The Picard Maneuver

[Trekker4747]

No, not him tugging down on the tunic becasue the unifrom was poorly designed. The "real" one where he engages a ship's warp-drive to get closer to a target and for the ship to appear in two places at once. According to Riker this was a great maneuver that blew people away and that there's no defense for it.

Ummm? What.

First of all, in the 200+ years of Starfleet history and manned FTL spacetravel no one ever thought of using the time-delay of light and distance to trick sensors? And there's no defense for it? Seems to me that there should be, as an observer should know that the one that "just appeared" and is closer would be the "real ship" and the other one is just a light ghost and we know the ships have FTL sensors!

And before anyone tells me that the Ferengi don't have FTL sensors so that's why it worked on them I remind you that The Picard Maneuver worked against the Enterprise.

 

[Vanyel]

I always thought FTL drives also were faster than computers. That would be another reason for long range sensors, to give the computer and crew enough time to react.

Now with the Stargaver and Enterprise so close together the FTL jump outpaced the Enterprise's sensors ability to clear the first image and the ship therefore sees two Staregazers.

If that is true, then the Enterprise's sensors couldn't unlock from the first image and lock on the second. Data didn't use the sensors to lock onto the ship but to see the compression wave created by the jump, and he, and only he, could react in time.

 

[Timo]

It makes no sense that FTL sensors couldn't counteract the Picard Maneuver as it was shown. Therefore, the Picard Maneuver can only work against ships that don't have FTL sensors. (Or, more exactly, it only works against ships whose FTL sensors are slower than the warp drive of the attacking vessel.)

And what is wrong with that? An Immelman turn doesn't work against a posse of horsemen chasing after you, or against a charging tank. It's still a perfectly valid maneuver against a fixed-wing aircraft if you sit in a fixed-wing aircraft as well. Maneuvers don't solve all the mysteries of the universe at once: they are specific solutions to specific problems. The Picard Maneuver solves the problem of facing an enemy ship that has superior armaments but inferior sensors.

Is that an unrealistic scenario? Probably not: "Sensors are down!" is about as common a battle cry as "Shields are down!" or "Weapons are down!". A situation may well arise during the course of the battle wherein the enemy has lost his FTL sensors. And since FTL sensors are likely to be "active" in nature (there being no known FTL signals in nature, therefore the sensors have to synthesize those themselves), the player being sensed will be able to tell more or less immediately when the enemy's FTL beams stop hitting him.

Is it a common scenario? Again, probably not: if the sensors of the enemy are shot to hell, it's a bit unlikely that he would still outgun you and force you to attempt the risky Picard Maneuver. But remember how the forged Stargazer logs "justified" Picard's "attack": the false Picard claimed he had mistaken an innocent Ferengi sensor cluster for a weapons array and reacted accordingly. Perhaps that part was actually close to the truth? Perhaps Picard had indeed hit the Ferengi sensor array early on in the game, possibly even while intending to hit their weapons array? The circumstances for using the Picard Maneuver would be created right there.

Is there no defense against the maneuver? Of course there is. The most straightforward is this: blow the enemy to smithereens before he can go to warp.

Could the Ferengi have used this defense against the maneuver? Nope. Not if their ship was disabled, having lost FTL sensors.

Could Riker have used that defense against the maneuver? Of course. And nope. He could have destroyed the Stargazer any time he wanted to. But he would have killed Picard in doing so. So Data was absolutely correct in his statement in two senses: a ship being targeted by the Picard Maneuver cannot defend against it (because such a ship would by default be lacking FTL sensors; no other sort of ship would ever be targeted by the maneuver, unless the captain were mad or otherwise delusional!), and the E-D could not utilize any known defense against the maneuver because using those would mean losing the battle (that is, losing the only element in the farcical battle that mattered in the slighest - Picard's life).

So what would Riker do? First of all, he would try and keep Picard predictable. He was in a unique position to do so, because Picard wasn't acting like a Starfleet captain at all: he was acting like a character from a historical play, going through motions written down for him. He would do that as long as he thought his opponent was a Ferengi ship that lacked FTL sensors but still intended to kill him. He would stop doing so the moment he realized the enemy did have FTL sensors or did not intend to kill him. And that's where Riker would lose him, and would have to kill him.

