Spoilers NCC-1701-A (alternate timeline) Capabilities Wish List

[WarpFactorZ]

Again, you're assuming Enterprise WOULD have been destroyed if the fight had dragged on. You don't know that, and neither does Nero. PIKE thought so, but he probably would have been wrong.

Um.... Just one of Nero's torpedoes knocked the Enterprise's shields down to 32%. You can bet the next one would have done some serious damage, and the one after that.... Nero's nonchalant "Destroy it too!" comment seems to suggest he wasn't really worried about a fight (which is compounded even more by his "Holy shit! STOP!!" reaction to seeing the name on the hull).

OTOH, the Battle of Vulcan is a case of Nero outsmarting Starfleet; 8 starships against the Narada wouldn't have been so one-sided if they'd known what they were warping into,

Riiiight..... I'm sure that would have made all the difference. What about the 47 Klingon warbirds? They were all caught off guard too?

You are purposefully underestimating Nero's weapons (over 100 years more advanced) to keep this argument on life support. Pull the plug.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I would also like to add the possibility of a Skycrane-like shuttle, which could carry a number of pods. These pods could include passenger bays (eliminating the need for other types of shuttles), science labs, vehicles, space mines, reconnaissance equipment, etc.

Something like this?

Finally, if the Enterprise is going to rely on its science to get out of situations, then it will need better facilities to produce useful equipment from that science. It should ideally have a full Industrial Replicator on board

I'm pretty sure it already does. It's implied that most of the machinery in the engineering section (the Brewery in particular) is actually the support machinery for a vast manufacturing complex the Enterprise uses to manufacture all of the food and equipment for the crew. It's not as compact as it was in the 24th century, but it should have most of the same capabilities.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Um.... Just one of Nero's torpedoes knocked the Enterprise's shields down to 32%...

And two of them put Kelvin's shields down to 9%. And the third took its shields down altogether.

But the fourth didn't destroy it. Neither did the fifth. Or the sixth. Or the twelfth. Narada's torpedoes being "powerful" describes their capacity to penetrate shields and screw up things like warp drive and long-range communications; their actual destructive power isn't much greater than a standard photon torpedo.

Kelvin hung in a fight with the Narada for almost five minutes before Kirk went on his kamikaze run and for most of that time the crew was busily abandoning their posts. Deleted scenes and story logic have it that Kelvin actually CRIPPLED the Narada through those actions. A fight between the Enterprise and the Narada would have been fairly interesting, especially once Enterprise actually caught its balance and got into the fight for real. And of course, if it came down to it, Pike knows better than anyone that RAMMING the Narada is a viable option here. So while it's far from clear if Enterprise could have actually won that fight, we also know it would have been a very costly victory for Nero.

Nero's nonchalant "Destroy it too!" comment seems to suggest he wasn't really worried about a fight..

He shouldn't have been. He thought he was shooting at an unshielded vessel that had no idea he was even here and was completely unprepared to defend itself. As it stands, it took Enterprise a few seconds to get its weapons ready; if Kirk hadn't warned them, they would have taken three torpedoes before they even had their shields up.

Riiiight..... I'm sure that would have made all the difference. What about the 47 Klingon warbirds?

What about em? One torpedo each would be more than enough, even assuming they had been FIGHTING the Narada rather than (as is more likely) bombed in their ports while their crews were trying to scramble.

You are purposefully underestimating Nero's weapons

There's no need for estimation. We saw what happens when Nero fights an early 23rd century starship toe-to-toe. He didn't lose, but it didn't end very well for him.

Enterprise is a larger, more powerful and more advanced ship than the Kelvin which also demonstrates the capacity to completely intercept what's left of Nero's arsenal (he blows his entire wad shooting at Spock) at the end of the film. Nero STILL wouldn't have lost, but he definitely wouldn't have won.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

their actual destructive power isn't much greater than a standard photon torpedo.

Conjecture. You don't know that for a fact. Given Sulu's comment "Their weapons are powerful, Sir, we can't take another hit like that!", I would question the structural integrity of those Federation starships if they buckle just as quickly from 23 century photon torpedoes.

Kelvin hung in a fight with the Narada for almost five minutes before Kirk went on his kamikaze run and for most of that time the crew was busily abandoning their posts....

That's because the Narada started shooting at the shuttles. And the Kelvin's critical systems were already failing across the board. Face it, she hung in for 5 minutes by virtue of the speed of plot, not the strength of the vessel.

There's no need for estimation. We saw what happens when Nero fights an early 23rd century starship toe-to-toe. He didn't lose, but it didn't end very well for him.

It didn't end well for the 23rd century starship, either.

Anyway, you've contradicted yourself numerous times here. On one hand, you claim "one torpedo each oughta do it" to destroy unshielded vessels (warbirds, the first 7 Fed. ships to arrive at Vulcan). On the other, you claim that a ship can hold off the Narada only by virtue of firing back -- EVEN IF THEIR SHIELDS ARE GONE. That makes no sense. Unless the ships are shooting at the torpedoes -- and hitting each and every one -- the unshielded Federation starship is toast.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Conjecture. You don't know that for a fact. Given Sulu's comment "Their weapons are powerful, Sir, we can't take another hit like that!", I would question the structural integrity of those Federation starships if they buckle just as quickly from 23 century photon torpedoes.

And yet we can SEE the effects of Nero's weapons and we have direct points of comparison to standard photon torpedoes. Their explosive effects VISIBLY correlate very closely with standard photon torpedoes and phaser strikes; a direct hit against the Kelvin's hull produces a ten foot hull breach through which at least one crewmember is blown into vacuum, and yet the explosion itself doesn't kill that officer beforehand. This seems equally true of Enterprise, which experiences blast damage directly at the impact site but suffers no other ill effects otherwise.

