Warp, Motion, Accelleration... ugh...

[Garrowolf]

The Picard Manuever could only work if the attacking ship thought that the other image was a hologram or some sort of illusion.
The problem with it is the FTL sensors. They are not dependant on the speed of light by definition so they would only read one ship. Plus they would detect the burst of energy from the warp engines so there is no reason for any FTL ship to not know which one was which.
So the only way it would work is if they had been previously tricked into firing at a hologram and they thought this was another example. Of course their weapons would be tied to their FTL sensors so they would probably not fire at the original location even if the crew wanted to because there would be no target there. They would have to go to manual to make it work and by that point the image change will catch up with the ship.
When they showed it on the show the ship was only a lightsecond at most away so it would have only appeared for a second.
Of course having known about it would have automatically negated the whole tactic so the Ferengi were being stupid to fall for it but the Enterprise crew was MORONS for even considering it a problem.
It was just a case of writers with no good idea for a tactic doing something silly.

[Garrowolf]

When you are using Impulse engines you are still under interial compensation so that the crew doesn't feel most of it movement. Personally I don't think that they should feel any of it but that doesn't look good on TV.
Full Impulse goes up to .25C and uses a low level warp field to reduce the mass of the ship so that a small impulse engine is enough. That way they don't have to stack the back of the ship with thruster bells like Star Wars.
Once you are at Warp you are not moving relative to the space inside the warp field but the space is moving relative to the space outside the warp field. Think of putting a ship model on a place mat and moving the mat instead of the ship.
Most of the time it is safer to generate a warp field away from a gravity well since that can cause wormholes and damage to your engines. That is the reason that they use impulse engines to pull away from a planet's gravity well before going to warp. If they were already away from one then they will just use their thrusters to turn and then go to warp.
A ship at warp has no acceleration. Some things like to say that if the inertial dampeners failed it would kill everyone. This is not true. It would mean that impulse travel would have to accelerate slowly but you could go in and out of warp without it.

[tighr]

Garrowolf wrote:

---

Of course having known about it would have automatically negated the whole tactic so the Ferengi were being stupid to fall for it but the Enterprise crew was MORONS for even considering it a problem.

The ultimate solution Data came up with was monitoring for gaseous anomalies (presumably something that they can do FTL?). Maybe the Ferengi ship weren't monitoring for those changes, or maybe it is not standard operating procedure to monitor for those types of things. Without knowing that, it's a bit naive to call the crew of those ships "idiots".

[Metryq]

"Gaseous anomalies"? I immediately think ST6 when I hear that bit of techno-babble. The movie begins with Starfleet's latest and finest "boldly going" out to do grunt work—mapping gaseous anomalies.

These GAs must be of great interest to the Federation—either that or there was a continuity error in the script—because towards the end of the movie Uhura asks, "Well, what about all that equipment we're carrying to catalogue gaseous anomalies? ...Well, the thing's got to have a tail pipe."

They probably stumbled upon FARSCAPE's Rygel farting helium.

[tighr]

Rather, the "anomalies" that Data proposed tracking is the dispersion of space when a ship warps in. The ship takes the place of whatever was in its arrival destination, causing detectable ripples. Kind of like jumping in a pool, you're going to make a splash. Also, it is going to leave a vacuum in the place you just left, so space gases and particles will fill that void.

Contrary to popular belief, space isn't a total vacuum. There's stuff up there.

Metryq wrote:

---

"Gaseous anomalies"? I immediately think ST6 when I hear that bit of techno-babble. The movie begins with Starfleet's latest and finest "boldly going" out to do grunt work—mapping gaseous anomalies.

TNG's The Battle came out in 1987, a full four years before Star Trek VI.

[Metryq]

tighr wrote:

---

TNG's The Battle came out in 1987, a full four years before Star Trek VI.

I wasn't giving ST6 precedence, I merely said that the term reminded me of that movie and its associated continuity error.

And I am aware that space is not a hard vacuum. Perhaps you have seen some of my posts alluding to plasma physics? It is mainstream astronomers who seem to have a problem with space being filled.