
Likewise with the scarcity of replicators thing, which the writers have tried to have both ways on. Not for any kind of sound in-universe logic (replicators already violate mass-energy conversion routinely) but so they can have them just effective enough to be cool and just ineffective enough so that people can't just use replicators in place of shields to replicate physical barriers around ships to absorb kinetic weapon impacts. That is, until somebody with the budget thinks it will be a cool visual and then it will happen, consistency be doggoned.
If you want to argue from a story teller's prerogative, that's fine. And probably within reason if only TNG were being considered. But Star Trek canon did expand with DS9 and Voyager (I hate on Voyager, but I sadly have to accept its bad with its scarce good when debating Star Trek canon), and this solidified technological boundaries (though unnecessary because TNG already defined the finite nature of replicators.)
At the end of the day, Star Trek is more allegory than simulation. But the boundaries and limits have always and will always bend to whatever somebody thinks would make a cool plot.
I don't disagree with the ideals of Star Trek and how it tells stories. But good story telling only breaks what is necessary. Having inconsistent rules is always bad. Either Replicators and all sorts of technology are magic, and the Federation (writers) are mind bogglingly stupid, or they have consistent, finite rules.
If a writer wants to say human beings or soong-type androids can't be replicated, they'll do that.
They're currently unreproduceable because Soong (and his ancestors) are/were geniuses far beyond their time. Eventually Data will be an off the shelf product, but the Federations communal knowledge of cybernetics isn't there yet.
They'd just have to replicate viruses or living DNA or physical barriers that make their fortress replicate and regenerate faster than orbital bombardment can penetrate its walls.
Its highly implied, if not out right stated, that replicates can not make large, complex molecules. Its why a lot of people prefer real food. So I don't think bio-weapons are replicatable. As for Barriers, unless they have antimatter powering them (which they would need antimatter production facilities, which would have to orbit stars), then any warp capable ship would simply have more power (the time rate of energy use).
Or you'd have someone hack the replicators on a ship and have them produce water continuously until it drowns all the crew on one deck of a ship.
Cut main power; I doubt replicators are tied the backup system.
And personally, I regard DS9 and Voyager as doing a lot of cheating to make future technology and future humans more relatable to modern audiences whereas TNG under Gene deliberately set out to make them difficult or impossible to relate to.
If it truly is technology, it must be logical and consistent; Replicators are unrelatable because people can't go to a slot in their wall and order food or a new shirt, but it would have definite limits. If it didn't, it wouldn't be technology, it'd be magic (and no, I do not use magic condescendingly, but to mean something which does not have to follow physical laws, but the flaws with that, as I have pointed out, are if it is Magic, then its not being used to its logical extent).
While this is a very good and lively discussion of politics and resources in Trek, it has regretably taken over this thread. I both propose and strongly support creating a new thread to conitinue this dialog, with a fitting Title so other interested parties may find it for their perusal or even to contribute.
I thank you all.
*************************************
Now, back to the Andorian Escorts. How have they performed/handled since the patch to correct errors in the ships' code?
I know they are still being flown; i've seen a few the last few days. Although the Temporal and Jem'Hadar ships seem to be the most polpular of late; i see them more often than all the other non-standard ships combinened.
[SIGPIC]Sarvour Shipyards[/SIGPIC]Sarvour Shipyards =A=Commodore Joshua Daniel Sarvour, S.C.E.
U.S.S. AKAGI NX-93347, Enterprise-class Battle Cruiser =A= U.S.S. T'KORA'S WRATH NX-110047, Odyssey-class Battle Cruiser "There Ain't No Grave, Can Hold My Body Down..." PS - I fully support a T6 Nova, fixing the Nova skins. I am also rooting for a T6 Science Cruiser, that can use Nova/Rhode Island skins. T6 Nova/Rhode Island, T6 Oberth & T6 Constellation are needed. Also needed a T6 Science Cruiser, that can wear any Science or Cruiser skin.
While this is a very good and lively discussion of politics and resources in Trek, it has regretably taken over this thread. I both propose and strongly support creating a new thread to conitinue this dialog, with a fitting Title so other interested parties may find it for their perusal or even to contribute.