So there's nothing really exotic or unusual about Nero's torpedoes except for the fact that they pack MANY different warheads into a single shot, and it's entirely possible that this feature ALONE is what makes them so damaging to deflector shields.

That's because the Narada started shooting at the shuttles.

The shuttles hadn't even started launching until three and a half minutes into the battle. That Kelvin survived long enough to launch them at all is pretty revealing.

And the Kelvin's critical systems were already failing across the board. Face it, she hung in for 5 minutes by virtue of the speed of plot, not the strength of the vessel.

You're not honestly going to try and claim that THE ENTERPRISE, of all ships in Starfleet, isn't similarly equipped with Hero Shields and a Speed of Plot Drive, are you? I think on some level you know good and damn well that if Enterprise had decided to fight it out with the Narada, both the accuracy and the destructive power of Nero's torpedoes would experience a sudden and anomalous decline in effectiveness.

But we're talking IN UNIVERSE, and a direct comparison of Enterprise to Kelvin is worth making. Kelvin lasted long enough against Narada to make a fight of it; there is no room for a conjecture that Enterprise wouldn't have lasted at least as long, especially considering that in the final scene of the film Enterprise is seen to intercept 27 torpedoes in under 12 seconds.

Anyway, you've contradicted yourself numerous times here. On one hand, you claim "one torpedo each oughta do it" to destroy unshielded vessels (warbirds, the first 7 Fed. ships to arrive at Vulcan)

Enough to destroy a Klingon ship, yes. That's not that impressive; Khan managed shot down three of them with his portable BFG, so Nero's torpedoes could be dollar-store merculite rockets (maybe even the same kind that Korris used to destroy a Klingon warship in "Heart of Glory") and have the same effect.

The Federation ships probably took 9 or 10 torpedoes each, assuming of course that Nero even bothered to shoot down ALL of them rather than just smash the first three of them with a torpedo barrage and then watch the others slam into the debris field like a starship-sized train wreck.

 

[AJE]

Something like this?

Exactly, a Runabout like that would be a perfect shuttle (and I still don't know why the Federation didn't replace their shuttles with Runabouts like that in the first place).

I'm pretty sure it already does. It's implied that most of the machinery in the engineering section (the Brewery in particular) is actually the support machinery for a vast manufacturing complex the Enterprise uses to manufacture all of the food and equipment for the crew. It's not as compact as it was in the 24th century, but it should have most of the same capabilities.

If it's sufficient to produce whatever equipment or modifications (including modifications to the entire ship) the science and engineering crew can come up with, then that's fine.

I also have to ask, is Science Officer 0718 a "dumb" enough AI to be considered expendable? If he's smart enough, then he'll be granted the same rights as other sentient beings like Data. That would preclude mass-producing units like him, and it would also make losing one just as great a loss as if it were a living crew member. They also would likely require some form of entertainment, leisure, and living space like the rest of the crew, which would take away most of the advantages of robots to augment the crew.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I also have to ask, is Science Officer 0718 a "dumb" enough AI to be considered expendable? If he's smart enough, then he'll be granted the same rights as other sentient beings like Data.

No to the first question, because technically he's not fully sentient. He's of the same cognitive class of some of the other androids Kirk argued to death in TOS like Doctor Corby or Norman1. He definitely won't be granted rights like Data or the Doctor, but considering there's only one of him and considering it would be resource-intensive to build another, he's probably not all that expendable either.

They also would likely require some form of entertainment, leisure, and living space like the rest of the crew, which would take away most of the advantages of robots to augment the crew.

0718 seemed easily entertained enough. He seemed to spend most of his time hanging out in the arboretum or people-watching on the recreation deck. IOW, he'd need no more entertainment than the rest of the crew, though probably quite a bit less.

Better to think of it like the Synthetics from the Alien franchise. Artificial humans who have fully articulated personalities and duties, but are basically considered hardware, and fully recognize this aspect of their existence as a matter of course.

 

[AJE]

No to the first question, because technically he's not fully sentient. He's of the same cognitive class of some of the other androids Kirk argued to death in TOS like Doctor Corby or Norman1. He definitely won't be granted rights like Data or the Doctor, but considering there's only one of him and considering it would be resource-intensive to build another, he's probably not all that expendable either.

Better to think of it like the Synthetics from the Alien franchise. Artificial humans who have fully articulated personalities and duties, but are basically considered hardware, and fully recognize this aspect of their existence as a matter of course.

In that case, there's still a use for something like the General Utility Androids from Andromeda. They're just intelligent enough to do menial tasks like guarding or maintenance, but simple enough to be expendable, easily built, and able to be switched off and stored just like any other cargo when not in use. Krall's alien drones seem capable of that much, so they shouldn't need much (if any) modification to fill that role once Starfleet reverse-engineers them.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Reverse engineering isn't really the issue. Starfleet is more than capable of building robots like that using existing technology (the cop that pulls over Young James Kirk in ST09 may or may not have been one example of this). There are practical reasons why those aren't in use on starships, though (or are they?) and that's a whole different can of worms. The most obvious reason is the fact that MOST away missions actually have a very low risk of injury or combat and are conducted as part of a scientific mission, which pretty much requires a human presence one way or the other.

A similar question poses itself from Star Wars, as to why the Empire would go through the time and expense of training a massive army of storm troopers when they could just crank out legions of battle droids like the CIS did years earlier. Evidently the storm troopers are just way better soldiers than the droids and pound for pound more effective overall (probably more agile, show more initiative, and less expensive to train to a higher level of proficiency). Even in the real world, there are practical limitations to what you can do with robotic units that are important enough that using humans is still the easier solution.

 

[publiusr]

Something like this?


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So that's the new Eagle...