Spoilers marsh8472's Consolidated Continuity Thread

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Discovery' started by marsh8472, Nov 9, 2017.

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Why does warp drive in Star Trek Discovery look so different?

  1. Starfleet is employing advanced propulsion technology on their ships in addition to the Spore Drive

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  2. Star Trek Discovery is showing correctly, every other series looks abnormal actually

    1 vote(s)
    4.8%
  3. Nothing is wrong at all, everything is consistent everywhere

    10 vote(s)
    47.6%
  4. Discovery is in a seperate timeline from TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT

    3 vote(s)
    14.3%
  5. Star Trek Discovery's visual effect of the warp drive is incorrect

    1 vote(s)
    4.8%
  6. Other

    6 vote(s)
    28.6%
  1. MakeshiftPython

    MakeshiftPython Commodore Commodore

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    You know what's cool about DISCO? We saw Mudd use a TOS phaser and it can fire in both stream and pulses. Ya know, kind of like how TOS kept switching between the two throughout the show. It wasn't until TNG that they stuck primarily to streaming, before making a return in DS9/VOY/FC.


     
  2. Blamo

    Blamo Commodore Commodore

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    Because they aren't phasers, they're phase cannons (not phaser cannons). They're a stepping stone to the more advanced TOS phasers.

    Given what's said about the Shen-zhou (in book and on screen) and it's similarities to the other ships at the battle at the binary stars, they all pre-date the Constitution class.
     
  3. Vger23

    Vger23 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Ugh...I don't know...

    "Let's just float around hopelessly and without aim or tactic and get hit with red LED lights every 25 seconds". That battle never excited me. There was almost nothing more to it. The token space battle in Insurrection is almost better.



    ...almost...
     
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  4. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    More like this, with Sulu doing the very hands on thrusters approach.

     
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  5. GeekUSACarl

    GeekUSACarl The Last Starfighter Fleet Captain

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    to each their own but i kinda wanna fight you now

    :hugegrin:
     
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  6. Vger23

    Vger23 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Hahaha! Understood!!
     
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  7. Ithekro

    Ithekro Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Hopefully, when they decide to fly in a Constitution-class vessel (or perhaps more specifically the Enterprise) they'll go for the now standard "there is another starship coming in" approach. If for no other reason just to highlight the cool ship that's entering the show...even as a guest.
     
  8. Arvis Taljik

    Arvis Taljik Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    I agree with what a couple people have said about the factors going into the "why" of the change in phaser graphics. Namely I think it stems from what today's audiences (this does not inlcude the "hardcore" fan demographic as that is the overall minority) tendency towards what they believe conveys 'intensity' in a battle scene. The use of kinetic weapons in BSG, the pulse weapons in ST09 and its sequels, and various other media has created a feeling of intensity.

    The same applies to the lower frequency range of the audio used for the firing sounds. A bit more bass in the sound makes it seem more 'intense' when compared to higher frequency sounds.

    What it really comes down to is what their studies show will sell, not what the minority hardcore fanbase wants to see.

    TLDR: I like the new VFX and SFX. Happy with how they're shown.
     
  9. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    For an "intense" beam, see e.g. Serenity and the reaver beams. A solid beam can be made to look and sound like a nuclear buzzsaw, with not just presence but also permanence unavailable to a fleeting pulse. That's why lightsabers are more impressive than blasters, too.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  10. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    IMHO the best looking solid beam weapons in sci-fi are the Stargate Atlantis version of the Asguard beam weapons. They were slow, meaty and smashed the fuck out of everything they hit.
     
  11. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    The Ori gigantic ships do a good job too
     
  12. Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie Vice Admiral Admiral

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    You are both dangerously close to advocating for the use of dubstep weaponry, which has been outlawed by the Geneva Protocols of 2152:

    I am NOT okay with this.
     
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  13. SPCTRE

    SPCTRE Badass Admiral

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    Eddie may be Crazy, but he does have point there

    [​IMG]
     
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  14. Feron

    Feron Commander Red Shirt

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    If you use Torpedo Spread in STO, you fire much more than one at once.
     
  15. GhostLoveScore

    GhostLoveScore Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    More important question is why the ship gets damaged when the "shields" are up? We can see explosions on the hull but the crew says "shields at 75%". Why don't we see those shields? In Star Trek universe shields on the ship are shaped like a bubble. Phasers or photon torpedoes will not go through (usually), they will weaken the shields with no damage to the ship's hull, except for some exploded consoles.
     
  16. Arvis Taljik

    Arvis Taljik Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    We quite clearly see the shields of the ship reacting throughout Discovery. As recently as Episode 8 when disruptor shots are hitting the Gagarin and Discovery you see a field of blue flash underneath the explosive impacts. Looking back, it appears this is something they adopted after the pilot, as I didn't really see much in the way of shields during the first two episodes.

    The explosions are likely explained as the release of energy when the bolt hits the shield and the particles contained within are dispersed in an explosive manner.

