Romulan engine power is "impulse only?"

[chrinFinity]

Scotty says in TOS (I feel like it was in Balance of Terror but I'm not 100%) that Romulan engine power is "impulse only." Obviously they have warp.

Is this explained in Litverse? I know they did a thing in Litverse at Coridan that involved warp technology.

Could it be because, as Marina Sirtis is so fond of quoting at every convention she's ever done or ever will do, that "Romulans use an artificial quantum singularity as their power source (for warp)," and maybe Federation science and sensors couldn't easily detect this in the 2260's?

Is there another explanation given? (I'm looking at you, Christopher L. Bennett)

 

[F. King Daniel]

Diane Duane's version of the Romulan War spanned 25 years and was fought with sublight Romulan ships. All other versions ignore Scotty's line (which is indeed from "Balance of Terror") and give the Romulans warp drive.

 

[Guy Gardener]

From memory, in Enterprise the smaller Romulan ships were impulse only, whereafter a dozen or so of these impulse ships were carted around by a larger Warp capable carrier vessel.

 

[Tuskin38]

I think some sources imply Scotty only detected impulse because the warp drive was completely shut down because the cloak used too much power.

 

[The Wormhole]

The Lost Era novel The Sundered (set mostly on the Excelsior after TUC) does include a flashback to that scene in Balance of Terror, written from Sulu's perspective. When Scotty says the "simple impulse" line, Sulu's internal monologue is that that must mean the ship has a warp-capable mothership nearby, but he chooses not to express this thought feeling it's "so obvious everyone else has already figured that out."

Although, there's also a Lives of Dax story set during the Romulan War in which the Romulans are attempting to steal a working warp drive, so LitCon has taken both sides of the "simple impulse" line.

 

[Tim Thomason]

I feel that assuming that Scotty wasn't able to detect a warp drive (because of singularity-based or it being turned off) still raises way too many questions and doesn't make sense to assume it was an impulse ship in the apparent middle of nowhere. The Sulu thought process is the first explanation that makes a little sense of it.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I just remembered, Diane Carey's Final Frontier had a impulse-only Romulan Preybird dropped off by a warp-capable mothership.

 

[Unicron]

As I recall, the Romulans had warp in the FASA Trek RPG but also had some motherships for deploying smaller, impulse only patrol craft as needed.

 

[Timo]

All the takes can work out simultaneously easily enough: our heroes have their misconceptions (they fail to detect warp so they assume carriers, they witness an attempted theft of warp so they assume Romulans lacked it originally) which have little to do with the reality (Romulans do have warp but they also happen to have carriers, Romulans steal but only in order to have a Fed warp drive in addition to their own).

Carey's Final Frontier is the only one offering an explicit Romulan point of view that involves the "our small plasma-belching ships of the mid-23rd century can't do warp to save their lives" concept; Duane's The Romulan Way the one offering an explicit neutral narration that involves the "Romulans first stole warp in the early stages of the 22nd century Romulan War" idea.

Of these, the former is not a problem even for those who want to see an AQS warp powerplant aboard the "Balance of Terror" ship - Romulans can have different types of ship in their mid-23rd century arsenal. The writing of the latter is vague enough that it could be treated more as "myth" than "history" - an approach Duane herself probably would appreciate, too. But out of the two, it's the one at odds with the "Romulans did always have warp, only it's exotic" model.

Onscreen, of course, the Federation acknowledges that the Romulans had a pre-warp phase during which they were "thugs", and warp turned them (or at least "a bunch" of them) into an "empire". But we get no timing for that in the ST:Insurrection dialogue. At best, we can speculate that the subsequent "We can handle the Son'a."/"Someone probably said the same thing about the Romulans a century ago" exchange gives the dating, but that's far from said, and the novels are free to have their own take on that.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Guy Gardener]

Maybe they wanted less warp trails leading to Romulus?

Hide the seat of the Empire, from those that would crush it?

Which would indicate that Romulus doesn't trade what it's neighbours, which might be why no one knows that Romulans look identical to Vulcans... As long as they don't still have those stupid head worts.

Maybe Romulans pose as Vulcans when conducting interstellar trade?

