Starship design history in light of Discovery

[Timo]

I'd rather think that "public" UFP technology would be more advanced than any old secrets the Vulcans were holding - many species would be divulging their secrets soon after joining, out of self-preservation or out of spite towards their competitors. Also, many UFP members would be young ones, still hungry for advancement, while the Vulcans probably invented everything they deemed worth inventing ages ago. After all, their cousins Romulans apparently came up with nothing much in two thousand years!

So the gap between "primitive by secret Vulcan standards" and "modern" could be even wider than "antiquated by Kirk's standards" and "modern"...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[valkyrie013]

Had a site come up with an explanation for the impulse comment. Starfleet Muesium site.
Basically, the romulan had warp drive, but we're powered by fusion reactors instead of antimatter. .. Possible but doubtful.
So rommie ships had less power reserve.

 

[DaveyNY]

... or ...
The ship was powered by a "singularity" (a known Romulan power source for their ships) that Scotty had never encountered before and thus had no prior knowledge to apply to what the sensors were telling him.

 

[Dukhat]

... or ...
The ship was powered by a "singularity" (a known Romulan power source for their ships) that Scotty had never encountered before and thus had no prior knowledge to apply to what the sensors were telling him.

That’s actually a pretty good theory. At the start of TNG the Federation had not heard from the Romulans for 50 years. Then all of a sudden later in the series Data knows that Romulan ships are powered by a singularity. I doubt that the Romulans made that known to Data in just the few years after they reestablished contact with the Federation. So it’s possible that Data’s info was based on earlier encounters with the Romulans.

 

[Timo]

Actually, the defector DeSoto tells Picard, Data and the Federation about the AQS system in "Face of the Enemy". The exchange makes it pretty clear this is the first time, as there is no "Yes, we know" retort to DeSoto's "Cigarette?", umm,

Picard: "Could this distortion be caused by a cloaked ship?"
Data: "Unknown, sir. Our understanding of Romulan technology is still limited."
DeSeve: "Captain, Romulan ships use a forced quantum singularity as a power source. If that system is not functioning perfectly or is damaged even slightly, it might show through the cloak as a magnetic disturbance of some kind."

It's just as well that we don't have to think the Federation found out all on its own. If they managed that between "The Neutral Zone" and the end of TNG, it would appear to be an easy task, and AQS tech thus would have to be a recent invention, made no earlier than the fifty-year silence. As matters stand, AQS might have been invented around AD 350 and be the basis of all Romulan achievement.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

Actually, the defector DeSoto tells Picard, Data and the Federation about the AQS system in "Face of the Enemy.”

DeSeve, not DeSoto

And DeSeve had been living on Romulus for 20 years, so the Romulans could have had the AQS system for at least that long if not longer.

 

[Timo]

Well, long enough. Doesn't tell us much about when the AQS invention was made, other than "before DeSeve defected".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DaveyNY]

The power source for the TOS Bird-Of-Prey weapon & cloak had to be something much more powerful than "simple Impulse," otherwise it doesn't seem possible that the blast could have lasted as long as it did chasing the Enterprise.
A "miniature black hole singularity" would explain a lot, including the fact that it's energy could only be controlled and diverted to either the cloak or the weapon, not both at the same time.
Perhaps it was actually the first time a Romulan ship had this type of power source and IT was really what was being tested, with the weapon being an offshoot technology.

Might also explain why the BOP had such crappy shields, perhaps they hadn't yet figured out completely how to apply the singularity's energy to their shield generators.


They never really went into a discussion in the episode as to HOW the Romulan ship could have produced such a massive energy blast and yet only be using what appeared to be "simple impulse" energy.

In thinking more about it, the "singularity" drive, is probably the actual reason why the Romulan Commander chose to self-destruct.

To keep that knowledge completely secret.
(might also explain the Massive blast that occurred)

 

[Timo]

This touches upon the fundamental problem with "BoT". The Romulans have not one but two all-new superweapons, the cloak and the plasma belcher. Obviously, neither was used in the old war. Yet the episode could do with just one, and it would be but a minor adjustment to go from "they flew ships with birds painted on" to "they flew invisible ships". This might have been the more interesting approach overall, allowing Kirk to fight like a seasoned sub-hunter against an enemy sub that was just a tad more advanced than those of the previous war, and thus exactly mirroring the WWII adventure the episode is, ahem, "giving a nod at".

However, if they did fly invisible ships, the very act would make itself difficult to find out and mark in the history books. Perhaps the Romulans always were so good at cloaking themselves that the invisibility was never seen - and this was a factor in allowing them to wage the extremely odd faceless war. The heroes mistakenly think the war was faceless because the players had primitive ships; the truth is that the ships were too advanced...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

Could it be the sihip only used the singularity energy for cloak or plasma bolt, and not propulsion? Assuming this was a vehicle being used as a testbed to check Federation defense and offensive capabilities?

 

[DaveyNY]

Could it be the sihip only used the singularity energy for cloak or plasma bolt, and not propulsion? Assuming this was a vehicle being used as a testbed to check Federation defense and offensive capabilities?

