ST Picard - Starships and Technology Season One SPOILER Discusssion

Discussion in 'Trek Tech' started by Mark_Nguyen, Jan 24, 2020.

  1. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Just wanted to chime in to say that the Romulan ships are really small.

    I mean, there's no polite way of putting it. We see the Snakehead scout in tight formation with the narrow-winged ships, above, below, en echelon, and the scout is one-third the size of the ship. That is, when you omit the wings.

    The shuttlebus type from "Remembrance", also shown in easy-comparison formation, is only slightly more voluminous, just as befits the windshield. So Oh really is commanding a formation of... boats.

    Which is actually good for the drama, while Riker's overkill fleet is not.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  2. NCC-73515

    NCC-73515 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    The snakeheads could simply be closer to the camera, I guess
     
  3. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    But probably not. The swarm is too tight for that, really. We get scouts in front of the ships, behind the ships, above the ships, below the ships, maneuvering around (chiefly in the scenes after Riker's arrival - prior to that, Oh fights exclusively with the apparently more warlike, narrow-winged ships).

    We also get comparisons with Oh's command ship, whose hull is only as wide as her (moderately oversized) bridge set; the fighting vessels have even narrower hulls.

    Both the command ship and the scouts have definite size, with people as yardsticks. The fighting vessels just fall in between. And the command ship sets the standard for teeny weeny. These things are perhaps the size of WWII destroyer escorts, while the command ship is a destroyer leader or miniature cruiser, just with wings added.

    The idea that Oh could only command modest resources is sound as such: the entire fleet of Romulus may be depleted, the madwomen of Zhat Vash may not carry the authority of regular Tal'Shiar, the intel service is assigned small and sneaky ships as a standard... But the ability to summon two hundred ships of the type goes against the dramatic idea of such a limitation. If Oh really has to scrape together an armada, then it being uniform seems unlikely. Except perhaps in the last of the three scenarios, the one where the spies have unlimited access to cloak-and-dagger ships of their own, and have not yet run them ragged or lost them in post-supernova attempts at enforcing law and order and whatnot.

    Good angles on all the ships in the episode, I must say. Eaves (?) really went to town with a bat motif, including giving the fighting ships a tail reminiscent of the Vampire jet fighter!

    Timo Saloniemi
     
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  4. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Given that Oh's Zhat Vash secret society within the Tal Shiar was supposed to be "Secret", almost mythical.

    Her having to scrounge resources makes sense.

    Converting part of a Borg Cube into custom Warships and fighters seems to be part of her long term plan.

    Eventually finding the "Synth Home World" means taking whatever resources you have at the time.

    And what we saw is what she had available.

    There's an old saying, you fight with the army you have, not the one you want.

    If you want a better, bigger, more powerful army; you should've prepared one earlier.
     
  5. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    That I guess is my problem with this fleet: that it looks way too prepared. For an example of a true desperation force, look at the Battle of the Java Sea, say. Lack of uniformity and indeed compatibility is a telltale there.

    A neat idea that the ships would have been manufactured at/by the Artifact! Of course, the holy mission of the ZV would call for firepower at every point of history, including Battle of Cheron and the Tomed Incident and not just the 2380s-90s. What happened to that firepower? Or, why wasn't it part of the long term plan?

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  6. Ronald Held

    Ronald Held Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Small ships were all the could be build with the remaining infrastructure of the RSE?
     
  7. Dukhat

    Dukhat Admiral Admiral

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    But that's not really what it shows. Those ships didn't appear to have been constructed from parts of the Borg cube. Nor was there an implication that Oh had to scrounge for anything.
     
  8. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    All of those same looking Tiny Romulan ships flying in/out of the Borg cube and part of the Borg cube missing a giant hole implied that to me.
     
  9. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Or then having a big hole in a Cube goes with having a Cube that isn't regenerating and can be semi-safely scavenged...

    We now are supposed to think that the Cube went down because it assimilated somebody who had been contaminated by the Admonition. Presumably the Collective severed connection with the Cube when the contamination was noticed - but what happened to the Cube itself? Were there internal explosions in which chunks were blown out? Or had the Cube already been in combat with the Romulans and was limping away badly hurt when it spotted just one more tiny, little scout - wafer-thin, really - and decided to assimilate that one?

