How difficult SHOULD it be to steal a starship?

[Unicron]

One potential problem with that approach is that biometric systems can conceivably be fooled, by a shapeshifting organism or with another way to duplicate the biometrics. As a comic example, the original Cyborg Superman (Hank Henshaw) has organic parts that are a genetic copy of Superman's DNA, because Hank at one point controlled the ship that brought Clark to Earth. That means that he not only gained most of Superman's advanced powers in a yellow sun, but that he can bypass biometric security on places like the Fortress of Solitude that would normally block someone who isn't Kryptonian or has special access. Genetically speaking, Hank is identical to Clark. Plus he can also control most forms of technology with his cyborg elements, so there's that advantage.

 

[Deks]

One potential problem with that approach is that biometric systems can conceivably be fooled, by a shapeshifting organism or with another way to duplicate the biometrics. As a comic example, the original Cyborg Superman (Hank Henshaw) has organic parts that are a genetic copy of Superman's DNA, because Hank at one point controlled the ship that brought Clark to Earth. That means that he not only gained most of Superman's advanced powers in a yellow sun, but that he can bypass biometric security on places like the Fortress of Solitude that would normally block someone who isn't Kryptonian or has special access. Genetically speaking, Hank is identical to Clark. Plus he can also control most forms of technology with his cyborg elements, so there's that advantage.

I was thinking the same thing.
However, Trek has other means of user technology for user identification that go beyond the simple biometric... and it could easily be automated and completely invisible/silent as described.

However, for all we know, majority of those measures ARE indeed used on Federation ships, and as we saw, for shapeshifters, that's easy to fool... but on another note, Federation sensors aren't a slouch so detecting changelings or something that 'mimicks' humans or Federation species dna and other biological markers would have to be a real thing in the confines of that universe.
There are also atomic and subatomic scans (as Trek sensors do operate on that range) that would most certainly identify even minuscule of changes.

Trek writers one the other hand don't really pay that much attention and have a real problem with writing drama that FITS the setting and technology.

 

[tesral]

Trek writers one the other hand don't really pay that much attention and have a real problem with writing drama that FITS the setting and technology.

There is the issue right there. The writers.

How hard? Bordering on impossible. Kirk and Co, got away with it because they HAD the inside track, AND Scotty had automated the running systems. That did not stand up to stress however.

 

[fireproof78]

There is the issue right there. The writers.

Curse them...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Timo]

Yeah, Trek would be so much better without them. There'd be more money for the VFX, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[tesral]

Yeah, Trek would be so much better without them. There'd be more money for the VFX, too.

Timo Saloniemi

Voyager proves that.

 

[Unicron]

There is the issue right there. The writers.

How hard? Bordering on impossible. Kirk and Co, got away with it because they HAD the inside track, AND Scotty had automated the running systems. That did not stand up to stress however.

There's a running joke in the Battletech fan base regarding fleets of warships, because they've always had game mechanic issues and because the various writers apparently have never learned the best way to handle them. Since the goal has generally been to keep mechs as the "main" unit, they've invented a few plots over the years to solve the problem by effectively destroying the fleets rather than just, you know, using them infrequently.

 

[tesral]

There's a running joke in the Battletech fan base regarding fleets of warships, because they've always had game mechanic issues and because the various writers apparently have never learned the best way to handle them. Since the goal has generally been to keep mechs as the "main" unit, they've invented a few plots over the years to solve the problem by effectively destroying the fleets rather than just, you know, using them infrequently.

If we ignore the bad game mechanic, it will get better. Yea I do some wargaming too. RPG mainly the tabletop kind. Played Battletech, the mechanics got to me.

 

[at Quark's]

Yeah, Trek would be so much better without them. There'd be more money for the VFX, too.

I can see the ads already.

"Welcome to Trek: the essentials, where you'll see more ships explode in half an hour than in an entire season of your dad's Trek! Every episode jampacked with 45 minutes of cool effects and unrelenting violence! Just who are these aliens and why do they keep fighting one another, you ask? We don't know, and we don't care! Just enjoy the pewpew!"

