Yesterday's enterprise vs. the actual TNG

[Bear Ribs]

Rodenberry was an Army Air Force pilot, and after that served in the police force. There is no reason to assume that US Navy will have impacted his thinking.

Also, when you look at how Starfleet is actually portrayed, it fits Age of Sail Royal Navy far better than it does World War II US Navy. It sends out ships on long-term exploration missions, ships are expected to last for years out "in the wild" without access to drydocks, and most ships are essentially multirole combat and exploration vessels... Star Trek is literally Horatio Hornblower in space.

In fact, there is an entire book detailling importance of Age of Sail in genesis of Star Trek:

Review of Star Trek and the British Age of Sail: The Maritime Influence Throughout the Series and Films

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 51, no. 1 Nonfiction Reviews download Review of Star Trek and the British Age of Sail: The Maritime Influence Throughout the Series and Films Russell Alexander Stepp Stefan Rabi…

sfrareview.org

Star Trek and the British Age of Sail: The Maritime Influence … by Stefan Rabitsch (2019) – www.popcultureshelf.com

www.popcultureshelf.com

Star Trek and the British Age of Sail

Clear all moorings, one-half impulse power and set course for a mare incognitum... A popular culture artifact of the New Frontier/Space Race era, Star Trek is often mistakenly viewed as a Space Western. However, the Western format is not what governs the worldbuilding of Star Trek, which was...

books.google.hr

And if you look through it, there are several instances in which Gene specifically mentions aspects of Age of Sail navies as inspirations for Starfleet. It is not the only inspiration (ranks are a mix of Age of Sail and modern-day RN and USN), but Age of Sail is the primary basis.

I can't see any reason this gent's work should be taken seriously. I've not read every page but gone through the excerpts and I see only nonsense. I mean look at this crap:

Most orders given on Starfleet vessels are acknowledge by subordinates by the quintessential naval phrase “aye, aye.” Such a simple phrase belies a rich naval corpus of descriptive and performative language. They are used to write and speak Star Trek stories as privileged English-Language artifacts. Its future celebrates the global dissemination of the English language which began during the Age of Sail and which, according to Star Trek, shall continue to spread in naval fashion throughout the galaxy; or at least throughout the Alpha Quadrant.

Oh, so the fact that the show is in English, a "Privileged" language, indicates it links to the age of sail. Because clearly nobody spoke English outside that era, right? I can already tell this is going to be good. Also how the utter fragglepuss does a show with the Universal Translator as a major and repeated plot device continue to celebrate the spread of the English language?

Starfleet vessels are commanded by an elite caste of senior officers (captain, commander, lieutenant commander, lieutenant, ensign). Other members of a starship's crew are often simply addressed as crewmen, or summarily referred to as hands

This is nonsense, Trek's pretty famous for not having many enlisted, it's kinda a meme that Chief O'Brien appears to be the only Chief in the entire fleet with everybody else being officers. The author's also using deliberately woke language to invoke a situation that doesn't exist, such as referring to an "elite caste" of officers Dude's simply inventing his "facts" wholesale to try to support a conclusion the show doesn't support. I honestly can't remember any time we hear those "elite caste" officers referring to the rest of the crew as hands (outside of an alert to "all hands" which doesn't support the whole elitist screed the dude's on about).

For example, the Royal Navy's infamous Articles of War, which delineated ranks, the duties of sailors and officers, and especially various forms of punishment, were used as a basis for the US Navy's Articles for the Government of the United States Navy, which remained in effect until 1951. Similarly, Starfleet is governed by a strict, expansive, and often-quoted set of rules Starfleet General Orders and Regulations.

So to avoid cherry-picking, all these quotes are from the same page, the first one that opened up on Aldarion's link (page 71). This one was actually before the previous quote. What you'll notice across all the quotes is the guy using bait-and-switch tactics, he claims that Star Trek has X, and X existed in the Royal Navy, ergo Star Trek is inspired by the Royal Navy. In this case he's gotten truly absurd, the Royal Navy had rules, Starfleet has rules, ergo Starfleet was inspired by the Royal Navy. It's the same case above, there are officers and enlisted, the Royal Navy had officers and enlisted, so Trek must be based on the Royal Navy. Captain Kirk speaks English, Royal Navy officers spoke English, thus Starfleet is based on the Royal Navy.

The problem is pretty obvious, besides the fact that he actually has to make up facts to supplement his claims, all the elements he's claiming as evidence aren't unique to the Royal Navy. Any organization is going to have directives and a code of conduct. Every even semi-militarized organization is going to have officer ranks. Any show made for prime-time TV in the US can be expected to speak English.

Couple that with the academics seeming inability to go a single page without reflexively spouting woke crap (English is a privileged language! Having officers is elitist!) and I think this book is really not worth the time.

 

[Aldarion]

I can't see any reason this gent's work should be taken seriously. I've not read every page but gone through the excerpts and I see only nonsense. I mean look at this crap:


Oh, so the fact that the show is in English, a "Privileged" language, indicates it links to the age of sail. Because clearly nobody spoke English outside that era, right? I can already tell this is going to be good. Also how the utter fragglepuss does a show with the Universal Translator as a major and repeated plot device continue to celebrate the spread of the English language?

This is nonsense, Trek's pretty famous for not having many enlisted, it's kinda a meme that Chief O'Brien appears to be the only Chief in the entire fleet with everybody else being officers. The author's also using deliberately woke language to invoke a situation that doesn't exist, such as referring to an "elite caste" of officers Dude's simply inventing his "facts" wholesale to try to support a conclusion the show doesn't support. I honestly can't remember any time we hear those "elite caste" officers referring to the rest of the crew as hands (outside of an alert to "all hands" which doesn't support the whole elitist screed the dude's on about).

So to avoid cherry-picking, all these quotes are from the same page, the first one that opened up on Aldarion's link (page 71). This one was actually before the previous quote. What you'll notice across all the quotes is the guy using bait-and-switch tactics, he claims that Star Trek has X, and X existed in the Royal Navy, ergo Star Trek is inspired by the Royal Navy. In this case he's gotten truly absurd, the Royal Navy had rules, Starfleet has rules, ergo Starfleet was inspired by the Royal Navy. It's the same case above, there are officers and enlisted, the Royal Navy had officers and enlisted, so Trek must be based on the Royal Navy. Captain Kirk speaks English, Royal Navy officers spoke English, thus Starfleet is based on the Royal Navy.

The problem is pretty obvious, besides the fact that he actually has to make up facts to supplement his claims, all the elements he's claiming as evidence aren't unique to the Royal Navy. Any organization is going to have directives and a code of conduct. Every even semi-militarized organization is going to have officer ranks. Any show made for prime-time TV in the US can be expected to speak English.

Couple that with the academics seeming inability to go a single page without reflexively spouting woke crap (English is a privileged language! Having officers is elitist!) and I think this book is really not worth the time.

I don't give a shit about what his politics - that wasn't the point. What matters are statements by Gene Rodenberry himself that were cited in the book.

 

[Agent23]

I don't give a shit about what that guy has written - that wasn't the point. What matters are statements by Gene Rodenberry himself that were cited in the book.

Roddenberry died before most Trek we've seen was even made.

 

[Aldarion]

Roddenberry died before most Trek we've seen was even made.

True. But he set the tone for Star Trek - both the good (historical inspirations) and the bad (leftist ideological underpinnings).

 

[Agent23]

True. But he set the tone for Star Trek - both the good (historical inspirations) and the bad (leftist ideological underpinnings).

There is no wind in space, not in RL space or Trek space.
The fact that he got some ideasdeom Hornblower novels does not mean the ship combat mechanics are 1-to-1.

 

[Bear Ribs]

I don't give a shit about what his politics - that wasn't the point. What matters are statements by Gene Rodenberry himself that were cited in the book.

That's nice, but since we've already established that the gent is willing to outright lie about things to support his political positions, we also have to give the side-eye to any statements he's supposedly quoting because he's known to be untrustworthy and could be either lying some more or taking massive liberties with context.

F'rex take his claim
Making it explicit that he is cast along the same Hornblower-esque lines, Roddenberry simply stated that Picard “has gone the way we saw Kirk going, content with a 'starship love.'” on page 135.

It's one hell of a massive stretcher to say that Roddenberry was confirming that Picard was based on Hornblower because he loved his ship. Actually, it's beyond a Stretcher because he's also misrepresenting Hornblower, Horatio did not have a ship love at all and swapped ships quite readily. He did have a love of sailing in general but also a Great Romance with Lady Barbara and retired to Kent to be with her rather than stick with one ship. He has to work around and completely ignore that Roddenberry's own description was that Star Trek was "Wagon Train to the stars" based on the successful 8-season western show Wagon Train.

At any rate such influences will have little to nothing to do with the actual tactics involved,

 

[LTR]

View attachment 1494

Relevant...

 

[Agent23]

Relevant...

Might be more reliable than the TNG Galaxy-class.

 

[Aldarion]

There is no wind in space, not in RL space or Trek space.
The fact that he got some ideasdeom Hornblower novels does not mean the ship combat mechanics are 1-to-1.

I never said they were 1-to-1? Closest we have to 1-to-1 transplantation of Age of Sail to space are Honor Harrington novels IIRC.

 

[Agent23]

I never said they were 1-to-1? Closest we have to 1-to-1 transplantation of Age of Sail to space are Honor Harrington novels IIRC.

And even there, Weber had to account for things like 3D space and his ships had sensors and missiles and smaller ships working to screen and protect the bigger ones.

 

[The Original Sixth]

Watch the episode. USS Galaxy was literally on top of the weapons platforms when they activated. Seeing how fleet was destroying the platforms, that means that yes, she was on the leading edge of the fleet.

And considering how vulnerable fighters / torpedo boats are to being destroyed by larger ships, I'd say you are using the wrong model here. You should go back to Age of Sail if you want to understand Star Trek battle tactics, such as that exist at all. And in the Age of Sail, frigates were used for scouting and pre-combat action, but once the battle was joined they would actually be screened by the ships of the line: a situation we actually see in the Star Trek, and complete opposite of what you are suggesting here.

Sure. But I was talking specifically about battles here. Raiding and escort is done by smaller ships: we see Defiant do an escort duty at least one time, and ships doing patrol mostly seem to be Mirandas, Centaurs etc.

