Yesterday's enterprise vs. the actual TNG

[The Original Sixth]

There are no word games here, just you being clueless. According to that statement, Technical Manuals are canon because they report on what is canon. That however means that if there is any contradiction at all between the Technical Manual and what is shown on screen, then Manuals are not canon, in that instance at least.

😂

That's funny, because that isn't what he said. You are trying to infer that, based on an interpretation that you would prefer.

TM does not settle the issue, because we see that a) short range engagements happen far more often than long-range engagements and b) short-range engagements are a rule, not an exception, in fleet battles.

Your only real proof to assert that is the case, is by appealing to visuals, as if Star Trek were a documentary. It is not and when we do investigate into the situation, we find that engagements between peers is generally around 30-40k, with close-range targeting generally around the single thousands.

You don't get to ignore what is shown to be a regular occurrence on screen just because TM agrees that they have the capability to engage at longer range. We already know that they have said capability from canon - there is no contradiction. But saying that it is a) normally employed and b) normally employed in fleet battles, is incorrect, because on-screen evidence shows otherwise.

I'm not ignoring it. I have already addressed it. Star Trek is a TV show. And while yes, there are undoubtedly instances where the portrayal is very accurate, there are times when it is not going to be. The people who worked with the show said as much:

Ronald D. Moore said: "The weapons are way too powerful to present them in any realistic kind of way. Given the real power of a hand phaser, we shouldn't be able to show ANY firefights on camera where the opponents are even in sight of each other, much less around the corner! It's annoying, but just one of those things that we tend to slide by in order to concentrate on telling a dramatic and interesting story." (AOL chat, 1997)

And when you compare it with this from one of their writer's manuals:

Notes on distances in space: giving precise distances and speeds in dialogue sometimes backs our visual effects staff into difficult corners. An example is a case when two ships are described as being 10,000 kilometers apart and the dramatics of a scene require both ships to be seen in the same shot. We've found that it's often best to use only enough numeric data to convey the aerospace/nautical "flavor" of the scene, but to otherwise fall back on relatively nonspecific statements such as "alien ship coming alongside"

So let's see, we KNOW it's a fictional TV show, so treating it like some sort of documentary is inappropriate. We also have a statement from one of the people running the show to fans that they have to let certain aspects of the setting slide in order to tell a dramatic and interesting story. And we also have directions to writers describing ship maximum range as 300,000 km, torpedoes with million km ranges, and at the same time--also telling writers to avoid precise figures because it could make things difficult for the special effects guys later in the process of creating an episode. If I'm not mistaken, these episodes could take 10 to 12 weeks to produce, with it generally starting with the writing.

This is solid proof that while I'm sure everyone who worked there did their best to present as accurate a portrayal of Star Trek as they were taught and imagined, they were still limited by things like budget, time, and dramatic storytelling. I am simply acknowledging this fact and I have supported it with evidence.

Neither is that quote you have provided canonical.

It is. You simply refuse to acknowledge it.

Why do we see ships receiving damage through shields, and shields being described as weakening as they accumulate damage? There is no reason why shields would be weaker as they accumulate heat - so long as heat sinks are not past capacity, shields are up. Once heat sinks go past the capacity, shields come down. Up or down, 1 or 0. That is what heat sinks would result in. That is, in fact, the purpose of heat sinks.

There are numerous reasons why shields might differ in combat situations. The emitters could be damaged, the generators could be damaged, the conduits that supply them could be damaged--there's really a whole host of reasons.

If shields are limited by heat sink system, why does it matter that "forward shields are at 30%" beyond how long will they last? Why dumping auxilliary power into shields apparently restores them - more power shouldn't affect heat sink capacity.

Please explain.

I don't know why auxiliary power would really affect anything, considering the warpcore would easily be able to generate all the power that they need. That only makes sense if there's some sort of energy shortage. If that's the case, it seems like an issue with the power grid, either where the fuel is being supplied, to where the energy is produced, and to where the energy is received. The only other interpretation might be them bringing up one of the auxiliary generators to support a failing generator. That would address the issue of needing more power.

Meanwhile, I'm not entirely certain how trying to generate more power to restore a matter screen that has probably been (at least partially) vaporized is going to make one bit of difference. If the field itself isn't primarily the thing affected by enemy weapons and rather the matter, then it should be an issue of pumping out more matter.

Technical manual at best, may show writers' intent - but even if you take writers' intent as canon, that only holds true if not contradicted by other evidence.

Also:
"The deflector field itself is emitted and shaped by a series of conformal transmission grids on the spacecraft exterior, resulting in a field that closely follows the form of the vehicle itself." - Considering how The Next Generation is the era when we actually get bubble shields, and conformal shields do not reappear until the appearance of Sovereign class - in fact, if I recall correctly, it was only in Nemesis that we actually see conformal shielding being used again.

Yeah, Technical Manual obviously doesn't really align with actual canon.

I'll take it that you don't have your own copy of the TNG TM. Otherwise, you would realize that they do in fact, look like that. This chart, which shows the shields set to low-end to deflect debris while the ship is in its flight path, shows the actual layout of the shields:

Portrayal attempts or style has changed what the human eyes see, but you can see how it retains the overall rough shape of the ship. Below, you can see a rare instance where more than one layer is visible

And here is a more typical TNG portrayal:

We see it when weapons fire hits the shields.

No, that shield flare can be (and has been) explained as something else. If you wish to suggest that there is physical matter present, then you need to present evidence that it's there. It's rather hypocritical of you also, to demand that we strongly adhere to visual evidence when you yourself do not the moment it becomes convenient.

Now you explain why a graviton field would glow when hit by weapons fire.

I already posted the canonical explanation.

So basically, "fuck the show"? Then we have nothing to discuss.

I never at any point said that something within the show can't be accurate in its portrayal. What I said, is that it is a TV show and the whole point of the TM is to provide us with the technical understanding of how the show works. That same information has been provided to writers by the company, both the official book and in writer manuals. If the company didn't believe that this was an accurate portrayal of their show, they wouldn't have bothered.

Which is something I have pointed out before: regardless of how many long-range duels we have, fleet engagements always happen at short range, meaning that it is clearly tactically advantageous, or else there is a technological reason. Or both.

But there's no strategic reason why they would do that. It would make sense if they used their phasers to shoot down incoming projectiles, as we see in later re-interpretations of the show, but in TNG and DS9, their defense systems are primarily their shields. Therefore, it really makes no sense as to why they would wait to start lobbing torpedoes at each other. In fact, they'd be better off, since at that distance, they could set their torpedoes to high megaton range and hit as many ships as possible with one torpedo.

Certainly, once both fleets collide, ships will probably be moving slower and will be at much closer ranges, probably fairly accurate to what we saw in the show.

Why not? They are certainly capable of it.

Because the Defiant was trying to escape. It would also imply that the Defiant has immense (and absurd) acceleration and de-acceleration abilities.

1) During the Dominion War? It is safe to assume that they were. And if the enemy is outnumbered, then the enemy would want to close in as quickly as possible. In other words, you would only get a long-range battle when forces are nearly equal - and even that only as long as one side doesn't start winning.

That's a well-thought-out explanation, but let's explore that argument. First, I don't believe that a larger fleet would necessarily want to engage at close-range. The reason is that space is generally empty and most ST battles are done in relatively empty space. Since that's the case, it doesn't make sense why a larger fleet that could lob torpedoes at the enemy without obstruction, would choose to engage at closer range, where its own ships would act as cover for the smaller fleet.

It would in fact, behoove the smaller fleet in some situations to move in as quickly as possible, even while taking heavy fire, because despite the losses, they aren't likely to win an endurance match with a larger fleet of peer power. And we see this sort of thought highlighted in Sacrifice of Angels, where Sisko tried to create an opening in the fleet by antagonizing the Cardassians. Dukat took a risk in making the opening as part of his feint and Sisko took a risk in entering there.

The real question, regardless of which way you want to slice it, is why fleets don't lob torpedoes at longer ranges. You accept that ships can do it. So either you would need to accept that the actual battle began at farther ranges and the distance shortened or you have to explain why the fleet whose advantaged by the distance wouldn't immediately lob torpedoes while they had that advantage.

2) Possibly - I mean, why would there be only one reason? But regardless of the reason(s), short-range battles seem to be the norm.

They appear to be the norm because of the style choice in the portrayal, which was influenced by Wrath of Khan. That movie is credited with saving the entire franchise and is hands down one of, if not the best movie they ever made. Regardless of the source for the style though, it requires both ships to be onscreen at once. And therefore, both ships have to be within a few dozen kilometers of each other.

3) Even with torpedoes, Federation ships have front and aft coverage, which seems to be rather an exception - Klingons appear to have only frontal torpedo launchers, and Romulan warbirds are front-loaded as well.

Because front-loading is more pragmatic. There really are only two options as far as actual space tactics go. You can design a ship that favors broadsides--thereby bringing an exceptional amount of firepower against your opponent at the risk of presenting a greater target OR you can have lots of weapons on the front, cutting down your exposure at the cost of reducing your firepower. In this case, it seems the popular thought is to have as many weapons facing forward. That would suggest that ships make attack runs against each other; firing off as many weapons as possible before swinging back around for another go.

Which is the combat style shown almost exclusively in TOS and is sometimes seen and spoken of in TNG/DS9.

However, that design would also encourage a battle to begin at longer ranges, where one side can inflict as much damage and exhaustion on the other before making the close.

* Which is particularly interesting, as the fleet comes into the field of deactivated weapons platforms to destroy them instead of destroying them from further away.

Which makes no sense. Especially if they're afraid that the platforms might activate soon, you'd lob as much firepower at them as possible and as soon as possible.

Maximum effective range, yes. But as I said: they are just as liable to close to visual range as to actually utilize said range. Most of the time, engagements will end up - and often start - at distances of dozens to maybe hundreds of kilometers, and sometimes even single-digit kilometers. This is especially true in fleet battles: literally all examples we have of actual long-range combat are between individual starships.

And this is where we differ. While there are certain situations where ships won't engage until closer in one on one fights or where only a few combatants are present, there is no reason for them to do so in large fleet engagements, because of the concentration of firepower. They do not (and cannot) jam photon torpedoes, they cannot avoid a large volume of torpedoes, and there is little evidence they use phasers to dispatch torpedoes. Some argue that torpedoes are even shielded.

Also, Phoenix engaged at closer to 200 000 kilometers than to 300 000 kilometers. Looking here and at the episode itself, Phoenix has weapons range of some 230 000 - 240 000 kilometers, with phasers demonstrating range of some 190 000 - 200 000 km. But that is just splitting hairs.

Good, so there's no need to really discuss it then.

100 000 km is "well within the weapons range" of Jem'Hadar warships, so I'd say that battlebugs actually also have range of some 150 000 - 200 000 kilometers (considering "well within"). And implication was that it made battlebugs a danger, so it is clear that weapons aren't affected too much by how small or maneuverable target may be.

The Defiant was cloaked at the time, which means its shields were down. Which means yes, they were still dangerous. Because not everything on the ship is going to be able to tank a multi-megajoule particle beam. And in fact, the wider spread would imply some sensors could easily get fried.

Not just phasers. Torpedoes as well are both shown and stated to be far more powerful than what TNG TM implies. And I don't mean just stuff like "The Die is Cast".

How so? Torpedoes are implied to generally be 45 megatons. That's roughly what you'd expect from that sort of weapon.

Also, if shields have no matter (like The Technical Manual states), and phasers are also as weak as the TM states... how can you explain phasers being useful - or usable - against shields at all? Either one of these must be wrong: either shields are based around some sort of matter (and are thus affected by NDF, whatever it is), or phasers have far more raw energy than the Manual states.

Or, if neither is true, phasers are completely, utterly useless against shielded targets. Which is bullshit.

Because the shields need to match the incoming energy for maximum efficiency. Since they're not always present, some damage is likely to seep through because there's (probably) going to be a waning and waxing in terms of how much energy is there at any given time. Matching an enemy's frequency is so difficult that only the Borg can manage it, but you can probably guess when the shields are weaker as opposed to stronger. Phaser strikes placed at the right frequency can inflict more damage to the ship. Damage a couple of shield emitters, for example, and the shields will be weaker.

There is also the fact that there is a difference between ships. In the TM, a Romulan Warbird discharges 20 GW disruptors. The Ferengi marauder's weapons discharge at 500 MWs, by the by. So it really depends upon the ship. Disruptors seem more powerful, probably at a cost of range, since they tend to be highly prized among the Klingons and Romulans, who prefer using cloaks for ambush attacks.

It was behind-the-scenes somewhere; couldn't find it right now.

Well, let me know if you find it.

You know, if you are going to offer evidence, you might want to make sure people can see it.

The link works? I tried to embed the image, but it gave me problems and I wasn't going to fight with it just for an image.

But yeah, I managed to find it - it is 700 MW. Which makes absolutely no sense considering that NX-01 had phase cannon with output of 250 - 500 GW (500 GJ over 1 - 2 s burst). So either Cardassian starships have weapons that are three orders of magnitude less powerful than those of 22nd century Earth starship (no wonder they couldn't even scratch the paint on unshielded Phoenix!), or displays are not reliable source of information.

Well, I would remind you that 500 GWs would also allow the NX to one-shot the Enterprise D with one shot, according to the numbers spoken by the characters in the Survivors. Overall, it seems the TNG, DS9, and even VOY era generally agree with the TMs in terms of weapon power scaling. Enterprise (and Voyager too) had this odd habit of really high power draws or outputs for no reason. Obviously a ship cannon has a reason to use that much power, but if you look at ENT's Silent Enemy, there's a device one of the intruders place in the ship, which draws in 600 MJ (watts?) of energy. For what reason? Keep in mind, 10 MJs is the power you get from a modern tank round. How is that thing able to even store that much energy, let alone ask what it's doing--unless it happens to be a bomb. Then you have Reed's phase pistols, which he up dialed to 10 MJs. Which, I really need to ask, just how is that possible? How can he fire that thing?

At least by DS9, I can pretend they might have found a way to manage ~800 KJs coming out in the span of a quarter of a second, but watching Reed fire what is in effect, equal to a tank round, and not seeing it reduce the borg drone he shoots to paste is I imagine, what a drug trip would feel like. And then the other drones somehow ADAPT to that!

So I would argue this.