 

[tesral]

I can see the ads already.

"Welcome to Trek: the essentials, where you'll see more ships explode in half an hour than in an entire season of your dad's Trek! Every episode jampacked with 45 minutes of cool effects and unrelenting violence! Just who are these aliens and why do they keep fighting one another, you ask? We don't know, and we don't care! Just enjoy the pewpew!"

It's called Battlebots.

 

[publiusr]

Hey, I like that

 

[at Quark's]

I was thinking the same thing.
However, Trek has other means of user technology for user identification that go beyond the simple biometric... and it could easily be automated and completely invisible/silent as described.
However, for all we know, majority of those measures ARE indeed used on Federation ships, and as we saw, for shapeshifters, that's easy to fool... but on another note, Federation sensors aren't a slouch so detecting changelings or something that 'mimicks' humans or Federation species dna and other biological markers would have to be a real thing in the confines of that universe.
There are also atomic and subatomic scans (as Trek sensors do operate on that range) that would most certainly identify even minuscule of changes.

If that is true, then why did they need continuous blood screenings to identify shapeshifters in DS9, even on a dedicated warship (and therefore probably with heavily restricted access) like the Defiant whenever they had the suspicion there was one among them?

 

[USS Firefly]

If that is true, then why did they need continuous blood screenings to identify shapeshifters in DS9, even on a dedicated warship (and therefore probably with heavily restricted access) like the Defiant whenever they had the suspicion there was one among them?

I thought It was because Starfleet didn't knew that Changelings could keep blood in their body for the test

 

[Timo]

It should be noted, with an appropriate chuckle, that the blood screening was actually introduced by a Changeling who performed the test on itself...

It was already known to Starfleet that a Changeling could become a plausible rock if it wished. This rather establishes that a tricorder scanning for DNA would be useless against a Changeling. But now comes this seeming Klingon with the news that exploiting the inability of Changeling droplets to hold their illusory shape is a working way to expose them. It's not that the technique sounds plausible (it does) - it's that this Klingon reports success in applying it already!

We don't know if the blood screening fails because the Changelings use borrowed real blood, or simply because there is no truth to the idea that droplets can't hold their shape. The latter could merely be something typically found on infant Changelings; a grown-up, house-trained one might never leak that way.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

If that is true, then why did they need continuous blood screenings to identify shapeshifters in DS9, even on a dedicated warship (and therefore probably with heavily restricted access) like the Defiant whenever they had the suspicion there was one among them?

Because DS9 dumbed down a lot of Federation technological capability.
That ground battle in episode AR whatever... phasers didn't even use wide-beams... even though in early/mid TNG and VOY they were more than capable of doing so. Heck, they even used phaser rifles on wide beams to 'scan' for Odo in DS9.

The writers are simply speaking unable or unwilling to write a decent story that fits the universe and technology in question.

 

[Timo]

They did a pretty good job at AR-558, really. The previous time somebody fought a serious infantry fight with hand phasers, Captain Tracey left the battlefield littered with corpses, so clearly the make-disappear setting isn't useful in war. Tracey also worried about running out of juice - and at AR-558 we see for the very first time a character (indeed every character) worriedly check his or her phaser load status. Okay, there was some of that in ST5:TFF, too, for the extra military verisimilitude which well serves the DS9 episode, too.

Perhaps wide beams are fun and well in the early stages of a fight. What we see here is the tail end of a broken-back scenario, though, with two sides fighting with dwindling resources and without hope of resupply. Every exchange of fire could be your last - but worse still, it might not be, so you have to spare ammo even when you see a likely banzai charge. And indeed the enemy fakes one of those, making the defenders waste their ammo. It's a good thing they don't waste even more of it in wide shots!

The worst single instance of dumbing down the Federation is The Motion Picture. Suddenly we have airlocks, puttering space pods, transit flights and docking maneuvers that take geological ages... But Trek survives that one. And it can survive having the versatile phasers behave differently in pretty much every episode, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Go-Captain]

Years ago I came up with a firing time for a high kill setting (setting 6) based on the time Geordi tests the Romulan Type III knockoff. Someone was nice enough to do the math for me with the assumption of an exponential power consumption curve.

