How hard is it to fly a starship (of another type or even from another species than you're used to)?

[at Quark's]

Got thinking about this one after rewatching Voyager's Basics.

The ship is taken over by Kazon crew (typically not your most sophisticated people), and they have no trouble at all flying it, not even with landing on a planet - probably one of Voyagers more 'difficult' features. So is flying Voyager ridiculously easy, everything automated to a high degree (and if so, why do they still value good pilots so highly)? Or did they painstakingly prepare and train for this offscreen?

We see this more often in Voyager, alien crews such as the Nyrians taking over Voyager or Voyager crew flying other starships usually don't have too much trouble (save for sabotage and such, of course).

On the other hand, the EMH has considerable difficulties figuring out the controls in Message in a Bottle on a new starship type, though he eventually manages to some degree. But he never had piloting lessons in anything larger than a shuttle.

So, is the hard part acquiring general piloting skills for large and sophisticated craft, after which 'switching' between starships of diferent types (or even from different races) becomes much easier, or are they just omitting all boring training hours from the episodes?

(and perhaps a parallel to today: how hard would it be for an accomplished and very experienced pilot of one large aircraft type to fly another large aircraft of very different design without adequate training for that type?)

 

[ALF]

Maybe there are user manuals left in the glove compartment?

 

[Mr Soak]

The EMH forgot to activate Clippy. “Looks like you are having trouble flying this starship. Would you like help with that?”

 

[Tenacity]

The ship is taken over by Kazon crew (typically not your most sophisticated people)

Don't get you here. The Kazon might have a strange social order, but they operate starships that can maintain pace with one of the fastest ships in Starfleet.

They obviously are technically sophisticated.

On the other hand, the EMH has considerable difficulties ...

Not a Academy graduate, not what he was programmed for.

 

[at Quark's]

Don't get you here. The Kazon might have a strange social order, but they operate starships that can maintain pace with one of the fastest ships in Starfleet.

They obviously are technically sophisticated.

They are not total primitives, of course, but I always got the idea that their technology level was meant to be distinctly lower than that of Starfleet.

First off, they didn't design their own ships, but stole them from the Trabe. So they might not even be capable of designing their own ships (much less improve on them), just maintaining them (and perhaps building new ones of the types they already have).

Apparently, the Kazon regard Voyager as a technological prize trophy. This is confirmed by Culluh himself, when he tries to entice other Kazon faction leaders: "There is a ship filled with new technology. Devices that can make food, water, even weapons appear out of thin air. A computer system which uses neural tissue that can react twice as fast as ours."

Tuvok somewhere states that 'even with our superior defence capabilities, we cannot prevail against three Kazon warships.' While this tells us the Kazon would win in a 3:1 advantage, they most certainly would not in a 1:1 situation. It's not for nothing the Kazon sent small fleets to capture Voyager, and even then relied on the 'inside information' provided by Seska and Jonas. And Voyager isn't even designed as a warship, it is only a long-range explorer, allbeit adequately armed.

Seska complains to the EMH about the primitive state of Kazon medicine.

Seven of nine describes the Kazon as 'technologically and biologically unremarkable, unworthy of assimilation'. The Borg certainly seem willing to assimilate Earth (to some extent).

I'm not sure there is direct evidence for your remark that they operate starships that can maintain pace with an undamaged Voyager, if voyager really goes into high speed cruise mode-- except of course for the fact that they keep running into them for a long time, 2 years. But for that, there could be other explanations too.

All of this leads me to conclude that the Kazon really were only a threat to Voyager because they had overwhelming numbers on their side. But I'll agree that large part of it is open to interpretation, and seeing what one wants to see in the source material, so I might have a distorted view.

 

[Stephen!]

or Voyager crew flying other starships usually don't have too much trouble (save for sabotage and such, of course).

Whereas in "One Little Ship", Sisko mentions that it took his crew a week just to learn how to fly a Jem'Hadar ship.

 

[at Quark's]

Whereas in "One Little Ship", Sisko mentions that it took his crew a week just to learn how to fly a Jem'Hadar ship.

True. Though I always figured that was also due to the Dominion having very different (design) philosophies, for example, only allowing the Vorta and the First access to watch what is happening outside the ship….

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Perhaps the Kazon lack the infrastructure to build their own ships on a large scale. Or perhaps while they can understand a ship, they lack the imagination to build their own.

 

[F. King Daniel]

From all evidence: It's really easy.

And it's weird how all the alien ships have compatible docking systems in Enterprise.

 

[Mojochi]

I'd think the basic flight/locomotion dynamics probably conform similarly, once you get past the bells & whistles. I imagine Starfleet, would by design, keep things fairly simple. What reason would they have to do otherwise. It's not like they're...

Whereas in "One Little Ship", Sisko mentions that it took his crew a week just to learn how to fly a Jem'Hadar ship.

Which I'd think might be deliberate. For someone who's so frequently in hostile conflict, it might be sensible to make commandeering your vessel as difficult as possible. Whereas Starfleet, as per the usual, doesn't think along those lines, or at least doesn't consider it as imminent a concern

 

[The Wormhole]

Don't get you here. The Kazon might have a strange social order, but they operate starships that can maintain pace with one of the fastest ships in Starfleet.

They obviously are technically sophisticated.

The Kazon are the one race the Borg refuse to assimilate, on the grounds of being too primitive.

 

[Deks]

Starfleet seems to design their ships with ease of use in mind - but I also doubt even SF would allow aliens to easily take over their ships.
That said, most things on a ship would HAVE to be automated.
Heck, one person with an operational computer could easily do that by issuing verbal commands (and a million other things could be done in this fashion).

I imagine that one of the aspects of using people is the purpose to explore and to keep themselves well trained in the technologies they operate... which is fine, but it can also be done differently, and with higher use of automation (for example, crew response times can be extremely pitiful in threatening situations - whereas we've seen the Enterprise-D automatically raising shields upon detecting an unidentified anomaly or something else that could be of 'potentially threatening nature').

In fact, we've likely seen situations in which the computer feeds info to the crew, but the crew simply doesn't have the knowledge to understand it... probably because the Federation database is ridiculously massive/comprehensive in its composition of data, and yet, the crew (even highly specialized) can only retain a fraction of the ever evolving knowledge that keeps increasing on a daily basis.
In a society like the Federation, no organic being would literally be able to keep up.

As for the Kazon... they had the benefit of Seska's intimate knowledge of SF tactics, computer systems, not to mention Cardassian technology and Maqui tactics to rely upon.

Though, in fairness, some of Voyager's writers never really thought things through (such as when Borg managed to assimilate Tuvok and then Borg gaining access to Voyager's access codes - Chakotay and the crew never changed them, as is standard procedure).