Yeah, I can't really comment on the Age of Sail, but the best way to determine the sort of military strategies they would use is actually by the technology and the environment. How it is portrayed in the show and lore is also important, but you're essentially asking for TV show writers in the 90s to properly articulate advanced space combat, on a TV show budget, and for an American audience. Even the Voyager TV writer's guide outright came out and said "look, these ships would fight at really long ranges, but it's easier for action shots to have them close up, so do that".

Realizing that any sort of media portrayal is prone to mistakes and rule-of-cool, accepting it, and moving past it is really important to having an honest debate with someone. Just because SD.net thought it was a cool idea, doesn't make it some kind of internet law. Or even good debating advice.

First, let's look at the technology.

Torpedoes -- Are often portrayed as having really long ranges and are suggested to move at very high fractions of c. They also tend to have variable yield, but the typical yield suggested by the TM is multi-megaton. This is contrary to consistent figures of MJ, GJ, and TJ weapons and shield figures. This suggests that most torpedoes set to high yields probably detonate some distance from the ship, essentially being AOE weapons. The distance from the torpedo would drop the yield, which accommodates the lower yield weapons.

Phasers -- Phasers are weird in that they have low DET (direct energy transfer) effects, but very high chain reaction effects, commonly referred to as NDF. According to the TM, they transfer matter into another dimension (subspace). In a sense, they seem to act like transporters, often leaving no secondary damage or effects. People like Wong have questioned the science (or even the logic) behind that explanation and offered competing theories. For hand units, the show creators have already spoken on it; the weapons are simply too strong to have a compelling gun fight (at least with what they can do on a 90s tv show) and so you get a sort of compromise, even if in reality, everything should be exploding. Overall, the prevailing logic, lore, and portrayal seems to be that denser objects are more difficult to vaporize, some materials are simply overly resistant to phasers, and phasers are very versatile, effective weapons. And some may have an auto-aim feature (this last one is probably only limited to ones with actual digital display sites, as found on Phaser IIIs).

Ranges -- Phaser ranges are obscenely high, even for a laser. Phasers, which are more often described as particle weapons, simply shouldn't have that kind of range. That said, it is their canonical range and there are even times when they take advantage of this, The Wounded being a classic example. However, some ships, like the Bird of Prey, have it in their TM as having much more limited ranges and so it suggests that certainly not all ship engagements are long-range. Indeed, the BoP seems to specialize at engagements that are in the dozens-of-kilometer range with its pulse disruptors. That certainly suggests that while these ships can and probably would engage at longer ranges, there must be an advantage to closing to several dozen kilometers for combat and that such a thing is plausible.

Second, the environment.

I'm in no way a specialist in modern combat or even space combat. I can at best say that I have some passing familiarity and some deep tidbits here and there. I've even played around with a game sim that attempts to present the most realistic space combat. Since it used the most realistic technology as possible, ships don't get to fly around at .25c or use limitless fuel reserves, but rather have limited fuel capacity and often need to orbit around planets and moons, carefully calculating the cost of adjusting their course for engagements.

But it basically falls into two categories of engagement. One is long-range engagement. This is where one fleet would fire drones or missiles at an opposing fleet or target. It would not be too uncommon for these to be launched while your ship is on the OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET, forcing the enemy fleet to expend valuable fuel reserves to avoid the incoming missiles/drones (who themselves are limited in their course adjustments) or risk a direct encounter and taking some battle-damage.

Then there's a direct confrontation. This can come by overtaking an opponent, taking them head-on, or coming upon them in an intercept course. In either case, outside of the optimal range, a ship can still technically hit--and it can even behoove you to fire at an enemy's general direction in hopes of getting some lucky hits/early damage, but as you enter effective combat range, it's generally a fight between your fleet's ability to resist enemy fire (defense guns, armor, maneuverability) to your ability to dish it out (disabling enemy systems with lasers, putting holes in them with rail guns, or hitting them with drone/missile swarms). In which case, lasers are great for disabling enemy weapons, but they have a shorter range than missiles, drones, and railguns. Missiles are great, but they can be intercepted and they're generally fragmentation missiles. Nukes are beautiful; they will probably never score a direct hit and they'll always be the first target, but if they get close enough, you can essentially cripple the enemy fleet. Drones are a mixed bag; they can be intercepted by well-screened fleets easily enough, but they can also just start firing at the enemy fleet. Several of them at close range can really tear up an enemy ship.

So in that sort of tactical/strategic environment, it suggests the following to me:

• Most fleet engagements would probably begin at 3.5-4 million kilometer ranges, as indicated by the lore in the TNG and DS9 TM. While that seems really long-range, keep in mind that you could really do that with a modern missile with no problem. Anything will keep going in space until something else slows it down. However, what we need to look at is the torpedo's velocity, which according to the TM, is .75c. That's 225,000 kps. That suggests that anything more than 18 seconds of response time between two enemy ships is too long and the torpedo is unlikely to hit in normal battle conditions. We also know that the torpedo needs 1.02 second to actually combine the matter-antimatter packages.
  • Initial volleys would probably thus begin anywhere between 3-5 million kilometers, depending on the tactical situation between the two fleets (more ships, harder to move, possible navigational hazards, sheer size of the enemy volley, ect).
  • As the two fleets engage each other, ships would suffer damage, formations would probably break up, and each fleet would probably begin to take damage.
• Then we enter the 300,000 km range, which is where phasers and energy weapons come into play. The first shots are going to come from the largest ships using their largest weapons, which are probably pot-shots. As ships begin to draw closer, the heavy guns begin to do more damage, the moderate-sized guns begin to hit, and damage begins to accumulate. As shorter weapon systems come into play, ships would be mercilessly torn apart. Expect many of the larger ships to be overwhelmed, while smaller ships are simply blown apart.
  • The flow of this short-range battle is very likely set by the success of the long-range bombardments. The gaps created by ships avoiding being too clustered, lost ships, damaged ships, and confusion, an enemy might find gaps to slide into, granting them the advantage. We might infer that this was the hope that Sisko had.
  • There is also clearly some means of jamming enemy weapons or at least some difficulty in hitting smaller ships. We can see this with the design philosophy of the BoP, the Defiant, as well as the existence of fighters on all sides. Sisko himself sent wave after wave of fighter squadrons against the DS9 Dominion Defense Fleet, in the hope of causing the Cardassians to break rank and chase after the fighters.
  • On the face of it, this would seem rather suicidal if done alone; after all, hundreds of ships firing their phasers at incoming fighter squadrons would be an effective deterrent unless the fighters severally outnumbered the defenders, sufficiently durable, or difficult to hit. Possible solutions:
    • Fighters may be very durable. We know the Dominion Attack Ships are referred to as fighters on occasion and even Cardassian fighters seem rather large. Indeed, shielding tech may just be good at stopping phasers. We've seen really small ships take handful of shots from capital ships without immediately folding. Although most of those situations involve them wanting to capture the ship, there seems to be some evidence that the ships have remarkable durability despite the size difference. After all, most of the DET for many weapon systems is in the MW range or low GW at best.
    • Hard to Hit -- Always possible, especially if the enemy is jamming you and they're shielded and you can't get the dwell time right because they keep jerking around.
    • Overwhelming Odds -- Possible, but we rarely see such situations in Trek. The only one I can recall in DS9 is where a hundred or so Jem'Hadar fighters ambush a couple dozen Tal Shiar/Obsidian Order ships.

 

[Aldarion]

Torpedoes -- Are often portrayed as having really long ranges and are suggested to move at very high fractions of c. They also tend to have variable yield, but the typical yield suggested by the TM is multi-megaton. This is contrary to consistent figures of MJ, GJ, and TJ weapons and shield figures. This suggests that most torpedoes set to high yields probably detonate some distance from the ship, essentially being AOE weapons. The distance from the torpedo would drop the yield, which accommodates the lower yield weapons.

Problem is that we only see torpedoes display long range in engagements between individual starships. This suggests that there is some fundamental issue with using them for long-range fleet engagements - most likely, jamming on fleet level is so good that it is forcing people to literally eyeball the target.

Also, Technical Manuals are a literal pile of manure. I wouldn't take them seriously.

Phasers -- Phasers are weird in that they have low DET (direct energy transfer) effects, but very high chain reaction effects, commonly referred to as NDF. According to the TM, they transfer matter into another dimension (subspace). In a sense, they seem to act like transporters, often leaving no secondary damage or effects. People like Wong have questioned the science (or even the logic) behind that explanation and offered competing theories. For hand units, the show creators have already spoken on it; the weapons are simply too strong to have a compelling gun fight (at least with what they can do on a 90s tv show) and so you get a sort of compromise, even if in reality, everything should be exploding. Overall, the prevailing logic, lore, and portrayal seems to be that denser objects are more difficult to vaporize, some materials are simply overly resistant to phasers, and phasers are very versatile, effective weapons. And some may have an auto-aim feature (this last one is probably only limited to ones with actual digital display sites, as found on Phaser IIIs).

If that were the case, then phasers would likely be useless against the shields (depending of course on how exactly the shields work - if they are some type of exotic matter, then the so-called NDF effect might be useful).

Ranges -- Phaser ranges are obscenely high, even for a laser. Phasers, which are more often described as particle weapons, simply shouldn't have that kind of range. That said, it is their canonical range and there are even times when they take advantage of this, The Wounded being a classic example. However, some ships, like the Bird of Prey, have it in their TM as having much more limited ranges and so it suggests that certainly not all ship engagements are long-range. Indeed, the BoP seems to specialize at engagements that are in the dozens-of-kilometer range with its pulse disruptors. That certainly suggests that while these ships can and probably would engage at longer ranges, there must be an advantage to closing to several dozen kilometers for combat and that such a thing is plausible.

Long ranges are something we only ever see during individual starship duels. We have no examples of long ranges in fleet battles that we see, with several battles making it clear that starships only opened fire upon reaching the visual range.

So while long ranges may be technically possible, it is clear that short range engagements are a preferred modus operandi, for whatever reason.

So in that sort of tactical/strategic environment, it suggests the following to me:

None of which we actually see, at any point. For some reason, thus, your thesis must be impractical in the field.

 

[The Original Sixth]

Ugh, because talking up one perpetually overrated ship wasn't enough for the thread.

The Defiant is a a set of engines with guns strapped to them (or possibly the reverse), and it is impressive that startfleet was able to fit the sort of firepower that's usually mounted on a light cruiser on what is basically a scout ship.