To keep that feint going, they would have to pay sales tax ((even though there is no money) to the Vulcans, even though none of their stock or wares are bound for a Vulcan Port.

 

[Sgt_G]

So, this thread reminds me of a funny story. About twenty years ago, I posted an idea on the Star Fleet Battles message board suggesting some sort of claw for tugs to recover separated saucers, with a similar thing for Klingon tugs to recover detached booms. After some back and forth with other players, the game's designer, Steve Cole, stepped in and flatly stated it wasn't anything the game needed.

Furthermore, he said, "Any ship, to include booms and saucers, with at least one working Impulse Engine can use a form of FTL mode to get itself home." Presumably, this would be a series of warp jumps, moving several dozen parsecs at about Warp 4 or Warp 5, and then dropping to sub-light to cool the engines off or recharge the systems for a period of time before taking another jump.

Someone asked in response if that included Romulan sub-light ships. Of course it did, he said, as it explained that's how the Romulans controlled a vast Star Empire, and indeed how the early Federation (and Klingon Empire, etc.) was created and explored. He coined the term "Non-Tactical Warp" for this mode of travel, which begs the question: If non-tactical warp pre-dates tactical warp, what did they call it back then??

(In SFB game-terms, Romulan Warbirds and other 'sub-light' ships can only move at Speed 1, whereas warp-drive ships can move up to Speed 31, which equates to Warp 3.14, while in tactical combat. Anything above Speed 32, Warp 3.17, is too fast for tactical combat.)

 

[Guy Gardener]

That's just flat out a lie.

Impulse is not warp.

It took Spock 7 months to move inside a solar system at impulse.

 

[valkyrie013]

For being an early episode, it has a number of screw ups, from the Impulse only, to proxemity blast phasers. Still a great episode!
I like the StarFleet Museums reasoning for the "Impulse Only" line. in that, the romulan ships didn't have an Antimatter warp core, or singularity, there warp drive was powered by a fusion core. The ships were still capable of warp, but at a low speed, and being a fuel hog. On that site, it was the starfleets adoption of antimatter cores that gave them a big advantage in speed and distance that won them the war. After the war, Romulans didn't get an antimatter engine till after the Klingon/romulan alliance in TOS. As good an explanation as any, but in reality it was a throw away line that people put to much thought in to, of course they had warp drive in Balance of Terror, a better line might have been about low power levels, and that it would be easy to keep up with them.

 

[Ronald Held]

Why is this thread not moved into Trek Tech?

 

[Tallguy]

To split the hair: Scotty says that the Rom's POWER is simple impulse. Although Kirk does note that this means the Enterprise can outrun them.

This is one of those things were ONE line (like "Vulcan has no moon") is given tremendous import even though an interstellar Empire and adversary of Earth's with only sublight doesn't make much sense. But we have multiple episodes that show money in the Federation or we spend the entire first season in multiple episodes referring to Spock's people as "Vulcanians" and this gets waved away as of no import.

 

[The Wormhole]

Why is this thread not moved into Trek Tech?

Because it's specifically asking how the novels addressed this issue.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I've always liked the way that the Romulan Bird of Prey blueprints from McMaster, Mandel, et al explain it. They posit that the ship can't generate enough power to use the cloak, warp drive, and plasma weapon all at the same time. When the cloak is on, the warp drive cannot be used, and so the ship must move sublight at impulse.

 

[Kaveh Arzie]

IIRC, LUGTrek (Or maybe it was in 'The Romulan Way') suggested the idea of early Romulans having a 'one-off' type of warp engine. They could use it once to get where they were going, then they patrolled that area at Impulse.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I thought Diane Duane had settled that a long time ago, with warp-capable motherships.

 

[minispace]

I had assumed the Romulan ship may have had a fusion (impulse) power plant, which could be used for sublight, warp, plasma torps, or cloak, but not everything at once.

Maybe the old Birds of Prey worked like WW2 submarines, which used a noisy diesel engine on the surface and silent chemical batteries while submerged. Since Balance of Terror was based on WW2 u-boat vs destroyer combat, the Romulans might have had to take their higher emission power plants offline in order to stay stealthy.

It makes more sense to me than using dedicated warp carrier ships, but your mileage may vary!