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Implications of "photonic" technology
hakkonoth
Member Posts: 4 Arc User
Photonic technology (holographic people and, especially, holographic ships that somehow do real damage) utterly destroys my suspension of disbelief. Just grabs it by the throat and feeds it straight into a wood chipper.
Three-dimensional images projected in the air are, of course, a sci-fi staple. I can even see highly sophisticated force field manipulation to allow the image of a person to pick up a phaser and use it. It would require an ungodly amount of processing power and incredibly fine control over the fields, but whatever. It's phlebotinum.
But a holographic phaser that shoots real phaser beams? A holographic ship, firing holographic photon torpedoes, that somehow produce real explosions? Muh sides. Not only does it fly in the face of everything ever said and shown in every Star Trek series and movie about holographic technology, it completely breaks the setting.
Let's start with ships. With the capabilities shown in STO, conventional starships should not even exist. Why in great Cthulhu's unholy name would you build several dozen different ship classes, when you can build a box, stick an antimatter reactor in it (or singularity core, if you're a Romulan), cover the outside with holoemitters, and have something that can turn itself into any kind of ship you want at a moment's notice? Exploring Delta Volanis? Flip a switch, and you're a science vessel! Going into combat? Flip a switch, and you're an escort!
The existence of this technology completely obviates the shipbuilding industries of every major power.
Moving on to personal equipment. Again, why do you need armor, a weapon, and a kit, when a power source and some holoemitters (possibly even a single holoemitter) can instantly furnish you with any piece of gear you need? Why carry a heavy load around with you, when holographic gear can just appear when you want it, and vanish when you don't?
The existence of this technology completely obviates almost every industry. Houses? Photonic. Furniture? Photonic. Clothing? Photonic. Vehicles, tools, appliances? All photonic.
I'm not even going to get into the moral and ethical implications of photonic people; that's a whole book unto itself. Nor do I suffer from the delusion that Cryptic will strip these elements from the game on my say-so or anyone else's. I just want to point out how breathtakingly dumb it all is.
Three-dimensional images projected in the air are, of course, a sci-fi staple. I can even see highly sophisticated force field manipulation to allow the image of a person to pick up a phaser and use it. It would require an ungodly amount of processing power and incredibly fine control over the fields, but whatever. It's phlebotinum.
But a holographic phaser that shoots real phaser beams? A holographic ship, firing holographic photon torpedoes, that somehow produce real explosions? Muh sides. Not only does it fly in the face of everything ever said and shown in every Star Trek series and movie about holographic technology, it completely breaks the setting.
Let's start with ships. With the capabilities shown in STO, conventional starships should not even exist. Why in great Cthulhu's unholy name would you build several dozen different ship classes, when you can build a box, stick an antimatter reactor in it (or singularity core, if you're a Romulan), cover the outside with holoemitters, and have something that can turn itself into any kind of ship you want at a moment's notice? Exploring Delta Volanis? Flip a switch, and you're a science vessel! Going into combat? Flip a switch, and you're an escort!
The existence of this technology completely obviates the shipbuilding industries of every major power.
Moving on to personal equipment. Again, why do you need armor, a weapon, and a kit, when a power source and some holoemitters (possibly even a single holoemitter) can instantly furnish you with any piece of gear you need? Why carry a heavy load around with you, when holographic gear can just appear when you want it, and vanish when you don't?
The existence of this technology completely obviates almost every industry. Houses? Photonic. Furniture? Photonic. Clothing? Photonic. Vehicles, tools, appliances? All photonic.
I'm not even going to get into the moral and ethical implications of photonic people; that's a whole book unto itself. Nor do I suffer from the delusion that Cryptic will strip these elements from the game on my say-so or anyone else's. I just want to point out how breathtakingly dumb it all is.
Post edited by hakkonoth on
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This is actually a very interesting topic. Why can't you just Holo-Make a ship do whatever you want? Well it actually boils down to it's effectiveness and stability. In the terms of a ship, the over all energy generating capacity does have limits, thus the amount of energy required to produce a hologram the size of a ship could put a huge demand on that supply. Then with the left over energy you must make a beam that carries the same effectiveness of a ship that was not burdened by the same Holographic technology. This is the major reason for ships to still be solid and piloted by living beings. Also on a side note, even if you managed to create an infinite energy source you must still make preperations for the most commons of laws. Murphy's Law. Something would break that would quickly cripple your ship, that might leave a solid ship only inconvenienced.