It's not really a scout ship though. Outside of Sisko's Defiant, they have no cloak. That leaves you with a ship that has no great range compared to other ships, isn't particularly fast, and isn't even well set for long-range journeys into enemy space. The Defiant is in effect, a highly focused and cheap destroyer. That gives the Defiant a very, very narrow field of utility, but they're really good at that.

But it's very slow, topping out at like 9.3 or something in an era where most ships can reach 9.6 or faster, and has limited operational endurance, both of which limit the ships effective patrol range. And while it has the punch of a ship several times it's size, it has the shields of a ship about its size. That is a bad combination, it's going to attract a lot more heat because of it's threat level, and it can't survive taking those sorts of hits.

I don't really agree with that assessment. While a Defiant is nasty, it's not the most dangerous part of any fleet. Galaxies, torpedo-pod Nebulas, Akiras, and Sovereigns comfortably outclass the Defiant in terms of firepower and durability. If anything, part of the Defiant's advantage is its small size and heavy firepower; its far more powerful than ships of its size tend to be, while being as difficult to hit, and not your primary target. That's probably going to be the Excelsior.

The real problem with the Defiant is that it doesn't really make any sense. And part of that is because the Defiant we follow had an angry black demigod in command.

Bear in mind, when the Defiant tried to take on an upgraded Excelsior, a ship that, for all it's other qualities, was still decades older and two generations behind the current standard for startfleet capital ships, the Defiant lost, because the Lakota was able to deliver a kill shot the defiant, but as far as the script says the reverse was not true.

Actually, the fight was pretty even and both crews were trying to disable each other, not put the other down. That makes any sort of real judge in terms of firepower difficult, because we don't know what sort of tactical advantage either ship passed up. There's no easy way to say whose superior.

If you want a good startfleet light warship, look at the Saber class, which is faster, just as tough, with better multirole capability and better crew accommodations, all at the cost of some (mostly excessive) firepower.

Well, Starfleet has a lot of good options for pure warships. We just didn't see them because...they were warships and not explorer types, like the GCS, Nebula, Excelsior, Constitution, ect. The Saber class is a bit different though, it's actually rated as a light cruiser. Same is true with the Steamrunner, Norway, and Akira Class. They have little purpose outside of a war. The Defiant is really just an overpowered pocket destroyer.

There is no evidence to suggest the Lakota was any more capable than an other ship of it's tonnage, and some to the reverse. Upgrades or not, there is a limit to what you can do to an older ship to keep it up to par. Power generation comes to mind, you can only do so much with the stock reactors on a ship that old, and you can only replace them with newer ones for so long until you can no longer fit a newer one in (and while that too can be fixed with yet more work, eventually you're doing more than just a few upgrades, and past that point you might as well build a new ship).

That isn't true. We know that the Lakota had at least a weapons upgrade. It was stated to have a higher-than-average firepower for a ship of its class and it was armed with quantum torpedoes. Of course, Sisko had ALSO added ablative armor plating to his ship (or more of it, I expect) so the Defiant we know is actually more durable than your average Defiant. That said, we don't know if this really made any difference to the numbers in the end.

That said, it's worth noting that the Defiant crew didn't immediately give in, suggesting that either the Defiant could try and run by them or else might be capable of pulling out a win, even if the odds weren't entirely in their favor. I would honestly have put the odds in the Excelsior's favor, because it probably has greater torpedo capacity and phaser range (given pulse weapon ranges tend to be lower range if the BoP is anything to go by), but I think once you get into close range combat, the Defiant's maneuverability gives an edge.

The defiant, yes (which is another reason it's a mediocre design, pure warships aren't very useful to the federation because most of the time they need a ship for non-military applications), but there's no evidence thatvthe Lakota was any such thing.

Warships are...really good during war. And when there isn't a war, you can park your ships in a lot where they won't rust, won't degrade much, and will be ready to be pressed back into service during the next war. That said, it is a very narrow window for what you'd want a Defiant for. It's a very capable pocket destroyer and put in the right place, are a real asset. Mostly because they break the rules of ship design.

 

[The Original Sixth]

Problem is that we only see torpedoes display long range in engagements between individual starships. This suggests that there is some fundamental issue with using them for long-range fleet engagements - most likely, jamming on fleet level is so good that it is forcing people to literally eyeball the target.

You know, people might like you more--or at least take you more seriously, if you actually address the entirety of their arguments. You know, instead of disregarding one key pillar that their argument is based on, assert your own, and then proceed to address the rest of the argument as if it weren't there.

Also, Technical Manuals are a literal pile of manure. I wouldn't take them seriously.

They aren't and I do. They were based on the technical manual for the show runners and are thus by far, the best look into the technology we're offered. It's certainly better than your policy of treating a TV show as if it's a documentary.

If that were the case, then phasers would likely be useless against the shields (depending of course on how exactly the shields work - if they are some type of exotic matter, then the so-called NDF effect might be useful).

No, they would be fine against shields. The main issue of shield generators is overheating. Dwell time on the shields can lower the endurance of the heat sinks, especially if the shields have recently sustained a torpedo "hit".

Long ranges are something we only ever see during individual starship duels. We have no examples of long ranges in fleet battles that we see, with several battles making it clear that starships only opened fire upon reaching the visual range.

Yes, I'm aware. If you had bothered to address my position on it being a TV show, you needn't have bothered trying to speak to me as if you somehow are more experienced in the TV show than I am. I can promise you, you aren't.

So while long ranges may be technically possible, it is clear that short range engagements are a preferred modus operandi, for whatever reason.

Lol, I do love it when people like to pretend that there is some mysterious reason why Star Trek ships engage at point-blank range despite numerous dialogue and TM info as to why they wouldn't...as if it's a completely unexplainable phenomenon that was in no way addressed.

Especially when I already addressed it.

VOY Writer's Manual (pg 15):

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"

In other words, the only reason why you see ships in the same shot is for dramatic effect. Because what you see onscreen is a portrayal of what is happening, NOT what actually happened. Surprisingly, a French Captain Picard would have a French accent, not a British one. Data hasn't actually obviously aged, as if he were a guy in cheap makeup.

You can see this later in the document, where they go over the weapons. Pg 21:

In brief: A particle beam projector which is the ship's primary offensive weapon. Voyager has a number of massive phaser banks that wrap around both of the ship's main sections. At maximum power, the main phaser banks can totally disrupt the surface of a planet. Phaser beams travel at the speed of light, and thus are relatively ineffective at warp speed. Phaser is short for PHAsed Energy Retification". Maxium effective phaser range is about 300,000 kilometers.

If the showrunners actually thought that these ships would only be engaging at knife-ranges because that is an accurate portrayal, one might assume they wouldn't tell their writing staff the complete opposite.

None of which we actually see, at any point. For some reason, thus, your thesis must be impractical in the field.

No, your problem is that you ignore key elements of my argument, so your position still seems plausible and not the behavior of a child stubbornly clinging to his interpretation of the evidence.

 

[Aldarion]

You know, people might like you more--or at least take you more seriously, if you actually address the entirety of their arguments. You know, instead of disregarding one key pillar that their argument is based on, assert your own, and then proceed to address the rest of the argument as if it weren't there.

What else was there to address?

They aren't and I do. They were based on the technical manual for the show runners and are thus by far, the best look into the technology we're offered. It's certainly better than your policy of treating a TV show as if it's a documentary.

They are a guide for showrunners. Guide which showrunners are perfectly free to ignore, wipe their ass with or whatever. And they are not canon.

The end.

No, they would be fine against shields. The main issue of shield generators is overheating. Dwell time on the shields can lower the endurance of the heat sinks, especially if the shields have recently sustained a torpedo "hit".

Proof? Because we never hear of any overheating issue that I remember. What we do see is:
1) Shields have certain strength, which one could theoretically consider a heat limit; however:
2) shields are at 100% strength at the beginning, and percentage drops with hits - the opposite of what you would expect with the heat limit;
3) as shield percentage drops, so does their effectiveness - ship starts taking damage through the shields as they weaken;
4) shields can be dropped via exotic means, requiring them to be "reassembled";
5) ships have no issue utilizing shields well within the star's photosphere.

Conclusion? Most likely answer is that shields are some form of exotic matter, which gets depleted with hits and requires shields to be lowered in order to be replenished. Nothing to do with overheating, otherwise you wouldn't have ships happily sitting at (or within) star's surface.

Yes, I'm aware. If you had bothered to address my position on it being a TV show, you needn't have bothered trying to speak to me as if you somehow are more experienced in the TV show than I am. I can promise you, you aren't.

And? What I wrote is equally true for show and for movies. In fact, it was the movies which began the tradition of short-range starship dogfighting.

Lol, I do love it when people like to pretend that there is some mysterious reason why Star Trek ships engage at point-blank range despite numerous dialogue and TM info as to why they wouldn't...as if it's a completely unexplainable phenomenon that was in no way addressed.

Especially when I already addressed it.

VOY Writer's Manual (pg 15):
In other words, the only reason why you see ships in the same shot is for dramatic effect. Because what you see onscreen is a portrayal of what is happening, NOT what actually happened. Surprisingly, a French Captain Picard would have a French accent, not a British one. Data hasn't actually obviously aged, as if he were a guy in cheap makeup.

You can see this later in the document, where they go over the weapons. Pg 21:

If the showrunners actually thought that these ships would only be engaging at knife-ranges because that is an accurate portrayal, one might assume they wouldn't tell their writing staff the complete opposite.

And? We have both visuals and dialogue showing both extremes. Yes, we have starships engaging at distances of 200 000 kilometers or more (e.g. Phoenix) - but we also have Defiant holding fire until it is within 500 meters of enemy ships. So believing that dialogue somehow 1) uniquely shows starships engaging at hundreds of thousands of kilometers and 2) inherently negates visuals which show short-range fighting, is completely wrong.

Both dialogue and visuals show both extremes and everything in between, with caveat that majority of long-range examples are shown through dialogue only. Therefore, rather than dismissing short-range examples outright, they have to be somehow explained.

No, your problem is that you ignore key elements of my argument, so your position still seems plausible and not the behavior of a child stubbornly clinging to his interpretation of the evidence.

I ignored nothing. Or at least, nothing you have actually written: I'm hardly a telepath.

 

[The Original Sixth]

What else was there to address?

Tell me Aldarion, how long have you been debating this sort of stuff?

