Spoilers New season 3 badges

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I refuse to believe these comm badges are also tricorders, PADDs, and personal transporters. A cool concept, but absolutely ludicrous. The computational power, as well as the energy needed to break a body down and reconstruct it, not just once, but numerous times in succession, housed in that little metal oval, really stretches credulity. Even by Trek standards. Flame me if you must, but also give me some hypnotically convincing technobabble to sell how it works. Please!

My issue isn't that TriComBadge integrates multiple functions:
Comunicator <- Seen in TNG Era
Tricorder <- The Tricorders Hand Held Sensor was fairly tiny, 800 years of innovation can fit the sensor into a tiny foot print.
Real Life miniaturization of sensors has already happened, see SmartPhone tech and all of it's sensors. Range is still limited.
Holographic UI Projector and Gesture sensor <- Holographic Projection should be at that point by 32nd Century
PADD <- is just a Tablet / Small Computer interface, replaced by the Holographic UI
Personal Transporter <- If it's just remote accessing the Ships Transporter and giving it commands, I have no issue.

If it's functioning at super long ranges WITHOUT the Ship or a Full Blown StarShip level Transporter, then I call BS.

The power to transport that far from Orbit to Planet without the backing of a StarShip level Transporter breaks the immersion factor.

The Emergency Transporter Unit from ST:NEM had a range of tens to hundreds of meters only and it was one way, but even with 32nd century tech, I can only see the Transport of up to 100 km at most for total distance transported given how tiny the energy supply is.

But that's more than enough for local spelunking.

Even if it was a "Folded-Space" transporter, there has to be some practical limit without a larger power source.

Personally, I think "Folded-Space" transporter would be a easier method of teleportation since you don't have to break down the target at a molecular level and reassemble them to move somebody or something. I'm sure they've come up with a solution to protect against cellular damage by the 32nd century.

 

[NCC-73515]

So what is Linus doing wrong?

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He seems to get home each time, but can't reach the right single-tap destinations. Maybe he can't see the interface properly with his giant eyes.

I refuse to believe these comm badges are also tricorders, PADDs, and personal transporters. A cool concept, but absolutely ludicrous. The computational power, as well as the energy needed to break a body down and reconstruct it, not just once, but numerous times in succession, housed in that little metal oval, really stretches credulity. Even by Trek standards. Flame me if you must, but also give me some hypnotically convincing technobabble to sell how it works. Please!

The only thing they can't handle is getting stepped on.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

He seems to get home each time, but can't reach the right single-tap destinations. Maybe he can't see the interface properly with his giant eyes.


The only thing they can't handle is getting stepped on.

The transporter option doesn't appear to have a visible interface, but I like the way you think.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I refuse to believe these comm badges are also tricorders, PADDs, and personal transporters. A cool concept, but absolutely ludicrous. The computational power, as well as the energy needed to break a body down and reconstruct it, not just once, but numerous times in succession, housed in that little metal oval, really stretches credulity. Even by Trek standards. Flame me if you must, but also give me some hypnotically convincing technobabble to sell how it works. Please!

What if I told you my phone is also a computer and a camera and I can watch movies and TV on it?

 

[fireproof78]

The only thing they can't handle is getting stepped on.

So, it's an Apple product.

What if I told you my phone is also a computer and a camera and I can watch movies and TV on it?

Are you a wizard?

 

[Nerys Myk]

So, it's an Apple product.

Are you a wizard?

It's also small enough to fit in my pocket!

 

[Blue Squadron]

While we're doing Apple jokes, here's one more thing...

I guess this really should be the final version of my drawings:

I haven't included the rather odd design for Fleet Captain as I'm presenting it here with a couple of the more obvious alternatives:

I just don't get the "official" version with the gold base and two black pips between two gold pips. It just makes no sense to me.

I tried drawing a few potential alternatives that would fit more obviously between Captain (silver base / four gold pips) and Commodore (gold base / one gold pip):

- The first was the flag officer style with the gold base but no pips -- that works but it's a bit bland.

- The second was gold base with a single pip, like Commodore, but making the pip either black or silver to differentiate the role -- that also works but somehow wasn't quite right and it occurred to me that if you were changing the colour of the pips then, actually, a Fleet Captain should keep the four pips of a Captain but simply reverse the colours have the pips in silver (to differentiate from flag officers) and the base in gold (to indicate seniority to other captains). I also guess that a fleet captain would wear standard uniform rather than flag officer uniform so confusion with a full four-pip admiral shouldn't be a problem.

