Redemption & tachyon detection grid

[Mytran]

Given the Needlessly Complicated nature of Shinzon's scheme, not to mention the bizarre gaps in logic and common sense that he displayed throughout (keeping Picard waiting while his terminal condition worsened, being unwilling to rule the empire once he took over as ruler etc), having him as a patsy for some mysterious higher conspirator makes a lot of sense to me.

I would like to think that the absurdly strong positronic signal is unique to B4, otherwise why wouldn't the Rommies have shot Data down in outer space during his Superman dive?

 

[Timo]

The dive from the E-E to the Scimitar? I don't think anybody on the wrecked Reman ship would have possessed the firepower or the situational awareness to do anything about it.

But yes, whoever wanted Shinzon to take the risks and the blame in removing the previous government of Romulus clearly managed to find the correct individual: Shinzon showed no interest in ruling. He did appear to have some sort of a manifesto, which he quotes to Picard over that cup of tea, but probably that was ghost-written for him, too - he didn't care about Remans, he cared about a) Picard and b) Earth. For what reason, we never satisfactorily found out, but there you have it.

ST:NEM seems to establish that it wouldn't be difficult for Romulans to defeat whatever tachyon grids the UFP has in place. "Face of the Enemy" already showed the Romulans operating on the wrong side of the RNZ with impunity, the unfortunate presence of the E-D being the actual factor that hastened their exposure. It's not that the grid wouldn't be effective: it's that it doesn't appear to cover any of the locations visited. Which is only natural even if the "Redemption" grid were lightyears across, and inevitable if said grid were mere AUs in diameter: proper scaleup would involve millions of starships or other nodes even in the best of cases.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Anwar]

It's possible that the Detection Grid the ships were generating was being amplified by reflecting it among all the Fed ships present creating a 3-D detection sphere that was simply too big for the Romulans to fly around/over/under.

 

[Vanyel]

How did Sela learn that Data was on that ship?

A Tal Shiar agent at the base that Picard collected his fleet from could have given them who command what ships, but not exactly what they were doing.

I still say that the Klingon's massive attack on the Duras' was focused on a single star system which would allow Picard's fleet to surround the system effectively cutting it off, forcing the Romulans to try to run the blockade. When the Romulans disabled the grid, Picard may have pulled the fleet in closer to the system or even inside it.

 

[Praxius]

One also has to consider that the grid we see in the show is displayed on a 2D display system.

^ To me, this looks pretty 3D to me, based on the connecting lines.

And looking to the left on the grid, you have a red dot, which would probably be a planet. The grid appears to be quite large and "Going Around" it would probably either take a long time and/or force the Romulan ships to enter conflict zones with active battles and thus, risk being exposed just as easily as flying through the grid.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

One also has to consider that the grid we see in the show is displayed on a 2D display system.

^ To me, this looks pretty 3D to me, based on the connecting lines.

And looking to the left on the grid, you have a red dot, which would probably be a planet. The grid appears to be quite large and "Going Around" it would probably either take a long time and/or force the Romulan ships to enter conflict zones with active battles and thus, risk being exposed just as easily as flying through the grid.

So, as pointed out specifically by Timo just upthread and as already understood by lots of others also posting in thread, the Okudagram here is bogus. You can get an idea of the scale of the net according to the Okudagram, from the fact that dialog says, "The net is no longer effective in a radius of ten million kilometres around the Sutherland." You see how the hole shown in the net in the Okudagram implies the overall size of the net by extrapolation? Many people in thread have already pointed out how the net's indicated size is many orders of magnitude too small to be effective against ships that can fly at FTL, including me.

 

[Timo]

There's one way to make this work as displayed that we have overlooked so far. Even a small 3D net will do its job if it is put where it matters the most - around the Romulans!

Why make the net 3D when it's supposed to guard a 2D border surface? Placing two ships "behind each other" will only waste precious resources there. But if Picard in fact throws his net around the most likely location of the Romulan convoy, then he can both catch them if they try to help the Duras forces, and verify if they agree to withdraw.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

Why are some of those ships only sending out 2 lines? Surely they'd all be sending out the same, maximum amount?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

There's one way to make this work as displayed that we have overlooked so far. Even a small 3D net will do its job if it is put where it matters the most - around the Romulans!

Why make the net 3D when it's supposed to guard a 2D border surface? Placing two ships "behind each other" will only waste precious resources there. But if Picard in fact throws his net around the most likely location of the Romulan convoy, then he can both catch them if they try to help the Duras forces, and verify if they agree to withdraw.

Timo Saloniemi

This is a clever idea, but there's no dialog indicating that any Romulan ships were enclosed, and quite the opposite actually since dialog repeatedly referred to the grid as a blockade.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Why are some of those ships only sending out 2 lines? Surely they'd all be sending out the same, maximum amount?