So Picard would play along, continue the charade, while working out a solution that worked within the confines of the scenario. The E-D would play a menacing enemy, intent on unleashing a deadly volley but so cocksure she wouldn't maneuver, wouldn't expect a warp dash, wouldn't be able to withstand the full blast of the Stargazer broadside. All of that would be play - none would be real. But all of it would help save Picard's life, help entrap him in a position where he could not harm himself any more than he could harm others.

In that sense, Picard Maneuver as portrayed in the episode works just fine. What doesn't work too well is Data's solution.

1) Using passive sensors on gas density would be too slow, no improvement on just waiting for the Stargazer's image to appear. Perhaps using active, FTL sensors on gas density would be all right, though - perhaps Picard wouldn't notice those sensors if they only were aimed at nearby interstellar dust, not at Picard's ship.

2) Applying the tractor would be fine - but why should it stop Picard from firing his weapons? Is it because the tractor would disrupt the scenario, shake Picard out of his sturpor, force him to think for a moment (even if his thinking were still clouded by the mindbending machine and forced to proceed in terms of Battle of Maxia, or whatever approximation of that could be applied in the new circumstances)? Or would the grip of the tractor beam also somehow disable the decrepit old wreck, short-circuit her weapons?

3) Why would Picard not commit suicide at capture? His original attack had not been suicidal - he doesn't seem to believe in suicide, as ST:NEM again proves. But the nefarious Ferengi plan was aimed at having Picard kill himself through foolish attack. Wouldn't the mindbending also extend to inciting Picard to use self-destruct when captured by the tractor beam?

The maneuver as such is valid, though. And very, very special. So special in fact that I can't think of any other Trek occasion where it would have been useful...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Holdfast]

Timo - I have huge respect for your uncanny recall of Trek detail and the imaginative way you manage to get it all to tie together, which makes it a joy to read lots of your posts.

But this has to be one of the most lawlerly parsings of a statement I've read a long time. It pushes even Data's rigid use to language to breaking point!

So Data was absolutely correct in his statement in two senses: a ship being targeted by the Picard Maneuver cannot defend against it (because such a ship would by default be lacking FTL sensors; no other sort of ship would ever be targeted by the maneuver, unless the captain were mad or otherwise delusional!), and the E-D could not utilize any known defense against the maneuver because using those would mean losing the battle (that is, losing the only element in the farcical battle that mattered in the slighest - Picard's life).

And I do think you give Riker a bit too much foresight with this bit:

So what would Riker do? First of all, he would try and keep Picard predictable. He was in a unique position to do so, because Picard wasn't acting like a Starfleet captain at all: he was acting like a character from a historical play, going through motions written down for him. He would do that as long as he thought his opponent was a Ferengi ship that lacked FTL sensors but still intended to kill him. He would stop doing so the moment he realized the enemy did have FTL sensors or did not intend to kill him. And that's where Riker would lose him, and would have to kill him.

So Picard would play along, continue the charade, while working out a solution that worked within the confines of the scenario. The E-D would play a menacing enemy, intent on unleashing a deadly volley but so cocksure she wouldn't maneuver, wouldn't expect a warp dash, wouldn't be able to withstand the full blast of the Stargazer broadside. All of that would be play - none would be real. But all of it would help save Picard's life, help entrap him in a position where he could not harm himself any more than he could harm others.

But I admire the attempts!



Personally, I think the Picard's side of the battle makes internal story sense; he's simply reliving the Stargazer's side of the battle as it occured in Maxia Zeta, and so is locked into repeating his tactics. The Picard Maneouvre does make sense within the context of the Battle of Maxia for the reasons you've outlined (inadequate/non-functioning Ferengi sensors).

But the Enterprise crew's dialogue doesn't really work for me. Despite your brave attempts, I think it's pretty clear the writers meant to indicate to viewers that the Picard manoeuvre made the Stargazer into an active threat to the Enterprise herself and that just doesn't wash. Also, their solution is pretty poor, for the reasons you gave. But hey, some things in Trek you just gotta roll with, and this is one of them!

