Lack of Redundancy and warp capable lifeboats in Trek

Discussion in 'Trek Tech' started by sciquest2525, Sep 10, 2017.

  1. Samuel

    Samuel Captain Captain

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    Sep 25, 2017
    Part of the "technological highway" in the Honourverse is the move from energy weapons being the "big guns" of starship combat to complete reliance on "missile duels".
     
  2. sciquest2525

    sciquest2525 Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    Phasers are very long ranged but substitute photon/quantum/transphasic torpedo duels for missile duels and you have Star Trek's situation as torpedoes greatly outrange phasers.

    TNG Tech Manual mentions active torpedo countermeasures, artificial gravity produced shields and mentions phasers being lightspeed with 300,000 kilometers range while torpedoes have much longer range and are faster than light.

    This does not match with TOS which had FTL phasers.

    For today and the future, we must assume degredation of targeting sensors by fast maneuvers( much faster than previously shown on ST), sensor countermeasures or SCM, the ST equivalent of ECM/IRCM, sensor decoys launched from torpedo/probe tubes, active CIWS phasers and minitorpedeoes, shields, armored hulls with ablative armor and superstrength hull armor, internal subdivision into armored compartments having armored bulkheads, decks and overhead and internal force fields to seal holes and structural integral fields reinforcing hull and internal armor.

    Armor does not consume power but shields, SIF and internal force fields do.

    Shields rely at least partially on reflection as well as resistance to penetration.

    Phaser and torpedo mounts need to cover a spherical 360 field of fire to be effective and you need some super phaser mounts ala Reliant in ST: TWOK for vey high power energy weapon with ranges and destructiveness equal to torpedoes but requiring so much power that power for shields, propulsion, standard phasers is so much less that COs will be careful of husbanding their power resources when deciding to use or not to use super phasers.

    ST: Discovery is doing better with these issues of more realistic combat scenes.

    There is no reason why fusion reactors cannot power warp engines as engines only care that the power comes in a common usable form and that MAM reactions do not have something special about their power output that makes them majically integral to warp field generation.
    This lines up with Doomsday Machine that chased Enterprise operating on impulse power which was good for FTL speeds, though with such high impulse power fuel usage that the ship had only hours of power left.

    Perhaps the Federation should buy some of Larry Niven's Pupeteer General Products hulls for better passive defenses or Ringworld foundation material.
     
  3. Samuel

    Samuel Captain Captain

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    Sep 25, 2017
    TOS was vague enough that it took me forever to understand the differences between deflector screens, shields, deflector shields, force shields, and force fields
     
  4. sciquest2525

    sciquest2525 Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    TOS was vague but after awhile you could figure things out.
    TNG Tech Manual helped but ran into problems with power output understated by many orders of magnitude, warp factor speeds being too small to go anywhere fast enough for story requirements, subspace radio being so fast in TNG and so slow in episodes of TOS which had Enterprise waiting three weeks for subspace radio messages to reach Starfleet Command while all TNG episodes had real time communication, separated saucer capable of only sublight impulse drive while all on board shuttles had warp drive.

    All these problems were caused by errors made by hard working and well intentioned production people on demanding schedules while trying to figure out ST universe for writer's bible and probably individual episodes as well.

    So redundancy of ship systems, realistic warp drive speeds and subspace radio speeds, impact of Alcubierre warp theory in real world on Trek, SCM, CIWS, FTL lifeboats and super phasers are needed to be changed for future productions.

    I don't think it will happen but one can hope.
     
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  5. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Aug 26, 2003
    Oh, I'm definitely hoping for the exact opposite.

    Star Trek has rules. The rules are different from those of the real world where real world applies, which is basically nowhere. Changing the rules would make it no longer Star Trek.

    Of course, the rules of Star Trek are those things on screen, not those uttered backstage. So TNG always had powerful warp phasers, as we could easily see, and a warp-capable saucer section, as we heard told, and kept up the good tradition of warp-capable shuttlecraft and ill-defined lifepods. And no CIWS or other such caveman tech, because shields render it irrelevant and anachronistic, as can easily be seen.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
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  6. sciquest2525

    sciquest2525 Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    I disagree. The ST rules were wrong and need to be corrected and updated. That's why you have holograms in ST: Discovery and much more complex displays on the bridge and much better special effects.
    Any SF program will eventually find some of it's elements dated and future productions will reflect that. As to ST's programs, one can hope things will be updated in the films, televisions, video games and canonical nonfiction books like future tech manuals.
     
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