An accurate depiction of exploration would probably be pretty dull to watch.
Proper Space Battles
- Thread starter Arpy
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Hours upon hours of people at computers entering data and creating simulations, testing, retesting, and then retesting again.
Is it really? It seems like a question of preferred fantasy. If we're talking about scientific realism, why should we expect lightspeed phasers and FTL torpedoes and "dizzying future-y movement" which are all not possible by known science? And if we're accepting nonexistent technology, the test for realism should be internal consistency rather than our own rules. We have no frame of reference other than the show itself to determine the realistic range and speed of an antimatter warhead, the firing rate of a "disruptor array" or what "impulse" exhaust or a "phaser" explosion look like, or how any of this should interact with "duranium".
Yes. Trek battles generally are "proper" in the script but the visual effects are less so. Ironically the worst offender was probably in TNG, with the description of the Picard Maneuver vs. the depiction of it. Distances are always enormous when mentioned in dialog, but suddenly everything is up close when you see it; and the maneuvers must be "dizzying" indeed if they are enough to strain the inertial dampers, but then you see them steering like ships on water. All manner of "bearings" and "patterns" are described but then you see everything on a plane.
In an episode of Enterprise, they were being pursued by an enemy ship, and Archer asked Mayweather if he could perform some maneuver with a made-up name. Mayweather said he thought so, and the effect then shows the NX-01 doing an Immelman. Probably THE first dogfighting maneuver ever created, in WWI. They had to discuss it like it was unusual? The writers had to make up a sci fi name for it?
In ST:VI, Uhura had to suggest that they modify a torpedo to home in on the BoP's exhaust. Why the hell wouldn't they already have every type of homing/guidance system imaginable on their torpedoes??
Probably because torpedos targeting systems utilize locks from ship scanners, making heat seeking torpedos irrelevant except in this one crazily abnormal case.
Why torpedos are so bad at hitting targets when they are locked on and ships have no counter measures is a different problem....
Why torpedos are so bad at hitting targets when they are locked on and ships have no counter measures is a different problem....
The majority of such episodes would probably take place while the ship is traveling at warp to their next destination. Which actually might be an okay idea for a budget saving character episode. Being set during the warp journey to their destination, that is, not the data processing thing.
Realism is overrated.
Most online arguments seem to consist of people exaggerating the other person's opinion into something extreme and absolute, then criticizing it for that. Anyway...
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Besides ships being far too close to each other in DS9 shots of battles and trips to get to battles... they also seem to be disorganized, random groupings of ships. Wouldn't there be some plan? Wouldn't a large number of the same model ship be sent together in some formation, to accomplish some specific goal? Instead, it seems every ship just shows up separately and randomly, and joins the crowd wherever it can.
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Besides ships being far too close to each other in DS9 shots of battles and trips to get to battles... they also seem to be disorganized, random groupings of ships. Wouldn't there be some plan? Wouldn't a large number of the same model ship be sent together in some formation, to accomplish some specific goal? Instead, it seems every ship just shows up separately and randomly, and joins the crowd wherever it can.
Actually, I want to make Trek utter shit again in every way possible except for space battles. Please don't go there.
I'm aware. Again giving props to TNG for not trying to do something they'd do badly.
This thread has nothing to do with philosophy or themes. I detest war for any number of reasons, not least of which being that I think that, as Isaac Asimov put it, "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
But can we please be adults long enough to see this subject as dispassionately as we would any other? I don't trust bad storytelling in any form, including hackneyed depictions of war.
It's the storyteller's job to make it interesting. It is for the SEAL.
You're suggesting that they're even thinking about internal logic or what any of that would look like. I suggest to you they're only doing what they've done before and are hacks.
They had the sense to keep the dialogue more realistic and if only for budgetary reasons the effects to a minimum. It's far from the egregiousness later on. You could watch and pretend the distances were further apart instead of cheer at how badass your guys were by how close they got to the fire. Plus, ALL the fleet stuff. Even as a kid I thought I was being spoken down to and only found myself pulling away from the cheese.
It's about degrees-of. I think tastes are more sophisticated these days and that calls for a larger dash of realism in the recipe. Think Batman Begins vs. Batman and Robin. Increase the realism and the flavor of the fantasy will taste that much sweeter.
Who's got #18?
And I'm starting to think I need to check out The Expanse.
