TOS Romulan BOP?

[MANT!]

Firstly if anyone has the games Starfleet Command 2 or Orion Pirates..go to the following link..
http://atrahasis.proboards25.com/index.cgi?board=download&action=display&thread=789

This was the flagship of the Romulian fleet, but not everyone could build a luxo-cruiser like the Federation..I'm more inclined to think that the weapon and cloak power systems require a large hull to store them..without much room for the crew... so small living space rather large hull..

 

[Icy_Penguigo]

In SFB, the sublight Romulans are reconciled by saying that they lacked "tactical warp" capabilities. Meaning, they had to drop to sublight to fight. Humans did not have this problem, and it proved to be a decisive advantage.

If SFB, impulse engines are actually a primitive version of a warp engine. They are powered by fusion reactors, and can move a ship at both sublight speeds and FTL speeds, but with nowhere near the efficiency of an antimatter-powered warp engine. A true warp engine has enough power to generate a subspace field that won't collapse when struck by weapons fire, but if an impulse-powered ship were hit by a sufficiently powerful weapon, its subspace field would violently collapse and rip the ship apart.

 

[Timo]

It seems obvious to me that the Romulan ship had every dramatic incentive to be a) very small and b) very slow in comparison with the hero ship. After all, those are the defining characteristics of a Nazi submarine, the threat that the Romulan ship was
intended to near-perfectly mimic.

It's just too bad that the writers at that time had relatively few arrows in their quiver: they could have chosen to put the Romulan ship at warp 3 vs. the warp 8 of the hero ship, but apparently Schneider or his proofreaders didn't trust such numbers would be consistent with other Trek writing, and the more ambiguous "impulse vs. warp" was chosen instead.

The Nazi submarine analogy should also tell us that a small and slow vessel is a very credible threat, and can represent the sharpest cutting edge of technology even when the civilization behind it has already fielded vessels that are larger and faster by an order of magnitude or three. I therefore tend to disregard all those lines of speculation that burden the entire Romulan civilization with warp-incapability, or with slow interstellar drives, or with the inability to build large vessels.

So for Scotty's "simple impulse" line, I prefer to assume all three of the following:

1) Romulans had indeed built an exceptionally slow ship, because low speed was dictated by the other, frighteningly superior attributes of the design.
2) The ship indeed had an odd power source quite unlike Federation warp cores - quite possibly the quantum singularity system finally explicated in the 2360s.
3) Scotty couldn't really make heads or tails of what he was seeing, so he jumped to incorrect conclusions.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

Could we find that out reliably after all of these years?

 

[James Wright]

Why not give the Romulan BoP some warp capabilities because of the fact the Romulan Empire bordered the Klingon Empire? For that matter, why didn't the Klingons invade Romulan territory?

JDW

 

[Icy_Penguigo]

Why not give the Romulan BoP some warp capabilities because of the fact the Romulan Empire bordered the Klingon Empire? For that matter, why didn't the Klingons invade Romulan territory?

JDW

Ironically, in the SFU timeline, the Klingons were going to invade them. They even had a fleet assembled and were heading their way. And the Romulans would have been easy pickings from the Klingons. Only the timely arrival of the Tholian refugees from their shattered empire in galaxy M81 prevented this.

In the SFU timeline, the Tholians originated in M81. They ruled basically the entire galaxy, and genetically engineered an insectoid race called the "Seltorians" to do most of their dirty work. Eventually the Seltorians revolted and overthrew the Tholians, but they weren't happy with just defeating them. They wanted to slaughter all Tholians, everywhere. So many groups of Tholians ran as far as they could. One such caravan made it all the way to our galaxy, bringing with them one of their Dyson spheres. They set up camp in the small space between the Romulans and Klingons without the Klingons' knowledge. When the Tholians first arrived(nearly a century before TOS), they were radically more advanced than the Klingons or Feds, and the Klingon fleet accidentally crashed headlong into their new Holdfast. They were utterly annihilated. Ever since, the Klingons have had a raging hatred for the Tholians.

Unbeknownst to the Tholians, they unwittingly saved the Romulans from being conquered. This is small fact that the Klingons never mentioned to the Romulans after they allied with them against the Feds.

 

[Nerroth]

Although, even if the Romulans did actually figure it out, they would not exactly rush to the Dyson Sphere with a box of choco-rocks for the Tholians to enjoy...

 

[James Wright]

I was looking at some shots of the big Romulan ship from TNG and happened to notice that there aren't any impulse engines visible. Can anyone confirm this?

JDW

 

[Unicron]

I always liked to think they would be located aft, where the fin is, though I don't think the model had any details in that area.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

I was looking at some shots of the big Romulan ship from TNG and happened to notice that there aren't any impulse engines visible. Can anyone confirm this?

JDW

There's nothing terribly OVERT which can be identified as impulse engines, but there are a series of aft-facing "notches" on the "wing" outer surfaces which I think are pretty clearly intended to be the locations for the impulse exhausts. This is most evident if you look at a 3D physical model (say, the AMT ship-set version). There are some on the lower wing and some on the upper wing, both sides, on the outer surfaces (ie, not inside the "cavity"), facing aft.

Those aren't canonically established as impulse engines, but their configuration and arrangement makes it very obvious to me (subjectively) that this is what they are.

 

[MarianLH]

I always liked to think they would be located aft, where the fin is, though I don't think the model had any details in that area.

The filming miniature has a tiny grilled alcove toward the rear of the upper wing which IIRC was intended to be the impulse engine, but it was never lit.


Marian

 

[Timo]

...It makes sort of sense that a ship designed to be invisible would have as few glowing bits as possible. Stealthy impulse engines would be a desirable design feature.

Who knows, perhaps the Romulans have also toned their warp engines to that green glow because it's less intense than the blue Federation one? Certainly it helps a bit that the glow is directed inward into the cavity rather than blatantly towards the enemy.

Timo Saloniemi