 

[ALF]

My fanon rationalization is like so: no one had ever pulled off that stunt with as much badassery (see: Robau) as Picard. That's why he gets much respect and street cred.

 

[Timo]

...But does he?

Data: "You performed what Starfleet textbooks now refer to as the Picard Maneuver."
Picard: "Well, I did what any good helmsman would have done. I dropped into high warp, stopped right off the enemy vessel's bow and fired with everything I had."
Riker: "And blowing into maximum warp speed, you appeared for an instant to be in two places at once."
Picard: "And our attacker fired on the wrong one."
Riker: "'I did what any good helmsman could have done.' You did it first, sir."
Picard: "It was a save our skins maneuver. We were finished. On fire. We had to abandon ship. We limped through space in shuttlecraft for weeks before we were picked up. I haven't thought about this for years."

That's the full extent of discussion on Picard's exploits, really. Nobody comes out and says "the maneuver is required reading at the Academy" or "your name has gone in the annals of history for inventing what nobody else managed to invent before you". Instead, Picard "did what any good helmsman would have done", under the circumstances. Since the circumstances were rare, it's no wonder Picard was the first.

(If we want to, we can even say that Picard wasn't the first Starfleeter to do it. Riker could instead be saying that in the Battle of Maxia, Picard "drew first", indicating that he was the superior starship-slinger and his Ferengi opponent was the inferior one.)

In "The Battle", Picard's old maneuver is discussed, not revered. It's not even really respected, but more like favorably commented upon as having been the right thing to do at the time.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Praxius]

No, not him tugging down on the tunic becasue the unifrom was poorly designed. The "real" one where he engages a ship's warp-drive to get closer to a target and for the ship to appear in two places at once. According to Riker this was a great maneuver that blew people away and that there's no defense for it.

Ummm? What.

First of all, in the 200+ years of Starfleet history and manned FTL spacetravel no one ever thought of using the time-delay of light and distance to trick sensors? And there's no defense for it? Seems to me that there should be, as an observer should know that the one that "just appeared" and is closer would be the "real ship" and the other one is just a light ghost and we know the ships have FTL sensors!

And before anyone tells me that the Ferengi don't have FTL sensors so that's why it worked on them I remind you that The Picard Maneuver worked against the Enterprise.

Sure and observer seeing the new ship just appear may know that is indeed the real ship, the sensors do not and unless you wish to target your weapons manually, by the time your ship locks onto the right ship, the ship that just jumped already has you targeted, locked and most likely fired upon.

So let's say you decide to target your weapons manually.... ok... so do you know which direction the ship will go to warp? Do you know the exact distance it will travel before it drops out of warp?

By the time you manually target the second ship after it drops out of warp and gives you the second ship... once again, chances are you still won't be fast enough to respond before you are fired upon.

Sure the Enterprise and Ferengi have Faster than Light travel sensors, but the sensors detecting something, pinging it back to the ship, sending it through the ships' computers, displaying the proper information to the reader of the console and that reader either reporting the information or taking action themselves.... is still not instant and there is time required for all of this to occur.

Since the jump is faster then light in a very short period of time at a very short distance, while the computer factor may play a role in being a disadvantage to such a tactic, the human factor is a bigger problem overall since the time to react to this jump is based on the response time of the human. And unless you know the enemy is about to perform this jump (Riker and crew were lucky in knowing it was going to happen before it happened) there is little opportunity to plan to counter this maneuver.

A couple of years ago I thought the same thing.... why is it such a cool move when all one has to do is target the new ship appearing?

Then I thought about it for a while and concluded that neither the computer sensors, nor human response time can compensate for a faster than light and faster then a second action.

Data could counter it, which is how they devised the counter action of using the tractor beam... and it worked... but unless you have the response time of Data to manually counter the maneuver, there is no real defense.

 

[sbk1234]

I can accept that the Ferengi didn't have a defense for it way back then. However, once Picard and crew got back to civilization and Starfleet debriefing, the tactical people would have worked back then to come up with a workable defense against such a maneuver.