The NX's figures are orders of magnitude too big. A more reasonable figure of 500 MW and 80 MW is more believable when we take the rest of the setting into account. That or we would need to assume that it's a retcon of some sort, in which case everything needs to go up by that same value. Since there is no reason to believe that and since ENT and VOY have had these odd sorts of numbers thrown out before, I would simply assume that they should have done MWs, not GWs.

That "rifle" is Phaser III, yes. It was also being tested for behavior of its energy unit, which means that stated output is unlikely to be absolute maximum. Point is, even if we assume it is, cca 0,8 - 0,9 MW output is still much closer to output TNG:TM states for Galaxy class phaser emitter (5,1 MW, or factor of 5,7 - 6,4) than to 10 kW you mentioned for phasers.

I don't think you read what I posted carefully, but it was long and somewhat tedious, so I'll put it more simply. The TNG's figure of ~10 KWs only logically applies to Phaser I, which tops off at around 15 KWs. Phaser II actually goes up to 1.55 MWs, but the actual total energy discharged is closer to 800 KJs, because the phaser only discharges for about a quarter of a second. So what we saw in the show actually works fine; the Phaser is discharging at around 1 MW, which is about in line with the maximum output for Phaser II. The DS9 TM suggests that the only major difference between the two is the power source.

Meanwhile, the TM indicates that phasers can fire without fail for 45 minutes if they needed to. So the actual energy delivered by the ship-based elements (just on their own) is 7x greater than that of the sidearms.

Anyway, what Manual states for Setting 16 is: Explosive/Disruption Effects; discharge energy 1.55 x 10^6 for 0.28 seconds.

That would actually imply discharge of 5,54 MW (1,55 MJ in 0,28 s) or else 1,55 MW (0,43 MJ). Thing is, phasers seem to usually fire a one-second burst/blast, so I have no clue where TNG TM writer got 0,28 seconds from.

I can see how you came to that, but I would disagree. I had the same conclusion you did at first, but as I've read through the writer's work, he seems to think in watts as to the rate of how much energy is being transferred, then specifies the amount of time that it is transferred. If you read through the portion on deflector shields, it's rather clear that's how he writes. Which would mean that it's 1.55 megawatts, but the device only fires for .28 seconds for a discharge of around 800 KWs.

Why else would there be grooves, if not to denote emitter segments?

It certainly could be that, but we don't know if that is the case. You're presuming that the emitter grooves are the segments themselves. After all, if each of those emitters could handle emitting the energy from all the other elements, why not just make a handful of energy cannons with the same output? However, if there is an additional layer to the weapon, where that energy is passed into and then primarily directed, it makes more sense.

At any rate, this brings us back to shield interaction. Sure, it might be that phasers are that weak, yet have effect on shields far beyond what they should have based on their energy... yet torpedoes have far more energy (64 MT even according to the Manual, and way beyond that if we actually look at what has been both stated and shown in the series itself) but are not ridiculously overpowered compared to phasers.

That's a conundrum I struggled with for years, but I actually found the answer while dunking on B5ers. I won't bore you with the details, but needless to say, it was about a nuclear missile that had variable yields. Photon torpedoes have multiple settings, ten according to the writer's manual. So we know adjusting the yield is possible. Moreover, space is really big. One of the things that I learned with Children of a Dead Earth, was that a missile is not likely to land a direct hit. Space is big and the enemy doesn't want to be hit. And high speed does not necessarily transfer to high maneuverability. Direct hits are probably not likely.

Try out this calculator here: Wayback Machine

If you put in a 45 megaton warhead, you'll notice how quickly the power drops at range. At 250 meters, the energy is ~24 megajoules per cm^2. I profess to being ignorant as to the area of a phaser beam's endpoint, but that's much closer to the directed energy of a phaser than one might believe when first they look at the weapon yields.

At longer ranges, those torpedoes would probably use proximity detonations, which means a torpedo could easily be 300 or even 600 meters from the shield when it goes off. In that case, the energy per square cm drops to 16 or even 4 MJs. At closer ranges, ships will probably use lower yields, because there's a danger in firing torpedoes too close to the ship, as we're told in the Nth Degree and in Q Who. The lower yield is offset by a more accurate or even direct hit.

Hence, torpedoes will consistently be more effective than torpedoes, but they won't by necessity effortlessly outshine them. Phasers are precise weapons that can be fired at points when shields are low for maximum penetration (as a knight might use the point of his sword to reach a gap in the enemy's armor) and apply the energy to a specific point, whereas a torpedo is more akin to a hammer or mace, that uses raw energy to batter the enemy.

Only solution I can think of is that phasers somehow disrupt the shields beyond what torpedoes can do... which would suggest shields are comprised of some sort of matter that is affected by phasers far more than it is by "normal" energy such as torpedoes. Which means that shields simply cannot be what TM states them to be.

That's a solution, but it requires that we prove that there is matter there for it to interact with.

And we still have issue of NX-01 phase cannons being rated for 500 GJ output (though there was also mention of 80 GJ later?) - and managing some ten times more in actual test. That alone would absolutely negate TM, as either one would mean that NX-01 has far more power in its one phase cannon than E-D has from an entire primary phaser array.

As I said, ENT was pretty terrible with its energy figures. And really, it was unnecessary. Any realistic spaceship in the foreseeable future is generally going to top out with guns at 1 GW. For the largest ships. Even as they carry kiloton and megaton-level nukes.

No. Phaser bank is an installation of two phaser emitters side by side. Phaser array is phaser array, not a phaser "bank".

Also, it was a small phaser bank, as in, emitters that were less powerful than those of Enterprise D.

No, that doesn't seem to be the case. Phaser bank refers to a phaser weapon. It may be a cannon (such as the Defiant or Constitution II) or it can be an array. The term is used interchangeably. You can see this in the show:

Yesterday's Enterprise

CASTILLO: You're right, I don't. But imagine coming home after twenty-two years. Would I even recognize them?
TASHA: What are the stats on main phaser banks?
CASTILLO: Emitters available, sixty percent forward, fifty-two percent aft.
TASHA: Good. Let's take a look at the torpedo launchers.
.

As you can see, Tasha, who is from the Enterprise D (a ship with all phaser arrays) refers to the phaser emplacements as "phaser banks" when regarding the Enterprise C. One look at the Ambassador class and you will see that they have phaser arrays.

So the term is clearly interchangeable. And that means we really have no idea how large this phaser bank actually is, what they're comparing it to (planetary or ship-based?) and to top it off, we don't know how much energy is required to power those banks, unless you think they have 100% efficiency (as in, no energy lost due to waste), in addition to needing to power the other systems for such a weapon.

Ship is moving at impulse speed, computers are active, life support systems are active... and yes, the Enterprise is moving. It is clearly seen - impulse engines are active, and so are warp nacelles, which apparently are also used at impulse speed. They aren't sitting idle, and apparently Star Trek treats universe like ocean with active propulsion required to keep moving. Also, don't forget that in Voyager: "Revulsion", you have five million gigawatts running through a single conduit. Considering that, you want me to believe that the entire Galaxy class starship have energy output of less than single Intrepid-class plasma conduit.

Yes, obviously the ship is doing something, but the Enterprise D didn't need what amounts to literal gigatons of energy annihilated every second to keep the ship running. And that power couldn't be applied to the impulse engines, because the impulse engines have their own dedicated power system; ie, the fusion reactors. I don't oppose that the ship could generate such energy--but that would need to be at warp. There is no indication that they use it for some kind of weapon system. The only time they were able to do that was when they passed all that energy through the main deflector dish, which was stated to be the only thing onboard (apart from the engines, obviously) that could handle that much power.

And as for Voyager, Voyager gives weird-ass shit numbers all the time. While some are sensible, others are not. Like the fucking Borg alcove that REQUIRED 30 megawatts to fucking work. What is it doing with 30 megawatts? What could it possibly need with that much energy? And even the conduit you reference is part of a nonsensical discussion of how Seven's exoskeleton arm could withstand that same energy. If that's the case, why worry about phasers? At all? Because 4 MWs per cm^2 is enough to vaporize over 900 millimeters of titanium armor, yet I'm supposed to believe her arm will be just fine while she sticks it in the path of 5 petajoules of energy? That's the full frontal force of a 1-megaton bomb.

What's even worse, is that Seven for some reason thinks that this is no big deal and that even if her ARM were to somehow survive it, it begs the question of how safe it is to mess with the power system that has a megaton bomb running through it every second. It makes her look either suicidal or stupid because she could quickly core her own ship.

So do I object to the power figures? No. Do I object to that figure if the Enterprise is doing nothing? Obviously and we don't know where Data was going with his example. And is the arm thing stupid? Sure, but that energy has to be transferred from the core to the engines somehow.

 

[Battlegrinder]

So let's see, we KNOW it's a fictional TV show, so treating it like some sort of documentary is inappropriate.

We also know the TM is just a fictional document they churned out to make money, and the writers guides were just that, guides, ones that the staff frequently ignored (eg, the guide no doubt mentions that shuttles have transporters built into them, but the writers are constantly forgetting that, most notoriously in Nemesis).

We also have a statement from one of the people running the show to fans that they have to let certain aspects of the setting slide in order to tell a dramatic and interesting story.

Yes, and I don't think you've quite thought through the implications of that. For dramatic reasons, in Nemesis the Enterprise's transporters failed, which lead to Picard having to fight his way about the Scimitar alone, Data's risky attempt to jump over to the ship and save him, and ultimately Datas death. All of those are, particularly the last bit, are very major, fixed plot points.

But in the actual setting, the shuttle transporters would have worked fine, the entries could have beamed over dozens of guys and easily won the day. Data would have lived (which in turn has interesting implications for the first season of Picard).

So......what actually happened in Nemesis? The events we saw onscreen, or something else, a something else that meant Picard season 1 never happened (ok, you're starting to sell me on this idea). This is the issue with your approach, once you start chipping away at the show because "the writers have to fudge things" well then pretty soon the entire narrative fails apart and the "real" setting bears no resemblance to the show at all.

What I said, is that it is a TV show and the whole point of the TM is to provide us with the technical understanding of how the show works.

The whole point of the TM is to make money from nerds, paramount could care less how accurate it is or how well it lines up with the show, and statements otherwise were made because if they said "eh, it's just some BS we slapped together out of writers guides that we occasionally follow" then that would have hurt sales.

That same information has been provided to writers by the company, both the official book and in writer manuals. If the company didn't believe that this was an accurate portrayal of their show, they wouldn't have bothered.

The writers manuals exist to try and maintain an consistent tone and feel throughout a series and between shows. There is no "real setting" the show is merely trying to depict, the "real setting" is the show.

 

[The Original Sixth]

Yes, and I don't think you've quite thought through the implications of that. For dramatic reasons, in Nemesis the Enterprise's transporters failed, which lead to Picard having to fight his way about the Scimitar alone, Data's risky attempt to jump over to the ship and save him, and ultimately Datas death. All of those are, particularly the last bit, are very major, fixed plot points.

But in the actual setting, the shuttle transporters would have worked fine, the entries could have beamed over dozens of guys and easily won the day. Data would have lived (which in turn has interesting implications for the first season of Picard).

So......what actually happened in Nemesis? The events we saw onscreen, or something else, a something else that meant Picard season 1 never happened (ok, you're starting to sell me on this idea). This is the issue with your approach, once you start chipping away at the show because "the writers have to fudge things" well then pretty soon the entire narrative fails apart and the "real" setting bears no resemblance to the show at all.

I'll address your other concerns later, but Nemesis is what we call a plot hole.

There was a shuttle that had transporters in them in Best of Both Worlds (that's how they rescued Picard), another episode showed the Enterprise D had a runabout as a support craft, which also has transporters (not strictly a contradiction, but it's likely the Enterprise E has one too) and of course, the Captain's Yacht had a transporter that Picard had used in the previous movie.

Those are the three that I can name off the top of my head. Honestly, it's as bad as Generations, where Riker forgets how to re-modulate the shields.

That's the thing fans generally complain about because it's so sloppy and poorly written.

 

[Battlegrinder]

I'll address your other concerns later, but Nemesis is what we call a plot hole.

There was a shuttle that had transporters in them in Best of Both Worlds (that's how they rescued Picard), another episode showed the Enterprise D had a runabout as a support craft, which also has transporters (not strictly a contradiction, but it's likely the Enterprise E has one too) and of course, the Captain's Yacht had a transporter that Picard had used in the previous movie.

Those are the three that I can name off the top of my head. Honestly, it's as bad as Generations, where Riker forgets how to re-modulate the shields.

That's the thing fans generally complain about because it's so sloppy and poorly written.

I'm not sure how you specifically can argue for something being a plot hole, since calling something a plot hole requires admitting that a specific event or line of dialogue played out precisely as we saw it, something your method precludes doing. This is, as I thing I've said before, my core objection to the "just a portrayal" arguement, since once you start saying onscreen events don't count and didn't happen that way, you have no way to argue that other things did happen in some particular way.

 

[The Original Sixth]

I'm not sure how you specifically can argue for something being a plot hole, since calling something a plot hole requires admitting that a specific event or line of dialogue played out precisely as we saw it, something your method precludes doing. This is, as I thing I've said before, my core objection to the "just a portrayal" arguement, since once you start saying onscreen events don't count and didn't happen that way, you have no way to argue that other things did happen in some particular way.

My argument doesn't preclude that what we see is an accurate portrayal. My argument simply presents that this is a portrayal and that we must accept that there might be inconsistencies. My position is that, acknowledging this fact, when we see something that doesn't make sense, we must accept that the portrayal is flawed in that aspect.

Your concern, if I am to understand you properly, is that there is nothing to stop me from using this as leverage to win an argument since there is every possibility that I might use it to keep you from pinning me down on a subject to which I wish to remain mercurial. Would that be correct?

 

[Battlegrinder]

My argument doesn't preclude that what we see is an accurate portrayal. My argument simply presents that this is a portrayal and that we must accept that there might be inconsistencies. My position is that, acknowledging this fact, when we see something that doesn't make sense, we must accept that the portrayal is flawed in that aspect.

That feels like a bit of a Motte and Bailey, there's a clear difference between "hey, this one event in this episode doesn't make sense per what's been established in prior episodes, it shouldn't have happened like that" and "all of the space battles are wrong because the writer's guide implies so".

Your concern, if I am to understand you properly, is that there is nothing to stop me from using this as leverage to win an argument since there is every possibility that I might use it to keep you from pinning me down on a subject to which I wish to remain mercurial. Would that be correct?

No, that's not my concern. My concern is that your method is so open ended and has so few limiting principles that there's no way to prevent it from just erasing anything we see onscreen.