Comments
Space, like open ocean, is not a territory that can be "held". You can only hold land, by occupying it with people, you can't hold ocean (or space) with ships. Planets (and starbases/outposts) are like islands in the ocean of space. You hold the planets, but the space in between is like open ocean.
I bet if you were to ask anyone actually in charge of canon, they would probably say that the ships in Star Trek work in this same way as current ocean-going naval vessels: A ship belonging to a sovereign state acts as an extended territory of that state when in the open ocean. All laws of the state the ship belongs to still apply while onboard that ship.
From HowStuffWorks.com:
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I think Starfleet has always been described as something more integrated than NATO. Starfleet is a Federation organisation, while NATO is a military alliance. The UN is a diplomatic forum while the Federation is an actual state with a government and citizenship.
I think the better approach with the Vulcan and Andorian designs is just to regard them as Starfleet ships from a different aesthetic tradition. The show had a limited budget and homocentricity (and ease of storytelling) meant that we mainly saw the Human side of Starfleet. The game has the ability to show this differently.
The D'Kyr should just be by default a Starfleet ship made by Vulcan shipyards; the Kumari the same by Andorians.
It opens up the possibility of expanding the variety of existing Starfleet ships. You could put a ring-warp-drive on the Deep Space Science Vessels and they'd look pretty natural for example...
And if you argue that that's not what was shown on Trek... well the racial diversity of Starfleet in STO is about a million times higher than the show ever portrayed too, but nobody complains.
It has never been stated where the empires in Star Trek get their antimatter from. Good Fiction never breaks more rules (physics in Sci-Fi's case) than is necessary. Therefore it can be assumed star empires control antimatter production facilities which orbit stars and mine gas giants for fusion reactor fuel (and mine dead planets, asteroids, etc, for raw materials).
Having a replicator is nice, but all it does is shift around what work needs to be done. Most efforts will be shifted to resource gathering since you don't need Ford or Honda to make your car for you, but you still need the designers from Ford or Honda to make new car designs.
Replicators do not require raw materials to function. They're matter-energy conversion units, not magic smelting machines.
None of that is canon because it was in a comic book, even the writers of the movie have said this.
So based on what was seen in Star Trek XI, the Jellyfish is completely Vulcan.
As it should be. The shows had their own reasons for portraying a majority of human crewmembers. They also had some restrictions due to finances/technology to implement more diversity.
STO as a game is liberated of those restrictions and this is a good thing. I hope noone seriosely believes that a vast majority of Starfleet officers consists only of humans, while there are so many other worlds and civilizations that are members of the Federation.
They kindof are in that they have eradicated scarcity.
There is no such thing as scarcity in the Star Trek universe except:
- Pre-warp cultures
- When the limitless resources (the only limited resources being time and latinum, basically) are somehow artificially withheld.
Replicators don't require finite resources to operate. This is one of the core problems with most attempts to depict war in Trek is that they constantly fudge this aspect of the universe.
In TOS, you had dilithium as scarce. But by TNG, dilithium was shifted to become infinitely replenishable because TNG was supposed to be completely devoid of resource scarcity.
I know some people think that's just silly and that Trek needs to stay more grounded in a modern mentality but I really think a key to strong sci-fi work is being forced to incorporate unreasonable or unrelatable ideas.
As-is, we do have modern theories of post-scarcity or scarcity-free economics... and I think warfare in Trek needs to incorporate the idea of scarcity free warfare. Which means, among other things, fights should not REALLY be over physical resources and doing so overrelies on the mcguffin that something can't be replicated.
It's part of STO's backstory, canon or not.
And most of what I typed up came from STO, not the COUNTDOWN comic.
It would mean whatever they replicate would end up being taken directly out of their anti-matter reserve (or at least half minus the inefficiencies)
They don't have that much anti-matter.
