Dreadnought-Class Production Line (Spoilers?)

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies: Kelvin Universe' started by Kevman7987, Jul 9, 2013.

  1. trevanian

    trevanian Rear Admiral

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    Too bad Galaxy-class starships can't do the same, since -D in GEN isn't too certain about knocking down Soran's model rocket in a timely manner before it turns the light out on Veridian.
     
  2. anh165

    anh165 Commander Red Shirt

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    The Kelvin took several missles, and I believe more than 4 and it wasn't destroyed by them, only by collision.

    Not saying the Vengeance can take the Narada, but we havent really fully seen what it is capable of (the torpedo cannons) and that it took 72 advanced torpedoes exploding inside the ship to actually disable her, which is a testiment to how rugged that ship is.

    The attack on the enterprise at warp was with phasers, the type of damage was through disintegration of the sections of the hull where as the missles from the Narada are explosive. Suffice to say after the Enterprise was incapable of firing back or put up any defense or escape, where as it was still fairly operational after taking a hit from the Narada.
     
  3. Jeyl

    Jeyl Commodore Commodore

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    I'm still on the boat that thinks the Narada wasn't really that tough of a ship. The USS Kelvin was able to withstand tons of bombardments from the Narada and that ship, including the tiny Jellyfish was able to cripple the Narada by simply crashing into her. As for the 47 Klingon.... battle cruisers, red matter did it.
     
  4. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    That's exactly what we do not see - there is no scene showing any other means of destroying multiple starships.

    We saw exactly what "everything" means, after maximum reload time - it's twenty missiles. And against nine starships, it means plenty of "ships not targeted" that can defend the targeted ships.

    Why not? Klingons are supposedly Earth's worst if not oldest nemesis; it stands to reason their territory would be very close, threateningly so.

    Starfleet didn't send Kirk to Klingon space to stop V'Ger, or a fleet of forty ships to Jouret to stop the Borg. Sending ships to a location between the threat and Earth is a sensible move, because that cuts down on travel time; Laurentius is probably the strategically obvious place to mount a defense against a threat from that Klingon prison system, and sufficiently far away from Vulcan and Earth to suit Nero's needs, which is why he chose that prison system as the centerpoint of his ruse.

    By going to Vulcan, you can only defend Vulcan (which probably isn't even among the obvious targets for the threat Nero led Starfleet to prepare against). By going closer, you can defend the Federation. That's how goalkeeping works.

    How is Nero being "coy"? :confused:

    Nero has every reason to alert Starfleet to a nonexistent danger nowhere near Vulcan first, and then to alert the remaining elements of Starfleet to an equally nonexistent threat at Vulcan. That's how he gets to destroy his enemy in detail, and to proceed with the real threat.

    Apparently not - it was just hovering there until Kirk fired at it.

    Interestingly, those ships must have been falling towards Vulcan rather than floating. After all, they were stationary wrt to the Narada, which was stationary wrt Vulcan due to the drill, but not high enough to be on a geostationary (hephaistostationary?) orbit.

    No way of really telling what cut those saucers in half; nothing of the sort happened to any of the ships we saw being hit by Nero's missiles.

    Not in the movie we are discussing.

    Sending those messages would be the job of the Truman, obviously - no need for more than one starship to clog the channels. Pike's comm officer hailed that lead ship, but this channel need not have been accessible to Nero.

    Besides, we know Nero was surprised by the arrival of the Enterprise, from dialogue. But we also know he was not surprised by the approach of the relief fleet, from dialogue. ("Seven ships are on their way" vs. "Sir, there's another Federation ship!")

    No need to write a memo about it; it's still the de facto result.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  5. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    To be fair, the former could be due to Nero being disoriented and perhaps damaged by the timehole transit. Somehow, Spock's Jellyfish was unable to escape from Nero when emerging, despite later being able to fly circles around the juggernaut...

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  6. Kemaiku

    Kemaiku Admiral Admiral

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    So the missiles were dizzy? because all the Narada did was fire them at her like they did every other ship.

    The only reason they weren't pulverised earlier is that they needed the right amount of time for the drama/scene to unfold before the ship was allowed to go boom.
     
  7. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Nero himself seemed to be. The amount of force he used to disable the Kelvin originally may have been excessive, due to poor targeting and poorer damage assessment. After killing Robau, he paid undue attention to the shuttles. And after that, the Kelvin was too close.

    Plenty of reasons why the Kelvin engagement might have been unrepresentative of the optimal combat capabilities of the mining platform, then - and this is relevant basically because Nero then had 25 years to plan for an optimal use of his definitely less than invincible assets.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  8. Set Harth

    Set Harth Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Missiles are in a lot of scenes.

    Not really. We've seen how well these ships can defend themselves against Nero's missiles, and it isn't anything to write home about. And if no one gets the bright idea to do a suicide run, they don't manage to hurt the Narada at all, so Nero just has to wear them down.

    Starfleet doesn't have a mandate to invade Klingon space, and that alone explains why they don't send fleets into Klingon space.

    When the threat can just warp right past you, setting up shop somewhere along its path is really no defense at all. The three-dimensionality of space makes things even worse.

