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Lord Ludikrous posted:Regarding the Borg and Earths defences during the Best of Both Worlds, I always assumed Earth was very heavily defended - the Borg just destroyed all of them. If you can swat aside 40 starships at Wolf 359 then it’s not much of a stretch. It occurs to me that the second Borg attack was like a year before the Breen hit Earth, maybe that's the reason they were able to sneak by.
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Aug 29, 2021 09:02
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Hollismason posted:I've seen TNG a lot its my go to relax in bed and watch a show show. that's how i use star treks too, it's the perfect show for it the crew co-operates well most of the time, there's not much drama or action, and the scenes are long. most of the time people are just having a non-heated conversation around a table, it's very relaxing to follow there's nothin off-putting about the show except wesley and ferengis
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Aug 29, 2021 11:57
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I always hated Wesley but on a rewatch he's not THAT bad past season 1, but by that point it was too late.
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Aug 29, 2021 12:21
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drilldo squirt posted:This is the first I've heard of this and I'm sad now. It’s never a happy occasion when a license on your streaming platform of choice expires, but by this point people should really treat it as inevitable and buy blurays for stuff they know they’ll miss. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CJW334Q/ The quality on these is outstanding, and with a single button you can flip back and forth between the original and updated effects.
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Aug 29, 2021 16:00
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MikeJF posted:It occurs to me that the second Borg attack was like a year before the Breen hit Earth, maybe that's the reason they were able to sneak by. on the other hand back during the tos movies/generations how many times was the enterprise or whatever the only ship around
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Aug 29, 2021 16:54
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drilldo squirt posted:This is the first I've heard of this and I'm sad now. It's likely they're going to go over to CBS All Access/Paramount +.
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Aug 29, 2021 16:56
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You know, I'd forgotten about the entire episode of Enterprise spent gaslighting Degra. It's so delightfully stupid the layers upon layers of bullshit they use to get him to give up the location of ~ThE WeApON~
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Aug 29, 2021 16:56
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MikeJF posted:It occurs to me that the second Borg attack was like a year before the Breen hit Earth, maybe that's the reason they were able to sneak by. And even in the second Borg attack, all you had was the fleet. Where are the other defenses?
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Aug 29, 2021 16:57
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Cardassia was the first nation in Star Trek to invest in orbital defence platforms.
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Aug 29, 2021 17:09
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Lord Ludikrous posted:Regarding the Borg and Earths defences during the Best of Both Worlds, I always assumed Earth was very heavily defended - the Borg just destroyed all of them. If you can swat aside 40 starships at Wolf 359 then it’s not much of a stretch. That's why I favor stationary mounted defenses as an idea, keeping a fleet of starships close by would result in them going crazy that their capabilities were being wasted. Which they would be, you don't waste a self-contained exploration and diplomacy ship patrolling your own backyard. The defenses on the moon would be super powerful but not photogenic since anything that matters would be underground. The corresponding defense platform on the other side though? Guess what happens when a starship class gets scrapped? That's right, they get dumped on Orbital Defense Platform Two. (ODP 1 is the moon, although no one calls it that). The crew of ODP-2 comes up with a plan to use them, which typically entails removing the nacelles and lashing them in an unused bundle out of the way. Then they attach them to the rest of the station with weapons facing outwards. When attacked or running a drill, ODP-2 (nickname: The Trashpile) spins irregularly in an algorithmically-determined pattern to maximize the number of weapons arrays brought on target, taking into account recharge, reload, and cooling times. This changes constantly as systems are brought online or turned off to be cannibalized. As an engineering posting it's actually very desirable to a certain class of person that doesn't mind obsolete technology and likes constantly upgrading things. Plus you're always being thrown new stuff, wrecked shuttlecraft, recovered level 3+ probes, whatever.
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Aug 29, 2021 17:14
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Arc Hammer posted:Cardassia was the first nation in Star Trek to invest in orbital defence platforms. Yeah and look at how much damage it caused, it wrecked so much of the fleet. Although I am reminded of President Clark's Scorched Earth command about turning the defenses onto Earth in B5
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Aug 29, 2021 17:24
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Uncle Enzo posted:That's why I favor stationary mounted defenses as an idea, keeping a fleet of starships close by would result in them going crazy that their capabilities were being wasted. Which they would be, you don't waste a self-contained exploration and diplomacy ship patrolling your own backyard. Or for the same cost as the constant maintenance needed to keep all that obsolete crap going, they could just make some new ships that are actually designed for the job of planetary defense, with new weapons that are more powerful and that you can actually get parts for and that can maneuver to the other side of the planet or the outer solar system if that's where they're needed and that aren't held together by a jury-rigged computer system that will probably either crash or attain sentience the first time you try to actually use it. The Federation clearly has the resources to build very nice hardware; there's no need for them to do like Cuba keeping all their old 1950s Yank Tanks going through sheer engineering creativity.