Hope that answered your question.
How many times during Voyager did the holodeck break down or malfunction and cause real damage? The Doctor and his mobile emitter, the photonic ships they deploy, the dimensional aliens invading holodeck during Captain Proton? Voyager was full of this TRIBBLE.
The holodecks broke down and casued damage when the power to the MacGuffin overloaded and the breaker tripped (or whatever) and real energy was released in harmful unexpected ways.
As for aliens on the holodeck, it is well established in cannon that no safety protocols ON the holodeck mean photonic energy can hurt - again, on the holodeck. Take that photonic energy and try to use it outside the holodeck and nothing happens. (Doctor can't leave the sickbay w/o the emitter, throwing an object outisde the holodeck causes it to disappear, etc). A photonic ANYTHING not contained inside holo-matrices can be nothing but a pretty projected light show.
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Holo ships as decoys, sure. Holo ships as combat vessels, heck no. My problem is the energy requirements. If you can generate three T4 ships to support you, why can't you channel that energy into weapons/shields instead?
Edit: Apparently the vessel holo emitters have their own energy sources, so they can do damage for a short period.
Hmmm.... source? They would have to be pretty powerful energy sources.
Now if we're talking particle synthesis - maybe I can see how that could work.
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To be honest I would Imagine in the sense of Star Trek Online's Photonic Fleet ablity they are launched as pods, much the same way as a modern Aircraft launches Contermeasures to avoid destruction. That would offer for very large Mobile Emitters to be used in Combat Situations, with a Limited Power amount being available. On the other note It could also explain why as the technology of Transporters has advanced that some limited stability of a projectile launched from a Holographic ship could have some usefulness. It would also explain why they can not be launched in larger squadrons and require a recharge/reloading time.
Nitpicking canon, story and gameplay makes no sense whatsoever in sto
We are flying in 2D space with no alert system without being able to travel from the bridge, come on now...
I share some of your discomfort here, I do think that you should be able to purchase what you want your photonic fleet to be constructed out of. That would however bring about some balancing issues. At the time I believe it was more being thought of a porting a "Summoning" type skill into the Star Trek Universe. Which greatly damaged its over all potential.
My ship has Borg bits all over it and I routinely destroy cubes with shuttle sized craft. And somehow the breaking point is Photonic Fleet???
Well his concern is more twords the realism, but lets honestly evaluate the concerns. Which I think we have. But your are also correct in the fact that a lot of Star Trek "Technobable" was thrown together on the fly.
You are WAY over thinking this.
In terms of Photonic Fleet doing real damage, it has been established in Star Trek that anything holographic can be fatal if the safety protocols are off. Think of it this way, Photonic fleet is the result of holo emitters or a holo grid being projected into space with the safety protocols off.
And, for the record, the existence of photonics does NOT make EVERY industry obsolete. A ship that is entirely a holographic projection would NOT be feasible. One power failure (WHICH HAPPENS A LOT) would make the ship vanish and everyone on the ship would die. Even if it was possible to have holographic ships manned by real people, I don't know a single person who would feel comfortable working on a ship that could just vanish around you at any instant.
The same is for cloths, cars, houses, etc. If the power fails...everyone is naked, homeless, and walking around with no means of transportation.
It is a video game buddy. Don't over think it and just enjoy it.
I would be OK with this.
What if at a fleet level, the Drone ship can transformer itself into a freaking cruiser? If that's the case, it would really make schimatar OP^2, since its weaponry will already OP.
More to the point, why would a holographic ship need a crew at all? Give the ship itself a mind. That gets into another suspension-of-disbelief-destroyer: a ship's computer can run a program that has free will and independent consciousness - that is a person, in other words - but the computer itself does not possess those qualities? Lolwut?
runs outside of academy building thinking " come on power outage"
You can't replicate the whole torpedo. But you can mine an asteroid for X mineral, collect Y gas from a nebula, synthesize compound Z in engineering, replicate the casings/components,and then manufacture the torpedoes by hand.
Just because they used more than 38, doesn't mean they replicated the additional ones.
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Go back and replay the mission Facility 4028 to see why this is a horrible idea. "Hey look, the enemy ship has an off switch! *hack-hack-hack-flip* I win, woohoo!"
Additionally, think of the number of times the Doctor's Holo Emitter had issues in voyager, not least of which being taken over by enemies (even incorporated into the body of One the future borg).
Just because the technology exists, doesn't mean that it exists in a form that is advanced enough for every possible application of it.