The fact that they use beams forming lines stupid to beginning with.
They have only 23 ships. With the distances involved, it would have been trivially easy to just slip through in between, unless the warp or cloaking fields are so wide in diameter that they trigger the beams even at a millions of km distance.

I prefer to think of each ship generating a blanket field of a circular nature. And they need to deploy the ships in a way to overlap the fields without any cracks at all to cover an interstellar region.

 

[Praxius]

Well if one estimated the size of the grid based on the 10 million KM range, then the diameter of the grid is aprox 70 million KM give or take.

This is based on where the grid no longer exists from Data's ship to the nearest one. Assuming that is 10 Million KM from ship to ship, one can guess at the entire grid being about 70M KM Dia.

To get a mental picture, the Earth's diameter is only 12,756KM.

That's a pretty big grid to try an bypass.

Considering that the Klingons on the Duras side needed the supplies from the Romulans soon, they most like didn't have the time to warp in one direction, warp in another direction past the grid and warp again to the Klingons.

This is also considering that there was the risk of their warp signature being traced somehow.

This is also considering that battles were raging all around the Empire except the area where Starfleet had their grid setup.

The warp signature issue would also explain why they didn't just warp through the hole they made near Data and were traveling on Impulse.

The whole issue was that the Romulans did not want to be detected at all, thus avoid any risks. Otherwise their entire plan fails and the Duras family is found out to be the traitors they were.

If they warpped through a battleground while cloaked, they risked getting smacked by stray shots and found out, or collided with..... Or captured.

Picard knew this deciding battle was taking place, the Romulans knew, and thus, Picard blocked off the most plausible route to the area the Duras needed supplies and made it large enough that they wouldn't have had enough time to reach the Duras forces if they went around.

In the show they emphasized a number of times how important this was and that they didn't have the time to screw around.

They made their play, Data saw it, they failed.

 

[Marsden]

The only fault I find is with the Okudagram itself, the concept seems vaild to me.


I prefer to think of each ship generating a halo in all directions, not a line like a laser beam alarm they like to show around jewels in a hiest movies. So any cloaked ship that would move through any individual ship's "sphere of detection" can signal immediately to it's nearest neighbors, signified by the lines, to focus on that part of space to verify the reading.

 

[Timo]

The fact that they use beams forming lines stupid to beginning with.

So probably they don't. We have no evidence that the lines on that graph would be the actual tripwires involved in the technique. Indeed, the comparable Romulan graph features a different grid connecting the seventeen dots: while the Federation version has four nodes with a dozen lines, the Romulan one only has two.

That's a pretty big grid to try an bypass.

No, it's tiny. According to ST:TMP, going around something of that size would only take a couple of hours at impulse, and the Romulans have no particular reason to limit themselves to impulse.

Considering that the Klingons on the Duras side needed the supplies from the Romulans soon, they most like didn't have the time to warp in one direction, warp in another direction past the grid and warp again to the Klingons.

Sela opted to wait for 20 hours. Warping around an obstacle mere 70 MKm wide would certainly take much less than that! Heck, you could probably do it on thrusters in 20 hours...

I prefer to think of each ship generating a halo in all directions, not a line like a laser beam alarm they like to show around jewels in a hiest movies. So any cloaked ship that would move through any individual ship's "sphere of detection" can signal immediately to it's nearest neighbors, signified by the lines, to focus on that part of space to verify the reading.

Works for me. The one mystery is, why do ships on that grid need warp engines? The Excalibur supposedly withdraws because of "warp engine problems", but we don't hear of any reason why ships in the grid would need to move at all, let alone at warp speed.

Then again, if the grid really is vast, then having functional warp engines standing by will be very necessary for patching any emerging holes. Still doesn't explain why the Excalibur should withdraw, rather than stay put...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Well if one estimated the size of the grid based on the 10 million KM range, then the diameter of the grid is aprox 70 million KM give or take.

This is based on where the grid no longer exists from Data's ship to the nearest one. Assuming that is 10 Million KM from ship to ship, one can guess at the entire grid being about 70M KM Dia.

To get a mental picture, the Earth's diameter is only 12,756KM.

That's a pretty big grid to try an bypass.

At only warp one, it would take just a few minutes to cross a grid that size. Sorry, but a grid that size is insignificantly tiny compared to interstellar distances.

 

[Praxius]

The only fault I find is with the Okudagram itself, the concept seems vaild to me.


I prefer to think of each ship generating a halo in all directions, not a line like a laser beam alarm they like to show around jewels in a hiest movies. So any cloaked ship that would move through any individual ship's "sphere of detection" can signal immediately to it's nearest neighbors, signified by the lines, to focus on that part of space to verify the reading.