 

[Timo]

Sure the Enterprise and Ferengi have Faster than Light travel sensors, but the sensors detecting something, pinging it back to the ship, sending it through the ships' computers, displaying the proper information to the reader of the console and that reader either reporting the information or taking action themselves.... is still not instant and there is time required for all of this to occur.

But we're talking about shorter time than is needed to follow the approaching attacker. After all, if the sensors are too slow to react to something coming at you at warp nine, then your ship can never move at warp nine through space! You'd be flying blind...

The sensors of a normally functioning Ferengi starship would have to be capable of following the approaching Stargazer through her warp maneuver, never losing sight of her and thus never getting confused about where the ship really is. A battle-damaged Ferengi starship is probably a different matter, though.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CaptainStoner]

My fanon rationalization is like so: no one had ever pulled off that stunt with as much badassery (see: Robau) as Picard. That's why he gets much respect and street cred.

That's not far off reality anyway. Others had surely thought of the maneuver before, it's just that Picard did it in a circumstance that brought him some fame.
As far as there being "no defense" for the PM - I can accept that it's a sensor dodge that is nearly impossible to anticipate/counter. Though sensors may be able to track a ship at impulse, or at warp, tracking a ship through a shift from impulse to warp may cause a momentary lag that is otherwise insignificant. But it's only going to win the battle if the enemy ship can be disabled in one round of fire. If their sheilds are still good, the PM is meaningless.

 

[Praxius]

But we're talking about shorter time than is needed to follow the approaching attacker. After all, if the sensors are too slow to react to something coming at you at warp nine, then your ship can never move at warp nine through space! You'd be flying blind...

That's not exactly what I meant.

A ship coming at you at warp 9 and just entering sensor range will be picked up, located, tracked and determined when it will arrive at your destination, but does the computer know all this instantly and can relay it back to you instantly?

We already know sub space communications has a delay, so it is safe to assume that there is also a bit of a delay between when the sensors pick up an object, calculate the information of that object and relay it back to the viewer.... a ship coming at you at warp 9 and just entering sensor range still allows you to have time to acknowledge and respond to the information provided.

But when it comes to a ship that is right in front of you that pulls a high warp jump of a very short distance in a fraction of a second.... you can not humanly compensate for that fraction of a second action, because your own eyes and the computers you are using to provide you with information to act on are simply slower then the action, and unless you know your enemy is going to pull this move and unless you know when they're going to pull this move, you can not counter this action, it's simply not humanly possible, even if your sensors and computers had an instant response time.... in order for you to read the information, comprehend that information and take the appropriate actions based on that information.... the warp jump would have already been performed and they would have already fired upon you.

It's like trying to catch a humming bird's wings with your fingers in mid flight.... or catching a bullet with your teeth.

Yes the starships do have sensors that can track objects not only at great distances, but also at high speeds, but it's mostly dealing with projections and calculations that do take time for the computer to figure out.... even if it's only one or two seconds, it still takes time..... more time then you have.

 

[Timo]

Yes the starships do have sensors that can track objects not only at great distances, but also at high speeds, but it's mostly dealing with projections and calculations that do take time for the computer to figure out...

Granted that even a slowish computer might handle stardust that approaches the ship at warp nine - that is, when the ship flies forward at warp nine - because stardust is generally predictable, and the computer would know in advance how the ship herself is going to move. But a slowish computer could not track another starship at warp speeds, because the behavior of that ship would not be predictable.

Yet we do see starships tracking each other while one or both are at warp. This happens with such accuracy that one can even transport from one ship to another! It's probably only possible in ideal conditions, though - Kirk for one always had trouble hitting an opponent that maneuvered at high speeds. Just add the tiniest bit of battle damage, and a Ferengi vessel that's originally merely on par with the antiquated Stargazer suddenly loses the ability to track a mad dash at the maximum warp speed of that Starfleet vessel.

A reaction time of seconds doesn't sound plausible, though. But of course it could be that the computer would react in nanoseconds, while the Ferengi themselves would be slow to do anything with the data the computer gave them. We seldom hear that our heroes or villains would slave their weapons directly to the computer, after all.

