Starship design history in light of Discovery
- Thread starter INACTIVEUSS Einstein
- Start date
Yeah, fair point. Clearly the Federation took a very long time to get its act together when it came to recruiting and promoting officers of the highest ethics.
(*Notices Admirals Jameson, Pressman and Dougherty*)
Never mind.
Just a few? Starfleet has always struggled with craziness at the top.
...And at the bottom. Half of Kirk's crew seemed suicidally stupid and undisciplined, as best evidenced by them getting their due Darwin Awards.
Which ought to be no wonder. The best and the brightest would steer well clear of Starfleet, when the alternative is living in paradise and making a difference by inventing transporters and longevity cures. And conversely, SF Academy would do well to screen against sensible self-preservation in those psych tests of theirs, if it wants to get people suited for deep space service...
Timo Saloniemi
Which ought to be no wonder. The best and the brightest would steer well clear of Starfleet, when the alternative is living in paradise and making a difference by inventing transporters and longevity cures. And conversely, SF Academy would do well to screen against sensible self-preservation in those psych tests of theirs, if it wants to get people suited for deep space service...
Timo Saloniemi
Except for arguably during the ENT era, but then we didn't see many flag officers at all and the only truly malevolent one was Mirror Universe Admiral Gardner. For all we know the Earth-Romulan War had its share of Starfleet Command brass who came close to going off the deep end.
Do we know whether ships in DSC are designed with quantum torpedo launchers?
I don’t think it’s ever stated that quantum torpedos were invented in the DS9 era - just that they existed then. Plus we see blue/white torpedoes in the TOS era, and quantum torpedoes are blue/white when we see them in DS9 and FC.
it’d be cool if the DSC fleet was designed to have dual function torpedo launchers.
I don’t think it’s ever stated that quantum torpedos were invented in the DS9 era - just that they existed then. Plus we see blue/white torpedoes in the TOS era, and quantum torpedoes are blue/white when we see them in DS9 and FC.
it’d be cool if the DSC fleet was designed to have dual function torpedo launchers.
I always thought the bluish/whitish torpedoes were of a lower power level than the red ones.
They are known to be loaded with antimatter energy. When the Enterprise went into the wormhole in TMP due to the intermix imbalance for example, other systems powered by it were shut off (like the phasers, as explained by Decker). What came out of the launcher to blow away the asteroid was blue-white instead of red like the Klingon torpedoes seen earlier in the film and from the Enterprise herself as well as Excelsior in later films. They were using the barest-minimum power requirements to get out the chute and do their job. Voyager's tri-cobalt torpedoes were also of a lesser power than standard ones, and I recall were also blue.
Quantum torpedoes are a whole different breed of weapon, which did seem to go back to a white color, so maybe it's just yet another continuity problem with different VFX houses.
They are known to be loaded with antimatter energy. When the Enterprise went into the wormhole in TMP due to the intermix imbalance for example, other systems powered by it were shut off (like the phasers, as explained by Decker). What came out of the launcher to blow away the asteroid was blue-white instead of red like the Klingon torpedoes seen earlier in the film and from the Enterprise herself as well as Excelsior in later films. They were using the barest-minimum power requirements to get out the chute and do their job. Voyager's tri-cobalt torpedoes were also of a lesser power than standard ones, and I recall were also blue.
Quantum torpedoes are a whole different breed of weapon, which did seem to go back to a white color, so maybe it's just yet another continuity problem with different VFX houses.
Quantum torpedoes where meant to be brand new weapons that needed specialised launchers, some books stating they were part of the same series of anti-Borg developments as the Defiant. Hence her and the E-E being the only two ships advanced enough at the time to fire them. The novels go on to say some ships could have refits to carry them.
They have a zero point energy extraction unit behind the warhead that arms on firing, the ZPE and antimatter creating a twin explosion.
The energy shroud around a torpedo is either a random effect of it's firing, or a deliberate plasma that prevents lock on in flight to shoot it down. The only other blue one we see post TOS-R is in TMP inside the wormhole so...blue shift?
Tricobalt torpedoes in Armada are made of mostly energy apparently and are an odd gold kind of projectile fired only in a line like a Romulan plasma torpedo.
