I did. It's obvious they lost sight of Reliant... and that's about it, it seems. "Veered away" would be a course change or a turn and I don't think that actually happens (actually, it could be that Reliant was the one that veered away when the phaers grazed the port side).
It's obvious that the Enterprise was already turned away (you can see her in profile) as the Reliant fires her aft torpedo. Since Khan didn't order an evasive before he fired aft torpedoes then it had to be Enterprise to make the turn away.
Khan might not have
ordered it. The phaser shot did toss the ship a bit to the point that Khan has to cling to the helm console to stay on his feet. OTOH, the camera angle is different between the two shots; one shows both Reliant and Enterprise in front aspect, the other shows both in profile with Enterprise farther behind; could be Reliant was knocked into a sudden portside turn by the phaser blast.
Those "friendly forces" are the troops under the reader's (leader's) command.
Incorrect. "Friendly forces" means simply "anyone fighting the same enemy you are." In this context, the paragraph is basically saying "Your defense shouldn't get in the way of other people's offense, nor should it prevent you from preparing for offensive action."
A good example of this is the defense of a firebase against massed attack. Maybe you've got reinforcements in the area or air cavalry or something who can come and attack your opponent; you want to keep your enemy from advancing, so you need suppressing fire and lots of it, maybe some well-placed grenades or antitank rockets to break up their advance. What you DON'T want is for your troops to get into close quarters with the attackers, because when your reinforcements go on the offensive you'll be in their line of fire and they will have to be careful not to hit you. You also don't want to counter-attack too early and drive the attackers into a strong defensive position where they can potentially hold you off. You CERTAINLY don't want to arrange a defense that prevents your own troops from taking offensive action (say, surrounding yourself with landmines and then sitting in a bunker until reinforcements show up).
It is interesting that you find that defending cannot include the destruction or killing of enemy personnel or vehicles.
That isn't the GOAL of a defensive action. A defensive action that destroys none of the enemy but prevents them from advancing is preferable to an action that destroys MOST of the enemy but still allows your position to be overrun.
Swarm tactics have this feature: the enemy rushes headlong into your fire to overwhelm your defenses, knowing that you only have so much ammo and your troops can only kill them so fast. No matter how many of them you kill, they'll overrun you in short order; if you create additional obstacles in their path, by demolishing bridges or obstructing movement pathways they have to use to get to you (or at least restricting their movement so they can only come at you through a chokepoint) you can effectively defend your position even if you never kill ANY of the enemy.
This is basically why torpedoes (also grenade launchers and antitank missiles) are not defensive weapons: they are designed to be pointed at a target and then activated, causing the destruction of said target. Either weapon CAN be used in a defensive action, but they are DESIGNED to destroy a specific type of target and are not actually optimized for that usage.
Ship A attacks Ship B with guns. Ship B defends itself by firing back at Ship A with guns and sinks it ... Defending can include destroying or killing the enemy.
So can Soccer. But that's not the GOAL of the exercise. Turning around and sinking your enemy means you're going on the offensive while potentially eschewing opportunities for defensive action. There's a clear difference between the two.
In this example: Ship B has failed to defend itself if, in the act of sinking Ship A, it sustains irreparable damage to its engines and subsequently has to be abandoned and scuttled. OTOH, if Ship-B uses white phosphorous rounds to confound Ship-A's gunners and then falls back out of range, it has successfully defended itself even though it has not destroyed the enemy. The "fence" case you allude to occurs if, in the act of attempting to fall back out of range a white phosphorous round from Ship-B winds up setting Ship-A's magazine on fire and the attacking ship explodes; since Ship-B has survived it is still a successful defense.
And if Ship-B turns around and blows Ship-A out of the water, Ship-A is said to have "counter-attacked" which is an offensive action.
Because Scotty tells Kirk that he's almost done automating the ship while in Engineering.
But he's NOT in engineering. He's in one of the ladder access ways that Kirk used to GET to engineering in the previous movie. We don't really know what he's doing there, but "fixing the computer" is far from certain even then.
It's also uncertain whether "fully automated by the time we dock" refers to the automation system installed later, or to the docking system that Enterprise normally used that had been otherwise compromised by Reliant's attacks. Probably the latter, considering that in order to dock they had to place their computers under control of space dock's computers.
Ship's computer systems were also in the engineering of Excelsior where Scotty pulled the chips...
Their "main transwarp computer drive," yes. Enterprise, which does not have transwarp drive, would have no reason to hook its automation system into its warp drive computers. More importantly, the warp drive wasn't the failure point for the automation system. The shield generators were, and even then it appears to be more of a software problem than a hardware one.
If he had a full crew then the ship would've needed to uninstall the automation
Or hit the button on the automation center labeled "manual override."
In either case, not all the battle damage had been repaired prior to reaching starbase and she needed repairs before going back into active service.
That's just it: she didn't GET repairs, but still went back into service. The weak link on the Enterprise at the time was Scotty's jury-rigged automation. With a full crew aboard (or at least somebody in deflector control who could override the automation center and raise the shields manually) they would have defeated Kruge easily.
I said Morrow stated this.
KIRK: As surely as if it were my very own!
Give me back the Enterprise! With Scotty's help I could...
MORROW: No, Jim! The Enterprise would never stand the pounding and you know it.
Considering how poorly Grissom handled the Klingon attack, it's unlikely Morrow was referring to a combat mission in the first place.
OTOH, why
would he expect there to be combat at Genesis? The entire project is highly classified; the only reason the Klingons know about Genesis is because their spies have intercepted the data, and the only Klingon who does anything about it is an unhinged warlord acting on his own initiative.
The hit on the impulse engine area shorted out the automation...
You continue to use "shorted out" as if that's just a fancy way of saying "blown to smithereens by a photon torpedo." That's really weird.
They were suppose to be low power as we saw the torpedoes set to low power prior to them firing on the Reliant.
We see some sliders being pulled all the way down prior to their being ARMED. We don't know what the down position even means, or what the arming sequence actually is for those weapons, primarily because everything we think we know about how the arming console works goes right out the window the moment Chekov pulls a joystick out of the wall and says "torpedoes ready, Sir."
Your argument is that a training ship would have dummy equipment yet the evidence shows that they had live torpedoes and phasers and no indication of deficient sensor capability or lack of science and exploration gear.
Phasers is simple: it's easier to turn them off and not use them than it is to uninstall them altogether. The ship obviously doesn't have planetary survey exploration gear because they weren't setting out to survey a real planet; they have torpedoes aboard, but we don't know what type or how many.
We also don't know the size of the asteroid in TMP, except that Ilia seemed to think the navigational deflectors would be able to push it away. For all we know, that entire asteroid would have fit inside their shuttlebay.
Again, we don't know why he wanted to go back to Genesis in the beginning. Grissom was already surveying the planet. For all we know it could be to visit his son and spend quality time with him.
That's an odd reason to spend two weeks refitting an entire starship, no?