The only real issue here is that Data appears to be thinking that fundamental instrument shortcomings, not human weakness, are the reason the Picard Maneuver can't be defeated even by the E-D. Or at least he's for some reason ignoring the possibility of simply using standard FTL sensors to keep constant track of Picard's ship. This is why we're going through the contortions of inventing ways for the hardware problem to be real, even though the rest of the episode could just as easily be shrugged off by saying "Picard didn't confuse the Ferengi sensors - he simply surprised the Ferengi gunners with clever maneuvering at a key moment, so that they either hesitated or missed, and Picard did not".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[NathanielM]

No, not him tugging down on the tunic becasue the unifrom was poorly designed. The "real" one where he engages a ship's warp-drive to get closer to a target and for the ship to appear in two places at once. According to Riker this was a great maneuver that blew people away and that there's no defense for it.

Ummm? What.

First of all, in the 200+ years of Starfleet history and manned FTL spacetravel no one ever thought of using the time-delay of light and distance to trick sensors? And there's no defense for it? Seems to me that there should be, as an observer should know that the one that "just appeared" and is closer would be the "real ship" and the other one is just a light ghost and we know the ships have FTL sensors!

And before anyone tells me that the Ferengi don't have FTL sensors so that's why it worked on them I remind you that The Picard Maneuver worked against the Enterprise.

I thought the Picard Maneuver was him doing some doggystyle rodeo moves with the green broad... Something with leather, ball gags and spurs.



*Cue the Jim Kirk doing the green broad music here*

Go Picard go...

Nathaniel

 

[BolianAuthor]

There is no known way to counteract the Picard Maneuver for two main reasons...

Number one... you are trying to lock onto the possible location of an object that will emerge from FTL at a certain point, without knowing where that location will be, exactly.

Number two... basically as above... the crew of the Enterprise had no idea which direction the Stargazer would enter warp at... they can only assume that it will be within direct line-of-sight, which is not a certainty... merely a potential... so there are unknown variables that have to be considered.

 

[BolianAuthor]

My fanon rationalization is like so: no one had ever pulled off that stunt with as much badassery (see: Robau) as Picard. That's why he gets much respect and street cred.

IDK why everyone thinks Robau is such a badass... all he did in the film was be very quick to take a shuttle, go over to an enemy ship and die. Die hard. Die like he meant it. Die like a bawss.

Captain Pike was the real badass... at least he survived.

 

[sbk1234]

There is no known way to counteract the Picard Maneuver for two main reasons...

Number one... you are trying to lock onto the possible location of an object that will emerge from FTL at a certain point, without knowing where that location will be, exactly.

Number two... basically as above... the crew of the Enterprise had no idea which direction the Stargazer would enter warp at... they can only assume that it will be within direct line-of-sight, which is not a certainty... merely a potential... so there are unknown variables that have to be considered.

However, as Picard's maneuver would have undoubtedly been analyzed by Starfleet tactical types, and Picard, in his mental state would be reliving the same situation would have done it identically, they should have known which direction, etc. he would have approached from.

 

[JarodRussell]

The biggest problem is that the Picard Maneuver wouldn't work at the distances shown in the episode. The point of the maneuver actually is: if the ship is 1 light minute away and goes to maximum warp (let's say it crosses the distance in 10 seconds), it would appear directly in front of the enemy ship while the "ghost" image would still be there for 50 seconds. But the distances shown in the episode where certainly below 2 or 3 kilometers. And there it makes no noticable difference.

Lightspeed is roughly 300,000 km per second.

 

[ALF]

My fanon rationalization is like so: no one had ever pulled off that stunt with as much badassery (see: Robau) as Picard. That's why he gets much respect and street cred.

IDK why everyone thinks Robau is such a badass... all he did in the film was be very quick to take a shuttle, go over to an enemy ship and die. Die hard. Die like he meant it. Die like a bawss.

Captain Pike was the real badass... at least he survived.

Pike wasn't bald.
It takes a particular kind of bald badass to pull that shit off and make it look easy.