They are a guide for showrunners. Guide which showrunners are perfectly free to ignore, wipe their ass with or whatever. And they are not canon.

The end.

Oh, is that so?

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

"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

"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.

"Only the reference books (tech manual, encyclopedia, etc...) and two books by Jeri Taylor are considered canon outside the TV show and movies." - Harry Lang, Senior Director of Viacom Consumer Products Interactive division, posts on StarTrek.com forum, January 2005.

And yes, I'm aware of the statements by Moore. Lang's statement is not only more current, but he holds a more authoritative position in the company. And of course, the statements by Roddenberry, Okuda, and Sternbach within the TNG TM itself.

Proof? Because we never hear of any overheating issue that I remember. What we do see is:
1) Shields have certain strength, which one could theoretically consider a heat limit; however:
2) shields are at 100% strength at the beginning, and percentage drops with hits - the opposite of what you would expect with the heat limit;
3) as shield percentage drops, so does their effectiveness - ship starts taking damage through the shields as they weaken;
4) shields can be dropped via exotic means, requiring them to be "reassembled";
5) ships have no issue utilizing shields well within the star's photosphere.

Hey, maybe just email Wong directly and ask him for debating tips.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Deflector_shield?file=Graviton_analysis.jpg

Conclusion? Most likely answer is that shields are some form of exotic matter, which gets depleted with hits and requires shields to be lowered in order to be replenished. Nothing to do with overheating, otherwise you wouldn't have ships happily sitting at (or within) star's surface.

Well, ignoring the fact that we know that shield technology is based off graviton, both from the TMs and the picture I linked to you, why is it that we don't actually SEE the alleged matter that the shields are made of?

And? What I wrote is equally true for show and for movies. In fact, it was the movies which began the tradition of short-range starship dogfighting.

Yes, for the theatrical effect. And Star Trek has been chasing Wrath of Khan for decades now, hoping to recapture the magic. Simply because they portray it that way, doesn't mean that's the actual reality. Contrary to what you may have learned, worshiping at Wong's long-departed feet, Star Trek is not a documentary. It is a TV show.

With a budget.

And? We have both visuals and dialogue showing both extremes. Yes, we have starships engaging at distances of 200 000 kilometers or more (e.g. Phoenix) - but we also have Defiant holding fire until it is within 500 meters of enemy ships. So believing that dialogue somehow 1) uniquely shows starships engaging at hundreds of thousands of kilometers and 2) inherently negates visuals which show short-range fighting, is completely wrong.

Yes, you're referring to 'The Die is Cast':

EDDINGTON: Shields at eighty percent.
SISKO: Attack pattern omega four. Full impulse power. Hold your fire until we're within five hundred meters.
KIRA: We might get pretty singed at that range.
SISKO: Not as singed as they're going to get. Engage.
DAX: Fifty thousand meters and closing. Two thousand meters. Five hundred!

To which Kira objects (softly, mind you) that they're going to get singed at that range. Whether she's referring to taking hits or backsplash from the Defiant's own pulse cannons, I can't be sure. Anyway, engagement with the enemy began at around 50 kilometers, minimum, since the fighters were probably closing in on the Defiant from the initial hits. Depending upon the speed of the ships and the actual timeframe, it would suggest that the range could easily have been 100 to 300 kilometers.

Both dialogue and visuals show both extremes and everything in between, with caveat that majority of long-range examples are shown through dialogue only. Therefore, rather than dismissing short-range examples outright, they have to be somehow explained.

Yeah, almost as if a show...which has lots of guest writers or writers in general who can make mistakes either in what they say or in their conception of the situation or for the sake of drama, might create contradictions that would not otherwise appear in reality. If only...yes, if only there was some sort of source that was definitive on the deep lore of the setting, to answer questions such as these!

Oh wait, it's called the TMs.

In which case, yes, sometimes close-range engagements do happen and it can depend upon the situation, but to assume that because they can and do happen, that ships would prefer to put themselves in maximum danger, is rather absurd.

In the scenarios in the TM, we have a GCS engaging at .75c (.02c relative) at a range of about 800 km. In another we have a low sublight engagement at .01c relative and absolute. A Romulan Warbird discharges its disruptor cannons at ~5,000 km. In a third scenario, which is mid-sublight, it's .001c relative and .60c absolute at very close range; 15 km.

I ignored nothing. Or at least, nothing you have actually written: I'm hardly a telepath.

Don't play that game with me. You are addressing the issue now, don't pretend as if you had.

 

[Battlegrinder]

It's not really a scout ship though.

I didn't mean to say it was, I meant it's something the size of a scout ship.

I don't really agree with that assessment. While a Defiant is nasty, it's not the most dangerous part of any fleet. Galaxies, torpedo-pod Nebulas, Akiras, and Sovereigns comfortably outclass the Defiant in terms of firepower and durability. If anything, part of the Defiant's advantage is its small size and heavy firepower; its far more powerful than ships of its size tend to be, while being as difficult to hit, and not your primary target. That's probably going to be the Excelsior.

I think you're misunderstanding me. The point isn't that the Defiant is the most dangerous ship in any given formation, the point is that it's a disproportionately dangerous one and it doesn't have the shield strength to back up its firepower.

If you can choose to shoot either an Ambassador, a Defiant, or a Miranda, you shoot the Defiant first, because by knocking it out you take a lot of firepower off the field in a few volleys, while hitting the Miranda with that same amount of fire would only slightly reduce the combined power of the enemy, and hitting the Ambassador wouldn't stop it.

Well, Starfleet has a lot of good options for pure warships. We just didn't see them because...they were warships and not explorer types, like the GCS, Nebula, Excelsior, Constitution, ect. The Saber class is a bit different though, it's actually rated as a light cruiser. Same is true with the Steamrunner, Norway, and Akira Class. They have little purpose outside of a war. The Defiant is really just an overpowered pocket destroyer.

That's extremely dubious. The show itself doesn't say that the Saber is only useful in war (or that GCS is less effective, which is a bizzare claim to make given its prominent use in the war), and secondary canon explicitly says its highly capable multirole vessel.

They were based on the technical manual for the show runners and are thus by far, the best look into the technology we're offered. It's certainly better than your policy of treating a TV show as if it's a documentary.

The problem with that is that the writers were free to, and indeed frequently did, disregard the TM and do whatever they wanted, and I can't recall any time when the writers said "well, we wanted to do X, but we'd established previously that X was impossible, so we can up with Y". No, they just did X anyway.

In other words, the only reason why you see ships in the same shot is for dramatic effect. Because what you see onscreen is a portrayal of what is happening, NOT what actually happened.

That's not what that says. What that says is "don't use explicit numbers and write the VFX team into a corner. The director might want both ships in frame at the same time, don't put stuff in the script to contradict that, just leave it vague".

It most certainly does not mean "the words on the page are the real star trek, the actual show and end product is just an occasion accurately distorted version of the script". Star Trek is A TV show, not a radio play.

If the showrunners actually thought that these ships would only be engaging at knife-ranges because that is an accurate portrayal, one might assume they wouldn't tell their writing staff the complete opposite.

One would also assume that if the VFX teams had insisted on incorrectly depicting this setting for 40 years and counting, that at some point the showrunners would have noticed that error and either made them do it right, or gone out and clearly said "yeah, only the dialog of the show is really correct, the visuals are just there too look pretty and don't mean anything, we'd run this franchise as a radio play if we could".

 

[Aldarion]

Oh, is that so?

"Report on what is canon", "technically canon"... please learn to read.

Technical Manuals are writers' guide. Writers were free to, and did, completely disregard them. The best you can say is that TMs are "canon so long as they do not contradict anything shown on screen"... which is as good as saying that they are not canon, considering how much TV shows and movies contradict the manuals (and also themselves, but that is another discussion).

Hey, maybe just email Wong directly and ask him for debating tips.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Deflector_shield?file=Graviton_analysis.jpg

That is supposed to prove what? It has no relation to your original claim.

Well, ignoring the fact that we know that shield technology is based off graviton, both from the TMs and the picture I linked to you, why is it that we don't actually SEE the alleged matter that the shields are made of?

We know gravitons are a component of shields. And yes, gravitational fields might be what shields are. But if that is all that shields are, how do you explain... literally everything about the shields? Why are shields shown as a membrane instead of a field? Why are they shown physically glowing when weapons or objects hit them? Why is only the area of impact shown as glowing? Why are shields invisible when active but when struck, glow in the area of impact? Why weapons dissipate immediately upon hitting the membrane instead of gradually dispersing as would be the case if the shields really were a field? Why objects bounce off the glowy membrane thing? Why do we see shields brushing against each as if they were solid objects other instead of area of effect which gradually grows stronger? Why are shields locational in nature (forward, left, right, aft shields)? Why do they weaken in percentages when struck by weapons fire? (OK, that last one might be explained by shields being powered by a capacitor instead of directly by the warp core).

In fact, we have a natural phenomenon which behaves almost exactly like Star Trek shields. And guess what it is?

Scientists Discover Star Trek Style Invisible "Shield" Thousands Of Miles Above Earth

Scientists Discover Star Trek Style Invisible "Shield" Thousands Of Miles Above Earth

www.iflscience.com

As described in the journal Nature, this invisible barrier is located within the Van Allen radiation belts. These are two doughnut-shaped rings around our planet that extend up to 40,000 kilometers above Earth. The inner zone is full of high-energy protons, whereas the outer zone is dominated by high-energy electrons.

The protective shield was discovered after scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder analyzed almost two years of data gathered by the twin NASA spacecraft, the Van Allen Probes, which orbit the rings to observe the behavior of high-energy electrons in this area.

The data revealed a sharp boundary at the very inner edge of the outer belt that appeared to be deflecting incoming highly charged electrons, called ultrarelativistic electrons. These particles whizz around Earth at near light-speed, travelling at approximately 160,000 kilometers per second. It was assumed that these electrons would make a smooth transition, gradually drifting into the upper atmosphere before being destroyed by collisions with air molecules. However, much to their surprise, a sharp cutoff was observed instead.

“It’s almost like these electrons are running into a glass wall in space,” lead author Professor Daniel Baker said in a news-release. “Somewhat like the shields created by force fields on Star Trek that were used to repel alien weapons, we are seeing an invisible shield blocking these electrons. It’s an extremely puzzling phenomenon.”