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Aug 29, 2021 17:39
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Uncle Enzo posted:ODP-2 this is cool Powered Descent posted:The Federation clearly has the resources to build very nice hardware; there's no need for them to do like Cuba keeping all their old 1950s Yank Tanks going through sheer engineering creativity. actually there is: it's cool and in the future people understand the value of Reduce Reuse Recycle
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Aug 29, 2021 17:41
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Powered Descent posted:The Federation clearly has the resources to build very nice hardware; there's no need for them to do like Cuba keeping all their old 1950s Yank Tanks going through sheer engineering creativity. I think that by the TNG the tech curve of the known galaxy had stagnated to slow to moderate advancements; Even the most modern top-of-the-line Starfleet ships keep getting knocked around by whatever, even ancient, weapon systems that happen to be around if they were made by someone sufficiently advanced to begin with, and while Discovery was outclassed its ability to dish out damage wasn't completely trivialized in the first episodes of S3. In less dramatic case, the then-60+ year old Excelsiors were still in service when the Dominion war happened. The important part is to have the weapon beam emitter and sufficient power source to keep it firing, and "more power is more firepower". Except when it isn't; that's why the Borg were such a huge threat.
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Aug 29, 2021 18:00
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Powered Descent posted:Or for the same cost as the constant maintenance needed to keep all that obsolete crap going, they could just make some new ships that are actually designed for the job of planetary defense, with new weapons that are more powerful and that you can actually get parts for and that can maneuver to the other side of the planet or the outer solar system if that's where they're needed and that aren't held together by a jury-rigged computer system that will probably either crash or attain sentience the first time you try to actually use it. But that's the point though, they aren't devoting any resources at all. A couple hundred weirdos who want to hang out in a rats nest and all they need is some diluthium or a field coil now and then. The defense platforms wouldn't be all the defenses of course, there'd need to be screening ships for light years in every direction, you'd want some kind of warp inhibitor field from Saturn on in, patrol ships, etc. And then best defense is a good offense, the idea is the fleet fights the enemy ad far away as possible. When the Feds find themselves in a peer conflict they'd throw some fresh technology in there of course. Manning a fortress is boring and a career dead end. Look at the poor sods in the US Air Force who get stuck in a missile silo in North Dakota: rampant drug abuse, absenteeism, bunker doors left open so the Domino's deliveryman can find you. With the ops concept I lined out, everyone assigned there has Something To Do all the time, forever. You get a small but committed cadre of people actively engaged in being the last stop of defense, not officers with careers rotting looking at empty viewscreens while their classmates are off making first contract with new civilizations. Let's say a ship finds a deserted 200-year old vessel in a time warp- who knows how to operate it? You've got a crew of experts who've practically singlehandedly taken apart an Excelsior-class. Fly a couple out to advise on repairs. There'd obviously be some friction though between "Proper" Starfleet and the defense platform weirdos. Plus having a bunch of old ships in vaguely working order would probably come in handy all the time. Someone doing their dissertation on Bridge Ergonomics And Their Relation To Crew Restfulness can go take a look at dozens of old bridges all in one convenient place. Historians could show up and gripe about preservation, then end up staying on to keep these cannibals in line. And you have to do something with the old or heavily damaged ships.
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Aug 29, 2021 18:09
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"Warp power to the shields" -> station never goes anywhere, so shields are nominally at warp-strength to start with Older photon torpedo launchers need more time to reload? Just rotate the station to bring another launcher into line. The links holding all the parts together aren't that strong. That's why in a combat scenario they activate the tractor beam integrity grid- all the major pieces have tractor emitters aimed at all the other major pieces. Even if an old saucer section gets blown free it can be pulled back into position. "What the hell is that thing sticking out?" "Well the offense committee decided to stack nacelles in two parallel towers, then use short bursts from evenly spaced tractor beam emitters to propel large payloads along the towers" "... Kind of like a railgun. Each set pulls the load a little bit faster than before. What does it shoot?" "Anything, really. Asteroids, chaff... plus you know, we do have a lot of old, unstable warp cores lying around"
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Aug 29, 2021 18:43
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"Why don't other empires attack Earth more often?" "Have you SEEN what their people can do with just a starship? A few half-broken devices in a cave? Do you want to see what happens if you try starting poo poo in their home system where they have all their best toys waiting on-hand before they even have to consider getting creative?"
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Aug 29, 2021 18:52
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Wouldn't be the first sci-fi franchise to say that the other species are a bit... worried in a situation where humans have to get creative and killing stuff is involved. "I heard those crazy mammals started to use nuclear weapons on their only ecosystem over 100 years before they were even able to reliably leave the place for their first colonies". "...So maybe lets not go there then?"