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  10. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Maybe the severed link couldn't process the admonition and they all suffered the ultimate BSoD and just froze in space =D
     
  11. Lakenheath 72

    Lakenheath 72 Commodore Commodore

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    The sheer number of ships was ridiculous. However, I am not surprised as most Hollywood writers know squat about the military. In the real world, the US Navy uses one or two ships to launch attacks against land based targets. They may be part of a carrier task group, which has at least eight ships and a few more depending on the mission.

    A more realistic scenario would be a small number of Romulan ships, some to hit the planet from orbit. They may have a troopship with the fleet for this specific mission, to land troops and to clear the settlement of survivors. The Federation would likewise have a small fleet, a squadron, which is smaller than a fleet. And, unlike what was seen in the episode, the Starfleet would stay in orbit until everything is settled.

    The only times I know of where there was a large number of ships was when there was an invasion. The Romulans weren't invading, they were raiding.
     
  12. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Don't forget how Hollywood treats Space Battles like the "Age of Sail" where every battle is within "Visual Range" because of the "Rule of Cool".
     
  13. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Well, the USN today sends two ships solely because it can't afford fifty.

    In Trek, the heroes generally are able to deal with the crisis of the week with the resources of their one starship, so it's rather jarring to see larger numbers - sure it's "shocking" to see fifty of them fail, but that wears off really quickly. Yet it's extremely logical to use numbers when dealing with a "peer". Starships already provide quality; the one who brings more of those to a fight will then win by quantity.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  14. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Well, the USN today also patrols several seas and the entire fleet is on several schedules split into various Operational Phases.

    One Ship can be in Maintenance
    One Ship can be in Training of the newly assembled Crew
    One Ship can be out on Deployment

    So no matter how large your fleet is, you generally have to follow those basic principles, even StarFleet.

    So let's say you have 50 ships of one type, only about 1/3 of them will be out and about on Deployment doing what it's assigned to do.

    Then you have all the various seas/oceans to cover.

    Ergo you split up your ships to cover all required areas.

    Currently, the USN has ~ 490 ships of various types for all sorts of roles / purposes.
     
  15. Go-Captain

    Go-Captain Captain Captain

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    My guess is it is all they can man post-Empire, or they prize versatility now. More hulls means more ships can be more places at the same time. Smaller hulls also means each loss sacrifices fewer people, if they care about that, and the loss of a smaller hull means easier maintenance post battle on surviving hulls. It's the difference between writing off a hull and having to rebuild it completely versus just making a new one and that would be a huge difference with a D'Deridex, but a small ship like the ones we saw could probably be built new in a matter of weeks instead of months or years.

    That being said, I will be disappointed if we never see D'Deridex and Valdore in later seasons. There should be Romulan governments formed around single D'Deridex and whole remnant fleets. Some governments would be captains or admirals turned warlord, others would be lucky local governments turned independent. I really want the show runners to read Jack Campbell's The Lost Stars, because it basically is about the breakup of the Romulan Star Empire without any Star Trek in it. Or, just get Jack Campbell on as a producer.
    The fleet sizes fit the peak of the Dominion War with fleets of a hundred and combined fleets in the thousands, and unlike the US military post-WWII they wouldn't have to worry about funding like we would if they wanted to maintain that peak capability. Even personnel issues shouldn't be that hard to get around if they go for more enlisted heavy crews over officer heavy crews. As in train on the job for specific jobs, as apposed to training each officer for every job all at the academy.

    Just for comparison, if the US military has 3.3% GDP but taken from the entire Earth's GDP it would be 4.4 times larger. If it scales linearly then we would have:
    48 super carriers
    96 cruisers
    13 Zumwalt
    294 Arleigh Burke class destroyers

    Multiply that by 150 (member worlds)
    7200 carrier
    14400 cruiser
    1950 Zum
    44100 Burke

    I would say the best comparison is "The Die is Cast." In both cases we have a fleet heading to a world to sterilize its surface, or vaporize its surface down to its outer core (which eliminates any need to land troops) but this time it is with a fleet of far smaller ships, implying far less firepower per platform. 30 ships did the job in "The Die is Cast" and now we have 200 and change, but in the former half the ships had 6 times more volume than a Galaxy class, and just eyeballing it I would say the average Romulan ship in the new fleet could pack 150 in just the Galaxy class saucer section if placed in 5x5 grids stacked 6 deep.