Mass effect has this problem back on SB, with people relentlessly abusing the "Codex is highest canon" quote to argue for some very high, very dodgy firepower figures, and refusing to consider the game itself or even conduct a sanity check (before its very hard to argue that the cutscences in ME show 50 BMG grade firepower being thrown around)....but this has the side effect of erasing actual story beats. That last conversation you have with Conrad Verner if he dies? Never happened, dude got exploded by a 50 BMG super pistol, no way he lived. Those companions or civilians that take a grazing shot? Mangled, maybe they live but not way are they keeping that limb.

And that's just fundamentally contrary to the very purpose of these works. The point of star trek is not to portray a carefully worked out science fiction universe that the writers guide explains in great detail. The purpose is to tell a dramatic, compelling story, and therefor anything that boils down to "that scene never happened because blah blah writer's guide" is facially wrong.


This isn't to say the SDN documentary method is correct or that there's absolutely no wiggle room, but the bar for "well, this scene still happened, but I thought it was envisioned as playing out more like this" is much, much higher and requires more basis than "the writers guide said not to use hard and fast numbers".

 

[The Original Sixth]

That feels like a bit of a Motte and Bailey, there's a clear difference between "hey, this one event in this episode doesn't make sense per what's been established in prior episodes, it shouldn't have happened like that" and "all of the space battles are wrong because the writer's guide implies so".

Well, I think we should really take it scene by scene, but reliance on TM doesn't create that problem. The problem is inherent to fiction-based debates themselves. That's why people prefer some sort of backbone document or methodology to address that problem. It doesn't matter if you use Wong's method or the TM method, you're still going to encounter that issue.

I would also argue that not all the battles are wrong in Star Trek. There are several episodes where they're portrayed fighting at hundreds of thousands of km, tens of thousands of km, and thousands of km.

No, that's not my concern. My concern is that your method is so open ended and has so few limiting principles that there's no way to prevent it from just erasing anything we see onscreen.

Again, I'm not sure how adhering to any other methodology doesn't create the same problems. We're debating a fiction. And while in reality, if you or I accomplished something, then it is possible. And that's fine because there are laws to the universe that cannot be broken. You can either do it or you can't. So if we encounter something that seems impossible, we have the scientific method to definitively decide whether something is possible or not.

We don't have that in a setting where the very laws of reality themselves can be different to a small degree.

Mass effect has this problem back on SB, with people relentlessly abusing the "Codex is highest canon" quote to argue for some very high, very dodgy firepower figures, and refusing to consider the game itself or even conduct a sanity check (before its very hard to argue that the cutscences in ME show 50 BMG grade firepower being thrown around)....but this has the side effect of erasing actual story beats. That last conversation you have with Conrad Verner if he dies? Never happened, dude got exploded by a 50 BMG super pistol, no way he lived. Those companions or civilians that take a grazing shot? Mangled, maybe they live but not way are they keeping that limb.

What sort of dodgy firepower figures? Because the pistol issue is not that difficult to address; he was obviously using a lower grade pistol and what the Codex cites is the standard pistol. One could say that since the guy survived long enough to speak, either he was really, really lucky or he was shot with a lower grade pistol or the whole scene was theatrics and didn't happen that way.

There are ways to address the situation without throwing out entire scenes, we just need to accept that it is the portrayal that is flawed, not the setting itself.

And that's just fundamentally contrary to the very purpose of these works. The point of star trek is not to portray a carefully worked out science fiction universe that the writers guide explains in great detail. The purpose is to tell a dramatic, compelling story, and therefor anything that boils down to "that scene never happened because blah blah writer's guide" is facially wrong.

It doesn't mean that a scene can't happen. There are plenty of historical-based shows and movies that do the same thing. They add in their own bits for story/drama or they simply aren't accurate to the type of wound the person took or the weapon that was used to inflict it. Let's take your Nemesis scene again.

First, we know from the first that the scene is a contradiction to what has already been established, both in the TM and the show. Best of Both Worlds established that at least some shuttles have transporters, we established that capital ships like the GCS carry at least one runabout in TNG, all runabouts have transporters as established in DS9, and in the very previous movie to Nemesis we establish that the Captain's Yacht has its own transporters.

There is really no way out of saying that the scene, as it is portrayed in Nemesis, does not work. That's why so many fans get upset with such scenes; it makes the situation seem stupid. So, if we're looking to ask ourselves, how does one resolve this contradiction, if we use the Wong method, it's that the characters are just fucking stupid. Of course, that generates its own contradiction, because the characters aren't supposed to be stupid and we see that historically, they're brilliant.

We might argue for a lapse in judgment, but transporters are something these people use daily. It's unlikely that everyone in the room...including Data, is going to forget about those alternative transporters. So how do we address this contradiction? Well, we could say that the scene played out slightly differently. We might argue that the shuttle bays and the captain's yacht were severally damaged in the battle. After all, the entire ship's transporters were damaged so badly that none of the transporter rooms were working properly.

Is it obviously for the writer's convenience? Yes. Is it still poorly written? Yes. Would it break continuity? No.

The point wouldn't be to eliminate the scenes altogether, so much as alter them as to make more sense.

Of course, one thing that you might object to is that it removes the possibility of characters being flawed. True, there is the danger that someone could use this to argue to remove inconvenient data under a false or faulty premise. However, we generally know when a character is mistaken or an untrustworthy source. It is either revealed or telegraphed to the audience.

For example, there is no rational reason why Picard should go alone to the Scimitar. It was clear that this was a lapse in judgment, brought on by the belief that he could reason with his clone. Possibly brought on by the desire to see something good in his evil twin. At the same time, he put the lives of his crew on the line, because he THOUGHT he could reason with Picard. No one could go after him, because transporters were unavailable due to battle damage. Data, knowing that Picard was not acting rationally, leaped through a hole and managed to get onto the Scimitar. He was the only one that could do it and Data on his own is very capable. When he got there, Shinzon was basically a dead man and the only way to save his crew would be to destroy the ship. So Data uses the mobile transporter to send Picard back, then sacrifices himself to save the crew.

Picard had a lapse in judgment because of his emotional attachment to Shinzon, which Data corrected at the cost of his own life.

This isn't to say the SDN documentary method is correct or that there's absolutely no wiggle room, but the bar for "well, this scene still happened, but I thought it was envisioned as playing out more like this" is much, much higher and requires more basis than "the writers guide said not to use hard and fast numbers".

My method does not require we dismiss an entire scene. It requires that the scene simply plays out slightly differently. Furthermore, my position is backed up by hard evidence. It's a fictional series. Why would anyone treat it as if it's some sort of lost documentary? It may be done to remove ambiguity and ease internal contradictions, but it's a poor method because the contradictions mount when you look at the dialogue contradicting the one-screen evidence. Sure, you can invent reasons as to why characters might be wrong, but it gets silly after a while that experts in their field know nothing about their field or the world around them.

Whereas my position not only helps to address ambiguity and contradictions, but it is factual. Star Trek is a fictional setting. It was created by Gene Roddenberry. It's owned by Paramount/CBS. I can list the actors, the writers, the producers, and such as evidence that this is the case. And I also have go-betweens those people and the fans who support the series, on how the technology and setting works. There is not always agreement, but the prevailing attitude has been that the TMs are canon, that they were written with the intent of explaining continuity, and were even used in-house for that purpose.

I also have messages to fans that sometimes realistic portrayals have to be set by the wayside for the sake of drama and storytelling. We also have instructions via writer's manuals that even though the technology works at certain distances, they don't want the writers to give hard and fast numbers, because Western effects and specifically Star Trek, prefers to have both ships in the same shot.

 

[Battlegrinder]

I would also argue that not all the battles are wrong in Star Trek. There are several episodes where they're portrayed fighting at hundreds of thousands of km, tens of thousands of km, and thousands of km.

There is no meaningful difference between "all the battles are wrong" and "99% of the battles are wrong".

There are ways to address the situation without throwing out entire scenes, we just need to accept that it is the portrayal that is flawed, not the setting itself.

I'm not seeing how "well, the portrayal is flawed" doesn't translate to "throw out the scene" in cases like this. I think that gets things backwards, the purpose of the setting is to support the story, not the other way around.

It doesn't mean that a scene can't happen. There are plenty of historical-based shows and movies that do the same thing. They add in their own bits for story/drama or they simply aren't accurate to the type of wound the person took or the weapon that was used to inflict it.

Ok, but no one argues that in Assassin's Creed, that if various details or weapons aren't accurate to the real setting (ie, real history) that the events in the game we saw didn't happen in the game. They say "yeah, well it's fiction" and they move on. They don't try and contort events of the game to fit into some imaginary version of the game that's 100% historical and go "and that's how the real story that we played should go".

Well, we could say that the scene played out slightly differently. We might argue that the shuttle bays and the captain's yacht were severally damaged in the battle. After all, the entire ship's transporters were damaged so badly that none of the transporter rooms were working properly.

That appears to be a different argument than "this portrayal of two ships being very close together is wrong because writers manual", what you're saying is "maybe there is more stuff going on in universe that the audience wasn't told". Infering the existence of offscreen events is not the sane as denying the occurrence of onscreen events.

My method does not require we dismiss an entire scene. It requires that the scene simply plays out slightly differently.

Those are the same thing. The remake of Resident Evil 2 plays out differently than the orginal, and is no longer the same story even if it's highly similar and at points even beat for beat the same. They are still two different stories.

There is not always agreement, but the prevailing attitude has been that the TMs are canon, that they were written with the intent of explaining continuity, and were even used in-house for that purpose.

And the problem is, as I originally pointed out with the Nemesis example, if the writers want to do something that the TM and even prior canon rule out, then they'll say "to hell with the TM" and do what they want anyway.

And frankly, when we're getting into the weeds of "well, it's fiction, the writers didn't intend for it to be a documentary" them that cuts against your argument again. The writer never intended ST to be a perfectly consistent hard sci-fi setting, they intended it to be a dramatic story with a consistent enough setting to keep the fans mostly happy. The writers guide was written to support that effort, not to explain the ins and outs of some meticulously detailed Tolkien-esqe setting. That setting, the one you say the TM and writers guides were written to explain, does not exist.

 

[The Original Sixth]

There is no meaningful difference between "all the battles are wrong" and "99% of the battles are wrong".

I think of it less as "all the battles are wrong", but as "while most or all the battles portrayed are flawed in some way, each such portrayal is only 20-90% flawed".

I'm not seeing how "well, the portrayal is flawed" doesn't translate to "throw out the scene" in cases like this. I think that gets things backwards, the purpose of the setting is to support the story, not the other way around.

That's perfectly true.

Ok, but no one argues that in Assassin's Creed, that if various details or weapons aren't accurate to the real setting (ie, real history) that the events in the game we saw didn't happen in the game. They say "yeah, well it's fiction" and they move on. They don't try and contort events of the game to fit into some imaginary version of the game that's 100% historical and go "and that's how the real story that we played should go".

Okay, this is my fault. I was referring to stories based on historical events, not in a historical setting. So say, the story of Abraham Lincoln or people in the Civil War. A portrayal of those historical events is going to generally require some artistic liberties.

That appears to be a different argument than "this portrayal of two ships being very close together is wrong because writers manual", what you're saying is "maybe there is more stuff going on in universe that the audience wasn't told". Infering the existence of offscreen events is not the sane as denying the occurrence of onscreen events.

You should only really throw out a scene if you have no other choice. I am suggesting that what we see is a flawed portrayal (in that is not 100% accurate). Since we don't know the original, we should start with trying to keep the scene intact as possible and only eliminate it if we cannot. And by eliminate, I mean "it actually happened this way". And you can actually keep most of the information important to the story.

Those are the same thing. The remake of Resident Evil 2 plays out differently than the orginal, and is no longer the same story even if it's highly similar and at points even beat for beat the same. They are still two different stories.

While that can be the case, it's not necessarily the case. And it should not be the case, if all can be avoided. We should look to keep the story intact. However, the drama of the story is often not affected by minor mistakes. For example, if we take Sacrifice of Angels, it doesn't really matter to the story or the drama at what distance the fleet battle takes place. All that's important is the heroics, the stakes, and that the hero gets there.

And the problem is, as I originally pointed out with the Nemesis example, if the writers want to do something that the TM and even prior canon rule out, then they'll say "to hell with the TM" and do what they want anyway.

But that's exactly my point. They'll disregard or forget or ignore any sort of continuity if they write themselves into a corner. That doesn't do us any favors. Not unless your position is "well, their technology doesn't work consistently from week to week", then regardless of whether or not we use the TM, we're still in the same boat.

And frankly, when we're getting into the weeds of "well, it's fiction, the writers didn't intend for it to be a documentary" them that cuts against your argument again. The writer never intended ST to be a perfectly consistent hard sci-fi setting, they intended it to be a dramatic story with a consistent enough setting to keep the fans mostly happy. The writers guide was written to support that effort, not to explain the ins and outs of some meticulously detailed Tolkien-esqe setting. That setting, the one you say the TM and writers guides were written to explain, does not exist.

You're right, the writers weren't really obsessed with the technical consistency of the setting, especially if it came into conflict with the drama. I don't see how that weakens my argument. It's in fact, what gives my argument strength. We already know that the writers aren't too terribly concerned with exact consistency, which means treating the setting as if it is exactly consistent is illogical. Now, this isn't too terribly important in the grand schemes of our lives, because we say "well, it's a TV show...what are you gonna do?"

The problem you and I have, however, is that our hobby (where we pit one universe against another) requires consistency. It's not good enough for us that the ships are faster in one episode than another for no apparent reason or that weapon yields vary drastically from one to the other because we need that detailed consistency in order to engage in our hobby. To address this, we all attempt to construct the most consistent explanation of the setting. We realize that there are flaws and we are somewhat biased, but we've accepted that as the price of the hobby.

Now, my position is that we should take the technical TMs, which are stated to be canon, which we know was deeply involved in the creation process of the show as a reference, and use that as guide for consistency. Because even if the writers deviate now and again or add more data that must be considered when we construct our consistent explanations, a lot the show's detailed technical data is generally derived from this source.

So yes, phaser ranges may reach out to 300,000 km and while this is a range ships may wish to engage at some of the time, it is not the range they wish to engage at all or even MOST of the time. Riker's statement of closing to 40,000 km offers a suitable explanation; it gives the target less time to respond. And Riker is correct. If we assume, for example, that a phaser moves at 1c (JUST as an example, mind you), then at 300,000 km, an enemy ship's computer would have a full second to try and adjust shield harmonics for maximum dissipation. If however, you engage at 40,000 km, that drops to 133.3 milliseconds.