Except .... the discharge from the weapon traveled at WARP speed in order to keep up with the backward movement of the Enterprise.
Seems logical to me that if it can propel a weapon blast at FTL speeds, then the power can most likely be used to also make the ship travel that fast.

 

[Timo]

...Yet gunpowder-propelled supersonic or high-subsonic paddle wheelers never were that great a success.

Not that I'd really want to believe that the Romulans only had FTL bullets but not FTL ships. It is pretty clear their bullets were faster than their ships; "by how much?" is our pertinent question.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DaveyNY]

...Yet gunpowder-propelled supersonic or high-subsonic paddle wheelers never were that great a success.

Not that I'd really want to believe that the Romulans only had FTL bullets but not FTL ships. It is pretty clear their bullets were faster than their ships; "by how much?" is our pertinent question.

Timo Saloniemi

Since the episode showed that the BOP could not outrun the Enterprise, I would surmise that it probably couldn't go any faster than WARP 5 or 6.

While the Weapon seemed to be able to reach WARP 8+(?).

 

[Timo]

Or, for all we know, warp 12+.

I mean, Kirk's ship did warp 10 a couple of times against the will of her lawful masters, and did it fine. Perhaps the Constitution is a "warp eight starship", but unlike Archer's, it apparently doesn't blow up immediately after exceeding maximum designed safe speed. And Kirk would have exceeded safe speed when fleeing from the plasma burp, reverse or not. But Kirk got lucky that the speed difference between his maximum panic escape maneuver and the weapon was essentially zero...

OTOH, a fight between a destroyer escort and a sub would have the ship at a speed advantage of perhaps 20 knots over the sub's submerged 5 (add a couple of knots to both for absolute maximum speed in good conditions). Warp speeds aren't linear, and they probably are very steeply nonlinear, so putting more than two warp factors between the hero and villain ships might be overdoing it already. But if we did hear warp factors quoted, the WWII-savvy audience would expect the heroes to have the 5:1 advantage there, so it's for the better that we never heard any specific numbers! (Yours are fine - nevertheless I'm just glad we didn't get those, either...)

Of course, the episode omits other key bits of technobabble we have come to expect. For example, nobody ever raises any shields there. So failing to mention that the Romulans go to warp is actually not particularly telling!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DaveyNY]

Yeah, we really only have the visual clues of the star movements past the ship and some basic "Trek" Starship knowledge to go by.

Perhaps that was done on purpose to heighten the tension of the episode?
(keep the audience guessing)

 

[Noname Given]

And what we saw in ENT showed that this wasn’t true. What a big ol’ liar Stiles was, huh?

ENT occurred prior to said War. Thus we have no idea how the ships the Romulans fielded in that era 10 years later. They were in the process of developing new ships per ENT S4 "United".

 

[Dukhat]

ENT occurred prior to said War. Thus we have no idea how the ships the Romulans fielded in that era 10 years later. They were in the process of developing new ships per ENT S4 "United".

They were? All that was mentioned was that the Romulan drone ship was a modified warbird (and not the warbird that was shown previously). And the drone ship didn’t have a bird on its hull either.

 

[Timo]

Now that is an interesting question: the Romulans absolutely don't want to have a finger pointed at them. In S4, they achieve this by faking the looks of their ships. Would they then dare wage war with ships that fake their looks? This would directly expose them as the same guys who previously used the holocamouflaged ships!

By the same token, and worse still, would they dare field invisible ships? Those would directly expose them as the folks who previously used invisible ships while staking out territory and calling themselves the Romulan Star Empire!

Possibly the bird paint was a third attempt at misleading their enemies, like a prominent false mustache or eyepatch to distract eyewitnesses and hide the truly relevant identifying factors...

The Romulans would also have to develop all-new ships or at least engines: if the holodrone used a standard warbird engine (or other characteristically emitting component), then continuing to equip ships with that would connect them to the holodrone incident. And given how the Romulans indeed managed to fight the Romulan War without being found out, they must have put insane effort into keeping their identity secret. Redoing the whole fleet would be right up their alley there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DaveyNY]

Another thought occurred to me....
Perhaps there were never any Romulan bodies seen and/or recovered during the Earth/Romulan War because of their ships having the Singularity Devices as power.

They either blew themselves up on purpose or their starships went 'Ka-Boom' naturally, at a certain point of sustained damage.
Either way, when the Singularity lost it's containment field anything nearby would have been totally annihilated.
Might even be possible that a few Earth Star Fleet ships could have been lost due to being too close to the explosion (Implosion?) at times.

If so, one would imagine that the Admirals back on Earth would instruct/order all their Captains NOT to approach or try to capture any of the enemy due to what appears to be their complete suicidal nature.

 

[Tomalak]

Either way, when the Singularity lost it's containment field anything nearby would have been totally annihilated.

This obviously doesn't happen, even with conventional warp cores, otherwise the Dominion War battlefields like Chin'Toka would be littered with tiny black holes or massive explosions.

I guess when they lose containment the worst thing that happens is the singularity collapses. They're artificial, so presumably the Romulans would bake in some safety features. They aren't Klingons!