- The final version, and perhaps the most obvious, was to just keep the normal silver base of all non-flag officers but use five pips instead of the usual four pips for Captain. Again, this would be on a standard uniform so confusion with the five-pip Fleet Admiral should not be a problem.

I was kinda surprised that they actually created a badge for Fleet Captain but in some ways it's kinda nice to see too. I can't imagine it ever actually appearing in the show (unless someone really wants to write an episode that deliberately includes a Fleet Captain...!). Let's hope they consider amending the design before that happens!



** EDIT **
Images updated to correct the positions of the pips on the flag officer badges (see posts below).

 

[Deks]

I refuse to believe these comm badges are also tricorders, PADDs, and personal transporters. A cool concept, but absolutely ludicrous. The computational power, as well as the energy needed to break a body down and reconstruct it, not just once, but numerous times in succession, housed in that little metal oval, really stretches credulity. Even by Trek standards. Flame me if you must, but also give me some hypnotically convincing technobabble to sell how it works. Please!

Ok.
In just a few decades, humanity in real life has put the telephone, the camera, scanning machine, microphone, and a whole bunch of other technologies that used to be 'separate' (and big) into a smartphone that fits inside a pocket and has a battery that can last 1 or 2 days with moderate use - that's a few decades... and science and technology advance at an exponential pace with the law of accelerating returns.

The Federation had 930 years (and the benefit of 350 alien species cooperating and sharing knowledge/resources/science and technology to minimize these things and put them into a badge - which probably happened around the 30th century).
Also, we know from the Na'Khul that the 31st century has power cells the size of a coin (and these would probably be an equivalent to a starship from the 24th century in regards to energy density/capacity... or 27th/28th at most given the laws of accelerating returns - to be fair, with laws of accelerating returns, they'd be FAR more advanced than that by the 31st century - but this was not really portrayed in Trek because they would have also included Transwarp beaming into the badge with a galaxy-wide range at least).

Although, to have all of this in a badge (while certainly neat) is a bit of a security risk.
If someone takes away the badge, all your technology is gone.
It would have been far better if all of this was part of their uniforms (there's plenty of surface space there to spread the technology around), or integrated inside their skin like a second layer that's coded to their biology and spread throughout the entire surface area - such as networking a whole bunch of technology over and over again to vastly increase their range/capabilities, etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if that's 31st century technology (not 32nd) because from what we saw, advancement seems to have ceased when the Burn happened... and Starfleet is using same ship designs as from when the Burn occurred (which granted doesn't say much because programmable matter can probably make any starship [no matter how old] perpetually upgraded with latest technology).

 

[Deks]

Personally, I think "Folded-Space" transporter would be a easier method of teleportation since you don't have to break down the target at a molecular level and reassemble them to move somebody or something. I'm sure they've come up with a solution to protect against cellular damage by the 32nd century.

I would think so to...
But then again, I would have thought that Transwarp beaming would be a thing by now with these badges and an ability to beam across the galaxy given the laws of accelerating returns... but alas, Trek writers don't have a good grasp to portray this that well.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I would think so to...
But then again, I would have thought that Transwarp beaming would be a thing by now with these badges and an ability to beam across the galaxy given the laws of accelerating returns... but alas, Trek writers don't have a good grasp to portray this that well.

Some random alien ship flies by at warp at the perfect time and scrambles your Transwarp beaming signal and your matter stream is LITERALLY lost to the ether.

I wouldn't want to be the sucker who gets hit with that.

Warp Field drives do "Warp Subspace" or Space Folding drives "Fold Subspace".

Your Matter/Data Stream getting lost because you wanted to travel several light years via Transwarp beaming because some random alien ship flew by at FTL either cloaked or uncloaked with no affiliation to you or your STC (Space Traffic Control).

I don't want to risk that, not worth it IMO.

I'll gladly take StarShip travel and just beam down from orbit, less chance of interference to scramble my Transporter signal.

 

[fireproof78]

Plus the whole genetic damage that was associate with a similar type of beaming.

 

[Deks]

Some random alien ship flies by at warp at the perfect time and scrambles your Transwarp beaming signal and your matter stream is LITERALLY lost to the ether.