And there may be instances where a ship wants to get within 2,000 km of another ship to hit a specific spot.

The TMs should be our consistency guide, but we should not rule out additional information that might inform on the limits or full depth of that technology. At the same time, we shouldn't be afraid to look at a scene--even if it's every battle scene and say "Okay, this doesn't make a lot of sense given what we know already, if we adjust this and that, but keep the overall strategy and goals--then it's fine".

 

[Aldarion]

Your only real proof to assert that is the case, is by appealing to visuals, as if Star Trek were a documentary. It is not and when we do investigate into the situation, we find that engagements between peers is generally around 30-40k, with close-range targeting generally around the single thousands.

I'm not ignoring it. I have already addressed it. Star Trek is a TV show. And while yes, there are undoubtedly instances where the portrayal is very accurate, there are times when it is not going to be. The people who worked with the show said as much:

And when you compare it with this from one of their writer's manuals:
So let's see, we KNOW it's a fictional TV show, so treating it like some sort of documentary is inappropriate. We also have a statement from one of the people running the show to fans that they have to let certain aspects of the setting slide in order to tell a dramatic and interesting story. And we also have directions to writers describing ship maximum range as 300,000 km, torpedoes with million km ranges, and at the same time--also telling writers to avoid precise figures because it could make things difficult for the special effects guys later in the process of creating an episode. If I'm not mistaken, these episodes could take 10 to 12 weeks to produce, with it generally starting with the writing.

This is solid proof that while I'm sure everyone who worked there did their best to present as accurate a portrayal of Star Trek as they were taught and imagined, they were still limited by things like budget, time, and dramatic storytelling. I am simply acknowledging this fact and I have supported it with evidence.

Sorry for late reply, had COVID and was busy afterwards, so...

Looking at stated ranges:
"The Wounded" - 200 000 km range for all weapons
"The Search" - >100 000 km for maximum range of Dominion attack ship, presumably against Defiant itself
"Return to Grace" - <200 000 km effective range for Cardassian weapons, tested against an asteroid
"Non Sequitor" - Nebula demonstrates 5 000 km range against a runabout

So what you say is certainly correct. Problem I have is that all these examples are starship duels. I do not recall a thousands of kilometers range being stated in any fleet battle, whereas we are shown fleets engaging at close range.

It is. You simply refuse to acknowledge it.

Manual is a guide for writers. Doesn't mean they are obliged to follow it.

Looking at quotes collection1, Ronald Moore stated that "none of the books are canon":

"In the episode "Starship Down," Sisko says that the Defiant wasn't built for atmospheric flight. However, when I was looking at the Defiant ship schematic in the Captain's Chair CD-ROM, the ship had landing gear! Why such a discrepancy? Also, any plans to see the Defiant land?

The Defiant has landing gear? You have to remember that things like CD-ROMs and the various "official" manuals put out by Paramount are not done in conjunction with the writing/producing staffs and that the authors are usually simply extrapolating information based on what's actually been seen on screen."

- Ron D. Moore, Co-Executive Producer of DS9 and TNG/DS9/VOY writer, July 1998 - AOL's "Ask Ron D. Moore" message board

"Q: I have been a Star Trek fan for quite a while now, and this question has always left me guessing. How exactly is it that the sensors on these grand ships sense?

A: I'll have to refer you to the TNG Technical Manual or the DS9 Technical Manual for the answer."

"Q: What type of books are considered canon? The ones written by Production staff?

A: Actually, NONE of the books are considered canon. We consider only the filmed episodes (and movies) to be canon for our purposes. We do use things like the Encylopedia, the Chronology, the Technical Manual etc. for reference, but unless it was explicitly mentioned on screen, we won't feel bound by anything stated even in those books."

- Ron D. Moore, Co-Executive Producer of DS9 and TNG/DS9/VOY writer, Sept. 1998 to January 1999 - Star Trek Continuum message board postings

This is solid proof that while I'm sure everyone who worked there did their best to present as accurate a portrayal of Star Trek as they were taught and imagined, they were still limited by things like budget, time, and dramatic storytelling. I am simply acknowledging this fact and I have supported it with evidence.

Oh, I am well aware of that. But do we have statements which show that visuals are completely non-canon, as opposed to merely taking a backseat if there is a conflict?

It is. You simply refuse to acknowledge it.

See above.

There are numerous reasons why shields might differ in combat situations. The emitters could be damaged, the generators could be damaged, the conduits that supply them could be damaged--there's really a whole host of reasons.

If shields weakened due to hardware damage, then a) it would be impossible to raise them up back again before repairs had been made, b) "routing energy to shields" would make no difference in their strength, and c) we wouldn't have "forward shields" or "port shields" being "down", but rather shields would be lost in a far more irregular manner corresponding to location of damaged sections on the shield grid.

I don't know why auxiliary power would really affect anything, considering the warpcore would easily be able to generate all the power that they need. That only makes sense if there's some sort of energy shortage. If that's the case, it seems like an issue with the power grid, either where the fuel is being supplied, to where the energy is produced, and to where the energy is received. The only other interpretation might be them bringing up one of the auxiliary generators to support a failing generator. That would address the issue of needing more power.

Meanwhile, I'm not entirely certain how trying to generate more power to restore a matter screen that has probably been (at least partially) vaporized is going to make one bit of difference. If the field itself isn't primarily the thing affected by enemy weapons and rather the matter, then it should be an issue of pumping out more matter.

Not if you need energy field to keep the matter in place in face of enemy firepower. Basically, my explanation is that both weapons and shields are supplied power by capacitors in order to facilitate quick discharge of energy as needed, with capacitors being recharged over time by the warp core or fusion reactors (this would also explain why phasers were "depleted" in Nemesis - if Enterprise had issues with warp core supplying energy, then once capacitors got depleted, phasers would no longer be a viable weapon. And yes, I know it was really just a stupid plot point).

Of course, that would work with shields being energy as well.

I'll take it that you don't have your own copy of the TNG TM. Otherwise, you would realize that they do in fact, look like that. This chart, which shows the shields set to low-end to deflect debris while the ship is in its flight path, shows the actual layout of the shields:

OK, though that is then contradiction with text.

No, that shield flare can be (and has been) explained as something else. If you wish to suggest that there is physical matter present, then you need to present evidence that it's there. It's rather hypocritical of you also, to demand that we strongly adhere to visual evidence when you yourself do not the moment it becomes convenient.

You mean, Cerenkov radiation?

I never at any point said that something within the show can't be accurate in its portrayal. What I said, is that it is a TV show and the whole point of the TM is to provide us with the technical understanding of how the show works. That same information has been provided to writers by the company, both the official book and in writer manuals. If the company didn't believe that this was an accurate portrayal of their show, they wouldn't have bothered.

Actually, the whole point of the TM is to be a writers' guide. But unless explicitly stated otherwise by Paramount or whoever, what has actually be shown on screen (dialogue, visuals etc) takes precedence over it. It is a writers' guide. But that doesn't mean it is necessarily canon.

See what I provided above, by Ronald Moore: they use manuals as reference for writers, but because manuals are not canon, writers are free to ignore them.

Or to quote my favorite golden banana:

But there's no strategic reason why they would do that. It would make sense if they used their phasers to shoot down incoming projectiles, as we see in later re-interpretations of the show, but in TNG and DS9, their defense systems are primarily their shields. Therefore, it really makes no sense as to why they would wait to start lobbing torpedoes at each other. In fact, they'd be better off, since at that distance, they could set their torpedoes to high megaton range and hit as many ships as possible with one torpedo.

Certainly, once both fleets collide, ships will probably be moving slower and will be at much closer ranges, probably fairly accurate to what we saw in the show.

There are actually several reasons why they might do it. First, as I said, smaller fleet would want to get in close. Second, if one torpedo can destroy multiple ships, then that would certainly make everybody want to get in close as quickly as possible to maximize chances of survival. Third, we see that starships often target subsystems, which would likely be easier at shorter ranges. Fourth, there is always explanation of jamming.

Because the Defiant was trying to escape. It would also imply that the Defiant has immense (and absurd) acceleration and de-acceleration abilities.

Defiant had to destroy that battlebug to escape. And starships do have absurd acceleration capabilities.

That's a well-thought-out explanation, but let's explore that argument. First, I don't believe that a larger fleet would necessarily want to engage at close-range. The reason is that space is generally empty and most ST battles are done in relatively empty space. Since that's the case, it doesn't make sense why a larger fleet that could lob torpedoes at the enemy without obstruction, would choose to engage at closer range, where its own ships would act as cover for the smaller fleet.

It would in fact, behoove the smaller fleet in some situations to move in as quickly as possible, even while taking heavy fire, because despite the losses, they aren't likely to win an endurance match with a larger fleet of peer power. And we see this sort of thought highlighted in Sacrifice of Angels, where Sisko tried to create an opening in the fleet by antagonizing the Cardassians. Dukat took a risk in making the opening as part of his feint and Sisko took a risk in entering there.

The real question, regardless of which way you want to slice it, is why fleets don't lob torpedoes at longer ranges. You accept that ships can do it. So either you would need to accept that the actual battle began at farther ranges and the distance shortened or you have to explain why the fleet whose advantaged by the distance wouldn't immediately lob torpedoes while they had that advantage.

Which is what I am trying to do, and there are several possibilities that may answer that - I mentioned them just before so I will not repeat myself.

They appear to be the norm because of the style choice in the portrayal, which was influenced by Wrath of Khan. That movie is credited with saving the entire franchise and is hands down one of, if not the best movie they ever made. Regardless of the source for the style though, it requires both ships to be onscreen at once. And therefore, both ships have to be within a few dozen kilometers of each other.

I am aware of that, I just don't think we should dismiss even visual evidence. Basically, having an ability doesn't mean you will always use it.

Because front-loading is more pragmatic. There really are only two options as far as actual space tactics go. You can design a ship that favors broadsides--thereby bringing an exceptional amount of firepower against your opponent at the risk of presenting a greater target OR you can have lots of weapons on the front, cutting down your exposure at the cost of reducing your firepower. In this case, it seems the popular thought is to have as many weapons facing forward. That would suggest that ships make attack runs against each other; firing off as many weapons as possible before swinging back around for another go.

Which is the combat style shown almost exclusively in TOS and is sometimes seen and spoken of in TNG/DS9.

However, that design would also encourage a battle to begin at longer ranges, where one side can inflict as much damage and exhaustion on the other before making the close.

Actually, I would suggest the frontloading may be partly responsible for short combat distances: side-loading would favor higher average engagement ranges because ships would be forced to maintain roughly-similar relative distances in order to bring all their weapons to bear while still remaining mobile. Front-loading however would encourage closing the distance because doing anything else would mean taking your weapons off your opponent, whereas keeping nose on target would mean you are constantly approaching him.

Which makes no sense. Especially if they're afraid that the platforms might activate soon, you'd lob as much firepower at them as possible and as soon as possible.

Agreed.

And this is where we differ. While there are certain situations where ships won't engage until closer in one on one fights or where only a few combatants are present, there is no reason for them to do so in large fleet engagements, because of the concentration of firepower. They do not (and cannot) jam photon torpedoes, they cannot avoid a large volume of torpedoes, and there is little evidence they use phasers to dispatch torpedoes. Some argue that torpedoes are even shielded.

Torpedoes are shielded. And in fact, I already mentioned several reasons why they may engage at short range in fleet engagements nevertheless (minimizing enemy ability to focus fire, minimizing enemy firepower, ship design... choose).

How so? Torpedoes are implied to generally be 45 megatons. That's roughly what you'd expect from that sort of weapon.

I do not remember such precise implication?

Because the shields need to match the incoming energy for maximum efficiency. Since they're not always present, some damage is likely to seep through because there's (probably) going to be a waning and waxing in terms of how much energy is there at any given time. Matching an enemy's frequency is so difficult that only the Borg can manage it, but you can probably guess when the shields are weaker as opposed to stronger. Phaser strikes placed at the right frequency can inflict more damage to the ship. Damage a couple of shield emitters, for example, and the shields will be weaker.

There is also the fact that there is a difference between ships. In the TM, a Romulan Warbird discharges 20 GW disruptors. The Ferengi marauder's weapons discharge at 500 MWs, by the by. So it really depends upon the ship. Disruptors seem more powerful, probably at a cost of range, since they tend to be highly prized among the Klingons and Romulans, who prefer using cloaks for ambush attacks.

OK, makes sense.

The link works? I tried to embed the image, but it gave me problems and I wasn't going to fight with it just for an image.

Didn't work for me.

Well, I would remind you that 500 GWs would also allow the NX to one-shot the Enterprise D with one shot, according to the numbers spoken by the characters in the Survivors. Overall, it seems the TNG, DS9, and even VOY era generally agree with the TMs in terms of weapon power scaling. Enterprise (and Voyager too) had this odd habit of really high power draws or outputs for no reason. Obviously a ship cannon has a reason to use that much power, but if you look at ENT's Silent Enemy, there's a device one of the intruders place in the ship, which draws in 600 MJ (watts?) of energy. For what reason? Keep in mind, 10 MJs is the power you get from a modern tank round. How is that thing able to even store that much energy, let alone ask what it's doing--unless it happens to be a bomb. Then you have Reed's phase pistols, which he up dialed to 10 MJs. Which, I really need to ask, just how is that possible? How can he fire that thing?

At least by DS9, I can pretend they might have found a way to manage ~800 KJs coming out in the span of a quarter of a second, but watching Reed fire what is in effect, equal to a tank round, and not seeing it reduce the borg drone he shoots to paste is I imagine, what a drug trip would feel like. And then the other drones somehow ADAPT to that!

So I would argue this.

The NX's figures are orders of magnitude too big. A more reasonable figure of 500 MW and 80 MW is more believable when we take the rest of the setting into account. That or we would need to assume that it's a retcon of some sort, in which case everything needs to go up by that same value. Since there is no reason to believe that and since ENT and VOY have had these odd sorts of numbers thrown out before, I would simply assume that they should have done MWs, not GWs.

OK.

I don't think you read what I posted carefully, but it was long and somewhat tedious, so I'll put it more simply. The TNG's figure of ~10 KWs only logically applies to Phaser I, which tops off at around 15 KWs. Phaser II actually goes up to 1.55 MWs, but the actual total energy discharged is closer to 800 KJs, because the phaser only discharges for about a quarter of a second. So what we saw in the show actually works fine; the Phaser is discharging at around 1 MW, which is about in line with the maximum output for Phaser II. The DS9 TM suggests that the only major difference between the two is the power source.

