Is it me, or does the EDF StarShips look like Flying Teeth with little Hovering bits for arms?
Spoilers ST Discovery - Starships and Technology Season Three SPOILER Discussion
- Thread starter Mark_Nguyen
- Start date
Exactly.
Even a dingy shuttle from 32nd century would be able to 1 kill shot Discovery... alas, there ARE some 'discrepancies' that allow Discovery to survive like the ones I mentioned above (but I somehow doubt we will get the writers to EXPLAIN it - they seem to just 'handwave' stuff thus far - still, we are only 1 third of the season into the story and not much was revealed).
And yes, I'd definitely love to see them research better shields, phasers, hull armor and other upgrades to the ship (like power core upgrades, efficiency in energy use, etc.).
Majority of starships likely get retired due to age. Sure, you can upgrade them to sport latest technologies which would likely make them on-par with say modern ships (like the USS Lakota was upgraded to match/exceed USS Defiant), but hull design alone might present certain challenges as time goes on in regards to say FTL drive, etc - albeit that's not a problem for Disco because it uses Spore Drive, and its technically only a few years old at that point.
Programmable matter opens things up for Discovery.
I can see the main Warp core being upgraded (the existing one could be say harvested for its raw materials and then recreated into modern/compact 32nd century version with major power conduits being upgraded with programmable matter... or it could feature multiple warp cores, along with how the ship uses energy (and of course vast efficiency improvement in how dilithium crystals are used), then of course weapons, shields, sensors and communications.
Fabrication facilities would need to be upgraded as well... either with far more advanced replicators or programmable matter tools.
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I would have hoped Earth would have offered to "Upgrade" the discovery. May not be modern, but it would better match up to the ships out there. Better shields, a cloaking device, better weapons.. owell.
The thing here is... Starships don't have to cope with more modern enemies as a function of passing time. They meet more modern enemies when they become faster and longer-ranged and cover more of the Milky Way. The galaxy isn't synchronized: some players have starships at 32nd century level in the 22nd century already, and many had the 32nd century level down pat in our 22nd century BC! Or the 22nd millennium BC, for that matter. It's less a matter of evolving, and more a matter of acquiring threshold tech.
So perhaps the threshold tech is what every player known to us had in Kirk's time already, and it's not really possible to improve significantly over that before one gets to the stage where one's species becomes divine and noncorporeal? We observed a quantum leap when Sam Beck... Jonathan Archer took over space exploration. Basically, he became an insta-Kirk, with phasers and transporters and photon torpedoes and eventually shields, and presumably that's what it takes to survive in the wilderness. And everybody after him was just another Kirk, first flying spacecraft made of these "23rd-25th century materials", then presumably flying starships of more or less the same capabilities but made of 26th-29th century materials.
There simply might not exist anything beyond dilithium and warp, save for essentially divine things such as sporespace, which are fundamentally incompatible with conventional civilizations. To get there, you need to become a lightbulb or a Collective or a consciousness comfortable with wandering across the mycelial network, and abandon all pretense of having a culture as we know it. And DSC might simply be our demonstration of this state of affairs.
Timo Saloniemi
So perhaps the threshold tech is what every player known to us had in Kirk's time already, and it's not really possible to improve significantly over that before one gets to the stage where one's species becomes divine and noncorporeal? We observed a quantum leap when Sam Beck... Jonathan Archer took over space exploration. Basically, he became an insta-Kirk, with phasers and transporters and photon torpedoes and eventually shields, and presumably that's what it takes to survive in the wilderness. And everybody after him was just another Kirk, first flying spacecraft made of these "23rd-25th century materials", then presumably flying starships of more or less the same capabilities but made of 26th-29th century materials.
There simply might not exist anything beyond dilithium and warp, save for essentially divine things such as sporespace, which are fundamentally incompatible with conventional civilizations. To get there, you need to become a lightbulb or a Collective or a consciousness comfortable with wandering across the mycelial network, and abandon all pretense of having a culture as we know it. And DSC might simply be our demonstration of this state of affairs.
Timo Saloniemi
Don't forget that the Borg & Voth were way ahead of 24th century StarFleet.
Yet not - their guns aren't particularly superior, their ships only slightly faster.
OTOH, the Borg have certainly given up having a conventional civilization, and they have attained immortality, too. Perhaps going forward means going there, and most civilizations hang on to the emergency brake for dear life when they realize this?
Timo Saloniemi
OTOH, the Borg have certainly given up having a conventional civilization, and they have attained immortality, too. Perhaps going forward means going there, and most civilizations hang on to the emergency brake for dear life when they realize this?
Timo Saloniemi
Well to me, weapons are made when needed, who's to say that from 2400 to 3000 wasn't a golden time where weapons went really needed, so they weren't advanced to newer better, and stagnate. How many hundreds of years were only cannon balls and muskets. Or milenia of sword and shield.
I was curious about this too...
I mean, Discovery WAS instrumental in solving Earth/Titan problem and brought stability to SOL as a whole.
The least they could do is offer some basic upgrades to vital systems like the power core, shields and weapons.
But then you need to remember that Earth didn't seem 'particularly' inviting to outsiders... even to Discovery when they first arrived.
Still, they DID soften up 'considerably' by the end of the episode... they could have thrown that it... and its possible Adira will be instrumental in providing Discovery with much needed upgrades (we just won't get to see that until the next episode and further possibly).
