ways to beat the kobayashi maru without cheating

perhaps launch several shuttles on auto pilot with a com beacon broadcasting it's on a rescue mission while the starship sits just outside the neutral zone. if the shuttles get destroyed they know they are walking into a Klingon trap

 

Put crisco in your underware and dance a jig.

 

how would that stop you from being destroyed by three klingon d7 class cruisers?

 

And then it turns out that it wasn't a ruse and the three hundred people you could have saved end up dying.

Or the shuttles aren't destroyed because the Klingons scanned them and held off firing, so you are still attacked when you cross the border.

The program is designed to not let you win.

 

the shuttles rescue the occupants of the kobayashi maru, cram about 30 people into ten shuttles.

 

The Klingons decloak and destroy the now-full shuttles.

 

you're no fun!!!!

 

I'm totally open to more attempts to best the program, but I'll still point out ways that the program could counter.

There's a reason that only one cadet ever beat the test.

 

one last try....

you warp in with your shields down, beam the survivors, and get the heck out at maximum warp

 

It'd scare the piss out of the Klingons

 

How about a Near-Warp Transport?

 

"This might sound crazy, but for a moment, I thought I was stuck in that wall." Troi

"For a moment, you were." Worf

 

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

 

The Klingons decloak and unload on you at point-blank range while you're still trying to transport the supposed survivors. Bummer.

 

Time travel.

Lay a bunch of gravitic mines in the neutral zone a week earlier.

 

Use the photonic cannon.

 

ok...ok.. this one I'm stealing from guy gardner

you slingshot back in time and and catch the kobayashi maru before it enters the neutral zone

 

How about that trick they use in TNG and create some sensor ghosts. Trick the Klingons that there are other Starfleet ships incoming; full of Tribbles.

 

Stand your flag down.
Declare yourself defectors as you cross the neutral zone and rescue the people on board the ship.
The people are rescued...and worst case, the Klingons get your ship and everyone including the Maru crew. But no one is dead.
Starfleet can court martial you, but, you’re in the KDF now, or at the very least being debriefed on Quo’nos.

If you get the people off the ship, and are not beset by Klingons, then you can probably go back across the border and claim it was all a mutiny, or that the crew regained the ship from their crazy captain. Again..you lose your career, but everyone is alive.

The only reason that wouldn’t work is if the simulator is as inaccurate as Kirks ‘the Klingons don’t take prisoners’ line.

Otherwise, the option becomes ‘ignore distress call, obey the law of the neutral zone’ and that’s that. Maybe fire a photon at warp to destroy the maru, as ‘klingons don’t take prisoners’ and it’s therefore a mercy kill or preventing federation resources falling into enemy hands.

I suspect the brass wouldn’t like either solution.

A third option is to track the Kobayashi Maru backwards...if it was put there by the Klingons, then they have broken neutral zone treaty, and the two powers are now at war and starfleet has to go to a war footing and send more ships whatever happens. If it wandered in by itself, then you are back to the first two solutions, with the added caveat that if it was deliberate, the Maru are either smugglers or defectors, in which case you can radio them a warning and blow them up without crossing the zone.

If obviously firing across the zone is also a no no, then you suddenly find out you need some weapons tests nearby and maybe a few torpedoes have guidance issues and cross into the zone happening to hit the Maru, and maybe any cloaked Klingon ships near it.

Sensors should also have been able to tell you if any ships crossed into the zone *and didn’t come out again nearby* flagging it up as a trap before you consider these options.

The test itself is a cheat, which is why Kirk cheating is fine.
According to at least one version, he hacked it so the Klingons all knew who he was and found him too scarey to fight and so ran away.

It’s on the captain of the Maru to get his people out anyway. ‘Risk is part of the game’ etc.

 

now that's officer thinking!