Discovery is just going it's own fucking thing no matter what came before it yet again.
They have a zero point energy extraction unit behind the warhead that arms on firing, the ZPE and antimatter creating a twin explosion.
The energy shroud around a torpedo is either a random effect of it's firing, or a deliberate plasma that prevents lock on in flight to shoot it down. The only other blue one we see post TOS-R is in TMP inside the wormhole so...blue shift?
Tricobalt torpedoes in Armada are made of mostly energy apparently and are an odd gold kind of projectile fired only in a line like a Romulan plasma torpedo.
Discovery is just going it's own fucking thing no matter what came before it yet again.
Huh I never thought of it that way. It makes sense in the TMP example since they wouldn’t need the most powerful warhead to destroy the random asteroid in the wormhole I guess.
Oh yeah I forgot about that. They look more like quantum torpedoes when you look at them retrospectively.
See I always thought that they were new in DS9 - but then again I thought holo communicators and holodecks were new in the TNG era as well.
And... since Starfleet has known about quantum torpedoes since the 22nd century (when they discovered the wreck of the Borg ship in the arctic which was destroyed by quantum torpedoes) it stands to reason that (given DSC likes to reference ENT) development of quantum torpedoes started in the ENT era so could be used in DSC.
But...
You’re absolutely right. They tend to see Star Trek as a homogenous whole - so if something has been in “Star Trek” before (regardless of era, timeline, or quantum universe) then it’s ok to be in DSC.
There is evidence of this in the use of TNG era sound effects on both ENT (“mirror darkly”) and DSC, plus TNG era style ships and technology 10 years before TOS. All of Trek history has happened simultaneously from a DSC perspective, so there’s no logical reason why quantum torpedoes couldn’t turn up in DSC.
Hmm, that's tricky. In reality, in terms of blackbody emissions, blue is a hotter, higher-energy color than red. Heated metal turns red-hot first, then goes up the spectrum until it's blue/white-hot. Blue stars are thousands of degrees hotter than red stars. But sci-fi special effects often portray red as higher-energy than blue, because we think of red as a "hot" color (like fire or lava) and blue as a "cool" color (like water).
That's not right. Torpedoes contain warheads of antimatter, the actual material substance, and when antimatter is brought into contact with matter, the two annihilate and turn into energy (equal to the mass of the reactants times the speed of light squared).
And the whole reason they did fire torpedoes in the wormhole sequence is that the torpedo launchers were not affected by the warp imbalance like the phasers were. The color had nothing to do with it. The color would've just been the light from the torpedoes' thrusters anyway. The filmmakers made the Klingon torpedoes a different color because they were alien tech, and because red is a more "violent," bloody color befitting the Klingons.
If only they were treated in any way differently to photon torpedoes in the show. All this backstory in technical manuals and all it really is, is [new babble] torpedo.
Most likely abject loneliness. As Satie stated, she has no friends and no family, all she had was her job and her duty to the federation. As a result her job became her identity, and any threats to the federation became threats to her identity. Which is why she couldn't be impartial and unbiased like any normal investigator would have.
Are we seriously getting upset over the colour of torpedoes now?
The quantum torpedo is a cool in-universe upgrade to Starfleet torpedo weaponry but in DS9 and the films they really don't come off as performing any differently than standard photon torpedoes used by the Federation since Kirk's era. They're described as leaving a slightly different signature on a target's debris than a photon torpedo but at the end of the day they're just photon torpedoes with some hot sauce tossed on for added kick.
The transphasic torpedo technology brought back by Admiral Janeway from the original future timeline is a lot more impressive since it's depicted onscreen that just one of those torpedoes can obliterate an entire Borg cube without having to fire an entire spread at one. They didn't look much different but they clearly had a colossal explosive impact that even a casual viewer could notice. So yeah, quantum torpedoes were cool to hear about but ended up just being deluxe photon torpedoes without much of a difference in their graphic depiction.
The transphasic torpedo technology brought back by Admiral Janeway from the original future timeline is a lot more impressive since it's depicted onscreen that just one of those torpedoes can obliterate an entire Borg cube without having to fire an entire spread at one. They didn't look much different but they clearly had a colossal explosive impact that even a casual viewer could notice. So yeah, quantum torpedoes were cool to hear about but ended up just being deluxe photon torpedoes without much of a difference in their graphic depiction.