Instead, they suggest that a cloud of cold, electrically charged gas known as the plasmasphere could be playing a role. This giant cloud starts just 600 miles above Earth but stretches thousands of miles into the outer, high-energy electron dominated zone of the Van Allen belt. They propose that low frequency electromagnetic waves within the cloud which produce a phenomenon known as “plasmaspheric hiss” could be scattering the electrons at the boundary.

As for the reason why we don't see the matter shields are made of unless it is struck by weapons, there is actually an explanation inherent in one of properties of the shields: namely, frequency. Star Trek shields are not a permanently active wall. They have a frequency, as do weapons (phaser discharge you see is not a continuous beam but rather a burst of a large number of individual beams). Ships fire out of the shield by matching the weapons frequency to shields, and incoming fire can bypass shields by matching the frequency. This implies that either shields are either on/off active (which would make sense if they really were an energy field, but - see above) or else that the shield "membrane" is really a rotating "donut" of matter, and weapons frequency is matched to donut's rotation in order to bypass it. So even assuming that whatever matter shields are made of should be physically visible (and considering it is obviously something exotic, that is a tall order), fact that shields are not in fact a solid "wall" means that you could still see through them.

Yes, for the theatrical effect. And Star Trek has been chasing Wrath of Khan for decades now, hoping to recapture the magic. Simply because they portray it that way, doesn't mean that's the actual reality. Contrary to what you may have learned, worshiping at Wong's long-departed feet, Star Trek is not a documentary. It is a TV show.

With a budget.

Which still does not mean you get to go "oh, we will simply ignore everything that has been shown".

To which Kira objects (softly, mind you) that they're going to get singed at that range. Whether she's referring to taking hits or backsplash from the Defiant's own pulse cannons, I can't be sure. Anyway, engagement with the enemy began at around 50 kilometers, minimum, since the fighters were probably closing in on the Defiant from the initial hits. Depending upon the speed of the ships and the actual timeframe, it would suggest that the range could easily have been 100 to 300 kilometers.

No, she is almost certainly talking either about taking hits while closing in or about Jem'Hadar battlebugs' warp cores exploding. And yes, I never denied the engagement began at longer range. But consider that maximum effective engagement range of Star Trek ships tends to be in the order of 100 000 - 200 000 kilometers - it is clear that they only rarely utilize this theoretical capability, for whatever reason.

In fact, that is easy to explain in fleet battles - Federation tends to be outnumbered, and its ships tend to have good all-around firepower whereas Dominion and Cardassian ships are both forward-focused by all appearances (well, Cardassians shouldn't be, except VFX team screwed up and decided that deflector dish is really a phaser coil). It is in Federation's best interest to close to shorter range. But that explanation does not explain why so many starships are apparently designed for short-range engagements: both Defiant and Klingon Birds of Prey utilize pulse cannons, as do some other alien ships - and while Klingons may be excused by cloaking device ambush tactics, Defiant was not designed with cloaking device in mind. So, why? The only explanation here is that short-range battles are, in fact, a rule rather than the exception.

Yeah, almost as if a show...which has lots of guest writers or writers in general who can make mistakes either in what they say or in their conception of the situation or for the sake of drama, might create contradictions that would not otherwise appear in reality. If only...yes, if only there was some sort of source that was definitive on the deep lore of the setting, to answer questions such as these!

Oh wait, it's called the TMs.

In which case, yes, sometimes close-range engagements do happen and it can depend upon the situation, but to assume that because they can and do happen, that ships would prefer to put themselves in maximum danger, is rather absurd.

In the scenarios in the TM, we have a GCS engaging at .75c (.02c relative) at a range of about 800 km. In another we have a low sublight engagement at .01c relative and absolute. A Romulan Warbird discharges its disruptor cannons at ~5,000 km. In a third scenario, which is mid-sublight, it's .001c relative and .60c absolute at very close range; 15 km.

Technical Manuals are not canon. They are a writers' guide, which writers are free to ignore.

They also contradict established facts heavily. In TNG:TM, we are shown that Enterprise has gone through a very slow and drawn out construction process... which is not what is implied by the series (in fact, ship was finished in a year). There is also the fact that starship firepower shown on screen is significantly greater than what is implied by the Technical Manual.

For a few examples:

Individual emitter segments are capable of directing 5.1
megawatts. By comparison, the small personal phasers
issued to Starfleet crew members are Type I and II, the latter
being limited to 0.01 MW.

A typical large phaser array aboard the USS Enterprise,
such as the upper dorsal array on the Saucer Module,
consists of two hundred emitter segments in adense linear arrangement for optimal control of firing order, thermal effects,
field halos, and target impact.

So how powerful are phasers?

Kira describes Cardassian rifle as having 4,7 MJ output, with 3 milisecond recharge time and 2 beam settings. I really don't know why "3ms recharge time" would be relevant if it were recharge time of a power unit. But if we assume it is the recharge time of the capacitor, meaning that each individual pulse has output of 4,7 MJ, then total output would be 0,003 s * 4,7 MJ = 1,57 GW output.

TOS-era hand phasers have output of some 23 MW. P24th century phaser rifle was tested at output of 1 MW, and we see examples which suggest significantly higher per-shot outputs (5 MJ for a roughly 1-second burst, so maybe 2,5 - 5 MW, and you might even go up to gigajoules-per-burst).

So we see that hand-held phasers are literally thousands of times more powerful than what they should be according to the TNG manual. As for shipboard phasers? Looking here and admittedly eyeballing, just the primary phaser array ought to have some 460 phaser emitters. Which is to say, more than twice than what ST:TNG TM says it has. Also, Technical Manual states that "Individual emitter segments are capable of directing 5.1 megawatts.". Except we see that handheld weapons are more powerful than that. And from "Who Watches The Watchers" (TNG), we know that 4,2 GW reactor can power a small phaser bank. Galaxy-class phaser bank ought to be far more powerful. How much more powerful? Who knows. 10 GW, 20 GW, 25 GW... might be hundreds of GW per emitter for all we know.

Also, going by TNG:TM, warp core output at maximum warp would be about one-third of what Galaxy class canonically uses at sublight cruise speed.

To sum up:

Hanheld phasers:
TNG TM: 0,01 MW maximum output
Canon: between 23 MW and 1,57 GW maximum output

Galaxy class primary array:
TNG TM: 200 emitters x 5,1 MW = 1,02 GW maximum output
Canon low-end: 460 emitters x 4,2 GW = 1,93 TW maximum output
Canon high(?)-end: 460 emitters x 25 GW = 11,5 TW maximum output

Warp core output:
TNG TM: 4,7 million TW at maximum warp
Canon: 12,75 million TW at impulse speed

So yeah, so much for Technical Manual being accurate to canon.

 

[The Original Sixth]

"Report on what is canon", "technically canon"... please learn to read.

Lol.

"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.

I know you might have thought that a brilliant strategy, but it really just shows how stupid you really are. And I have little patience for these sort of word games. The first part of the sentence justifies the latter part; which is, they are canon. We KNOW that the contents that they report on are canon, because as the previous sentence indicates, they were written by production staff.

Technical Manuals are writers' guide. Writers were free to, and did, completely disregard them. The best you can say is that TMs are "canon so long as they do not contradict anything shown on screen"... which is as good as saying that they are not canon, considering how much TV shows and movies contradict the manuals (and also themselves, but that is another discussion).

Yes. And?

Your argument doesn't solve the issue. It's not that there are no long-range engagements in Star Trek. That does happen. The question that takes place is, which is accurate to the setting and why? Someone has already brought up The Wounded and you invented some reason why it's an outlier that shouldn't apply. Which is all you actually care about; not finding the truth, but kneecapping the opposition.

What the TM does is settle the issue. Yes, undoubtedly short-range engagements happen. Maybe even often. Probably for good reasons. No, that doesn't eliminate the strategic advantage that a ship might employ.

That is supposed to prove what? It has no relation to your original claim.



We know gravitons are a component of shields.

Don't play games with me. Shields are not a matter cloud and have never been described as such in the show. That's a fan theory and while certainly a good one, is in no way canonical.

TNG TM:
"Heat dissipation on each generator is provided by a pair of liquid helium coolant loops with a continuous-duty rating of 750,000 MJ. Four backup generators are located in each hull, providing up to twenty-four hours of service at 65% of nominal rated power."

When a character is saying something like "shields at 30%" or some such, they are describing the effective output of the generator. And those generators, while limited in other ways, are primarily limited in their ability to dissipate 384 megawatts of energy, the heat generator is limited to ~750,000 MJ before the generator begins to break because it's too hot. It's an obvious heatsink system, with that heat eventually radiated into space.

And yes, gravitational fields might be what shields are. But if that is all that shields are, how do you explain... literally everything about the shields? Why are shields shown as a membrane instead of a field? Why are they shown physically glowing when weapons or objects hit them? Why is only the area of impact shown as glowing? Why are shields invisible when active but when struck, glow in the area of impact? Why weapons dissipate immediately upon hitting the membrane instead of gradually dispersing as would be the case if the shields really were a field? Why objects bounce off the glowy membrane thing? Why do we see shields brushing against each as if they were solid objects other instead of area of effect which gradually grows stronger? Why are shields locational in nature (forward, left, right, aft shields)? Why do they weaken in percentages when struck by weapons fire? (OK, that last one might be explained by shields being powered by a capacitor instead of directly by the warp core).

Yes, yes--I've also read Wong's article on shield portrayals being inconsistent.

In fact, we have a natural phenomenon which behaves almost exactly like Star Trek shields. And guess what it is?

Scientists Discover Star Trek Style Invisible "Shield" Thousands Of Miles Above Earth

Scientists Discover Star Trek Style Invisible "Shield" Thousands Of Miles Above Earth

www.iflscience.com

That could certainly fit the bill for what we see in the show.

Except that isn't the actual canon explanation. Which is I'm sure, something you should actually cared about, given your previous interest in keeping stuff in canon.

The actual explanation is this:

11.8 Deflector Shields

"The tactical deflector system is the primary defensive system of the Galaxy class starship. It is a series of powerful deflector shields that protect both the spacecraft and its crew from both natural and artificial hazards.

Like most forcefield devices, the deflector system creates a localized zone of highly focused spatial distortion within which an energetic graviton field is maintained. 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. The field is highly resistive to impact due to mechanical incursions ranging from relativistic subatomic particles to more massive objects at lesser relative velocities. When such an intrusion occurs, field energy is concentrated at the point of impact, creating an intense, localized spatial distortion.