    By leaving the goal completely undefended?

    GOAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!

    Is this the same Kirk that said Nero would not survive the singularity without their assistance? The film was quite clear that the Enterprise only escaped the singularity because of the ejected warp core(s). By what means was the Narada's wreckage supposed to escape?

    The idea is that if Nero hadn't stopped firing at the Enterprise it would have eventually ended up in a similar condition. One hit did a lot of damage, and not the kind of damage you would talk to a psychiatrist about. The kind that eventually destroys starships.

    I guess we're agreeing to disagree on that...

    How do these alleged messages to Nero get through the communication interference caused by the drill?

    We didn't see his reaction to the arrival of the other ships.

    No. Using red matter wouldn't have left evidence behind, while gaining red matter doesn't somehow make the Narada's other capabilities any less dangerous than they were in the script.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2013
  9. SeerSGB

    SeerSGB Admiral Admiral

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    Another reason the Vengeance's attack might have been more successful: Marcus knows the Enterprise's specs. He could have tuned his weapons to punch through her shields.

    As for Nero/Narda, would Nero even need red-matter warheads/mines? Late 24th C. starship, off the shelf is probably going to be able to curb stomp a ship a century or so older--especially when he's waiting like a trap door spider to pounce on them. Seemed to me that once he lost the element of surprise he wasn't doing to hot anymore.
     
  10. anh165

    anh165 Commander Red Shirt

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    The Enterprise shields were up and were absorbing weapons fire, hence Sulu informing the bridge that shields were at 6%
     
  11. M.A.C.O.

    M.A.C.O. Commodore Commodore

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    I never really thought about the Narada in battle until reading some of the above comments. In the finale of the we see the Enterprise phasers at the 27 Narada torpedoes and has no trouble destroying them. Given they were not targeted at the Enterprise but the Jellyfish. Also at the beginning of the film the Kelvin's phasers had no trouble shooting torpedoes down that were aimed at the shuttlecrafts escaping the fight.

    With those being the facts. It seems surprising that 6 Starfleet ships were not able to damage the Narada with their weapons before the Enterprise arrived. With how long the Kelvin lasted against the Narada. You would expect these new ships; 25 years after the Kelvin attack would be able to last longer in a struggle. The same can be said about 47 Klingon war birds. Unless the Narada was shooting "one-hit total destruction torpedoes" against the Klingons and the Starfleet rescue fleet. It seems implausible for the Narada to survive those encounters against such odds. With how long it took the Narada to destroy/disable the Kelvin mind you.

    Unless you use the "plot dictates" everything in the movie. Like max warp for the Enterprise from Earth to Vulcan taking 30 minutes to an hour in ST09 but 3 days for the refit ENT in TMP.
     
  12. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Nero would no doubt be fully aware that his vessel was not a warship. He'd prepare his ambushes accordingly. Remember his modus operandi: he kidnaps key personnel, obtains information from them, and uses that as a weapon. Those missiles must have been but part of his true arsenal, and the only part that was a conventional weapon as such (if that - they could have been mining tools, too).

    Destroying the cadet fleet was a less impressive feat than keeping anybody on Vulcan or Earth from blasting the drill to bits with a sidearm or a pickup hovertruck mounting a Gatling phaser. Neither missiles nor red matter could have achieved that! Nero was a sneaky bastard who didn't need much in the way of conventional weapons because he had had twenty-five years to come up with a plan.

    Indeed, the fight with the Kelvin probably taught Nero that he should never engage in a straight-out fight with a starship, not without an ace or sixty in the sleeve.

    Why less than an hour? Kirk could have been out cold for much longer than that.

    Not days, of course. But we could always argue that the three days in ST:TMP were a thing Scotty was lamenting. That is, the refit and the adventure with V'Ger had made it impossible for the ship to maintain higher speeds for the next few days at least.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  13. M.A.C.O.

    M.A.C.O. Commodore Commodore

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    ^ I said less than an hour because it doesn't seem like a whole lot of time passed from the time Enterprise left Earth to reaching Vulcan. Remember the events of the film.

    The Enterprise is delayed from departing with the other ships for several seconds because of Sulu.

    Pike orders maximum warp to Vulcan.

    McCoy sedates Kirk.

    Pike orders Checov to give mission broadcast. Which usually is given after the ship has began it's course. Not several hours later. Checov says they'll arrive in Vulcan in 3 minutes upon completing the mission directives and information about the lightning storm in space.

    Returning to the medical bay we see McCoy with a change of cloths and discovers Kirk awake with swollen hands. It seems McCoy left Kirk on the bed, changed and came back. If he had been carefully monitoring Kirk for hours. Kirk's swollen hands wouldn't have caught him by surprise.

    Kirk spends the next 3 minutes running around the ship looking for Uhura before going to worn Pike on the bridge.


    The ENT was only delayed seconds by Sulu's blundering with the external inertial dampener. The ENT should've arrived while the fight with the Narada was still taking place.

    We can just hand wave the discrepancies away and say that the film is moving at the speed of plot.
     