Meanwhile, the TM indicates that phasers can fire without fail for 45 minutes if they needed to. So the actual energy delivered by the ship-based elements (just on their own) is 7x greater than that of the sidearms.

Phasers on ships also fire in short bursts, much like infantry phaser weapons. So there is still a massive discrepancy between how much energy shipboard phasers should output based on their nature and physical size, and how much energy they do deliver based on the numbers.

I can see how you came to that, but I would disagree. I had the same conclusion you did at first, but as I've read through the writer's work, he seems to think in watts as to the rate of how much energy is being transferred, then specifies the amount of time that it is transferred. If you read through the portion on deflector shields, it's rather clear that's how he writes. Which would mean that it's 1.55 megawatts, but the device only fires for .28 seconds for a discharge of around 800 KWs.

That doesn't make sense. Watt is joules per second. 1,55 MW for 0,28 seconds is still 1,55 MW, it is just that the overall discharge is 800 KJ. Unless you mean he averages out, but why would he average out for a discharge that lasts less than a second and does not repeat unless trigger is pulled again?

It certainly could be that, but we don't know if that is the case. You're presuming that the emitter grooves are the segments themselves. After all, if each of those emitters could handle emitting the energy from all the other elements, why not just make a handful of energy cannons with the same output? However, if there is an additional layer to the weapon, where that energy is passed into and then primarily directed, it makes more sense.

So you are saying these grooves are lenses, and actual emitters are underneath them?

And the reason "why not make handful of energy cannons" is the same to "why use electronically-scanned radar": you get greater flexibility in terms of coverage, damage resistance and ability to quickly shift focus, than you do with something you need to physically move.

That's a conundrum I struggled with for years, but I actually found the answer while dunking on B5ers. I won't bore you with the details, but needless to say, it was about a nuclear missile that had variable yields. Photon torpedoes have multiple settings, ten according to the writer's manual. So we know adjusting the yield is possible. Moreover, space is really big. One of the things that I learned with Children of a Dead Earth, was that a missile is not likely to land a direct hit. Space is big and the enemy doesn't want to be hit. And high speed does not necessarily transfer to high maneuverability. Direct hits are probably not likely.

Try out this calculator here: Wayback Machine

If you put in a 45 megaton warhead, you'll notice how quickly the power drops at range. At 250 meters, the energy is ~24 megajoules per cm^2. I profess to being ignorant as to the area of a phaser beam's endpoint, but that's much closer to the directed energy of a phaser than one might believe when first they look at the weapon yields.

At longer ranges, those torpedoes would probably use proximity detonations, which means a torpedo could easily be 300 or even 600 meters from the shield when it goes off. In that case, the energy per square cm drops to 16 or even 4 MJs. At closer ranges, ships will probably use lower yields, because there's a danger in firing torpedoes too close to the ship, as we're told in the Nth Degree and in Q Who. The lower yield is offset by a more accurate or even direct hit.

Hence, torpedoes will consistently be more effective than torpedoes, but they won't by necessity effortlessly outshine them. Phasers are precise weapons that can be fired at points when shields are low for maximum penetration (as a knight might use the point of his sword to reach a gap in the enemy's armor) and apply the energy to a specific point, whereas a torpedo is more akin to a hammer or mace, that uses raw energy to batter the enemy.

OK, that makes sense.

No, that doesn't seem to be the case. Phaser bank refers to a phaser weapon. It may be a cannon (such as the Defiant or Constitution II) or it can be an array. The term is used interchangeably. You can see this in the show:

OK, thanks.

Yes, obviously the ship is doing something, but the Enterprise D didn't need what amounts to literal gigatons of energy annihilated every second to keep the ship running. And that power couldn't be applied to the impulse engines, because the impulse engines have their own dedicated power system; ie, the fusion reactors. I don't oppose that the ship could generate such energy--but that would need to be at warp. There is no indication that they use it for some kind of weapon system. The only time they were able to do that was when they passed all that energy through the main deflector dish, which was stated to be the only thing onboard (apart from the engines, obviously) that could handle that much power.

And as for Voyager, Voyager gives weird-ass shit numbers all the time. While some are sensible, others are not. Like the fucking Borg alcove that REQUIRED 30 megawatts to fucking work. What is it doing with 30 megawatts? What could it possibly need with that much energy? And even the conduit you reference is part of a nonsensical discussion of how Seven's exoskeleton arm could withstand that same energy. If that's the case, why worry about phasers? At all? Because 4 MWs per cm^2 is enough to vaporize over 900 millimeters of titanium armor, yet I'm supposed to believe her arm will be just fine while she sticks it in the path of 5 petajoules of energy? That's the full frontal force of a 1-megaton bomb.

What's even worse, is that Seven for some reason thinks that this is no big deal and that even if her ARM were to somehow survive it, it begs the question of how safe it is to mess with the power system that has a megaton bomb running through it every second. It makes her look either suicidal or stupid because she could quickly core her own ship.

So do I object to the power figures? No. Do I object to that figure if the Enterprise is doing nothing? Obviously and we don't know where Data was going with his example. And is the arm thing stupid? Sure, but that energy has to be transferred from the core to the engines somehow.

As I said, we know the ship was moving. And IIRC, warp field is active even when the ship is at impulse. So yes, there are high-power-drain systems active at the time Data is giving that figure.

 

[The Original Sixth]

Sorry for late reply, had COVID and was busy afterwards, so...

Looking at stated ranges:
"The Wounded" - 200 000 km range for all weapons
"The Search" - >100 000 km for maximum range of Dominion attack ship, presumably against Defiant itself
"Return to Grace" - <200 000 km effective range for Cardassian weapons, tested against an asteroid
"Non Sequitor" - Nebula demonstrates 5 000 km range against a runabout

So what you say is certainly correct. Problem I have is that all these examples are starship duels. I do not recall a thousands of kilometers range being stated in any fleet battle, whereas we are shown fleets engaging at close range.

Which brings us to the question of why these ships would bother to wait until they reach what is shockingly close range even for precise targeting.

Manual is a guide for writers. Doesn't mean they are obliged to follow it.

Looking at quotes collection1, Ronald Moore stated that "none of the books are canon":

Yes, I am aware of what Ronald Moore said in 98' and 99'. However, let's consider a few facts. First, Moore's position contradicted Roddenberry's, who was the creator of the series.

"Documents such as this Technical Manual help give some background to the vision we work so hard to create on Star Trek. Rick and Mike have obviously had a lot of fun filling in the gaps and trying to find technical 'explanations' for some of our mistakes." - Gene Roddenberry, Introduction to the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual

Nor does Moore's statement in 98' match up with known facts:

"How 'official' is this stuff? Well, this is the first technical manual done by folks who actually work on Star Trek. It's closely based on source material we've developed in conjunction with our writers and producers in our role as technical consultants for the series. In that sense it can be considered pretty 'official'." - Mike Okuda and Rick Sternbach, Introduction to the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual

Mike and Rick were both technical consultants and members of the production staff for Star Trek. They were the ones who did the writing for the TM. In fact, what Mike and Rick say in regards to how the TNG TM was developed is entirely counter to what Moore said about no writers or production staff being involved. So either Moore is mistaken, Moore is thinking about something else other than the TMs (Paramount put out a lot of tech stuff that was NOT connected to Mike or Rick or the staff), or he's lying. I doubt he latter and either of the remaining options would leave us to consider the TMs are as stated by other show writers/production staff and the show creator himself.

That leaves us with the issue of timeliness. Can we argue, for example, that there was a change of policy in Paramount-CBS that aligns with Moore's version of policy? Well, we know that the TNG TM was printed in 91', when those statements were also published. Moore made his statements several years later. It is possible that after several years of holding that policy, Paramount-CBS changed their minds.

But then we get to this here:

"The tech manuals are written by ST production staff, same as the Encyclopedia (Mike Okuda). Since their contents report on what is canon, they are technically canon." - Harry Lang, Senior Director of Viacom Consumer Products Interactive division, posts on StarTrek.com forum, January 2005.

Harry Lang's statement, on behalf of the company, was in 05'. One thing I found interesting with Lang's statement is the rationality he presents for why the TMs are canon; because they were written by production staff. This is in direct contradiction to what Moore stated. It's also rather easy for anyone not familiar with these names to do a quick google search and see that indeed, Okuda and Sternbach were technical consultants and members of the production staff on Star Trek. One of Moore's statement is simply incorrect.

The second issue, is as I've mentioned, timeliness. Moore's statements were made in 98' and 99'. Lang's statement, long after Moore had moved onto other projects, was made in 05'. More to the point, when we are talking about consistency on company policy, Moore's statement is off the mark in regard to the TMs. Roddenberry considered it canon. Okuda and Sternbach considered it official. And Lang outright says that it is canon in an interview. And considering it was a softball interview, he probably got those questions in advance and he probably consulted others on the status of the TMs.

Oh, I am well aware of that. But do we have statements which show that visuals are completely non-canon, as opposed to merely taking a backseat if there is a conflict?

You're throwing out facts and logic in favor of some sort of quasi-religious law. Star Trek is a TV show. They have budgets, production limitations, and will happily do what is technically wrong for the sake of TV drama. I have already proven this to you several times, if one indeed thought it was necessary since we all know that it is a TV show and these sort of limitations to authenticity and accuracy would apply.

I've supplied you with, I believe Moore's statements and there is of course, the one from ENT:

"I wouldn't really consider any of this 'hard canon,' so take it all with a grain of salt. Both bios were slapped together hastily and weren't approved by the exec producers." - Mike Sussman, Enterprise Producer, TrekBBS posts, April 30, 2005.

Sussman was referring to a couple of in-show bios of characters shown in one of the alternate-dimension episodes.

If shields weakened due to hardware damage, then a) it would be impossible to raise them up back again before repairs had been made, b) "routing energy to shields" would make no difference in their strength, and c) we wouldn't have "forward shields" or "port shields" being "down", but rather shields would be lost in a far more irregular manner corresponding to location of damaged sections on the shield grid.

a) Repairs can be made during a battle and probably are.
b) My argument does not require that this is always the case; if it's simply one heat sink being overloaded, switching to an auxiliary generator or diverting strength from one generator to another part of the shield grid is perfectly acceptable.
c) Actually, it's more than probable that certain emitters are separated into sections. So port shields are the emitters that face the port side. Since we know that shields can be extended or shifted to face other directions, it's not really a stretch for the emitters to redirect their shields over from the port side (where they face) to the bow. It would probably be less effective, but if your enemy is only pounding your forward shields, it makes sense.

Not if you need energy field to keep the matter in place in face of enemy firepower. Basically, my explanation is that both weapons and shields are supplied power by capacitors in order to facilitate quick discharge of energy as needed, with capacitors being recharged over time by the warp core or fusion reactors (this would also explain why phasers were "depleted" in Nemesis - if Enterprise had issues with warp core supplying energy, then once capacitors got depleted, phasers would no longer be a viable weapon. And yes, I know it was really just a stupid plot point).

Of course, that would work with shields being energy as well.

Two problems.

1) Why is this never shown? You are trying to fit the facts around an alternative theory, which creates just as many problems as it solves.
2) Why does no one ever say anything in regard to these particles? This is physical matter that they ship would need to eject in order to be useful as a defensive mechanism...so where is it? Do they ever run out? Wouldn't they need to be refilled after a battle? What is the advantage, apart from stand-off distance, that these matter fields provide the ship?

OK, though that is then contradiction with text.

No it isn't?

You mean, Cerenkov radiation?

The problem we have though, is that while your theory could certainly fit the fact that the ship does produce cerenkov radiation, that is not proof that it is the proper explanation. Especially when we already have an explanation for what is going on. Nor is it a particularly attractive alternative fan theory, because an official one was already supplied.

Actually, the whole point of the TM is to be a writers' guide. But unless explicitly stated otherwise by Paramount or whoever, what has actually be shown on screen (dialogue, visuals etc) takes precedence over it. It is a writers' guide. But that doesn't mean it is necessarily canon.

No, the Technical Manual was published to sell to the public and was introduced by the show creator and two of the production staff (and tech consultant members) as the official source on the show's technology. Writer's manuals are made to be a writer's guide. Which we know uses the same information from the TMs and even gives them pointers. The information in the manuals is also illuminating into how the show is made, as I've already brought to your attention repeatedly.

See what I provided above, by Ronald Moore: they use manuals as reference for writers, but because manuals are not canon, writers are free to ignore them.

And maybe that's how the writers felt. That doesn't make it company policy. Moore doesn't and never did, own Star Trek. He worked for Paramount-CBS, who DID own the rights and DOES own the rights. And when we look at Moore's statements on this issue, not only is he contradicted by a later statement by a representative of the company, it's contradicted by the creator and the two tech/consultant guides. Indeed, one of Moore's statements seems to be riddled with inaccuracies as to the sourcing of the TM.

There are actually several reasons why they might do it. First, as I said, smaller fleet would want to get in close.

So again, why wouldn't the larger fleet immediately attack? If close range favors the smaller fleet, why would the larger fleet allow that when it is easily rectified?

Second, if one torpedo can destroy multiple ships, then that would certainly make everybody want to get in close as quickly as possible to maximize chances of survival.

No, the opposite is true. Getting into knife-ranges with another ship would be a suicide pact. Why? Because if you think it's a bad idea to get hit by a photon torpedo set to max, then you and your buddies clutching each other's asses as you get up close and personal with a Galaxy Class Starship with the intent of destroying it, is effectively a nose-dive on a multi-teraton antimatter bomb armed to the teeth.

Third, we see that starships often target subsystems, which would likely be easier at shorter ranges.

Granted, but that doesn't explain why fighting doesn't start from further away. Especially when, by the constraints of your own argument, doing so would prevent a strategic advantage to the smaller fleet.

Fourth, there is always explanation of jamming.

Not really. Your argument is that getting in close negates the danger of an AoE weapon. If that could be solved by jamming, as opposed to getting close to ships that carry large stores of antimatter just waiting to vaporize you when they die, jamming is by far the more preferable strategy. And if it isn't, then jamming isn't really an issue.

Defiant had to destroy that battlebug to escape. And starships do have absurd acceleration capabilities.