The Romulans developed a forced quantum singularity for a power source and didn't seem to use dilithium to regulate those reactions - Starfleet knew about it... and could have developed their own version in the proceeding years just because they knew it was possible.
The fake USS Dauntless (which had a Quantum Slipstream drive - all of which Voyager crew scanned in detail and brought back to the Federation) didn't use Antimatter (and by extension Dilithium).
Krieger Waves (never completed - but the research was still there and Enterprise-D recreated the entire station and Krieger Waves experiment which allowed Geordi to absolve Riker) - no followup on that one.
Omega Molecule - Voyager found a way to safely stabilize and control Omega using the harmonic resonance chamber... but Omega Directive prevented them from keeping and eventually using the molecules and so they destroyed them - but the crew retained the knowledge of what they did, and even though Janeway deleted those logs, its possible a security backup was made for Starfleet higher ups to review the data regardless. They may fear Omega, but they're also not stupid to pass up an opportunity to study what the crew did (and besides, plenty of new discoveries in power generation come with potential dangers - that doesn't stop you from finding SAFER ways of pursuing it).
The Borg also don't seem to use Dilithium or Antimatter for power generation.
Both the Enterprise-D and Voyager crews were on board Borg ships and scanned Borg technology in detail. Also, 7 of 9 was liberated from the collective... acquired massive amount of data from her being in the collective second time (in Dark Frontier) and downloaded that data into Voyager's database.
Just to name a few.
I cannot recall all of them, but I think there may have been other instances throughout 23rd and 24th centuries mentioning power sources that did NOT rely on M/AM reaction or dilithium for regulation.
Bottom line is... Trek demonstrated on more than one occasion there are PLENTY of options that go beyond dilithium and antimatter for other alien species... it just never explored them in detail.
It also seems stupid to me to have such a limit in Trek... it never presented itself as such.
Its just lazy writing.
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So, you reckon we gonna see an Enterprise this season or next?
Either finding an old one and sparking hope again among its crew.
Or building a brand-new one once the Federation has been propped up a bit?
With all the new shows covering so much temporal ground, there's room for a cool Enterprise in every show! Pike's Discoprise in SNW, the Enterprise-E in Lower Decks; a heavily refitted E or Odyssey-class F in PIC, and something new for the 32nd century in DSC.
Either finding an old one and sparking hope again among its crew.
Or building a brand-new one once the Federation has been propped up a bit?
With all the new shows covering so much temporal ground, there's room for a cool Enterprise in every show! Pike's Discoprise in SNW, the Enterprise-E in Lower Decks; a heavily refitted E or Odyssey-class F in PIC, and something new for the 32nd century in DSC.
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I read somewhere (since I cannot recall) that Book's ship has three types of drive, but apparently dilithium is preferred. As a technical problem I would honestly like to hear the problem, and see them expand upon the technologies you list. That would be very interesting.
I hope not. It would be nice to focus on Discovery rather than again having the Enterprise.
On the other hand, we know Discovery is abandoned for some reason. Perhaps the crew jumps ship to the Enterprise after being forced to leave Discovery?
On the other hand it would be nice to see brand new ships rather than it feeling like they can only choose between the Discovery and the Enterprise.
In "That Hope Is You", Book curses to Burnham that he can't afford X, Y or Z and has to make do with dilithium. We can't tell whether his ship would be equipped to fly on X if he could get some; or whether he has another ship with X engines that he cannot afford to fly at all; or whether he's saying he can't afford to obtain a ship that would use X, Y or Z.
The likeliest interpretation IMHO is the last one: no, he couldn't fill her tanks with benamite and go to quantum slipstream even if somehow the fuel became available to him. Instead, he would first have to obtain a ship with slipstream engines to go with that benamite. His Nautilus is dilithium-only and doesn't work without it, or with alternate fuels or catalysts or whatnot. And it can only do regular warp.
Timo Saloniemi
As much as I would like to see that, it probably won’t happen. They’re not going to want to take the focus off of Discovery. But I’ll be happy to be wrong.
Well, they already stole some of the Discovery glory once in this show by bringing in an Enterprise. This could well be habitual, especially considering that it was apparently generally well received.
If it becomes a Discovery thing, I won't be too disappointed. Lower Decks did the Titan instead, which was fun. SNW is going to have the Enterprise, obviously. PIC I doubt will go for anything of this sort. But Star Trek is about Kirk, Spock, the Klingons and the Enterprise, and every show needs at least three out of the four in order to survive. Oh, if just ENT had been able to somehow involve Kirk or Spock, too...
Timo Saloniemi
If it becomes a Discovery thing, I won't be too disappointed. Lower Decks did the Titan instead, which was fun. SNW is going to have the Enterprise, obviously. PIC I doubt will go for anything of this sort. But Star Trek is about Kirk, Spock, the Klingons and the Enterprise, and every show needs at least three out of the four in order to survive. Oh, if just ENT had been able to somehow involve Kirk or Spock, too...
Timo Saloniemi
Then Star Trek deserves to fail.
"Didn't seem to"
It works however they need it to work, and as of 2020 it requires dilithium.
Says who though?
No one to date even mentioned that the forced Quantum singularity uses dilithium crystals... and why should it?
Its a completely different method of power generation than M/AM reactions.
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