Handwave away your concerns by telling yourself that while this may be true in the future, there are current power/control/safety/reliability issues that make the limits shown the practical limits.
And we all can name many episodes where holographic technology failed or was overcome because of a technological limit.
Photonic crew would be as powerful as the power supply they're running off. If it's the ship then they would likely exceed any human, if it's on another planet then they would likely be less powerful than a full kitted officer - the power used to create the hologram would go towards shield power.
I think Facility 4028 shows the pros and cons of a place run by holograms quite well - great when it all works but disaster when something (inevitably) goes wrong.
IMHO, game aside and strictly from a TV/movie lore standpoint, I can't imagine either the Romulan Star Empire or the Klingons embracing photonic people (the Torres/Doctor friendship aside), except as mindless drones to scrub the engines and other menial tasks. And they'd likely make them look distinctive, not good enough to be cast in the Romulan or Klingon image. I suppose the RSE might agree to a few emergency personnel, but not on an equal standing with the crew.
Regarding the Federation, although I could see them formally giving Voyager's Doctor legal sentient status, as was done for Data, I would like to hope the Feds are wise enough to approach the situation of creating synthetic sentients cautiously, possibly reducing production of them while studying the full ethical and philosophical ramifications carefully for possibly decades. Not to mention the need to improve the technology so you don't have psychotic photonics or Soong androids running amok. Just because you have the power to create a new race doesn't mean you quickly should. I don't recall the exact words, but the judge in Measure of a Man ruled wisely when she granted Data personal rights but stated this was a unique case and the universal decisions would be made outside the individual court.
Torpedoes probably can't be replicated as patterns of items were stored with lossy compression. They means there were small errors in the replicated items. (Not made up. It's caon from the shows). Probably not an problem with food and clothing. But possibly a BIG problem with a high precision explosive weapons. You won't want the containment field of an armed photon torpedo to fail while in the launch bay. That's 64 megaton *KA-BOOM*, you don't want to happen.
Regarding the video, Voyager didn't have the resources to replenish their torpedo supply soon after they got dumped on the otherwise of the galaxy. But they probably found and mined/bartered for/acquired the resources they needed to make new torpedoes.
Photonic beings to be given fully rights of a sentient being has to fully sentient. Star Trek has established that they create lifelike and sophisticated holographic/photonic replications of beings. But they aren't fully sentient. Holographic "people" can be programmed or synthesized by the computer, but they are little more then sophisticated robots. They has to be more to their programing, like what the Doctor from Voyager went through over the 7 years of their trip.
Recall from TNG "Boobytrap", Geordi created a holographic Leah Brahms to act as an interface into Braum's papers and work on the Galaxy Class engines. Gerodi got to know Leah Brahms better via the hologram. But when he met the real Leah Brahms, he found out the holo version of her kinda left out the fact she was married.
I can't believe she did that. How could she just holographically walk all over Geordi's feelings like that? Holo-tramp.
I thought WoW's forums had angry elitist snobs, but I never could have imagined the level STO forums has.
I don't think the weapon replicated actual rounds (if that has been stated somewhere so be it, though it's stupid XD). On a holodeck, everthing you see are forcefields and photons (though even on the show they never got that straight, for example in early TNG they could get wet on the holodeck and still be wet outside etc.). Those forcefields usually dissipate with the safeties turned on once they touch organic matter. When the safety is off, those forcefield hit you with a certain force, being able to hold you or throw you down. In the case of the tommy gun, every bullet would be a little forcefield thrown at the target at whatever velocity a holo-tommygun generates. Those forcefields would deal kinetic damage and thus hurt the Borg.
That's at least how I think about it. Holodeck technology is kinda weird and inconsistent
EDIT: Now, projecting things outside of a holo-grid like photonic starships (which wouldn't be "manned". It's just a "hollow" model of a starship) seems kinda nonsensical though it'd be fine if it would serve as a short-timed decoy. But doing actual damage? Nah... Like others said, this way they isn't much reason to use actual starships and people in conflicts
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Photonic ships only deals damage as a game mechanic so they actually pull aggro and give you some kind of tactical advantage. Actually they are distracting the enemies, changing the way they maneuver, making them reinforce the wrong shield facings and other things that allow you to land some nice extra hits.
Sometimes, if you want to bury the hatchet with a Klingon, it has to be in his skull. - Captain K'Tar of the USS Danu about J'mpok.