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In a peaceful situation, the Federation may have enough resources to adequately please most of its citizens, but its apparent it cant do that *and* fight a war. They do; If you pay attention in DS9, its implied. Voyager outright stated it, but abandoned it later because Voyagers writers didn't seem to care. Because they learned how to reconstitute it after the Dilithium was worn out; This is similar to how thorium reactors today work; 95% of a "spent" fuel rod is still usable fuel, but because of how the reaction produces homogenized pockets non-fissionable material, a steady reaction can no longer be maintained in it. Part of thorium reactor design is to create a reaction chain which allows a fuel rod to be usable for a longer time before you have to resort to figuring out a way to separate out the non-fissionable material (Yay for longwinded examples). As I stated before, Good Fiction only breaks as many rules as necessary. If the Federation was really post-scarcity, they could just build giant replicators, churn out as many ships as they need to kick whoever's TRIBBLE and be done with it. But that didn't happen in the Dominion war, or even the tensions that arose between the Klingons and Romulans in TNG. TNG purported the ideals and aspirations of the Federation, but that doesn't mean they were *there*.
That assumes that their limitation is on replicable hardware, as opposed to, say, crew or antimatter generation, or whatever else.
Second, I think this is a very particular, and meaningless, definition of post-scarcity. Scarcity is simply the state of having finite resources, but it's not at all clear that it's possible to have infinite resources according to the laws of physics as we know them. It's not clear that it is in fact possible to be post-scarcity, by that 'hard' definition of the term.
It is certainly possible, however, to define "post-scarcity" as being a point where people's basic needs are met for everyone, and that does seem to be where the Federation exists.
What I'm arguing against is STOLevianthan's assertion that it would be impossible to subjugate a planet with Replicators; Replicators require resources. Anybody with a higher resource capacity and higher rate of resource use will be able to subjugate a planet with those abilities at a lower level. Replicators don't make whatever you want for free. They merely shift around what work is necessary.
Sure, a planet could easily turn all resources on hand into weapons, but anybody that wants to take you over would quickly take out the facilities which generate the resources for your replicators. They'll go into seige warfare, run dry the weapons you were able to make with on hand resources and energy, and then occupy your planet. This already happened once. The planet was Bajor.
You're right, but there is no real-world equivalent to either the Federation or Starfleet. The Federation has its own government and citizenship, but it's also clear from the shows that each member state has its own government.
It'd be like citizens of countries who are UN members having "UN citizenship" in addition to the citizenship of their own nation, and all member states disbanding or combining their military into one multinational armed force under a UN flag. Although I think it's been established that UFP member states can and do handle their own internal security (oddly, Earth seems to be the exception to this - it's given pretty much everything over to the UFP).
Edit: Upon further thought, I suppose the USA is a reasonable analogue for the UFP.
I think a better example might be the Russian Federation; a series of autonomous republics with their own cultures, traditions and governments.
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I thought about Russia, but don't really know enough to know if it's a good comparison. I shall take your word for it!
I know what you're arguing and I'm saying the definition of post-scarcity you're using is impossible.
A culture can still be "post-scarcity" and still not have enough ships to fight off any potential aggressor (to say nothing of the actual technical superiority or inferiority of those opponents).
The idea that "post scarcity" = "infinite warships capable of stopping any potential foe" is malformed on almost every level; it's not even wrong, it's fractally wrong.
For example:
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/United_Earth_Space_Probe_Agency
I don't think you need starships to fight a starship.
You just need to use replicators in incredibly complex ways.
If you want to get right down to, this whole isn't and should never be governed by logic.
If you go by logic, as one poster used to argue, any one shuttle could be used to annihilate a planet with a warp impact.
The reason why that doesn't happen has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with writers who, if necessary, would invent rules to keep that from happening or make it an isolated occurrence because it would destroy dramatic storytelling if any ship with shuttles could destroy any target.
Likewise with the scarcity of replicators thing, which the writers have tried to have both ways on. Not for any kind of sound in-universe logic (replicators already violate mass-energy conversion routinely) but so they can have them just effective enough to be cool and just ineffective enough so that people can't just use replicators in place of shields to replicate physical barriers around ships to absorb kinetic weapon impacts. That is, until somebody with the budget thinks it will be a cool visual and then it will happen, consistency be doggoned.
At the end of the day, Star Trek is more allegory than simulation. But the boundaries and limits have always and will always bend to whatever somebody thinks would make a cool plot.