There's no reason to believe that the Defiant did slow down. It was fleeing the battle. Dropping to low impulse would allow other ships to catch up. Furthermore, if the Defiant retained a high impulse, then if the two ships did pass each other and not destroy one another, the Defiant would be able to put large ground between it and the bug for every second it had before the bug could swing around and follow.

I am aware of that, I just don't think we should dismiss even visual evidence. Basically, having an ability doesn't mean you will always use it.

I didn't say we should dismiss visual evidence. I'm saying that we should not treat it as if it is a documentary, where seeing is believing.

Actually, I would suggest the frontloading may be partly responsible for short combat distances: side-loading would favor higher average engagement ranges because ships would be forced to maintain roughly-similar relative distances in order to bring all their weapons to bear while still remaining mobile. Front-loading however would encourage closing the distance because doing anything else would mean taking your weapons off your opponent, whereas keeping nose on target would mean you are constantly approaching him.

The advantage of a broadside is maximizing your firepower. That is something that makes sense if your technological capability is WWII or sooner, but it doesn't really work for space combat. First, you can taper the front of your ships, which means that all of your weapons will be able to fire ahead, rather than needing the broadside. In fact, since a broadside can only present PART of the ship (port or starboard), you would have less firepower, unless you decide to spin the ship. Which is possible.

The major drawback of a broadside is that you are presenting a wide target for your opponent. Worse, it actually exposes more systems than if you had not. Engines, for example, are almost impossible to hit directly in ranged combat when you have forward-facing weapons, because the whole rest of the ship is between the weapons and the engines, barring AoE weapons, which might be able to fly past and detonate. And while it doesn't apply to Star Trek necessarily, by having your prow forward facing, you can put heavier armor on the prow and go cheap on the rest of the ship if you wanted to. Broadsides at long range are really just a disadvantage that makes you a larger target.

It would also make jamming harder because you're presenting more heat from your engines for the enemy to use as a targeting guide.

Torpedoes are shielded. And in fact, I already mentioned several reasons why they may engage at short range in fleet engagements nevertheless (minimizing enemy ability to focus fire, minimizing enemy firepower, ship design... choose).

Torpedoes being shielded would encourage long-range engagements, actually. If they were unshielded, a long-range shot would give the enemy more time to shoot them down. If however, there is a mixture of penetration issue due to armor/shields, as well as them being small targets that are probably only properly engaged at 2,000 to 5,000 km, then firing them off at long-range is the smart idea.

I do not remember such precise implication?

TNG and DS9 TMs.

Didn't work for me.

Weird. Regardless, we're on the same page in what it was showing.

OK.

Phasers on ships also fire in short bursts, much like infantry phaser weapons. So there is still a massive discrepancy between how much energy shipboard phasers should output based on their nature and physical size, and how much energy they do deliver based on the numbers.

And there may be tactical reasons for that. Just like how simply because you have a rifle that can fire a thousand rounds a minute, doesn't mean you should empty the clip as quickly as possible.

That doesn't make sense. Watt is joules per second. 1,55 MW for 0,28 seconds is still 1,55 MW, it is just that the overall discharge is 800 KJ. Unless you mean he averages out, but why would he average out for a discharge that lasts less than a second and does not repeat unless trigger is pulled again?

Sorry, I meant to say 800 KJ. As a comparison, the KE from a .50 BMG Browning bullet is under 20 KJs. At an ROF of up to 650 rounds per minute for about 10-11 bullets a second, that's about 184 kilowatts. The actual discharge energy of 800 KJ is over 4x as powerful and is released at a far quicker rate than the BMG. It already strains credibility that Reed or any other person would be able to fire this pistol from say, the hip and not have his wrist broken. The idea that they could fire 1.55 MJs from that same weapon is pure fantasy.

So you are saying these grooves are lenses, and actual emitters are underneath them?

And the reason "why not make handful of energy cannons" is the same to "why use electronically-scanned radar": you get greater flexibility in terms of coverage, damage resistance and ability to quickly shift focus, than you do with something you need to physically move.

Correct.

As to the why, that doesn't make any sense. If a single emitter could absorb 1 GW of energy, then why not just have a single emitter that fires 1 GW of energy? You say it's for coverage, but the ship has to pass all of that energy from one side of the array to the other. Why have 200 emitters that produce 5 MWs, when you can have 20 emitters that can each produce 1 GW? You'd still have the same effective coverage, but it would be more responsive and not expose the weapon to weapons fire (since a large volume of the array is actually exposed on the hull--especially with common AoE weapons like photon torpedoes).

As I said, we know the ship was moving. And IIRC, warp field is active even when the ship is at impulse. So yes, there are high-power-drain systems active at the time Data is giving that figure.

The warp field generated at impulse is actually generated by the impulse engines. The warp engine has nothing to do with it. Otherwise, their ships would be effectively immobile without the use of warp engines and we know in several episodes where the warp engines didn't work, the impulse engines worked just fine. It's also why the ship doesn't produce any sort of noticeable exhaust while at impulse; it's the same basic technology of the warp engines, just at a lower scale and using fusion instead of antimatter.

 

[Aldarion]

Which brings us to the question of why these ships would bother to wait until they reach what is shockingly close range even for precise targeting.

That is why I am looking for explanations. And now that I think about it - I remember it being stated in one episode that intense subspace fields can jam sensors? And impulse engines, as well as maybe some other systems on ships, use subspace fields.

Which means that a large fleet would provide natural jamming environment merely by the virtue of a gigantic mass of ships being close together. Which might explain short engagement ranges and the ships-packed-as-sardines formations we see during Deep Space Nine.

Yes, I am aware of what Ronald Moore said in 98' and 99'. However, let's consider a few facts. First, Moore's position contradicted Roddenberry's, who was the creator of the series.

Nor does Moore's statement in 98' match up with known facts:

Mike and Rick were both technical consultants and members of the production staff for Star Trek. They were the ones who did the writing for the TM. In fact, what Mike and Rick say in regards to how the TNG TM was developed is entirely counter to what Moore said about no writers or production staff being involved. So either Moore is mistaken, Moore is thinking about something else other than the TMs (Paramount put out a lot of tech stuff that was NOT connected to Mike or Rick or the staff), or he's lying. I doubt he latter and either of the remaining options would leave us to consider the TMs are as stated by other show writers/production staff and the show creator himself.

That leaves us with the issue of timeliness. Can we argue, for example, that there was a change of policy in Paramount-CBS that aligns with Moore's version of policy? Well, we know that the TNG TM was printed in 91', when those statements were also published. Moore made his statements several years later. It is possible that after several years of holding that policy, Paramount-CBS changed their minds.

But then we get to this here:

Harry Lang's statement, on behalf of the company, was in 05'. One thing I found interesting with Lang's statement is the rationality he presents for why the TMs are canon; because they were written by production staff. This is in direct contradiction to what Moore stated. It's also rather easy for anyone not familiar with these names to do a quick google search and see that indeed, Okuda and Sternbach were technical consultants and members of the production staff on Star Trek. One of Moore's statement is simply incorrect.

The second issue, is as I've mentioned, timeliness. Moore's statements were made in 98' and 99'. Lang's statement, long after Moore had moved onto other projects, was made in 05'. More to the point, when we are talking about consistency on company policy, Moore's statement is off the mark in regard to the TMs. Roddenberry considered it canon. Okuda and Sternbach considered it official. And Lang outright says that it is canon in an interview. And considering it was a softball interview, he probably got those questions in advance and he probably consulted others on the status of the TMs.

Thing with Lang's statement is that I do not read it as Manuals being canon, period. I mean, read the sentence:

Since their contents report on what is canon, they are technically canon.

Basically, manuals are technically canon. But the reason they are canon is because they report on what is canon - which then would mean that the Manuals can be used to expand onto the show (and maybe solve some contradictions within the show), but if there is a contradiction between the show and the manual, the show takes the precendence.

a) Repairs can be made during a battle and probably are.
b) My argument does not require that this is always the case; if it's simply one heat sink being overloaded, switching to an auxiliary generator or diverting strength from one generator to another part of the shield grid is perfectly acceptable.
c) Actually, it's more than probable that certain emitters are separated into sections. So port shields are the emitters that face the port side. Since we know that shields can be extended or shifted to face other directions, it's not really a stretch for the emitters to redirect their shields over from the port side (where they face) to the bow. It would probably be less effective, but if your enemy is only pounding your forward shields, it makes sense.

a) Yeah, but how often do we hear of damage to shield grid? And it is an actual grid,
b) Possibly.
c) Emitters are that grid of lines we see on ship's hull.

Two problems.

1) Why is this never shown? You are trying to fit the facts around an alternative theory, which creates just as many problems as it solves.
2) Why does no one ever say anything in regard to these particles? This is physical matter that they ship would need to eject in order to be useful as a defensive mechanism...so where is it? Do they ever run out? Wouldn't they need to be refilled after a battle? What is the advantage, apart from stand-off distance, that these matter fields provide the ship?

1) How would they show it?
2) You forget that they have replicators, which can apparently transfer one type of matter to another. And with Bussard's collectors, all they need is do a flyby of a star to replace matter reserves. So I do not think it would be an issue in a battle.

Advantage of the matter field would be basically ability to affect things that do not have mass. Sure, a gravitational anomaly can affect torpedoes and particle beams (albeit latter are questionable - after all, effect would be hardly instantaneous, so you could still end with things hitting the ship), but what about lasers? You would basically need a black hole for that, and if you have just produced a black hole where your ship is... daresay, you have greater problems than incoming enemy fire.

No, the Technical Manual was published to sell to the public and was introduced by the show creator and two of the production staff (and tech consultant members) as the official source on the show's technology. Writer's manuals are made to be a writer's guide. Which we know uses the same information from the TMs and even gives them pointers. The information in the manuals is also illuminating into how the show is made, as I've already brought to your attention repeatedly.

And maybe that's how the writers felt. That doesn't make it company policy. Moore doesn't and never did, own Star Trek. He worked for Paramount-CBS, who DID own the rights and DOES own the rights. And when we look at Moore's statements on this issue, not only is he contradicted by a later statement by a representative of the company, it's contradicted by the creator and the two tech/consultant guides. Indeed, one of Moore's statements seems to be riddled with inaccuracies as to the sourcing of the TM.

OK. So what is the relative canonicity of TM vs show itself, then?

So again, why wouldn't the larger fleet immediately attack? If close range favors the smaller fleet, why would the larger fleet allow that when it is easily rectified?

Starships have a weapons range of some 200 000 kilometers. That is less then a second at full impulse, and tactical warp jump is always a possibility.

So how, exactly, would they "easily rectify" it? They could run away, but do we ever see warp combat beyond visual range?

No, the opposite is true. Getting into knife-ranges with another ship would be a suicide pact. Why? Because if you think it's a bad idea to get hit by a photon torpedo set to max, then you and your buddies clutching each other's asses as you get up close and personal with a Galaxy Class Starship with the intent of destroying it, is effectively a nose-dive on a multi-teraton antimatter bomb armed to the teeth.

OR, it would force everybody to shoot to disable instead of shoot to kill.

Granted, but that doesn't explain why fighting doesn't start from further away. Especially when, by the constraints of your own argument, doing so would prevent a strategic advantage to the smaller fleet.

And that is what I'm trying to explain.

Not really. Your argument is that getting in close negates the danger of an AoE weapon. If that could be solved by jamming, as opposed to getting close to ships that carry large stores of antimatter just waiting to vaporize you when they die, jamming is by far the more preferable strategy. And if it isn't, then jamming isn't really an issue.

Keep in mind that we are talking about fleets here, not individual starships. Considering how fast photon torpedoes can be, I am not certain staying away would help when the enemy can simply dumb-fire them at a fleet like flak shells. Hundreds of ships firing a torpedo spread which arrives maybe a second or a two later... chances are, you'd need a tactical warp jump to escape.

Although that is just a possibility. Still, if both sides are jamming each other... well, in that case, both sides have three options: 1) close in, 2) sit at range and try to replicate the above scenario and 3) use very harsh language as their primary weapon.

I didn't say we should dismiss visual evidence. I'm saying that we should not treat it as if it is a documentary, where seeing is believing.

Right.

The advantage of a broadside is maximizing your firepower. That is something that makes sense if your technological capability is WWII or sooner, but it doesn't really work for space combat. First, you can taper the front of your ships, which means that all of your weapons will be able to fire ahead, rather than needing the broadside. In fact, since a broadside can only present PART of the ship (port or starboard), you would have less firepower, unless you decide to spin the ship. Which is possible.

The major drawback of a broadside is that you are presenting a wide target for your opponent. Worse, it actually exposes more systems than if you had not. Engines, for example, are almost impossible to hit directly in ranged combat when you have forward-facing weapons, because the whole rest of the ship is between the weapons and the engines, barring AoE weapons, which might be able to fly past and detonate. And while it doesn't apply to Star Trek necessarily, by having your prow forward facing, you can put heavier armor on the prow and go cheap on the rest of the ship if you wanted to. Broadsides at long range are really just a disadvantage that makes you a larger target.

It would also make jamming harder because you're presenting more heat from your engines for the enemy to use as a targeting guide.

Exactly.

Torpedoes being shielded would encourage long-range engagements, actually. If they were unshielded, a long-range shot would give the enemy more time to shoot them down. If however, there is a mixture of penetration issue due to armor/shields, as well as them being small targets that are probably only properly engaged at 2,000 to 5,000 km, then firing them off at long-range is the smart idea.

Agreed.

TNG and DS9 TMs.

Thanks.

And there may be tactical reasons for that. Just like how simply because you have a rifle that can fire a thousand rounds a minute, doesn't mean you should empty the clip as quickly as possible.

Eh, we see them fire in short bursts even when longer bursts would make more sense. In fact, off the top of my head, I cannot remember a single example of a prolonged phaser discharge in a tactical scenario (one I do remember is basically drilling planetary crust).

Sorry, I meant to say 800 KJ. As a comparison, the KE from a .50 BMG Browning bullet is under 20 KJs. At an ROF of up to 650 rounds per minute for about 10-11 bullets a second, that's about 184 kilowatts. The actual discharge energy of 800 KJ is over 4x as powerful and is released at a far quicker rate than the BMG. It already strains credibility that Reed or any other person would be able to fire this pistol from say, the hip and not have his wrist broken. The idea that they could fire 1.55 MJs from that same weapon is pure fantasy.

Unless they have inertial dampening in personal weapons, but yeah, that is going into the epileptic trees territory...