To an observer aboard the starship, it appears that the intruding object has "bounced off" the shield. A zero-dimension observer on the intruding object would, however, perceive that his/her trajectory is unaffected, but that the location of the starship has suddenly changed. This is somewhat analogous to the spatial distortion created by a natural gravity well and is typically accompanied by a momentary discharge of Cerenkov radiation, often perceived as a bright blue flash. The deflector is also effective against a wide range of electromagnetic, nuclear, and other radiated and field energies."

As for the reason why we don't see the matter shields are made of unless it is struck by weapons, there is actually an explanation inherent in one of properties of the shields: namely, frequency. Star Trek shields are not a permanently active wall. They have a frequency, as do weapons (phaser discharge you see is not a continuous beam but rather a burst of a large number of individual beams). Ships fire out of the shield by matching the weapons frequency to shields, and incoming fire can bypass shields by matching the frequency. This implies that either shields are either on/off active (which would make sense if they really were an energy field, but - see above) or else that the shield "membrane" is really a rotating "donut" of matter, and weapons frequency is matched to donut's rotation in order to bypass it. So even assuming that whatever matter shields are made of should be physically visible (and considering it is obviously something exotic, that is a tall order), fact that shields are not in fact a solid "wall" means that you could still see through them.

So where is the actual matter that you insist that the shields are made of?

Which still does not mean you get to go "oh, we will simply ignore everything that has been shown".

It's a TV show. I have no problem dismissing what we see as well, production mistakes, poor writing decisions, and dramatic action shots for the audience. I mean, I would argue that Picard's accent is not British, because his character is French. Yet in the show, he clearly has a British accent.

No, she is almost certainly talking either about taking hits while closing in or about Jem'Hadar battlebugs' warp cores exploding. And yes, I never denied the engagement began at longer range. But consider that maximum effective engagement range of Star Trek ships tends to be in the order of 100 000 - 200 000 kilometers - it is clear that they only rarely utilize this theoretical capability, for whatever reason.

And now you've switched to handwaving instead of the more obvious conclusion; that there are tactical reasons why someone would want to engage at longer ranges, but also why they might engage at closer range. In the case of Kira, it doesn't really matter why she said what she said--clearly the indication was that they were going to take damage because of it. The main importance is that the bugs engaged at least as far as a hundred thousand kilometers. Sisko CHOSE to engage at 500 meters for maximum firepower effect.

Which by the way, visually doesn't add up either and is an example of continuity errors that crop up in TV shows, if one prefers the Wong approach. These ships cross a hundred thousand kilometers in a few seconds, but onescreen, are clearly not moving at such speeds. Did they hit the brakes at the last moment?

In fact, that is easy to explain in fleet battles - Federation tends to be outnumbered, and its ships tend to have good all-around firepower whereas Dominion and Cardassian ships are both forward-focused by all appearances (well, Cardassians shouldn't be, except VFX team screwed up and decided that deflector dish is really a phaser coil). It is in Federation's best interest to close to shorter range.

Some problems there.

1) Starfleet was not always outnumbered in every engagement.
2) That seems an over-simplistic approach as to why they would close during engagement. It can be just as probable that they would do so for the sake of reaching a strategic objective or simply to reduce response time or inflict more damage.
3) Federation ships are torpedo heavy. I don't think canonically, we've seen any major ship as having the capacity to fire the sort of bursts that we know the Galaxy and other Federation ships are capable of. It also doesn't explain why the enemy doesn't try to avoid close-range engagements.

It is in fact, most probable given what we see in the actual show:

A Matter of Honor

TACTICS: The Enterprise has raised its shields.
RIKER: That's normal procedure when entering into a suspicious situation. It's not an act of aggression. The Enterprise will not fire first.
KARGAN: Then they are fools, for we will.
RIKER: You'll get only one shot.
KARGAN: We'll only need one. Stand by on phasers and torpedoes. Prepare to fire them simultaneously.
RIKER: I recommend you don't fire until you're within forty thousand kilometers.
KLAG: Why?
RIKER: It will cut down their response time.

And even then, Riker had suggested that they wait until a *mere* 40,000 km.

But that explanation does not explain why so many starships are apparently designed for short-range engagements: both Defiant and Klingon Birds of Prey utilize pulse cannons, as do some other alien ships - and while Klingons may be excused by cloaking device ambush tactics, Defiant was not designed with cloaking device in mind. So, why? The only explanation here is that short-range battles are, in fact, a rule rather than the exception.

See, A Matter of Honor sort of knee-caps you my dude. If that were the case, the Klingon captain in the Bird of Prey would probably have waited until they were much closer. Instead, Riker's the one that suggests they wait until they're within 40,000 km to cut down on ship response time.

In fact, going over stated ranges, they tend to paint a very different picture than one 500-meter range battle you're trying to pass off as standard.

The Search:

O'BRIEN: One hundred thousand kilometres.
KIRA: That's well within range of their weapons, Commander.
DAX: Should I alter course?

100,000 km? Well within weapon's range.

Equinox Part 2

PARIS: Thirty thousand kilometers and closing.
JANEWAY: Target their power core

30,000 km. And Janeway felt comfortable designating a target on the ship and not just the ship itself.

Basics:

TUVOK: They are randomly detonating torpedoes in our flight path.
KIM: Shields are holding. No damage.
JANEWAY: Hold your fire, Mister Tuvok. They may have torpedoes to waste. We don't.
PARIS: Thirty seconds to intercept.
JANEWAY: Take us out of warp.
PARIS: Engaging impulse engines.
JANEWAY: Power to all weapon systems. Stand by phasers.
TUVOK: Kazon vessel ten thousand kilometers off our starboard bow.
JANEWAY: Not yet.
TUVOK: Six thousand kilometers.
JANEWAY: Not yet.
TUVOK: Five thousand, three, two thousand.

Here, Janeway decides to hold fire until 2,000 km.

Non-Sequitur

KIM: They're going to try to do everything they can to stop us. They think we're trying to steal this prototype.
PARIS: They're closing to five thousand kilometers.
KIM: Shields down to seventy percent. Fifty percent.
KIM: Twenty nine percent.
PARIS: I thought you said this ship was new and improved.
KIM: It is, but it looks like they haven't finished working on the defensive systems. In fact, some of the safety interlocks aren't even in place. A few more of those hits and I don't.
KIM: We're losing antimatter containment. Attempting to stabilize the field.
PARIS: We're approaching the coordinates of the time stream.
KIM: The containment field is weakening. We could be looking at a core breach.
PARIS: The ship's closing to three thousand kilometers.

So here we see a ship close to 5,000 km before engaging the runabout.

The Changeling

SPOCK: Unknown, Captain. Nothing within sensor range. Something now, Captain. Very small. Bearing one two three degrees, mark one eight. Range ninety thousand kilometers.
KIRK: That's our target, Mister Sulu. Prepare photon torpedo.

90,000 km engagement range.

Journey to Babel

CHEKOV: Here he comes. Range decreasing. Speed dropping close to sublight.
KIRK: Hold your fire, Mister Chekov.
CHEKOV: Phasers locked on target. Range closing. Seventy five thousand kilometers.
KIRK: Fire.

Phasers are fired at 75,000 km.

Patterns of Force

SPOCK: Captain, it's an unmanned probe which seems to be carrying a warhead.
KIRK: Stand by phasers.
CHEKOV: Phasers ready.
KIRK: Range, Mister Chekov?
CHEKOV: Two thousand kilometers, closing fast.

Phasers fired at a missile at 2,000 km.

So let's see.

Large ships like the Nebula class engage at around 300,000 km for maximum range, as do their Cardassian counterparts. Jem'Hadar attack ships engage at around 100,000 km. Klingon BoP looking to ambush a target is told to hold off until 40,000 km to cut down on response time. Janeway orders targeted shots on Equinox's warpcore at 30,000 km. In fighting one opponent, she waits until 2,000 km. And a runabout was engaged at 5,000 km. TOS has two instances of engaging between 70,000 to 90,000 km. And targeting a missile at 2,000 km.

So going by the statements given in the show:

Max Effective Range: 100,000 to 300,000 km
Effective Combat Range: 30,000 to 40,000 km
Precise Targeting (or small targets): 2,000 to 5,000 km
Absurd Point Blank Range: 500 meters

The situations and the logic given in the episodes for those situations suggest as much. So yes, a Galaxy Class can absolutely engage you at 300,000 km, but it may withhold fire or prefer an optimal range of 30,000 to 40,000 km for peer engagements, at a range where they can cut down response time and make effective attacks at key parts of the ship. Meanwhile, very precise targeting or attacking small targets seems to prefer a range of 2,000 to 5,000 km.

So a ship like the Defiant is probably most effectively engaged at 2,000 to 5,000 km because of its size and maneuverability. Fighters and BoPs probably have a similar limit.

Technical Manuals are not canon. They are a writers' guide, which writers are free to ignore.

They are canon. I'm sorry that someone with a position of authority says you're wrong.

They also contradict established facts heavily. In TNG:TM, we are shown that Enterprise has gone through a very slow and drawn out construction process... which is not what is implied by the series (in fact, ship was finished in a year). There is also the fact that starship firepower shown on screen is significantly greater than what is implied by the Technical Manual.

The phasers are NDF. How is this at all a contradiction?

When was it stated that the ship took only a year to build? That seems unlikely given that she was the second of her class, which would have required a great deal of technical work to make sure a new ship functioned properly.

Kira describes Cardassian rifle as having 4,7 MJ output, with 3 milisecond recharge time and 2 beam settings. I really don't know why "3ms recharge time" would be relevant if it were recharge time of a power unit. But if we assume it is the recharge time of the capacitor, meaning that each individual pulse has output of 4,7 MJ, then total output would be 0,003 s * 4,7 MJ = 1,57 GW output.

Lol, so some chick that weighs 90 pounds wet can fire off a 1.57 gigawatt weapon? That's even funnier when you consider that a Cardassian warship is firing off a 700 MW energy weapon in The Wounded.

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/m...ision/latest?cb=20140123093659&path-prefix=en

So the warship gets a dinky 700 MW energy cannon and the untrained child gets a 1.57 gigawatt rifle. Seems legit.

TOS-era hand phasers have output of some 23 MW.

Wait, you want me to take that seriously? A number based on how many Yangs killed?