88,571.43 seconds, Setting 6 of 16
1,476.19 seconds, Setting 11 of 16

An exponential fit will give you a fit like this:
T=c*e^(-a*N)
The given numbers give the following fit values:
a=0.82
c=12052449.86

e=the mathetmatical constant e
c=the constant that gets modified by the exponential
a=factor that decides how fast the firing time drops when increasing setting. Higher number means a faster drop.

So the results are thus:

1. 5314287.60 (2 months)
2. 2343229.22
3. 1033200.23
4. 455569.05
5. 200874.10
6. 88571.43 (more than 24 hours)
7. 39053.81
8. 17220.00
9. 7592.81
10. 3347.90
11. 1476.19
12. 650.90
13. 287.00
14. 126.55
15. 55.80
16. 24.60

You can High Stun for almost 12 days straight, but High Vaporize for 24.6 seconds straight. At 1 second per shot (I think it's actually 1.5 s) you only get 24 shots using High Vaporize, so it's no wonder that's a rare setting is most likely used with an expectation of brief combat.

Setting 10 might be around where piercing shots begin, which gets around how easily random materials stop phaser fire, and armor, but balances total fire duration by leaving thousands of shots available. That's assuming carrying spare power cells is undesirable or impractical.

I believe modern soldiers carry 200 rounds, so four batteries and a setting of Mid Vaporize (S15) would be equivalent. In The Siege I believe everyone had been fighting for months and were on their final power cells, so it makes sense they would drop to a Kill setting (S4-6) to make the final power cells last as long as possible.

 

[Timo]

Five months of fighting is insanely good in comparison with today, where five days would really be stretching it with standard firing discipline. And that's for a company, as apparently also in the episode, with a centralized ammo dump available; individual soldiers, squads or platoons would not be expected to fight through a full day with the ammo they carry.

Tracey had fought thousands of Yangs for six months, going through several clips (at least some of this in a corpse-leaving setting); we might postulate the AR-558 team packed spare clips or a reloading generator, and ran out of the former or lost the latter before our heroes arrived.

AR-558 really isn't a problem for us. Every other piece of phaser fighting is: our regular heroes would not expect to be denied a recharge immediately after the exchange of fire. Why don't they vaporize mountains more often, to get better lines of sight? (Or leave phasers to auto-fire on top of a strategically placed rock or stump, like Wes did in "The Game"?)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[at Quark's]

Because DS9 dumbed down a lot of Federation technological capability.

Which Trek series didn't ? A society with the Federation's level of technology could have pushed technology to a far higher degree than they did. Automated starships. Ubiquitous holograms or androids to help out the crew. Even if they were still learning to construct advanced holograms such as the EMH or the androids wouldn't have been up to Data's level, they could have had them for much more menial tasks. Nanotechnology. Supercomputers with artificial intelligence far superior to human baseline to help analyse the strategic situation. To mention just a few examples. And that's not even considering all one-time amazing breakthroughs that were subsequently forgotten about. Purportedly they didn't want to lose the human element but they could have employed their technology far more efficiently.

 

[Deks]

Which Trek series didn't ? A society with the Federation's level of technology could have pushed technology to a far higher degree than they did. Automated starships. Ubiquitous holograms or androids to help out the crew. Even if they were still learning to construct advanced holograms such as the EMH or the androids wouldn't have been up to Data's level, they could have had them for much more menial tasks. Nanotechnology. Supercomputers with artificial intelligence far superior to human baseline to help analyse the strategic situation. To mention just a few examples. And that's not even considering all one-time amazing breakthroughs that were subsequently forgotten about. Purportedly they didn't want to lose the human element but they could have employed their technology far more efficiently.

Exactly my point.
I never said DS9 was the sole offender... other Trek series did that too.
The writers could have put more effort into it and advanced the technology more radically (in line with what both of us mentioned would be appropriate for the UFP) and accommodate the drama/story to FIT with that setting.