• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

ways to beat the kobayashi maru without cheating

Then send a shuttle with a portable beaming thingy to the ship and voila!!! :D

At worst you risk material not people and the Klingons won't know what is going on before they'll end up vulture-circling an empty ship. You can even set the ship on self-destruct as a parting gift to the Klingons.:techman:

I mean the portable transporter that Kahn used to beam himself light-years away!!!:vulcan:

Sheesh!!

The Klingons set up a dampening field that shorts out the shuttle's drive system, so it slams into the Kobayashi Maru, hastening its destruction and injuring your shuttle pilot/rescuer. It also blocks the operation of the transporters (all of them), and jams the auto-destruct so it can't be turned off once started.

The Klingons record the whole thing, and use the information as an excuse to fire on your ship from across the border.
 
The Klingons set up a dampening field that shorts out the shuttle's drive system, so it slams into the Kobayashi Maru, hastening its destruction and injuring your shuttle pilot/rescuer. It also blocks the operation of the transporters (all of them), and jams the auto-destruct so it can't be turned off once started.

The Klingons record the whole thing, and use the information as an excuse to fire on your ship from across the border.

You can't just make things up out of thin air. I didn't imagine the beaming device for example it exists and is used in a movie.

I mean otherwise, you can just say anything like Superman comes and saves everyone!
 
You can't just make things up out of thin air. I didn't imagine the beaming device for example it exists and is used in a movie.
Wait, thought of another flaw: the super-teleportor doesn't exist for the Kirk time in the academy, Old-Spock didn't giving it to Nu-Scotty until halfway through the movie, and by the time Nu-Khan uses it, it is already the next movie. Also, it is super top secret, so, you plebes now in the academy, don't even know it exists. Hah.
 
Surely if someone taking the test claimed they had a transwarp transporter then the computer would just say the Klingons had tech that rendered it inoperable.

That's the point of a no-win scenario; you don't get to win.
 
Of course you can. As has been said many times, the program is designed to stop you from "solving" the problem. No matter what you come up with, something will happen to stop your plan from working.

Yeah, but it has to use things that exist. It can't just say: "Let's pretend that the Klingons have a device that turns humans into turtles!".
 
It wouldn't need to. If you tried to use Device X to solve the problem, said device just wouldn't work. Or it would work incorrectly.
 
Which as such is a valid phenomenon in Trek: even if it for its part is proof positive that reality is screwy (such as in "Spectre of the Gun"), there's little the Cadet can do about that but accept it as a given.

That the test should appear realistic does not mean much in the weird world of Star Trek. But we don't have to think it would be realistic to begin with. Klingons in the Neutral Zone that sits right next to Gamma Hydra? That's basically the same as throwing Klingon hordes into the World War II occupation of France scenario of "The Killing Game". And again, the Cadet just has to accept and cope, even if thinking "Unfair!".

Timo Saloniemi
 
Have Scotty invent trans-warp beaming and carry out the rescue at maximum warp.

There would be a malfunction. I recommend the book Kobayashi Maru by Julia Ecklar.

https://www.amazon.com/Kobayashi-Maru-Star-Trek-Original-ebook/dp/B000FC0QOS

It tells the stories of how Kirk, Chekov, Sulu, and Scotty handled the test as cadets. The Kirk story was great, much better than what they did in ST09, and similar to how it was treated in the game Starfleet Academy.

But my favorite story by far was the Scotty version. Both Kirk and Scotty showed something major in that test which led them to their best destiny. In Kirk's case, his unwillingness to accept defeat and creativity got him noticed and likely was a factor in his getting put on the fast command track.

In Scotty's case, he showed off incredible engineering skills, wreaked unbelievable havoc on the simulation, and like Kirk, kind of cheated too, but his version of cheating, and his hilarious experience with the test showed off his uncanny engineering skills and ability to think on the fly and set him on the path to becoming the miracle worker.
 
I would hail the Klingons and ask "Are trying to initiate a mating ritual? If not then get lost!"
 
I think the whole thing about how people react when faced with certain death doesn't work as people know it's not real! Hence the guy in "Nor The Battle To The Strong" who passed Starfleet's tests and yet injured himself in order to be taken out of the fight. If you want a test like that to be probatory, you will have to sort of hypnotize the people into believing that what is happening to them is real. Then you'll know if they can't hack it.
 
I seem to remember that all of the novelized versions of the test have emphasized how real it's felt, but I kind of agree, though not as strongly as I felt that Troi's command test in "Thine Own Self" was ridiculous because she had to order a holographic Geordi to kill himself (at least the KM test involves other real crewmen).

In an ideal world the person being tested would have no way to realize that the test wasn't real, but at least the first time one takes the KM scenario one theoretically doesn't realize (as Saavik didn't), that it's a test they're going to lose, possibly with the sense that they failed their crewmates in the process (even if they weren't really on a ship, they're still performing in front of their peers and for their superiors).
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top