I just understood the lines as being the boundaries of the signals between the ships, like the edges of a diamond (yet the diamond itself is solid)

Like when you are modelling a cube in a 3D program like 3DMax or Maya.... if you're in wireframe, you see just the lined edges of the model, yet the object is solid.

 

[Timo]

One wonders what the true shape of that diamond is. Picard wouldn't need a thick lump when he only wishes to create a flat barrier...

We don't see the display rotate enough to reveal the 3D shape. Nor do we see what the missing half a dozen ships are doing. Perhaps we're misunderstanding the whole deal, and the tachyons don't shuttle between the ships at all: perhaps a critical number of emitters at the "core" of the formation is needed to create the tachyon cloud, and the cloud itself extends way beyond the seventeen ships, perhaps bouncing off the remaining ones somewhere lightyears away. Or something.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I just understood the lines as being the boundaries of the signals between the ships, like the edges of a diamond (yet the diamond itself is solid)

Like when you are modelling a cube in a 3D program like 3DMax or Maya.... if you're in wireframe, you see just the lined edges of the model, yet the object is solid.

Yeah, I think it's reasonable to suppose that the overall shape is a polyhedron that is presumably convex.

In that case, at least some of the lines in the figure between starships would represent edges of the overall solid, with starships at the vertices, but other lines could be strictly internal with at least one starship in the interior.

Like Timo, I'm left wondering what the 3D shape is. It could very well have been drawn simply in 2D to begin with, without concern for the 3D shape overall, beyond the idea that it was a cluster of starships.

 

[Trekker4747]

The "net" does seem rather un-weildey, and I don't think the Okudagram does a good job of really showing what it "should" look like. It makes no sense to effectively make a 3-D structure in space that is "hollow" and made of straight beams. (like a wire-frame model or a "cage") There's not any ships "inside" their field so why protect it? They call this as being a "net" so should it behave like, well, a net?!

It's hard to get anything out of that diagram as far as scale. We know they have 23 ships and we have to assume they've cast this net over a wide-enough area for it to be effective. (i.e. too wide for the Romulans to just "warp around it" without entering unfriendly space.) So, I guess, we'll just say we don't understand that diagram.

We know that ships can project particles and such very great distances and tachyons (real-world ones, that is) travel faster than light so it's possible it's a very, very big net and that the diagram is somehow simplifying how it looks.

 

[Marsden]

The only fault I find is with the Okudagram itself, the concept seems vaild to me.


I prefer to think of each ship generating a halo in all directions, not a line like a laser beam alarm they like to show around jewels in a hiest movies. So any cloaked ship that would move through any individual ship's "sphere of detection" can signal immediately to it's nearest neighbors, signified by the lines, to focus on that part of space to verify the reading.

I just understood the lines as being the boundaries of the signals between the ships, like the edges of a diamond (yet the diamond itself is solid)

Like when you are modelling a cube in a 3D program like 3DMax or Maya.... if you're in wireframe, you see just the lined edges of the model, yet the object is solid.

The "net" does seem rather un-weildey, and I don't think the Okudagram does a good job of really showing what it "should" look like. It makes no sense to effectively make a 3-D structure in space that is "hollow" and made of straight beams. (like a wire-frame model or a "cage") There's not any ships "inside" their field so why protect it? They call this as being a "net" so should it behave like, well, a net?!

It's hard to get anything out of that diagram as far as scale. We know they have 23 ships and we have to assume they've cast this net over a wide-enough area for it to be effective. (i.e. too wide for the Romulans to just "warp around it" without entering unfriendly space.) So, I guess, we'll just say we don't understand that diagram.

We know that ships can project particles and such very great distances and tachyons (real-world ones, that is) travel faster than light so it's possible it's a very, very big net and that the diagram is somehow simplifying how it looks.

Well, let's say it's an abstract representation that would make sense to Captain Picard or a similarly trained person but doesn't try to "literally" represent the formation.

After all, my idea of halos would be impossible to make a picture of, wouldn't it?

 

[Timo]

...it's possible it's a very, very big net and that the diagram is somehow simplifying how it looks.

We can also handwave away Data's dialog on the mere 10 Mkm radius of the Romulan jamming effect, saying that the graphic doesn't display that effect but some much wider effect that is less total than the one Data is talking about.

The one remaining problem is that when Picard arrives and deploys his fleet, Romulans make no comment whatsoever on the enemy ships dispersing. If Picard's force suddenly split in 23 and the formation expanded from five hundred meters to fifty lightyears, surely there would be amazed gasps? Yet the Romulans continue to refer to Picard's ships as a "fleet" as if no splitting up worth writing home about had taken place.

Timo Saloniemi