"Shields at 60%, Captain!"

[3D Master]

You know it's odd actually, I had my friend around a few weeks back and we watched the entire film collection (not all at once). And I pointed it out to him in Insurrection that the shields always seem to be at 60%. Even after they've been hit like 100 times and I'm not sure if the writers were trying to convey an atmosphere of fear on the actors part, but 60% isn't exactly low. I'd be happy if the shields were at 60%, took some more hits and were still at 60%.

They never put them above 60%. They were just trying to save gas.

Someone mentioned targeting the warp core--I never understood why an extreme emphasis was never placed on the antimatter bottles, at least in situations where killing the ship was what was desired. The warp core's just the thing most prone to screw up on its own, the AM containment units, no matter how well-armored (with AM weapons, armor's cardboard against a stick of dynamite), seem to clearly be the most vulnerable part of the ship.

The antimatter bottles would be part of, right next to the warp core; and they won't be that big at all. Never wondered why there's never a need to refuel on anti-matter? That's because the ship itself generates anti-matter. Remember "The Naked Time" or "The Naked Now" I can never remember for certain which is the TNG and which is the TOS episode. It's the TOS episode, and I think it's "The Naked Time." In it, the Enterprise is trapped in a gravity well with it's warp engines off-line. The ship is rapidly going through it's anti-matter stores as it needs every little bit of energy needed to keep from being destroyed. The energy is nearly gone is a problem at the very last moment; until they break free and the warp engines are once more on-line. Once the Enterprise is free and no longer needs to use every bit of energy it has to remain stationary, and the warp engines are back on line, the energy crisis is gone.

What happens is that part of the energy the warp-nacelles generate as they warp space and time, is caught and rerouted back into the ship, where it is, most likely with some form of particle accelerator, used to generate anti-matter.

Thus, the ship doesn't need to carry large stores of anti-matter.

I'd very much have liked to have seen a one shot lighter effect for any ship expressly without shields. Take Generations--Enterprise should've been taken out in the first few seconds.

Not me, quite the contrary in fact. The whole bullshit about how Star Trek hulls and ships are pathetic if they don't have their shields up, would actually have a basis in fact then. But, this simply isn't true. Hell, a Cardassian freighter with a weapon powerful enough to obliterate a large asteroid but obsolete, couldn't even scratch the hull of Klingong Bird of Prey, who, to mock the freighter, deliberately lowered the shields and showed it the weakest part of their hull.

Star Trek hulls are not flimsy paper and can stand up to abuse on their own quite handily.

I'd like to have seen ramming have less of an effect than it did in, say, Nemesis. If you can't handle the kinetic energy of a million tons moving relatively at .00000^5% lightspeed, you can't handle the kinetic energy of the photons released by a volley of torpedoes. Ramming should work only if you intend your ship to become a flying bomb.

Yeah, well, Nemesis was idiotic. Best to forget it ever happened. A true "ramming speed" would of course not be slow; it would be as fast as you can go.

I'd have liked to have seen CIWS, especially by the time of the Dominion War. Sometimes they use phasers to this effect, but not often enough. This is sort of alluded to in Nemesis, viz. the Scimitar and it's ridiculous number of disruptor banks, although I'm pretty sure not on purpose.

Doesn't work. Torpedoes are built such, that if shot at by phasers and we assume disruptors the resulting explosion is more powerful and does more damage than if it hadn't been shot, as the Voyager episode Workforce part 1/2 showed us. It would only be useful if you managed to hit the torpedo FAR away from your ship.

 

[Timo]

Someone mentioned targeting the warp core--I never understood why an extreme emphasis was never placed on the antimatter bottles, at least in situations where killing the ship was what was desired. The warp core's just the thing most prone to screw up on its own, the AM containment units, no matter how well-armored (with AM weapons, armor's cardboard against a stick of dynamite), seem to clearly be the most vulnerable part of the ship.

One would assume the two would be at the same location, tho. Targeting the warp core would refer to targeting that part of the warp drive that contains antimatter; it's probably not even possible to direct the hits so carefully that one could distinguish between antimatter tanks, antimatter injectors or the reaction chamber.

I'd very much have liked to have seen a one shot lighter effect for any ship expressly without shields.

The Lantree?

The BoPs at the ends of ST6 and ST:GEN would probably count, too. The former did swallow something like four torps after the first, possibly reduced-yield one exposed it - but three of those were probably overkill anyway.

I'd like to have seen ramming have less of an effect than it did in, say, Nemesis. If you can't handle the kinetic energy of a million tons moving relatively at .00000^5% lightspeed, you can't handle the kinetic energy of the photons released by a volley of torpedoes. Ramming should work only if you intend your ship to become a flying bomb.

Here we could argue that the acceleration methods that Trek ships and torps usually use for rapidly reaching high speeds are based on "cheating", and do not give the ships and torps actual kinetic energy. Only a ramming performed with the subspace fields off will yield "kinetic results" - which also helps explain why the E-E moved slow as molasses during that ramming.

I'd have liked to have seen CIWS, especially by the time of the Dominion War. Sometimes they use phasers to this effect, but not often enough. This is sort of alluded to in Nemesis, viz. the Scimitar and it's ridiculous number of disruptor banks, although I'm pretty sure not on purpose.

It would be a bit odd to add CIWS after so many hours and centuries of Star Trek have showed that it's not practicable. If no explanation for the previous absence were given, most of Starfleet, including our past heroes, would look pretty stupid.

OTOH, it's easy to believe that CIWS is considered unproductive or counterproductive in a universe where a generic shield will stop a wide range of attacks. If you have power to spare for CIWS, it's probably better used for ramping up these excellent shields. It would depend a bit on whether a photon torpedo impacting on a shield will cause more damage than a photon torpedo exploding an extra kilometer off the shields.

Why does the Enterprise blow up when the USS Frasier tears a hole in an area that can ordinarily, for hours, days, perhaps years on end, handle that power flow?

Why not? It's not really this area that exploded - it's the warp core, which got a nasty backlash from the as such harmless whupping the nacelle received. It's probably not possible to install circuit breakers big enough in the main power loop.

What is the feedback mechanism there?

Probably the same as in the regular transmission of power through plasma - which we don't know, not yet.

Have you considered turning off your warp core?

That was the one thing they couldn't do. Turning off is probably a process taking several minutes. Ejecting is something they couldn't do, due to the weird damping effect of the time rift.

Is there no mechanism for just venting this stuff?

It would have to be a very complete mechanism; one section of piping left unpurged would explode in a small puff, making the next section explode in a bigger puff, until we got what we saw... Again, probably very time-consuming, which explains why our heroes don't shove the core out by brute force when the ejector jams.

The ejector might have an idiotproof mode that ejects the core in all situations - but usually this ends up destroying the ship, and the mode is there only to ensure that the destruction of the ship doesn't take the entire fleet with it. Only a very specific special case allows an ejection that doesn't also lead to destruction due to leftover antimatter.

The lights should never go off. Are there no batteries in the future?

When do they go off?

Probably there are still advantages to having separate emergency lights, rather than providing all regular lights with batteries next to the shining components in case power sources elsewhere fail or are cut off.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Misfit Toy]

Holy Thread Necrophilia!

Anton - it would be better to create a new thread on the topic than to resurrect a nine-month dead thread. It also may be a better topic for Trek Tech...

Closing...