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Aug 29, 2021 18:58
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"Vasquez had the idea to have a long protrusion with a couple hundred transporter pads all synced in phase at the end. We have an internal bay with all kinds of goodies and we transport them to the end of the arm as needed." "Vasquez?" "Oh, she's the Chief's daughter. She's 11. It was a really good idea, so we did it." "You took orders from an 11-year-old?" "Look I already told you: It was a good idea, ok? Plus I gotta tell you, that's far from the craziest thing around here"
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Aug 29, 2021 19:02
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the best space battle i ever read in fiction was one where the winning team didn't even show up to the battle and instead they just fired ball bearings towards earth nonstop for a couple weeks to wipe out everything outside the atmosphere
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Aug 29, 2021 19:53
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what im trying to say is that the borg aint got the cojonessssssssssssssssssssss
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Aug 29, 2021 19:55
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Isn't catching, vaporizing or redirecting such debris and particles the actual purpose of the deflector dish? When it is not used to solve the problem of the week by recalibrating it to do some space magic.
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Aug 29, 2021 20:19
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if they really wanted to fortify earth, they could just make a big station covered in deflector dishes. get enough nerds together and those can do anything. also, starfleet is absolutely never short of nerds.
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Aug 29, 2021 20:23
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Uncle Enzo posted:Guess what happens when a starship class gets scrapped? That's right, they get dumped on Orbital Defense Platform Two. (ODP 1 is the moon, although no one calls it that). The crew of ODP-2 comes up with a plan to use them, which typically entails removing the nacelles and lashing them in an unused bundle out of the way. Then they attach them to the rest of the station with weapons facing outwards. In order to rotate it properly you'd need to have the center of mass to be located in the middle. So the big pile of munched up ship components would have to be pretty symmetrical. If nothing else, a threefold symmetry around the x, y, and z axes. So basically picture a huge irregular, greebly cube...
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Aug 29, 2021 20:30
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Tunicate posted:In order to rotate it properly you'd need to have the center of mass to be located in the middle. So the big pile of munched up ship components would have to be pretty symmetrical. If nothing else, a threefold symmetry around the x, y, and z axes. So basically picture a huge irregular, greebly cube...
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Aug 29, 2021 20:33
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Tunicate posted:In order to rotate it properly you'd need to have the center of mass to be located in the middle. So the big pile of munched up ship components would have to be pretty symmetrical. If nothing else, a threefold symmetry around the x, y, and z axes. So basically picture a huge irregular, greebly cube... Also, give everyone vizor and maybe some assisting implants so that they get instant feedback from stuff, there are so many different systems involved they cannot remember the small details of every separate one... maybe even let them sleep on cryo/biobeds so that the areas can be compartmentalized and no separate barracks/hospitals are neeeded, replicate food paste directly to stomach and poo poo back to recycling tanks to cut out plumbing and toilets... Its actually a miracle how little borg-style stuff the starfleet ends up doing to itself.
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Aug 29, 2021 20:49
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Gatts posted:And even in the second Borg attack, all you had was the fleet. Working on an orbital defence platform sucks, and all the AIs in startrek keep going terribly wrong. Well, I mean, working on an orbital defence platform should suck. Though with transporter technology it should be no big deal to get from anywhere in the solar system to anywhere else in the solar system in under 10 minutes. So the commute and living quarters aren't a problem. Maybe the issue is that in a post scarcity utopia where no one needs to do boring work, the people who would volunteer to man a big gun right next to Earth are the last people you would want manning a big gun right next to Earth. They didn't get into the job because they want to explore and excel like the starfleet nerds, orbital defence platform guys have no purpose but to shoot people. Sitting there day after day waiting for the opportunity to shoot someone.
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Aug 29, 2021 21:29
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Facebook Aunt posted:Maybe the issue is that in a post scarcity utopia where no one needs to do boring work, the people who would volunteer to man a big gun right next to Earth are the last people you would want manning a big gun right next to Earth. They didn't get into the job because they want to explore and excel like the starfleet nerds, orbital defence platform guys have no purpose but to shoot people. Sitting there day after day waiting for the opportunity to shoot someone.
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Aug 29, 2021 21:34
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Facebook Aunt posted:Working on an orbital defence platform sucks, and all the AIs in startrek keep going terribly wrong. nah the part where it's a fun rube goldberg machine of bullets is way better than what you've described, which is just yet another iteration of "the people in the federation/starfleet are actually bad"
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Aug 29, 2021 21:38
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hanging out on a giant stationary space gun all day wouldn't be so bad when you still had every other benefit of federation citizenship and easy access to earth.