There are shows that have sub-light combat because faster-than-light travel is done in jumps. Possible realism in anime would be "Legend of the Galactic Heroes" were you have walls of thousands to tens of thousands of ships firing at each other from several light-seconds away from each other at the start of the battle, only getting close hours later if the battle is still going on or the fastest way to the nearest way out of an area is through the enemy fleet. Detection is light-minutes to maybe a light-hour out. There are counter-measures, but they aren't so effective when the enemy just lines up in a three dimensional wall and opens fire at your visible selves. They will eventually hit you just by volume of fire over the entire possible area you could occupy within a square light-second of your last known location.
People use the terrain, be it black holes, stars, gas giants, some dangerous phenomenon between the arms of the galaxy, to their advantage in combat. Even something simple like igniting the hydrogen in a gas giant to disrupt or destroy an enemy formation hiding in the clouds, or using the event horizon of a black hole to throw off the aim of your enemy and make it so they can't flank you without getting pulled in themselves. Or causing Solar flares in proto stars to trap or destroy enemy ships while fighting near a nebula.
People use the terrain, be it black holes, stars, gas giants, some dangerous phenomenon between the arms of the galaxy, to their advantage in combat. Even something simple like igniting the hydrogen in a gas giant to disrupt or destroy an enemy formation hiding in the clouds, or using the event horizon of a black hole to throw off the aim of your enemy and make it so they can't flank you without getting pulled in themselves. Or causing Solar flares in proto stars to trap or destroy enemy ships while fighting near a nebula.
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No I'm not, read that again: I'm suggesting that your criticism should be be of inconsistency, rather than of failing to meet your arbitrary preferences that have nothing to do with realism.
But it did work in that one case, how is that irrelevant? It beggars belief that any possible emission from a cloaked ship had been left untried.
Because no other cloaked ship in Trek can fire while cloaked. Somehow the technology was lost and not reinvented. So why store a complement of gas seeking torpedos on ships with limited storage in deep space when only 1 such torpedo has ever been needed in the 250 years between Archer and Nemesis?
If Starfleet was out there at war with an enemy using cloaked vessels and launching pre-emptive strikes against them then, yeah, they'd come in handy - assuming that nobody using cloaked ships thought "Maybe we should hide our ionized gas trail?" and assuming there was no other ship nearby that the torpedo might look into and hit instead (like civilians or allies..) making the situations you could use it in fairly limited.
The whole gas seeking torpedo is a flawed solution in TUC. It really doesn't make sense if you think about it. Hiding or at least dispersing the gas trail should be part of cloaking technology already. The idea that Starfleet ship sensors can't detect it, but a little do dad they can attach in a minute to a torpedo can, and that capability was never added to Starfleet ships is silly.
The whole thing makes cloaks useless. Which is likely why its never mentioned again in Trek. Like so many other franchise breaking moments.
But it has nothing to do with firing; the way Spock put it, the "trail" was a product of the impulse engines. So any time the cloaked ship is moving, it's leaving that trail. That would make it potentially useful whenever dealing with a cloaked ship. Why wait for it to uncloak and fire if you don't have to?
Yeah, that's what I was saying.
Because Starfleet doesn't fire preemptively on unidentified vessels. They, like everyone else, have their rules of engagement and they don't include blowing up cloaked vessels just because they are cloaked.
But suppose a Starfleet ship is preemptively fired upon by a vessel that then cloaks itself. Would it not be self defense to return fire and try to hit the cloaked opponent?
Can you point to that ever happening in Trek? My memory of ship to ship battles wa that once uncloaked to fire, the ship doesn't have time to recloak before an enemy targeting sensors picks it up, which is why they raise shields for protection.
Then there is still the issue of your torpedo targeting nearby civilian or friendly vessels since it's based only on gas emissions.
Be pretty shitty if the Enterprise accidentally blew up the Defiant.
Or the Yorktown blew up allied Birds of Prey.
Or the Conestoga blew up a ship of refugees fleeing an attack by a cloaked shio.
Then there is still the issue of your torpedo targeting nearby civilian or friendly vessels since it's based only on gas emissions.
Be pretty shitty if the Enterprise accidentally blew up the Defiant.
Or the Yorktown blew up allied Birds of Prey.
Or the Conestoga blew up a ship of refugees fleeing an attack by a cloaked shio.
Yeah, "Balance of Terror." Pretty much the whole episode is about Enterprise not being able to target the Romulan ship that has fired upon it.
That problem would be simple to avoid. There's no reason to assume the gas trail would be the only input the torpedo would use to find its target, other sensor data could be used to determine friend or foe.
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