Before going to warp, it's a good idea to plot a course, making sure you're not going to smack into something. So you scan straight ahead along your proposed course, but doing that for a curved path might not be so easy. Either way, something might move into your path, but if looking straight ahead at least you can see that the coast is clear for the moment.
"Faster than light, no left or right"
- Thread starter Cyke101
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I imagine this to be the case, and we tend to hear of course corrections being ordered (albeit perhaps not for objects in the way, but perhaps that's too mundane to regularly show on TV).
Saquist
Commodore
It's all convoluted. Fan convolutions writer convolutions, what does it really matter? It's not real. Does some statement on officialism really make that much of a difference?
Moreover I see nothing wrong with the "rule" as given in Voyager's situation which was extremely unique as it was convoluted. Timo is right... few things will fit after 40 years of convoluted writing, but this isn't necessarily one them.
Voyager had a sensor radius of 15 lightyears but not even that could stop them from suddenly placing the charges in Voyagers path...they knew where they were going...and that was the whole idea so yeah...
As this board and others have shown over and over again, yes it does because it's how arguments for-or-against anything are framed to begin with. Additionally, it's how other Trek properties like the media are written. Even if you're against a certain aspect of Trek, you're still addressing it in order to counter it. It's the playing field.
But they shouldn't be shoe-horned on a whim, either, or else they get ignored (see: TNG's speed limit). Doing so just seems self-indulgent and worse, creating mechanical plot contrivances because the ending was conceived first, rather than playing out the rest of the story -- an easy way to make a script.
A fairly strong argument against warp bubbles being sensitive to proximity obstacles: we see our share of point-blank battles where such sensitivity would be used for tactical advantage if it did exist. VOY had some Kazon skirmishes where we're talking about warp bubbles being compatible with objects (and other warp bubbles) that are mere dozens of meters away.
A fairly strong argument for warp bubbles being sensitive in general: it never takes special superweapons or kill-category hits to force your opponent out of warp, and the damage that causes the opponent to go sublight is generally very quickly repaired. Sure, there are warp chases, but supposedly only because the fleeing party can and will maintain the minimum safe distance but will not endanger his ship and his advantage by attempting even greater speeds.
Timo Saloniemi
A fairly strong argument for warp bubbles being sensitive in general: it never takes special superweapons or kill-category hits to force your opponent out of warp, and the damage that causes the opponent to go sublight is generally very quickly repaired. Sure, there are warp chases, but supposedly only because the fleeing party can and will maintain the minimum safe distance but will not endanger his ship and his advantage by attempting even greater speeds.
Timo Saloniemi
But both those arguments (for and against) require some sort of force external to the ship's actions, rather than the ship's actions within the bubble by itself, I would think. So I'm assuming that some of Saquist's argument depends on the sensitivity of the bubble in relation to the ship that's generating it, in addition to external forces.
I suppose I should have clarified when posted the OP the idea of a single ship at warp without other considerations -- in other words, a normal, smooth ride, no equipment malfunctions and everything working within normal parameters.
Saquist
Commodore
Proximity Obstacles? What do you mean.
Being forced out of warp is actually very rare.
In happened I think only once in TNG with the Borg and the weapon seemed specifically designed to as much and in Nemesis where the Enterprise shields failed and took superifical damage to the port nacelle and never regained warp.
I'd say that the rhyme was simply a general policy, and not any sort of actual danger.
In "The Squire of Gothos," for example, when escaping from Gothos, the Enterprise is moving at full-warp when Kirk orders hard to port and starboard in order to avoid the planet Gothos, which Trelane is moving into the ship's path.
Likewise in "Journey to Babel," the Orion-attack ship is clearly maneuvering laterally in its attack-pattern at high warp, otherwise its higher speed would not give it an advantage since the motion would be relative. But the ship doesn't blow up from such maneuvers.
Recall that the full line is "Faster than light, no left or right: course-corrections can fracture the hull."
The key word here is can, i.e. it's possible but not certain. Thus, in conjunction with these and other examples, we see that it's simply not a good idea when it can be avoided. But that aside, we've clearly seen the ships maneuver at warp on various occasions when necessary, even at warp 10 (TOS scale) without damage.
In "The Squire of Gothos," for example, when escaping from Gothos, the Enterprise is moving at full-warp when Kirk orders hard to port and starboard in order to avoid the planet Gothos, which Trelane is moving into the ship's path.
Likewise in "Journey to Babel," the Orion-attack ship is clearly maneuvering laterally in its attack-pattern at high warp, otherwise its higher speed would not give it an advantage since the motion would be relative. But the ship doesn't blow up from such maneuvers.
Recall that the full line is "Faster than light, no left or right: course-corrections can fracture the hull."
The key word here is can, i.e. it's possible but not certain. Thus, in conjunction with these and other examples, we see that it's simply not a good idea when it can be avoided. But that aside, we've clearly seen the ships maneuver at warp on various occasions when necessary, even at warp 10 (TOS scale) without damage.
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