  14. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Why would they go at maximum warp just to drop Spock off on Vulcan? Spock's great, but that's hardly a maximum warp emergency where you'd risk damaging the ship - hence the travel time difference.
     
  15. anotherdemon

    anotherdemon Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    I agree. Though I'd put 4 at least crippling Vengeance to some extent (depending on the location of the hits, of course). If Kelvin was doing so well, she never would have needed to warp into Narada in the first place. IIRC, the first hits she sustained made her basically combat ineffective insofar as putting up a fight, i.e., if she decided to stay put and slug it out, she'd be dead. The captain of Kelvin obviously thought such.

    Weren't the warp capable torpedoes lacking the initial warheads though? I'm guessing Spock had some form of "conventional" munitions put in place of the augments (warheads from photon torpedoes would work). But yeah, Vengeance took a heap of internal hits that bypassed its defenses and wasn't catastrophically blown apart. We can assume that Narada's torps are more powerful though. Narada only hit Enterprise once though (and it was assumed that one more would have been bad news). Vengeance fired a heap of phasers and torpedoes at Enterprise without blowing it apart. I couldn't say that several torps from Narada would have kept Enterprise intact, especially with the state of the fleet over Vulcan (and Narada can't put out too much fire at any given time).
     
  16. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    In this situation, it could have been after pertinent facts have been sorted out, though. Chekov does reference supposedly confidential Starfleet communications intercepts, combining two that at first sight do not appear related to each other in any manner; this after a really hurried departure during which not even the senior staff aboard most ships might have known all the facts yet.

    That gives us the excuse to go for a multi-hour journey - beneficial not merely because it would be more consistent with other takes on the Trek universe, but also because the journey to the opposite direction, from the erstwhile Vulcan to Earth, takes quite a bit of time. Or at least it takes Nero an eternity in terms of plot events, and our heroes only barely outrun him to Sol.

    Let's remember, though, that those were "fake" torpedoes. Perhaps after Khan's modifications, there was enough warhead material left for matching one standard torpedo? Or as you say,

    The thing is, our heroes didn't know what was inside and what wasn't, so the dialogue isn't helpful here. Carol Marcus obviously thought that when the torpedo was triggered to start a countdown to explosion, said explosion would be large, but she may have been totally wrong. She was an expert on the weapons as designed, after all, not as modified by Khan - possibly a blinding fault.

    Another thing Khan may have left on the pier when modifying the torpedoes is the ability to fly at warp, or even at sublight. After all, if it ever came to Kirk actually firing the torps, Khan would have lost the game, and he isn't the sort of a guy to plan for defeats.

    Interestingly, the Kelvin lost weapons capacity twice during the first fight, and regained it pretty quickly - once during the fight itself, and once between the fights. Incapacitation of the ability to fight back probably didn't feature much in Captain Robau's decisions, then. He would have had to be thinking in terms of not withstanding Nero's pounding defensively, or in terms of the Kelvin's weapons being impotent offensively in the first place, even when undamaged. Which may well have been true, as we never saw her weapons hurting the Narada in any way. The mining rig did have shields of some sort, mentioned in dialogue, even if those did little good in subsequent fights.

    Why Pike would think his ship couldn't resist more of Nero's torps at Vulcan, we don't know. Sure, Pike's shields were weak, but later on we learned his ship can shoot down torpedoes. Indeed, he gave the command to prepare to fire all weapons, despite having suffered the initial hit. Quite possibly his decision to surrender to Nero stemmed from strategic thinking unrelated to the actual vulnerability of his ship... The shuttle journey did give him two advantages: the sapper team on the drill, and a delay while Nero tortured him.

    That in mind, Nero's shield-shattering first hit might in fact have been fairly insignificant and not the sign of great offensive power in practice.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  17. Hartzilla2007

    Hartzilla2007 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    They were only missing fuel cells, they said nothing about the warheads being gone.
     
  18. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    My memory of the dialogue is too hazy to carry an actual argument here... Do transcripts already exist online?

    If the heroes came to know that fuel cells had been removed, they'd probably know everything there was to know about the modifications, save perhaps for minor details such as hidden switches or transponders, or software surprises.

    One wonders... Did Khan really leave death traps in those torpedoes? Or did McCoy and Marcus simply fumble the opening procedure so badly because they thought the things would be booby-trapped? It wouldn't appear sensible for Khan to leave the torpedoes with the ability to blow up, especially when tampered with. Yet demonstrably they had enough oomph to harm the Vengeance...

    ...Unless Spock and pals actually installed proper explosives aboard the torps for the first time when removing the corpsicles.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  19. Set Harth

    Set Harth Vice Admiral Admiral

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    When they're all flying toward someone else.

    It is what it is on a technical level, it provides the math as to how many hits they could reasonably sustain ( not many ).

    See above. Also: all the destroyed ships. It's not some kind of mystery.
     
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2013
  20. publiusr

    publiusr Admiral Admiral

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    We never saw the Narada ever fire energy weapons, which I imagine it held in reserve. It had just come out of the event horizon and was dazzled. Later, against the starships, it was at full strength.