As to the why, that doesn't make any sense. If a single emitter could absorb 1 GW of energy, then why not just have a single emitter that fires 1 GW of energy? You say it's for coverage, but the ship has to pass all of that energy from one side of the array to the other. Why have 200 emitters that produce 5 MWs, when you can have 20 emitters that can each produce 1 GW? You'd still have the same effective coverage, but it would be more responsive and not expose the weapon to weapons fire (since a large volume of the array is actually exposed on the hull--especially with common AoE weapons like photon torpedoes).

But why would passing the energy through emitters somehow lead to energy buildup? We see in the show that the energy is often passed along the strip to a position before being discharged.

The warp field generated at impulse is actually generated by the impulse engines. The warp engine has nothing to do with it. Otherwise, their ships would be effectively immobile without the use of warp engines and we know in several episodes where the warp engines didn't work, the impulse engines worked just fine. It's also why the ship doesn't produce any sort of noticeable exhaust while at impulse; it's the same basic technology of the warp engines, just at a lower scale and using fusion instead of antimatter.

If that is the case, why was warp core active at all? They are not at warp, shields are not active, they are not using weapons... and if TM is correct, even the last one can be easily run off the fusion reactors. They could have easily shut the warp core down.

 

[The Original Sixth]

That is why I am looking for explanations. And now that I think about it - I remember it being stated in one episode that intense subspace fields can jam sensors? And impulse engines, as well as maybe some other systems on ships, use subspace fields.

Yes, that is the case. However, the only time where we've had fleet-on-fleet jamming was in Sacrifice of Angels. In which case, the jamming took place once the two fleets had moved into close range, NOT when they were farther away. Keep in mind that Sisko had sent wave after wave of fighters at the enemy fleet too--and they didn't spring the rotating EM pulse until AFTER the fleets closed.

Which means that a large fleet would provide natural jamming environment merely by the virtue of a gigantic mass of ships being close together. Which might explain short engagement ranges and the ships-packed-as-sardines formations we see during Deep Space Nine.

That may and in actual space combat scenarios, your major issue is a mix between the enemy being able to out-maneuver your weapon, shooting down the incoming weapon, or the dwell time/intensity of your energy weapon, but our problem here is that these don't work for Trek if we go by the show.

1) Ships rarely ever fire on torpedoes or missiles. We have one TNG example of the Enterprise D intercepting a Ferengi missile sent at a wormhole. The other that I can recall is ST Generations, where Worf discusses with Riker the difficulty in intercepting any sort of probe or missile fired at the local star.

2) ST ships are smart enough to identify objects. So simply jamming radio or confusing heat signatures isn't really an option. You could of course, produce a counter-effect by simply trying to blind the sensors, but that would mean that you'd need to do that on the visible spectrum too. And really, if that would work, then so would a laser or a phaser.

3) Jamming actually works better close up, where your jamming signal is strongest, instead of further away. While that would be useful in jamming torpedoes or fighters, as I mentioned, they would also need to blind the torpedoes/fighters on the visible spectrum too for it to actually be effective. And if that worked, then so would a laser or phaser.

So no matter which way you want to cut it, we would need to accept that Star Trek engagements would not play out exactly as we see on TV.

Thing with Lang's statement is that I do not read it as Manuals being canon, period. I mean, read the sentence:


Basically, manuals are technically canon. But the reason they are canon is because they report on what is canon - which then would mean that the Manuals can be used to expand onto the show (and maybe solve some contradictions within the show), but if there is a contradiction between the show and the manual, the show takes the precendence.

I can see the logic for that because it simplifies a discussion, but I think that's the wrong approach. I think it should be debated. A rational argument should be presented. And in regards to how the TM interacts with the show, nothing the TM says is really outside the realm of the show. Weapon ranges of 300,000 km are clearly possible from what we see in the show. Shield effects are debatable, but nothing in actual science matches what we see in terms of shields anyway. Most everything else is just inconsistent entirely; warp speed times, weapon yields, and the occasional tech work around are entirely plot-driven and in some cases (such as in VOY), entirely made up on the spot.

a) Yeah, but how often do we hear of damage to shield grid? And it is an actual grid,
b) Possibly.
c) Emitters are that grid of lines we see on ship's hull.

a) It is, but what of it? Complicated systems work together in complicated ways. That vastly increases the chances of something going wrong. It could be several emitters literally being vaporized, it could be a power surge that damages the wire, it could be a physically damaged section having busted a coolant pipe--all of that can contribute to a sudden drop in power output.
b) Most probably. Writers, especially at the time when the shows were made, would want something rather simple and intuitive that audiences could grasp. Not to mention, in a tactical situation, the captain probably doesn't need to know minor expected damages. A simple, easy report is probably the best.

1) How would they show it?

I would expect we'd see the actual matter. Sort of like a dust cloud.

2) You forget that they have replicators, which can apparently transfer one type of matter to another. And with Bussard's collectors, all they need is do a flyby of a star to replace matter reserves. So I do not think it would be an issue in a battle.

You still have to carry the same amount of mass though. If you were converting iron into lead, you'd need more mass to get 1 kilo of lead than if you wanted 1 kilo of iron. So that doesn't really solve the mass issue and then it adds on an energy issue too, since you'd need to expend energy to reconfigure the matter, which expends fuel.

Advantage of the matter field would be basically ability to affect things that do not have mass. Sure, a gravitational anomaly can affect torpedoes and particle beams (albeit latter are questionable - after all, effect would be hardly instantaneous, so you could still end with things hitting the ship), but what about lasers? You would basically need a black hole for that, and if you have just produced a black hole where your ship is... daresay, you have greater problems than incoming enemy fire.

Again, we need not argue that they've actually created something with the mass of a black hole, only that they temporary simulate a gravitational-like effect with their shield system.

OK. So what is the relative canonicity of TM vs show itself, then?

Probably more or less equal, unless a new technological breakthrough is made in the show or a piece of tech is further fleshed out. For our needs however, since our purpose is to create as much of a logically consistent world that we can assign some level of objectivity too, I would go with the TM in most cases. Because it provides consistency. Not in every case, mind you. But in most cases.

Starships have a weapons range of some 200 000 kilometers. That is less then a second at full impulse, and tactical warp jump is always a possibility.

Two things.

First, impulse is a quarter lightspeed. Light travels at ~300,000 km/s. Going with the TM's range of 300,000 km for a capital ship, a ship at full impulse would need closer to four seconds to cross that distance.

Second, impulse speed is not acceleration. Ships don't go from 0 to 1/4th lightspeed in a second or two. The TNG TM puts the GCS's acceleration at 10 km/s. The ship can obviously keep pouring energy to accelerate to or near light speeds, but you'd need about eight hours for a GCS to wind up its engines to those speeds on impulse.

That's not really useful for combat. You also need to keep that sort of acceleration in mind when a ship is in combat. If you're on a ship, even if your subspace field makes it possible for you to BANK as if you were in an atmosphere, you may not want to spend more than 10 seconds to de-accelerate. Especially when you're in the middle of a battle zone. A GCS is very likely only moving at 1000 km/s, possibly making sharp banks to port or starboard or even making a U-turn. And that doesn't even take into account limited human reaction times.

OR

, it would force everybody to shoot to disable instead of shoot to kill.

That doesn't seem all that reassuring given the Jem'Hadar have no qualms about committing suicide to either prove a point or because someone else told them to do so. Or Klingons, who happily charge into melee with swords and energy weapons and have little qualms about dying themselves, especially if it's in battle.

It's also a rather difficult tactic, considering if you're being jammed, it's more difficult for you to use precision aiming. Which means you aiming at an impulse engine might instead hit the warp core. The last place I'd want to be, fighting an enemy that tends to explode violent if hit in the wrong section, is to be upclose and blindly hoping to disable them.

And that is what I'm trying to explain.

I get that, but there is no in-universe explanation if you try to use TV visuals as an accurate marker because there is no rational explanation for it. In any conflict, you are going to want to shoot your opponent first, all other things being equal. That means you fire as soon as you have a workable solution. Because if you don't, he will and that grants him initiative and momentum. That's why so many early ST vs SW debate boils down to "Well, these people are just incompetent", because that's the most rational explanation.

Of course, that's more likely to just an internet slap fight and not actually resolve the issue.

Keep in mind that we are talking about fleets here, not individual starships. Considering how fast photon torpedoes can be, I am not certain staying away would help when the enemy can simply dumb-fire them at a fleet like flak shells. Hundreds of ships firing a torpedo spread which arrives maybe a second or a two later... chances are, you'd need a tactical warp jump to escape.

But your theory doesn't resolve that issue. Firing a torpedo that moves at .75c + ship velocity, with a maximum effective range of 3,500,000 km won't really matter if you're 50 kilometers away or 300,00 meters away, because both are effectively point-blank range. The best policy would begin to lob torpedoes at the max range (or even just outside), because that would still leave your opponent with only 15 seconds or so to respond to the torpedo launch.

Although that is just a possibility. Still, if both sides are jamming each other... well, in that case, both sides have three options: 1) close in, 2) sit at range and try to replicate the above scenario and 3) use very harsh language as their primary weapon.

Except even with jammers, that still favors the larger fleet. Consider how muskets were used; low accuracy at range. The best way to use your soldiers would be to line them up for maximum volume. That tactic would still favor the larger fleet, to take Sacrifice of Angels, because you outnumber the enemy two to one. The smaller fleet would still want to close, but they would at least 46 seconds to close that gap at maximum torpedo range, assuming their impulse engines were on full burn. Anything lower and it could take much, much longer. A warp jump is possible, but with so many ships that's going to be very predictable and it would mean no hope of evading incoming shells.

Eh, we see them fire in short bursts even when longer bursts would make more sense. In fact, off the top of my head, I cannot remember a single example of a prolonged phaser discharge in a tactical scenario (one I do remember is basically drilling planetary crust).

I believe there were a few early TNG instances of them keeping dwell time on the target, but as special effects became easier and cheaper, they clearly went with the short shots. There's really no reason for that, unless you wanted to flip through your frequencies to keep the enemy guessing, so you take lots of short shots so you can switch the frequency.

Unless they have inertial dampening in personal weapons, but yeah, that is going into the epileptic trees territory...

Exactly. And while I'm sure one might present a credible argument of how a 24th century phaser rifle might have such a thing, I don't find it all that credible of an argument. It also alleviates the lack of pseudo-bolo firepower these ground troops should be throwing at each other, since any officer firing at maximum power would actually need to brace himself for the shot. Hence, in any realistic battle scenario, most troops would keep their phasers set to stun/kill or even low disintegration, but only one soldier in a squad might have his phaser set to or near maximum.

But why would passing the energy through emitters somehow lead to energy buildup? We see in the show that the energy is often passed along the strip to a position before being discharged.

That energy doesn't fire until it meets the firing point, when the energy is suddenly and instantly released, unless it's a sustained shot (in which case, the emitters don't appear to show a visual display of passing energy to each other as in the initial shot, but that's probably a special effects error--in reality, the emitter would just stay lit up).

If that is the case, why was warp core active at all? They are not at warp, shields are not active, they are not using weapons... and if TM is correct, even the last one can be easily run off the fusion reactors. They could have easily shut the warp core down.

The warp core powers the ship. So the navigational shields (ie, the deflector dish), heating, gravity, and that sort of stuff all come from the main reactor. Not to mention that winding the antimatter reactor up in the case of an emergency is probably easier if it's already on, rather than a cold-start. What doesn't make sense is how the ship isn't doing anything.

So let's look at the scene. The girl is awed by how much energy is supposed to be running through what is, relatively, a thin piece of pipe and a reactor chamber. She mentions this. Data answers by giving a power figure, which is interrupted.

Now there are really three ways to resolve the dilemma.

1) Data is talking along the lines of maximum output. Since he was cut off, we might imagine that the rest of the sentence might have made the earlier part of his comment sensible given the situation.

2) Data made a mistake in his figures or otherwise his comment is nonsense. While this is not an in-universe explanation we should want, given Data's character, we also know the writing staff isn't entirely sure what a fish or an amphibian is.

3) The ship was gearing up or was actually at warp in the initial scene, but rewrites or a writer made a mistake somewhere and no-one caught it.

I personally favor the former or even the last one, because it allows us to keep as much information as possible. The energy figure is also not out of order for what the ship can in theory generate.

 

[Aldarion]

3) Jamming actually works better close up, where your jamming signal is strongest, instead of further away. While that would be useful in jamming torpedoes or fighters, as I mentioned, they would also need to blind the torpedoes/fighters on the visible spectrum too for it to actually be effective. And if that worked, then so would a laser or phaser.

Jamming would actually work better further away when it is "noise" jamming, which is the effect I'm thinking about.

I can see the logic for that because it simplifies a discussion, but I think that's the wrong approach. I think it should be debated. A rational argument should be presented. And in regards to how the TM interacts with the show, nothing the TM says is really outside the realm of the show. Weapon ranges of 300,000 km are clearly possible from what we see in the show. Shield effects are debatable, but nothing in actual science matches what we see in terms of shields anyway. Most everything else is just inconsistent entirely; warp speed times, weapon yields, and the occasional tech work around are entirely plot-driven and in some cases (such as in VOY), entirely made up on the spot.

Agreed.

a) It is, but what of it? Complicated systems work together in complicated ways. That vastly increases the chances of something going wrong. It could be several emitters literally being vaporized, it could be a power surge that damages the wire, it could be a physically damaged section having busted a coolant pipe--all of that can contribute to a sudden drop in power output.

Problem I have with that is that we see shields being reassembled, or reinforced merely by rerouting the energy.

You still have to carry the same amount of mass though. If you were converting iron into lead, you'd need more mass to get 1 kilo of lead than if you wanted 1 kilo of iron. So that doesn't really solve the mass issue and then it adds on an energy issue too, since you'd need to expend energy to reconfigure the matter, which expends fuel.

Yeah, but I don't think an energy or gravitational field would show the sort of strict boundary we see.

Again, we need not argue that they've actually created something with the mass of a black hole, only that they temporary simulate a gravitational-like effect with their shield system.

Problem I am having is: how do they defend against lasers if shields are only a gravitational anomaly?

First, impulse is a quarter lightspeed. Light travels at ~300,000 km/s. Going with the TM's range of 300,000 km for a capital ship, a ship at full impulse would need closer to four seconds to cross that distance.

Usually limited to, perhaps. But I see no reason for that to be a hard limit. We actually have cases in canon of impulse speed being closer to 90% of light speed if memory serves me, and considering that Nebula class has weapons range of slightly less than 250 000 km, it would be less than a second.