    Also, not all Star Trek shields are shaped like a bubble. STVI has hull-hugging shields on the Enteprise and Nemesis has hull-hugging shields on every ship in the movie.
     
  17. Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Except you can only fire a torpedo spread once every 20 to 30 seconds, depending on your duty officer setup, AND the torpedoes do less damage individually when fired in a spread. This is a limitation torpedoes do not need to have.

    It should be one or the other: either torpedoes are basically WMDs that do a shit ton of damage (so firing more than one is overkill and also really dangerous to YOU as well) or they're just mildly competitive with phasers. A high yield tricobalt torpedo or a temporal disruption device will, if properly upgraded, do enough damage to one-shot-kill just about anything that doesn't have its shields up. If photon torpedoes aren't kicking out damage in the 20 or 30k range, you should be able to hit your enemies with a wall of them.
     
  18. Feron

    Feron Commander Red Shirt

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    Of course this is subjective on both of our parts, but I find that the STO torpedoes do just fine.

    You can't fire them continuously, but at least from what I've seen in the shows and movies, most ships don't do that in the canon material either. The point was that your assertion that in STO you can only fire them one at a time rather than 5 or 6 at once was just incorrect. You can. If you have TP I, II, and III in a rotation you can fire them fairly frequenty.

    Here's a clip that I made for a friend months ago who asked about the Quantum Phase set. It isn't some optimal "min-max" build and I am certainly not some elite player with L33t skillz, but at least IMHO the torpedoes perform quite similarly to the canon ones. The Discovery took out the Sarcophagus Ship with a salvo of about 5 or 6 torpedoes against an unshielded ship taking no defensive actions. When you account for the fact that in this clip I also have to take down their shields I think that the game imitates the shows pretty well.

     
  19. Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie Vice Admiral Admiral

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    "Fairly frequently" is one thing; point is, the firing rate normally achievable from, say, High Yield should be the torpedo's DEFAULT setting. Or, if it is not, the weapons should do a hell of a lot more damage than designed.

    This is case where the Needs of the Balance outweigh the Needs of Logic. STO basically nerfed the torpedoes to make them less effective, because if they really did what they seem to do in the show, nobody would ever use phasers, you could literally just bury your enemy up to his neck in photon torpedoes (the fact that their firing range is identical to phasers is another feature of this).

    That's just it, though: when you measure damage per second, you find that torpedoes and phasers are actually (for the most part) kind of a wash. Torpedoes DO more damage to a particular target, but they take a lot longer to HIT the target; by the time your torpedoes impact, you could have put four or five phaser beams into his hull doing the same amount of damage. The main -- in fact, ONLY -- advantage of torpedoes in game is actually the fact that they can do impressive damage to the target without having to divert all of your power to weapons. This makes torpedo builds pretty robust since you can transfer power to shields or engines when you need it without sacrificing attack power.

    That, again, is a feature of the game trying to balance different play styles and make them equivalent when ordinarily they wouldn't be. The canon depiction of torpedoes and phasers has a similar but unrelated problem: photon torpedoes are not, it seems, a great deal more powerful than phasers and are essentially interchangeable with them in terms of damage yield. Here again we have the issue that, except for their possibly having a much longer firing range, there doesn't seem to be a REASON to include both types of weapons since they both do pretty much the same thing. Unless, of course, torpedoes have the advantage that they can cause a lot more damage when your phasers are starved of power (TMP, TWOK and TUC sort of imply this) but that would make photon torpedoes a kind of backup weapon for when the phasers -- their main weapon -- aren't working or need time to recharge.

    On the other hand, it would be interesting if we had Star Trek -- both STO and TV -- actually flesh out the logic of these two weapon systems. If, for example, deflector shields are pretty much immune to phaser strikes and you have to use photon torpedoes to take his shields down; your opponent will try to shoot down your torpedoes with HIS phasers, but if enough of your torpedoes get through, his shields will overload and he'll be forced to either shut them down to save his engines, or use what little power he has left and run for it. If he chooses to stand and fight, now you have to close the distance to get into phaser range and risk getting YOUR shields knocked out by HIS torpedoes. So both combatants now have to be smart about how and where and when they fight.

    Otherwise, it's just a slugfest with cliche videogame mechanics and the only tactic that matters is "shoot him till he's dead." If they're going to go that route, then there's no reason for torpedoes to even exist.
     
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  20. Feron

    Feron Commander Red Shirt

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    My interest is not in measuring damage per second or having some optimized min-max build.

    I was just responding to the assertion implying that you can't make a serviceable canon build in STO. I think that it is perfectly possible to do so. Other than some of the Temporal stuff that I had in the build in the clip that I made for my friend that build looks pretty canon to me. I've got a 23rd century style ship with the classic blue beams and torps. I can fire the torps in good spreads, in many cases actually larger ones than in TOS, and they do good damage.

    My point was that IMHO the torpedoes in STO perform fairly similar to what is shown on the shows. If anything, the video game ship performs too well. I took out a large number of enemy ships without ever being in serious danger myself.