Heck, photon torpedoes are supposed to be more powerful than nuclear weapons, but in practice they're often treated as little more than glowing cannonballs.
And during ENT I'd hoped that the series would have touched on using thermonuclear warheads on the NX-01's spatial torpedoes since the 2150s were the era of the Earth-Romulan War and we know that atomic weapons were used by both sides during the conflict. The spatial torpedo was a very interesting and retro design for a Starfleet weapon, essentially a 21st century submarine torpedo with more explosive power and a greater range. Fitting some of them with nuclear warheads for emergency tactical and defensive operations against an adversary with formidable energy weapons or shielding would have both stirred up debate amongst Enterprise's crew over the use of weapons that had killed some 600 million people a century before as well as the audience, many of whom would no doubt find the introduction of nuclear weapons into ENT to be questionable as a story narrative decision.
A real missed opportunity as it would also have opened the door for at least one episode where the crew face the legacy of World War III and the horrific destruction caused by those weapons. Another reason why a Season 5 to launch the Earth-Romulan War would have been a good idea from a storytelling point of view.
Yes. It demonstrates Discovery's lack of respect for Star Trek.
Mock Outrage needs to die.
If we want to, we can see differences between the way photon torpedoes and quantum torpedoes are used, basically simply because the latter have been used so seldom that they haven't covered all the bases yet.
Quantums in DS9 and ST:FC are launched in rapid volleys of four that do virtually no damage, at extremely short ranges. When our heroes launch volleys of photon torpedoes, they tend to expect devastating results; with quantums, Tom Riker or Picard apparently expect to just wing the opponent, or to bring down an already shieldless one, without fear of hurting their own ship in the process. You start out with photons at long ranges, you finish off with quantums at point blank.
Might be q-torps can be fine-tuned, and tuned to a broader range of yields, especially at the lower end, thanks to the different warhead type. Perhaps the warhead even adjusts in mid-flight or impact, unlike a bottle of antimatter that is likely to deliver all its energies at the target even if there's a last-second requirement for less or more.
As for the color issue, blue has often been associated with cool or weak in Trek. The impulse radiator of the E-C also glows blue when the damaged ship limps to our view; other Ambassadors glow a healthy red there. We might just as well mutter "subspace" here, just as we have to in so many other places: red subspace is hot, blue subspace is as cool as they can make it (but their warp nacelles still glow blue a bit, despite their best efforts, and make hiding a tad more difficult).
Of course we could argue the opposite as well. Perhaps damaged or inefficient hardware runs hot, while a red or yellow glow from a torpedo in flight tells us the weapon is preserving its energies for the terminal kaboom?
Timo Saloniemi
Quantums in DS9 and ST:FC are launched in rapid volleys of four that do virtually no damage, at extremely short ranges. When our heroes launch volleys of photon torpedoes, they tend to expect devastating results; with quantums, Tom Riker or Picard apparently expect to just wing the opponent, or to bring down an already shieldless one, without fear of hurting their own ship in the process. You start out with photons at long ranges, you finish off with quantums at point blank.
Might be q-torps can be fine-tuned, and tuned to a broader range of yields, especially at the lower end, thanks to the different warhead type. Perhaps the warhead even adjusts in mid-flight or impact, unlike a bottle of antimatter that is likely to deliver all its energies at the target even if there's a last-second requirement for less or more.
As for the color issue, blue has often been associated with cool or weak in Trek. The impulse radiator of the E-C also glows blue when the damaged ship limps to our view; other Ambassadors glow a healthy red there. We might just as well mutter "subspace" here, just as we have to in so many other places: red subspace is hot, blue subspace is as cool as they can make it (but their warp nacelles still glow blue a bit, despite their best efforts, and make hiding a tad more difficult).
Of course we could argue the opposite as well. Perhaps damaged or inefficient hardware runs hot, while a red or yellow glow from a torpedo in flight tells us the weapon is preserving its energies for the terminal kaboom?
Timo Saloniemi