Second, impulse speed is not acceleration. Ships don't go from 0 to 1/4th lightspeed in a second or two. The TNG TM puts the GCS's acceleration at 10 km/s. The ship can obviously keep pouring energy to accelerate to or near light speeds, but you'd need about eight hours for a GCS to wind up its engines to those speeds on impulse.

Problem here is that we see - even during TOS, let alone TNG - examples of acceleration that are far above this 10 km/s^2 acceleration. Enterprise in TOS achieves a minimum of 29 km/s^2 acceleration (1,8 hours to Jupiter), and almost certainly far above that (going by some visuals). So if TNG TM really was based on show, how come writers were unaware that old Connie has three times - and more likely, three thousand times - the acceleration they gave the Galaxy class?

That doesn't seem all that reassuring given the Jem'Hadar have no qualms about committing suicide to either prove a point or because someone else told them to do so. Or Klingons, who happily charge into melee with swords and energy weapons and have little qualms about dying themselves, especially if it's in battle.

Actually, we only have two examples of Jem'Hadar intentionally ramming their opponents. Most of the time, while they are willing to die, they are not in a hurry to do so.

I get that, but there is no in-universe explanation if you try to use TV visuals as an accurate marker because there is no rational explanation for it. In any conflict, you are going to want to shoot your opponent first, all other things being equal. That means you fire as soon as you have a workable solution. Because if you don't, he will and that grants him initiative and momentum. That's why so many early ST vs SW debate boils down to "Well, these people are just incompetent", because that's the most rational explanation.

Of course, that's more likely to just an internet slap fight and not actually resolve the issue.

Yeah, but as a rule, I really dislike the "these people are incompetent" explanation. Sure, it is the most likely one - mostly because writers usually are incompetent (I'm having a discussion on the Planetos militaries over at ASoIaF forum, and yeah, half of them are simply stupid because GRRM couldn't be arsed to do the research) - but it is a cop-out, and not a very good in-universe explanation.

But your theory doesn't resolve that issue. Firing a torpedo that moves at .75c + ship velocity, with a maximum effective range of 3,500,000 km won't really matter if you're 50 kilometers away or 300,00 meters away, because both are effectively point-blank range. The best policy would begin to lob torpedoes at the max range (or even just outside), because that would still leave your opponent with only 15 seconds or so to respond to the torpedo launch.

If one torpedo can destroy multiple ships and both fleets can lob torpedoes without being able to evade (and with hundreds of ships closely packed in a fleet... yeah, not likely), any long-range exchange would be a MAD scenario. Closing in however would force both sides to shoot to disable, but one would need to survive to get close enough - and "close enough" would be in order of dozens to hundreds of meters, like what we see in DS9 fleet battles.

Except even with jammers, that still favors the larger fleet. Consider how muskets were used; low accuracy at range. The best way to use your soldiers would be to line them up for maximum volume. That tactic would still favor the larger fleet, to take Sacrifice of Angels, because you outnumber the enemy two to one. The smaller fleet would still want to close, but they would at least 46 seconds to close that gap at maximum torpedo range, assuming their impulse engines were on full burn. Anything lower and it could take much, much longer. A warp jump is possible, but with so many ships that's going to be very predictable and it would mean no hope of evading incoming shells.

Agreed.

I believe there were a few early TNG instances of them keeping dwell time on the target, but as special effects became easier and cheaper, they clearly went with the short shots. There's really no reason for that, unless you wanted to flip through your frequencies to keep the enemy guessing, so you take lots of short shots so you can switch the frequency.

Or maybe short bursts are actually more powerful in terms of energy output per second? Who knows.

 

[The Original Sixth]

Jamming would actually work better further away when it is "noise" jamming, which is the effect I'm thinking about.

It actually wouldn't, because the signal's strength would drop with distance. This is somewhat reinforced by what happened in Sacrifice of Angels, because they didn't wait to

Problem I have with that is that we see shields being reassembled, or reinforced merely by rerouting the energy.

The only time I can recall a shield being "reassembled", was in TNG's Survivors. In regards to "reroute energy to...", again, that can really mean anything. It could mean that battle damage has damaged the typical shield generator, it could mean that a generator is overheating and thus its output has fallen, it could physically damage to the power systems of that generator, and all that stuff. Some sort of matter shield is not generally going to require more energy, it would probably require more matter.

I think you're giving the idea of the issue being solely more power needed too much credit. Shield tech stuff is rather difficult to find in the show, because most of the time shields are treated as a percentage. But we do have a couple of statements I've dug out:

Q Who

SONYA: I can't get the shields up.
LAFORGE: Divert power from anywhere you need it. Anywhere except for life support.
SONYA: No, it wouldn't help. The circuits which control the shields, they've been fused.
LAFORGE: If you can't reprogram, then reroute.

BoBW

SHELBY: Accelerator coils are responding normally.
LAFORGE: Excellent. Forward shields at fifty eight percent. Aft shields sensors must be down
SHELBY: Checking. Sensors are fine. No. Aft shields have completely failed. Damn it. Auxiliary generators are out again.
LAFORGE: Just the man I need. We're having some problems with the aft shields. Generators going on and offline. I could really use your help, Worf
RIKER: How soon do we get underway, Geordi?

The Wounded

DATA: Direct hit, sir. Moderate damage to their aft shield generators.
PICARD: Continue phaser fire.
DATA: Multiple hits, sir. Power failure in forward shields.
WORF: The Cardassian ship is standing down, sir.

Suddenly Human

LAFORGE: I can't divert any more power to the shields. We're already hitting our maximum thermal limits. Only other choice is to bring some other fusion reactors online, but we're running at peak coolant pressure.
RIKER: Do it.
COMPUTER: Warning. Radiation levels at one hundred fifty millirads per minute and rising. Lethal exposure in thirty five minutes.

I did find two examples of the Enterprise crew trying to just dump more power into the shields. One particular example was them dumping warp energy into the shields, but this makes little sense. If their shields could handle that much output, they would have done it at other times. It also contradicts the statement in regards to the navigational deflector in BoBW. I also recall them doing that once in Voyager, but they were also flying into a supernova, so the whole episode was just stupid.

Setting those examples aside, we get a good look as to what sort of damage occurs.

Alright, it seems I may need to amend my position a bit. The primary issue in most episodes that I find is not that the shields overheat, but rather damage to the shield generators themselves. In one of the quotes, LaForge says they could increase power to the shields by taking it from other fusion generators. Okay, that suggests that the shield generators don't work off the warp core, but rather get it from an independent source; their own fusion reactors.

Yet we see that also has a limit according to LaForge; there is both a thermal limit to what their shields can take and only so much coolant they can pump through the system to keep it cool. The weak point to the shield system itself seems to be those fusion reactors; they're probably overheating or otherwise taking damage. When they fail, they bring other generators online or they try to siphon power from other systems.

However, logically, there is no way around the heat generation issue. And in many cases, there is probably already a heat dissipation issue before the shield generators themselves begin to take damage. Bringing on alternative fusion reactors can temporarily alleviate the problem, but they're going to have the same issue with heat generation as the other reactors.

Yeah, but I don't think an energy or gravitational field would show the sort of strict boundary we see.

But if it were solid particles, we should see them. What's more, how are those particles staying in place? You also need to consider things like the matter not being dense enough to keep someone from running through them. Unless it was a solid wall, it would be like running straight into a thousand tiny knives. You wouldn't bounce off, you'd be impaled. And that's assuming the matter is being held in place, not if it's on some kind of rotation, in which case, anyone trying to run through a shield would torn to shreds.

The best explanation is the one we're given by the book; they simulate a high gravitational field effect, so when someone hits the shield, they bounce off. To them though, it would look like the rest of the hallway somehow moved.

Problem I am having is: how do they defend against lasers if shields are only a gravitational anomaly?

Gravity can bend light.

Usually limited to, perhaps. But I see no reason for that to be a hard limit. We actually have cases in canon of impulse speed being closer to 90% of light speed if memory serves me, and considering that Nebula class has weapons range of slightly less than 250 000 km, it would be less than a second.

No, it wouldn't be a hard limit. Theoretically, so long as you keep pushing more energy out, you could travel at .99c or some-such, you'll just never reach actual lightspeed without a proper warp drive.

Problem here is that we see - even during TOS, let alone TNG - examples of acceleration that are far above this 10 km/s^2 acceleration. Enterprise in TOS achieves a minimum of 29 km/s^2 acceleration (1,8 hours to Jupiter), and almost certainly far above that (going by some visuals). So if TNG TM really was based on show, how come writers were unaware that old Connie has three times - and more likely, three thousand times - the acceleration they gave the Galaxy class?

TOS also had them being thrown across the galaxy on multiple instances.

Actually, we only have two examples of Jem'Hadar intentionally ramming their opponents. Most of the time, while they are willing to die, they are not in a hurry to do so.

A more accurate take is that the Jem'Hadar will kill themselves to accomplish their goals. And in a space fight where you're basically sitting on a massive multi-gigaton bomb, getting into a knife-fight with a Jem'Hadar ship would not just be dangerous, it be a suicide pact.

If one torpedo can destroy multiple ships and both fleets can lob torpedoes without being able to evade (and with hundreds of ships closely packed in a fleet... yeah, not likely), any long-range exchange would be a MAD scenario. Closing in however would force both sides to shoot to disable, but one would need to survive to get close enough - and "close enough" would be in order of dozens to hundreds of meters, like what we see in DS9 fleet battles.

One torpedo can't destroy multiple ships, because the torpedo is not likely to make a direct hit. In which case, energy drops with distance. Now, you can have an effect where a torpedo hits multiple ships. And there's no reason why these ships can't be a kilometer away from each other. That's a relatively small distance in space.

More importantly, you still hit a MAD scenario when you get into "close" range, because now not only would your fellow ships be a danger to you if they lose containment, but so would the enemy ships. It would also increase the likelyhood of a "domino" effect. In other words, you accidentally destroy one ship or it self-destructs as a "fuck you". Well, that sets off the next ship. Then the next ship--before you know it, both fleets would be flying balls of expanding plasma in space.

What your argument actually suggests is that ships most probably wish for a stand-off distance of at least a few kilometers to reduce or eliminate the dangers of other ships. In fact, given that Sisko ordered his units into "wings", that suggests that there was probably a group of ships 3-15 kilometers apart, with each group probably 15-30 km apart. Sisko's drive into the "opening" that Dukat had created was probably dozens, if not a hundred kilometers wide.

Or maybe short bursts are actually more powerful in terms of energy output per second? Who knows.

That wouldn't make any sense either. That's what pulse phasers do.

 

[Aldarion]

It actually wouldn't, because the signal's strength would drop with distance. This is somewhat reinforced by what happened in Sacrifice of Angels, because they didn't wait to

We are thinking of different types of jamming. You seem to think of the targeted jamming where sensor is directly affected. What I'm thinking of is jamming that masks starship's signature with noise - think lighting a flashlight into somebody's eyes vs hiding in a self-generated fog from somebody. In former case it may be better to be close - in latter case, it is better to be further away.

The only time I can recall a shield being "reassembled", was in TNG's Survivors. In regards to "reroute energy to...", again, that can really mean anything. It could mean that battle damage has damaged the typical shield generator, it could mean that a generator is overheating and thus its output has fallen, it could physically damage to the power systems of that generator, and all that stuff. Some sort of matter shield is not generally going to require more energy, it would probably require more matter.

Damage I can buy, but if generator is overheating, transferring power would be the worst option possible.

I did find two examples of the Enterprise crew trying to just dump more power into the shields. One particular example was them dumping warp energy into the shields, but this makes little sense. If their shields could handle that much output, they would have done it at other times. It also contradicts the statement in regards to the navigational deflector in BoBW. I also recall them doing that once in Voyager, but they were also flying into a supernova, so the whole episode was just stupid.

There is also Booby Trap, where they gradually end up transferring power from everything into shields in order to defend from ever-increasing radiation bombardment. And a dozen other episodes that I cannot recall where they either transfer power to shields or else to particular shield segment.

That doesn't negate your examples, but reverse is also true.

But if it were solid particles, we should see them. What's more, how are those particles staying in place? You also need to consider things like the matter not being dense enough to keep someone from running through them. Unless it was a solid wall, it would be like running straight into a thousand tiny knives. You wouldn't bounce off, you'd be impaled. And that's assuming the matter is being held in place, not if it's on some kind of rotation, in which case, anyone trying to run through a shield would torn to shreds.

The best explanation is the one we're given by the book; they simulate a high gravitational field effect, so when someone hits the shield, they bounce off. To them though, it would look like the rest of the hallway somehow moved.

Take a look at this:

https://d3eys52k95jjdh.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Warp-Drive-in-3D-Space.jpg

Mechanism would be similar: shields would generate an Alcuberrie-like gravitational distortion around the ship, and this distortion would trap particles within it. And if said distortion has shape of a ring that rotates around the ship, that would also explain how shield frequency works and why ships don't just turn off the "flickering" of shields when not firing back.

And high gravitational field would be drawing things into it, not having them bounce off...

Gravity can bend light.

It can, but if shields were so strong as to bend light, they would a) prevent ship from being seen or being able to see anything and b) tear the ship itself to shreds.

TOS also had them being thrown across the galaxy on multiple instances.

So does TNG. In fact, "The Chase" would indicate that ships can cross the Federation in few days. And we have an outright statement that puts Warp 9,9 at 21 000 c, which is far more than what the manual implies.

So while the warp scale in Manual may be correct for cruise or average speed, there are a lot of inconsistencies in the show.

A more accurate take is that the Jem'Hadar will kill themselves to accomplish their goals. And in a space fight where you're basically sitting on a massive multi-gigaton bomb, getting into a knife-fight with a Jem'Hadar ship would not just be dangerous, it be a suicide pact.

If they were so die-happy, why wouldn't they just warp jump to range where they can ram the opposing fleet?

What your argument actually suggests is that ships most probably wish for a stand-off distance of at least a few kilometers to reduce or eliminate the dangers of other ships. In fact, given that Sisko ordered his units into "wings", that suggests that there was probably a group of ships 3-15 kilometers apart, with each group probably 15-30 km apart. Sisko's drive into the "opening" that Dukat had created was probably dozens, if not a hundred kilometers wide.

Why would it suggest that?

That wouldn't make any sense either. That's what pulse phasers do.

Pulse phasers don't make any sense anyway...