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Aug 29, 2021 22:49
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Just tinker all day with Transporters Deflector dishes and their many pulses Phaser arrays Photon torpedo launchers Warp cores Subspace communication and detection arrays Shield generators Bussard ramscoops Antimatter Tractor beams Force fields Replicators Thrusters Impulse and warp engines Shuttles, runabouts, probes, and torpedos Your mission is "defend Earth against ???". You have a huge pile of old and/or damaged equipment to work with. You go home to your family who lives anywhere on earth or the moon every night, or maybe you sleep on the station or your family lives there with you. Your family is as close to 100% safe as anywhere in the entire Federation, unless Earth gets attacked in which case you will be personally manning the defenses, which are as good as you and your team can make them. You have to "stand watch" 1 day a month, unless the Feds are in a shooting war with a peer the automated stuff will give plenty of warning. If tensions are high you just live on the station, no biggie. You have a cottage you built yourself inside a decommissioned Galaxy-class main shuttlebay with Giant Redwoods growing in it. In the meantime you're free to hack together whatever your imagination permits. Plus the people of earth are friendly and close at hand, they're always visiting and cooking new cuisines in the guest kitchen(s) and asking interesting questions. I think there'd be plenty of takers, really.
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Aug 29, 2021 23:40
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80% of every job on Earth and in space is just telling a group of schoolchildren how you do your job.
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Aug 29, 2021 23:50
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Brawnfire posted:80% of every job on Earth and in space is just telling a group of schoolchildren how you do your job. This next question is from Lily who lives in Lake Armstrong: Captain Archer, can you describe in great detail how you decontaminate your toned bodies after a mission on a mysterious new planet?
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Aug 29, 2021 23:53
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Uncle Enzo posted:Your mission is "defend Earth against ???". You have a huge pile of old and/or damaged equipment to work with. You go home to your family who lives anywhere on earth or the moon every night, or maybe you sleep on the station or your family lives there with you. Your family is as close to 100% safe as anywhere in the entire Federation, unless Earth gets attacked in which case you will be personally manning the defenses, which are as good as you and your team can make them. I have nothing against the idea of techies making Frankenstein creations out of Starfleet's junk pile. But remind us exactly why the cobbled-together garbage has to have the incredibly critical job of defending the planet Earth? Really, it would be acceptable to have some engineering nerds making cool poo poo for its own sake, and leave the whole "defending billions of lives" thing to ships and stations that actually, you know, already work.
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Aug 30, 2021 00:11
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the idea that earth would be the most important place in the federation is loving stupid. hundreds of years of space travel with dozens of different species and earth is the centralized hub?
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Aug 30, 2021 00:18
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jsoh posted:the idea that earth would be the most important place in the federation is loving stupid. hundreds of years of space travel with dozens of different species and earth is the centralized hub? Edit: oh no wait I see what you’re saying. Yeah Risa is way more important
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Aug 30, 2021 00:19
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I'm picturing space defence platforms as being much smaller than normal space stations. Like, not much bigger than a runabout. A big power station, a transporter pad, shields, guns, and outside of duty stations maybe a few bunks and a replicator for comfort. Really uncomfortable to have more than 10 guys on station at a time. Because 10 mini-platforms with less than 10 guys each are better than one big station with 100 guys. With a big station a single lucky hit could cripple the whole thing, with 10 small stations it takes at least 10 hits. Plus your return fire is coming from 10 points rather than just one. It doesn't need family quarters, a med bay, an arboretum or the rest, because you're in the Sol system the whole time and can easily beam out. There's no reason not to build them compact like modern submarines, keep them small and hard to hit. Most of the time you wouldn't even need the full crew onboard, it's unlikely that anything (except Discovery) will appear in your zone without at least a few minutes warning. A skeleton crew of a couple guys doing routine maintenance should be fine. Maybe that's why the defences don't exist, nobody could agree on what form they could take.
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Aug 30, 2021 00:35
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We've only seen Earth attacked a few times, really: - V'Ger was able to disabled the "Earth Defense Network" - Whale Probe just knocked everything offline - Borg we never actually saw enter Earth orbit, but I assume it would've been a matter of seconds to destroy anything - During Homefront when Earth's power systems are sabotaged, it's mentioned that the planet has been left vulnerable with surface based sensors and defence elements offline - Most of the ships in the Breen attack were destroyed by defences but they got enough through to fire a bit at San Francisco, although not that much all things considered. - Mars had shields and orbiting defences during the Synth attack. So yeah, I think they have stuff.
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Aug 30, 2021 00:52
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MikeJF posted:We've only seen Earth attacked a few times, really: Is the Xinidi not canon anymore? Or does Florida not count? Both statements are totally viable.
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Aug 30, 2021 00:56
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Oh yeah but that was ye olde times.
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Aug 30, 2021 01:05
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