P24th century phaser rifle was tested at output of 1 MW, and we see examples which suggest significantly higher per-shot outputs (5 MJ for a roughly 1-second burst, so maybe 2,5 - 5 MW, and you might even go up to gigajoules-per-burst).

A couple things. That "rifle" is a Phaser III, so it having a higher output than the TM's stated figure for Phaser I and II is not a contradiction. Second, it's possible that the writer mixed up which unit he was thinking about. Phaser I is limited to setting 8, whose discharge energy is 15,000 for 1.75 seconds. Now, that might be interpreted as 15 KJ for 1.75 seconds or 8.5 KWs. works pretty well with what it says in the TM of phasers being limited to around 10 KW, whereas setting 16 on phaser II would be much higher.

There is an odd contradiction between setting 16 and the phaser rifle though. At 1.55 MJs for .28 seconds, a continuous test would suggest they could get a higher result. Of course, there's no immediate indication that the rifle must be at full power. And it would match with the Cardassian rifle of 4.7 MJ capacity, with the rifle being 5.5 MWs at full power.

Of course, given the style in which the TM writer(s) put information down, it may be that 1.55 stands for watts instead of joules. That's odd to me, but that's also the way he does his shield generators (he doesn't say 473,000 MJ for 170 milliseconds, but MW). In which case, you have a bit of an inversion; setting 8 would be 15 KWs (that does suggest a self-contradiction, assuming he mixed the two units, but it's only by .5 MWs) and would discharge for a total of 26.25 KJs, but setting 16 would be 1.55 MWs for .28 seconds, so the total energy delivered is 723 KJs.

This is different to the arrays, mind you, as I state elsewhere, the phaser arrays can fire for 45 minutes without problem, so the ship-born elements are 7x stronger than the small arm units.

So we see that hand-held phasers are literally thousands of times more powerful than what they should be according to the TNG manual.

.01 MWs would be 10 kilowatts. While that clearly isn't where the phaser bottom's out, we have Setting 7, which is 4.9 KJ for 1.75 seconds, Setting 8 at 15 KJ for 1.75 seconds. For Setting 8, that's about 8.5 KWs, but given the language:

By comparison, the small personal phasers
issued to Starfleet crew members are Type I and II, the latter
being limited to 0.01 MW.

It's fairly close. And as I said, while it doesn't bottom out there, most phasers in use generally aren't put to a setting higher than 8, as that's the lowest human vaporization setting.

As for shipboard phasers? Looking here and admittedly eyeballing, just the primary phaser array ought to have some 460 phaser emitters. Which is to say, more than twice than what ST:TNG TM says it has.

You're assuming those grooves correlate with emitter segments. We have no idea how those segments are divided up. At 200 emitter segments, each with generating 5.1 MWs, that's 1,020 MWs, which favors well with the 700 MW output display of the Cardassian warship. It works well with TNG's Survivors, where a 40 MW weapon was dismissed, whereas a 400 GW weapon was considered a major threat. DS9's Battlelines also is in line, as a weapon satellite targeting a Runabout charges to 900 MWs before taking out the ship.

Doctor Soran in Generations is said to have a 50 GW shield generator, which sounds off (and excessive) until we realize that a generator on a GCS is rated at 473,000 MWs for 170 seconds. Now, if we assume that to mean a total output of 80.4 GJs for a single generator, with 7 phase-locked to provide a total of 562.87 GJs of defensive energy, we again see the TM well in-step with the show; 400 GWs at once is pretty large compared to what most ships can throw around in an energy weapon and for the Enterprise D, it basically skull-fucked the shields*. In the case of Soran's shield generator, it'd have a max peak output of 8.5 GJs and assuming a similar design to the GCS, is probably designed for about a normal output of 40 KWs.

*It is worth noting that the weapon had 400 gigaWATTS, not 400 gigajoules. If you look at the special effects, it's a single pulse, not necessarily a continuous beam. So the fact that the ship would be limited to 3.331 gigajoules per millisecond is nothing to be concerned with, so long as the ship can match the 473 GW (for 170 milliseconds) with the enemy ship's 400 GW, since it seems that this is the rate at which the energy is being delivered, not necessarily the total energy.

EDIT -- It's worth noting that when Quark was involved in those black market arms deals, he sold a shitload of Breen CRM 114s to one guy, which was stated to penetrate 4.6 GJ shields. Keep in mind the sort of firepower a weapon like that would need. And consider again, how this man would be standing if he fired one. It'd double as a high-powered jet engine. Yet, if we consider that the writers were probably thinking of shields along the same way as the TM (which was based off their writer's guides), then 4.6 GJ is probably 4.6 GW at peak loads for the shields, which assuming they functioned on the same numbers as the GCS shield generators, would imply that a shield generator would have a typical output of 3.7 MWs.

Business as Usual

QUARK: The Breen CRM one-fourteen works equally well against moving vessels or surface emplacements. It's guaranteed to cut through reactive armor in the six to fifteen centimeter range, and shields to four point six gigajoules.

Since according to Quark, these are supposed to be surface emplacements AND moving vessels (presumably shuttles, hoppers, and skimmers--but possibly runabouts and fighters) and in his statement, he suggests it would cut through reactive armor--it would lend credibility to my theory as to how the shields work. That in turn, gives the statement more sense. At 4.6 GJs, my concern isn't going to be if it cuts through any kind of reactive armor 15 cm thick, my concern is if it'll gut Walmart half a block away. My interpretation fixes this strange disconnect, as 3.7 MWs is something you might have on a shuttle or skimmer, is around the energy of a modern tank round (which can be foiled by reactive armor), and is not so absurdly powerful that the weapon should launch the user over a twelve-story building.

Also, Technical Manual states that "Individual emitter segments are capable of directing 5.1 megawatts.". Except we see that handheld weapons are more powerful than that.

Absolutely no hand-held weapon is that strong. The effects are a result of NDF and the stated outputs, even for Kira's rifle, is still lower. It also lacks the range, focus, and endurance of the larger units. Those ship units can handle being fired for 45 minutes before they're effectively spent. That's 13.77 GJs of firing endurance for one of those units. Phaser I storage is 7.2 MJ and Phaser II is 45 MJ. In which case, a phaser II would be exhausted after a *mere* 29 seconds of fire (assuming it didn't melt from overheating or something--the discharge for Setting 16 is for .28 seconds). Ship phasers have far greater range and far greater endurance.

Yes, I know that the TM says 7.2*10^6 and 4.5*10^7, but it's most probable that the author was thinking megajoules and wrote it despite having already done so. Sort of how someone might say "It's the El Diablo" when 'the' would be redundant.

And from "Who Watches The Watchers" (TNG), we know that 4,2 GW reactor can power a small phaser bank. Galaxy-class phaser bank ought to be far more powerful. How much more powerful? Who knows. 10 GW, 20 GW, 25 GW... might be hundreds of GW per emitter for all we know.

Phaser 'bank' would refer to the whole array. The individual emitters are 'elements' of that array. And that's assuming 100% efficiency, which is probably not the case. That's not including things like powering the things that make the phaser bank work, like targeting, the containment beam, ect. And since it's planetside, we know that those sort of arrays are actually STRONGER than shipboard ones and that then brings into question if it's a small phaser bank for a ground sight or a starship.

Also, going by TNG:TM, warp core output at maximum warp would be about one-third of what Galaxy class canonically uses at sublight cruise speed.

Hmmm, yes. Because the warp core is going to be expending enough energy to roast a country every second while it...does nothing? Shields aren't up, phasers aren't firing, and they're using the impulse engines, which draw on fusion reactors. Data's line was cut off, we really have no idea where he was going with that figure.

So yeah, so much for Technical Manual being accurate to canon.

Oh yeah, you got me on the ropes alright. Dialogue suggests common engagements between thousands to tens of thousands of km, with maximum ranges at 100,000 to 300,000 km, weapon capacity roughly where the TM suggests it to be as indicated by at three episodes, and your only attempt at disproving the TM's canon status is by trying to mince-meat a man's sentence to fill your own selfish ends.

Oh yeah, really sweating this one!😂

 

[Aldarion]

I know you might have thought that a brilliant strategy, but it really just shows how stupid you really are. And I have little patience for these sort of word games. The first part of the sentence justifies the latter part; which is, they are canon. We KNOW that the contents that they report on are canon, because as the previous sentence indicates, they were written by production staff.

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.

Your argument doesn't solve the issue. It's not that there are no long-range engagements in Star Trek. That does happen. The question that takes place is, which is accurate to the setting and why? Someone has already brought up The Wounded and you invented some reason why it's an outlier that shouldn't apply. Which is all you actually care about; not finding the truth, but kneecapping the opposition.

What the TM does is settle the issue. Yes, undoubtedly short-range engagements happen. Maybe even often. Probably for good reasons. No, that doesn't eliminate the strategic advantage that a ship might employ.

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.

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.

Don't play games with me. Shields are not a matter cloud and have never been described as such in the show. That's a fan theory and while certainly a good one, is in no way canonical.

TNG TM:
"Heat dissipation on each generator is provided by a pair of liquid helium coolant loops with a continuous-duty rating of 750,000 MJ. Four backup generators are located in each hull, providing up to twenty-four hours of service at 65% of nominal rated power."

When a character is saying something like "shields at 30%" or some such, they are describing the effective output of the generator. And those generators, while limited in other ways, are primarily limited in their ability to dissipate 384 megawatts of energy, the heat generator is limited to ~750,000 MJ before the generator begins to break because it's too hot. It's an obvious heatsink system, with that heat eventually radiated into space.

Neither is that quote you have provided canonical.

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.

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.

That could certainly fit the bill for what we see in the show.

Except that isn't the actual canon explanation. Which is I'm sure, something you should actually cared about, given your previous interest in keeping stuff in canon.

The actual explanation is this:

11.8 Deflector Shields

"The tactical deflector system is the primary defensive system of the Galaxy class starship. It is a series of powerful deflector shields that protect both the spacecraft and its crew from both natural and artificial hazards.

Like most forcefield devices, the deflector system creates a localized zone of highly focused spatial distortion within which an energetic graviton field is maintained. 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. The field is highly resistive to impact due to mechanical incursions ranging from relativistic subatomic particles to more massive objects at lesser relative velocities. When such an intrusion occurs, field energy is concentrated at the point of impact, creating an intense, localized spatial distortion.