If a writer wants to say human beings or soong-type androids can't be replicated, they'll do that. If it advances a theme, it will suddenly be possible. And it might have horrible consequences in one episode (oh, no! defective copy!) and in the next be part of a mind bending twist ending where lovable crewman #1 dies but replicates his body at the last second.
Trek is governed by possibilities more than rules. And by and large, if it happens offscreen, nobody will mention replicators (without the ability to frabicate starships) as a means of fending off a hostile invasion force.
But take the recent news stories about 3D printers being able to create most of the materials needed to make 3D printers coupled with the news about 3D printers being used to make ammunition and I guarantee if Trek were on the air today, you'd have a whole episode where a culture gets replicators and manages to change the course of their history and pose a threat to warp capable species without even using the replicators to make starships. They'd just have to replicate viruses or living DNA or physical barriers that make their fortress replicate and regenerate faster than orbital bombardment can penetrate its walls.
And it'd be twice as likely if a Starfleet engineer who starred on the show came up with the idea.
Or you'd have someone hack the replicators on a ship and have them produce water continuously until it drowns all the crew on one deck of a ship.
And personally, I regard DS9 and Voyager as doing a lot of cheating to make future technology and future humans more relatable to modern audiences whereas TNG under Gene deliberately set out to make them difficult or impossible to relate to.
A 3D printed car takes fifty times as long to make, costs a hundred times as much, and is significantly inferior to one produced the conventional way.
More to the point, this isn't economically surprising and there's no good reason why it would change. Replicators suffer all of the disadvantages and advantages of 3D printing- that is to say they're useful for rapid prototyping and building a wide variety of objects and totally useless for actually building stuff that you want in any reasonable quantity.
Quite frankly that's something that Star Trek got quite right about the replicators, both physically and story-wise; they won't solve all problems.
Ultimately, though, they have nothing to do with the original argument I made.
I think that the UFP is more like the Federal Government of the United States than the UN.
The UN is a treaty that nations sign. The UN can pass resolutions, but it cannot create laws. It has no military forces.
On the other hand, the Federation Charter seems more like the US Constitution. The US Constitution explicitly lays down which authorities are the domain of the States (or by analogy Planets) and which authorities belong to the Federal Government (or UFP by analogy). Unlike the UN, the Federal Government can pass laws and has military forces. The States have their own local military forces too (National Guard), but they can be called into active federal service and use the same ranks, uniforms, equipment, et cetera (for the most part).
In the show, it is shown that some Starfleet vessels are manned by a specific race (such as Vulcans) but it is never shown that other Federation societies have their own military warships.
My suspicion is that Andorians would not have their own military vessels but rather Starfleet officers on Starfleet vessels permanently attached to the UFP equivalent of the Andorian National Guard.
Um, that simply is not true.
Typically, prototyping on a 3-D printer is much more cost effective than "conventional" prototyping, which is why 3-D printers are becoming so popular.
Sure, if you are comparing the cost of manufacturing 100 million items at an industrial facility to the cost of manufacturing 100 million items using current 3-d printers, the industrial facility will be more cost effective, but only because the tremendous cost of the traditional facility is negligible at a certain scale.
But there is going to be a price-point where it becomes more cost effective to use a 3-d printer and you better believe that industrial facilities are more-and-more using designs that can be rapidly retooled.
The replicators on Star Trek are made up technology with little basis in fact but it is pretty clear from the show that they have taken the place of many traditional manufacturing centers, hence the importance of "industrial replicators", devices which presumably can be used to quickly and efficiently manufacture everything from shuttles to significant parts of a large spacecraft.
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Now, back to the Andorian Escorts. How have they performed/handled since the patch to correct errors in the ships' code?
I know they are still being flown; i've seen a few the last few days. Although the Temporal and Jem'Hadar ships seem to be the most polpular of late; i see them more often than all the other non-standard ships combinened.
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PS - I fully support a T6 Nova, fixing the Nova skins. I am also rooting for a T6 Science Cruiser, that can use Nova/Rhode Island skins.
T6 Nova/Rhode Island, T6 Oberth & T6 Constellation are needed. Also needed a T6 Science Cruiser, that can wear any Science or Cruiser skin.
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