Ditto ANY window. Point a camera at the conference lounge and lip read your enemy's plans. Watch Picard discuss important space details in his quarters with Beverly over breakfast tea.
What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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Why don't they just shoot warp cores at their enemies? Yes I know the technical manuals say a photon torpedo IS pretty much that but they're never ever depicted as such. Look at every warp core breach or ejection and breach in the franchise (Generations, ST'09, Disco's S4 finale etc) and that shit goes off with the force of a supernova. Shoot warp cores at your enemies.
Only as a last-ditch measure. Shooting your warp core there usually means you won't have the means to escape the blast yourself.
I meant like, special ones made just for the purpose of shooting at enemies
Ah... you mean, like a kind of erm, 'photon torpedo' for want of a better term :P
Ok, without trying to be facetious, I would think that a warp core is more powerful than a photon torpedo simply because it's a lot bigger, but that in terms of the mass to explosion-yield ratio the photon torpedo would be more efficient, because it has been explicitly designed and presumably optimised for that explosion.
Which raises the question why they don't carry such upscaled photon torpedoes aboard for such extreme situations. If they're really last-resort means they wouldn't need many of them; just one, maybe two.
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That would be a massive waste of resources. The reason a warp core breach is SO MUCH BIGGER than a photon torpedo explosion is because a photon torpedo, at most, holds 1.5kg of antimatter. If a Galaxy-class starship's entire photon torpedo magazine were to detonate at once that's still only 412.5kg of antimatter. Meanwhile its entire warp drive when fully fuelled holds 255 freaking tons.
I agree. But, if we must abide the stupidity then having a window is fine by me.
Honestly, while deep in the ship sounds most plausible at first, when I think about the way Trek usually portrays battles it really doesn't seem to matter. When torpedoes smash right through the ship and out the other side, more depth really isn't much defence. In general, it seems to me a Starfleet ship pretty much always has to rely on the shields for any real defensive capability and once those're gone it's all down to luck anyway. Ablative armor maybe changes the equation a bit, but I doubt it's possible to add an extra layer of that on every deck, so it's still a case of game over once the hull is breached.
About photon torpedoes and warp cores.
Warp cores need antimatter storage tanks and when that goes boom it's a big explosion.
If one wanted an explosion big as that they could fire warp cores but is it easier with a "miniature warp core", also known as photon torpedo.
Firing warp cores might be a waste of all that it takes to build a warp core.
Warp cores need antimatter storage tanks and when that goes boom it's a big explosion.
If one wanted an explosion big as that they could fire warp cores but is it easier with a "miniature warp core", also known as photon torpedo.
Firing warp cores might be a waste of all that it takes to build a warp core.
Could be that maybe I don't want to give the whole universe a theater like view to the operations of a Starship. Maybe I just like the idea of having a bridge with a consistent lighting source that doesn't change whenever a ship passes by, we orbit a planet or head straight towards the sun. Maybe I like the idea of having a screen that gives us more control over what we see rather than where the ship is pointed. Maybe I don't want my crew who suffer from epilepsy or seizures to be exposed to flashing lights that a screen can just filter out. Maybe I just want to say the line "On screen" and have it actually happen.
I love how it having the potential functionality of a window somehow eliminates these things.
I believe viewscreens in Star Trek were capable of replicating the functionality of a window without literally being a window. Least you can turn the viewscreen off.
The scene from "Requiem for Methuselah" will probably always add credence to the "it was always sort of a window" argument anyways, though some fans argue and not without merit that Kirk was looking DOWN into the bridge module through the transparent dome and the effects team made it look like he was peering through the main viewscreen.
And I believe that having it as a window would be useful in low power situations, allowing them to see during a crisis, rather than relying upon sensors which may be nonfunctional. I'm not arguing to take away functionality of the viewscreen in some sort of "Window or nothing!" ridiculousness. Just that, make it a window so that it can serve as a back up when the power goes out. It's a simple idea that the push back against it makes no sense. Probably because the assumption is "window=no tech" which is not what I am arguing.
I'm struggling to think of scenarios where there's sufficient power available to make a ship move or do anything useful whilst simultaneously not enough to power a simple video camera relay (or whatever the Star Trek sensor beam equivalent would be). Even rarer would be scenarios where there's no power at all, but in those situations a window facing forward wouldn't be much help - you'd want viewport hatches facing in several directions in order to see what's going on out there. Such viewports could be manual release and stay closed 99.9% of the time
TWOK proves otherwise. As well as "Justice" with Picard sending Geordi to look at the Edo god ship.I'm struggling to think of scenarios where there's sufficient power available to make a ship move or do anything useful whilst simultaneously not enough to power a simple video camera relay (or whatever the Star Trek sensor beam equivalent would be). Even rarer would be scenarios where there's no power at all, but in those situations a window facing forward wouldn't be much help - you'd want viewport hatches facing in several directions in order to see what's going on out there. Such viewports could be manual release and stay closed 99.9% of the time
Are there limited situations? Yes. Do I believe it still is helpful to have? Also, yes because sometimes sensors are not able to work for whatever plot contrived reason.
Power wasn't the issue with the viewscreen in TWOK, it was the external environment which limited the sensors - and Kirk still won the battle. Given the soupy conditions of the nebula I'm not sure how much better the view out of a window would have been in any case.
Justice is that unusual instance where Picard wanted a "real" view of the Edo god (because apparently Geordi's VISOR has better sensors than the flagship of the Federation). While a window on the Bridge would have saved Geordi a 30 second turbolift ride to the nearest lounge, I'm not convinced it's worth having a permanent weak spot in the wall of their control room.
I agree - manual hatches for visual observations would be useful for specific emergency situations - but under normal conditions they would remain unseen and closed.
Sure, you might see what's going on outside if whatever that is decides to place itself directly in front of the ship, but then what? Phasers? Photon Torpedos? Tractor Beam? Transporters? Shuttlecraft? I'm sorry. Power is out and we kind of need that for everything. If the power is out, the last thing the crew should be worried about is what's outside of a window. And it's not like there aren't other windows all over the ship as many users here liked to point out.
That won't be a problem anymore since New Star Trek has officially retconned every ship ever made across all species, realities and timelines as having windows for viewscreens. Once we get to TWOK, the Enterprise will win against the Reliant without sacrificing Spock. I mean, why would a more advanced Enterprise remove the window viewscreen or repair bots that could have repaired the warp drive?
You're telling me you think that a cadet on look out doing, using binoculars or the 23rd century equivalent, could not have seen the Reliant coming right at them?
Technology makes us lazy sometimes. SMH.
I've addressed this previously. Once the shields are down the hull is pretty sure done for. I don't see this as a more egregious weak spot than having windows any where else around the hull.
Which is what I am saying with the viewscreen. I'm asking to add one little function and apparently that's too much?
I disagree pretty much completely. Being able to see who might be attacking, navigating, even, or at least being able to identify your surroundings could be beneficial in an emergency situation.
It's a cadet ship. And no one is saying you can't use viewscreens as well as windows. The two are not exclusionary, though for some reason the argument is taken that they are. SMH.
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