To an observer aboard the starship, it appears that the intruding object has "bounced off" the shield. A zero-dimension observer on the intruding object would, however, perceive that his/her trajectory is unaffected, but that the location of the starship has suddenly changed. This is somewhat analogous to the spatial distortion created by a natural gravity well and is typically accompanied by a momentary discharge of Cerenkov radiation, often perceived as a bright blue flash. The deflector is also effective against a wide range of electromagnetic, nuclear, and other radiated and field energies."

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.

So where is the actual matter that you insist that the shields are made of?

We see it when weapons fire hits the shields.

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

It's a TV show. I have no problem dismissing what we see as well, production mistakes, poor writing decisions, and dramatic action shots for the audience. I mean, I would argue that Picard's accent is not British, because his character is French. Yet in the show, he clearly has a British accent.

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

And now you've switched to handwaving instead of the more obvious conclusion; that there are tactical reasons why someone would want to engage at longer ranges, but also why they might engage at closer range. In the case of Kira, it doesn't really matter why she said what she said--clearly the indication was that they were going to take damage because of it. The main importance is that the bugs engaged at least as far as a hundred thousand kilometers. Sisko CHOSE to engage at 500 meters for maximum firepower effect.

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.

Which by the way, visually doesn't add up either and is an example of continuity errors that crop up in TV shows, if one prefers the Wong approach. These ships cross a hundred thousand kilometers in a few seconds, but onescreen, are clearly not moving at such speeds. Did they hit the brakes at the last moment?

Why not? They are certainly capable of it.

Some problems there.

1) Starfleet was not always outnumbered in every engagement.
2) That seems an over-simplistic approach as to why they would close during engagement. It can be just as probable that they would do so for the sake of reaching a strategic objective or simply to reduce response time or inflict more damage.
3) Federation ships are torpedo heavy. I don't think canonically, we've seen any major ship as having the capacity to fire the sort of bursts that we know the Galaxy and other Federation ships are capable of. It also doesn't explain why the enemy doesn't try to avoid close-range engagements.

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.
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.
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.

It is in fact, most probable given what we see in the actual show:

And I have already said that they do have examples of long-range engagements. What is that list supposed to prove?

Fact is, even when they start the engagement at long range, they tend to close to short range - even when seemingly unnecessarily. This is doubly true in fleet battles. Look at Deep Space Nine: The Die Is Cast, Way of the Warrior, A Call to Arms, Sacrifice of Angels, Tears of Prophets*, The Changing Face of Evil, What You Leave Behind. All of them feature battles at short range. Even in one-on-one engagements, short-range engagements are frequent: you see them in the The Maquis, The Jem'Hadar, The Way of the Warrior, Paradise Lost, A Time to Stand, Favor the Bold, Valiant, The Die is Cast. And they are just as prevalent in The Next Generation and Voyager.

* 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.

So yes, they have technical ability to engage from hundreds of thousands of kilometers. But they usually choose not to engage at that distance, and most of the time when they do, they still eventually close to visual range.

Large ships like the Nebula class engage at around 300,000 km for maximum range, as do their Cardassian counterparts. Jem'Hadar attack ships engage at around 100,000 km. Klingon BoP looking to ambush a target is told to hold off until 40,000 km to cut down on response time. Janeway orders targeted shots on Equinox's warpcore at 30,000 km. In fighting one opponent, she waits until 2,000 km. And a runabout was engaged at 5,000 km. TOS has two instances of engaging between 70,000 to 90,000 km. And targeting a missile at 2,000 km.

So going by the statements given in the show:

Max Effective Range: 100,000 to 300,000 km
Effective Combat Range: 30,000 to 40,000 km
Precise Targeting (or small targets): 2,000 to 5,000 km
Absurd Point Blank Range: 500 meters

The situations and the logic given in the episodes for those situations suggest as much. So yes, a Galaxy Class can absolutely engage you at 300,000 km, but it may withhold fire or prefer an optimal range of 30,000 to 40,000 km for peer engagements, at a range where they can cut down response time and make effective attacks at key parts of the ship. Meanwhile, very precise targeting or attacking small targets seems to prefer a range of 2,000 to 5,000 km.

So a ship like the Defiant is probably most effectively engaged at 2,000 to 5,000 km because of its size and maneuverability. Fighters and BoPs probably have a similar limit.

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.

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.

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.

They are canon. I'm sorry that someone with a position of authority says you're wrong.

Read again.

The phasers are NDF. How is this at all a contradiction?

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".

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.

When was it stated that the ship took only a year to build? That seems unlikely given that she was the second of her class, which would have required a great deal of technical work to make sure a new ship functioned properly.

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

Lol, so some chick that weighs 90 pounds wet can fire off a 1.57 gigawatt weapon? That's even funnier when you consider that a Cardassian warship is firing off a 700 MW energy weapon in The Wounded.

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/m...ision/latest?cb=20140123093659&path-prefix=en

So the warship gets a dinky 700 MW energy cannon and the untrained child gets a 1.57 gigawatt rifle. Seems legit.

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

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.

Also, in "A Matter of Time", 60 GW was considered an absurdly small margin of error for igniting the atmosphere. So apparently, 700 MW energy weapon is a threat... but 60 GW is a nearly unnoticeable margin of error? Yeah, right.

A couple things. That "rifle" is a Phaser III, so it having a higher output than the TM's stated figure for Phaser I and II is not a contradiction. Second, it's possible that the writer mixed up which unit he was thinking about. Phaser I is limited to setting 8, whose discharge energy is 15,000 for 1.75 seconds. Now, that might be interpreted as 15 KJ for 1.75 seconds or 8.5 KWs. works pretty well with what it says in the TM of phasers being limited to around 10 KW, whereas setting 16 on phaser II would be much higher.

There is an odd contradiction between setting 16 and the phaser rifle though. At 1.55 MJs for .28 seconds, a continuous test would suggest they could get a higher result. Of course, there's no immediate indication that the rifle must be at full power. And it would match with the Cardassian rifle of 4.7 MJ capacity, with the rifle being 5.5 MWs at full power.

Of course, given the style in which the TM writer(s) put information down, it may be that 1.55 stands for watts instead of joules. That's odd to me, but that's also the way he does his shield generators (he doesn't say 473,000 MJ for 170 milliseconds, but MW). In which case, you have a bit of an inversion; setting 8 would be 15 KWs (that does suggest a self-contradiction, assuming he mixed the two units, but it's only by .5 MWs) and would discharge for a total of 26.25 KJs, but setting 16 would be 1.55 MWs for .28 seconds, so the total energy delivered is 723 KJs.

This is different to the arrays, mind you, as I state elsewhere, the phaser arrays can fire for 45 minutes without problem, so the ship-born elements are 7x stronger than the small arm units.

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.

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.

You're assuming those grooves correlate with emitter segments. We have no idea how those segments are divided up. At 200 emitter segments, each with generating 5.1 MWs, that's 1,020 MWs, which favors well with the 700 MW output display of the Cardassian warship. It works well with TNG's Survivors, where a 40 MW weapon was dismissed, whereas a 400 GW weapon was considered a major threat. DS9's Battlelines also is in line, as a weapon satellite targeting a Runabout charges to 900 MWs before taking out the ship.

Doctor Soran in Generations is said to have a 50 GW shield generator, which sounds off (and excessive) until we realize that a generator on a GCS is rated at 473,000 MWs for 170 seconds. Now, if we assume that to mean a total output of 80.4 GJs for a single generator, with 7 phase-locked to provide a total of 562.87 GJs of defensive energy, we again see the TM well in-step with the show; 400 GWs at once is pretty large compared to what most ships can throw around in an energy weapon and for the Enterprise D, it basically skull-fucked the shields*. In the case of Soran's shield generator, it'd have a max peak output of 8.5 GJs and assuming a similar design to the GCS, is probably designed for about a normal output of 40 KWs.

*It is worth noting that the weapon had 400 gigaWATTS, not 400 gigajoules. If you look at the special effects, it's a single pulse, not necessarily a continuous beam. So the fact that the ship would be limited to 3.331 gigajoules per millisecond is nothing to be concerned with, so long as the ship can match the 473 GW (for 170 milliseconds) with the enemy ship's 400 GW, since it seems that this is the rate at which the energy is being delivered, not necessarily the total energy.

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

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.

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.

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. And also, again, "A Matter of Time" where 60 GW margin of error in phaser output was considered basically unacceptably small. That alone would suggest TW-range or higher output for Galaxy-class phaser arrays.

EDIT -- It's worth noting that when Quark was involved in those black market arms deals, he sold a shitload of Breen CRM 114s to one guy, which was stated to penetrate 4.6 GJ shields. Keep in mind the sort of firepower a weapon like that would need. And consider again, how this man would be standing if he fired one. It'd double as a high-powered jet engine. Yet, if we consider that the writers were probably thinking of shields along the same way as the TM (which was based off their writer's guides), then 4.6 GJ is probably 4.6 GW at peak loads for the shields, which assuming they functioned on the same numbers as the GCS shield generators, would imply that a shield generator would have a typical output of 3.7 MWs.

Business as Usual
Since according to Quark, these are supposed to be surface emplacements AND moving vessels (presumably shuttles, hoppers, and skimmers--but possibly runabouts and fighters) and in his statement, he suggests it would cut through reactive armor--it would lend credibility to my theory as to how the shields work. That in turn, gives the statement more sense. At 4.6 GJs, my concern isn't going to be if it cuts through any kind of reactive armor 15 cm thick, my concern is if it'll gut Walmart half a block away. My interpretation fixes this strange disconnect, as 3.7 MWs is something you might have on a shuttle or skimmer, is around the energy of a modern tank round (which can be foiled by reactive armor), and is not so absurdly powerful that the weapon should launch the user over a twelve-story building.

Maybe, but see above.

Phaser 'bank' would refer to the whole array. The individual emitters are 'elements' of that array. And that's assuming 100% efficiency, which is probably not the case. That's not including things like powering the things that make the phaser bank work, like targeting, the containment beam, ect. And since it's planetside, we know that those sort of arrays are actually STRONGER than shipboard ones and that then brings into question if it's a small phaser bank for a ground sight or a starship.

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.

Hmmm, yes. Because the warp core is going to be expending enough energy to roast a country every second while it...does nothing? Shields aren't up, phasers aren't firing, and they're using the impulse engines, which draw on fusion reactors. Data's line was cut off, we really have no idea where he was going with that figure.

Oh, so let's just ignore actual canon, because... reasons.

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.

Bravo.