    The fleet ran un-cloaked, and with long range sensors Starfleet would know what it was heading into so it makes sense it would send a fleet of similar size rather than the squadron originally promised.

    I believe the only unrealistic part of this is how Oh didn't ignore the various opponents and just fire on the planet from the start. She should have been enough of a fanatic to have done that.
    I believe that has less to do with being cool than a failure of imagination. There are several anime out there with beyond visual range fleet fights which manage to be visually impressive and exciting. Heroic Age, one of the Space Battleship Yamato movies, and Legend of Galactic Heroes all do it. Also Babylon 5 has at least one if not two beyond visual range fight scenes which are fantastic if brief.
     
    Last edited: Apr 11, 2020
  16. Lakenheath 72

    Lakenheath 72 Commodore Commodore

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    My scenario, after some thought:
    1. Send a recon probe and confirm the existence of the synth colony.
    2. Send a single ship with cloaking device.
    3. Ship decloaks briefly, sends a salvo into the colony.
    4. Ship returns to Romulan territory victorious.

    Oh would not have commanded the fleet. If she is smart enough to evade detection by Starfleet for decades, then she would know plausible deniability and continue in her position as Chief of Starfleet Security. She revealing herself as an agent, by being on the bridge of a Romulan ship, was her gravest error.
     
  17. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    What, and miss her moment of triumph?

    I don't see what remained to be achieved in the undercover job, now that the Planet of the Androids was located and Bruce Maddox already successfully eliminated. Oh didn't need the resources of the Federation for anything much at this point.

    Of course, being able to command the Starfleet military resources would have been nice: even when she had Romulan ones for the death and destruction needs, it wold have helped had she been able to command Starfleet to Laurentius or whatever. But I doubt she had the authority for that to begin with.

    (It's a bit of a mystery that Riker did have the authority; perhaps his retirement wasn't all it was reputed to be? Or then he had the ear, or other sensitive body parts, of Admiral Clancy somehow.)

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  18. SoM

    SoM Captain Captain

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    Well, when Picard asks him in Nepenthe if he thinks about "shipping out again", he says he's still "on active reserve" (although qualifying it with "but it would have to be a very good reason"). So he's in a sort of halfway house - as far as Starfleet is concerned, he's on indefinite leave, not fully retired like Picard (although, as McCoy found out in TMP, you're never really out.)

    In the last episode, he then says "When I heard you sent an SOS, I asked for temporary reassignment. Just because I didn't try to talk you out of it didn't mean I was gonna let you go it alone."

    Meanwhile, between the two eps, Picard managed to present Clancy with enough evidence to flip her round to his POV.

    What I'm thinking is that he heard about Picard's "SOS" from Clancy herself, and that she contacted Riker as a "Picard expert" of sorts. And that when he asked to be assigned, he was pushing on an open door. Anything else requires a helluvalot of coincidences that he just happened to find out, and he just happened to have the right leverage to get put in charge of a fleet.
     
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  19. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    That does sound very good. Even if it shouldn't be all that obvious for Clancy that a squadron of ships is the solution to the problem Picard posed in their first meeting, Picard now saying he needs one is motivation enough, and there's then (just) enough time to assemble such. Although from a dramatic point of view, it would still have been much better to use fewer ships and to give Riker a distinct, gosh-and-wow one.

    It's too bad we didn't get the three distinct ship types Chabon has now talked more about. But the very fact that he wanted those may mean that some work was done on them, and we might meet them at some point of the second season.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  20. valkyrie013

    valkyrie013 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Well, slightly off topic.. Well slantways.. A normal squadron should have different types of ships like a navy fleet.. Like for a Starfleet squadron that would be in a sector would be maybe 5 exploratory ships , then a few escort/patrol ships, a hospital ship, a fuel/tender/supply/repair ship with industrial replicators and a wet dock ability..

    Never should a ship be "the only ship in the sector!" Even long range exploritiry should have at least a few ships going in the same direction and be able to help in emergencys