I wouldn't want to be the sucker who gets hit with that.

Warp Field drives do "Warp Subspace" or Space Folding drives "Fold Subspace".

Your Matter/Data Stream getting lost because you wanted to travel several light years via Transwarp beaming because some random alien ship flew by at FTL either cloaked or uncloaked with no affiliation to you or your STC (Space Traffic Control).

I don't want to risk that, not worth it IMO.

I'll gladly take StarShip travel and just beam down from orbit, less chance of interference to scramble my Transporter signal.

TW beaming would likely operate on different bandwidths compared to Warp drives or even TW drives used on starships, therefore, one wouldn't affect the other. There are MANY different subspace domains one can reserve for TW beaming - one that isn't accessed by ships that do Warp or TW (or Slipstream or anything else).
Its also excessively unlikely for a situation like yours to actually occur given the size of the galaxy.

 

[Deks]

Plus the whole genetic damage that was associate with a similar type of beaming.

Likely this was a problem to which a solution was found by the 32nd century (or so you'd think).
Maybe the personal transporters ARE subspace transporters (and most of the other species who use personal transporters don't have access to that technology due to the Burn as SF was primarily using it).

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

TW beaming would likely operate on different bandwidths compared to Warp drives or even TW drives used on starships, therefore, one wouldn't affect the other. There are MANY different subspace domains one can reserve for TW beaming - one that isn't accessed by ships that do Warp or TW (or Slipstream or anything else).
Its also excessively unlikely for a situation like yours to actually occur given the size of the galaxy.

Can you gurantee that "non-Federation" members will follow your regulation in any way shape or form?

I doubt it, they're going to operate on whatever layer of Subspace they wish.

And we know that there are plenty of species with "Cloaking" that can travel at warp and remain cloaked.

I don't want to risk my Transporter signal integrity by shunting my Matter & Data stream across Subspace when you don't have absolute control or minimize the risk by doing traditional Transmission from Orbit to Planet and vice versa over normal space.

If you're transporting inanimate goods that have no risk of "Life & Limb", I wouldn't care.

But I'm not risking a Sentient & Sapient being over a situation you can easily avoid.

 

[NCC-73515]

While we're doing Apple jokes, here's one more thing...

I guess this really should be the final version of my drawings:

The flag officer pins start one position further down, at the right spike of the arrowhead

 

[fireproof78]

or so you'd think).

Not immediately. Especially if the fix was genetic modification.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

I refuse to believe these comm badges are also tricorders, PADDs, and personal transporters. A cool concept, but absolutely ludicrous. The computational power, as well as the energy needed to break a body down and reconstruct it, not just once, but numerous times in succession, housed in that little metal oval, really stretches credulity. Even by Trek standards. Flame me if you must, but also give me some hypnotically convincing technobabble to sell how it works. Please!

This show just can't win. People are complaining that the 32nd century isn't advanced enough. Then when they show us advanced tech it's too advanced and stretches credibility. Ffs seriously. Tricombadges are no more far fetched than humans being able to have children with aliens or warp travel or the half million other things trek asks us to accept.

 

[Nerys Myk]

This show just can't win. People are complaining that the 32nd century isn't advanced enough. Then when they show us advanced tech it's too advanced and stretches credibility. Ffs seriously. Tricombadges are no more far fetched than humans being able to have children with aliens or warp travel or the half million other things trek asks us to accept.

Or warp travel causing humans to have alien babies .

 

[Blue Squadron]

The flag officer pins start one position further down, at the right spike of the arrowhead

Yes, they do! I spotted it but then forgot to make the changes before exporting the images -- bah!

I totally understand why they did it in order to fit in the five pips for Fleet Admiral but I'm not sure why they needed to start so low for the one- to three-pip ranks. The Commodore badge in particular looks very odd with the pip that low.


I guess you could argue that it makes the Flag Officer pips visually distinct -- but, frankly, there is nothing that is visually distinct about these badges...!



** EDIT **
Rather than add yet another post, I have changed the previous post to replace the images so they now have the flag officer pips in the correct positions. Thanks, NCC-73515

 

[Lakenheath 72]

My issue with the tricom can be summed up with a famous proverb:

I heard how the tricom works, except in the one area which matters. How does it work as a communicator? What gesture activates that function?