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mlooney

Story Monday, Jun 1, 2020

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Just now, hkmaly said:

Definitely sounds like it should be Data.

Data was Ops though, sure he could have piloted the enterprise, but that wasn't his position. He was able to reroute some thruster control to his console when Trois' console stopped responding though. But as for Trois' piloting, she was asked to go full impulse and put distance between the saucer and the drive section once separation was complete and she appeared to follow those orders as best she could, it was just a matter of being able to get far enough away.

Besides, remember when it was a kid driving the ship? ;)

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5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Didn't stopped Voyager.

Voyager is much smaller and is designed to land.

 

5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yes.

 

5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Obviously, it's because only named characters are allowed to do something as important as crashing piloting the ship. From named characters, she might really be the most suitable one left.

Of the names characters on the bridge, she was the least suitable. Any of the others should have had the training. At best, she took the corespondent course. Although, more recently, so there is that.

 

5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Generally, you shouldn't think too much about it, because then you realize that either the computer is clever enough to pilot the ship by itself, or those few people on bridge wouldn't be enough.

I do wonder that.

 

3 hours ago, ijuin said:

The Enterprise-D overall is a bit over six hundred meters (two thousand feet) long. The secondary hull (i.e. the non-saucer part) is three hundred and a bit not counting the warp nacelles. The hard part of getting people out of there is climbing the decks--the lowest deck is Deck Forty-Two, and the interface between the primary and secondary hulls is somewhere around Deck Twelve or so, which means up to thirty decks to ascend, with the elevators probably not having enough capacity to carry everyone quickly. To evacuate everyone that quickly, they would have to use the transporters to pull out those who were too far away. With a stated eight transporter rooms in the Saucer section, and assuming six people per transport cycle and two transport cycles per minute over four minutes, that allows evacuating about 380 people via transporter in four minutes, which is a third of the Enterprise-D's entire crew.

Interesting, because we see exactly no one being transported, we see disorganized scrambling crowds in halls towing toddlers, and crewmen scampering in Jeffries tubes and up ladders.

 

3 hours ago, ijuin said:

As for crashing with the top up, what little control they had during descent was being used by Data to put them into the safest orientation for the landing.

He did indeed appear to be surmising that he needed to. Note, though, that this always happens. Fictional space has an orientation, and ships are always upright. When two meet in battle, they are both oriented with the top in the same direction. It's not just Star Trek. Look at the big battle scenes in Star Wars; all the ships have the same 'up'. This, among other things, seems tactically unsound.

Although, for not being designed to land, the saucer seems oddly aerodynamic.

 

3 hours ago, ijuin said:

Deanna Troi was officially a Lieutenant Commander at this point in the story--there was an episode during the series where she was taking the Command Officer's examination, where she had to send Geordi La Forge to his "certain death" in a simulation in order to prove that she was psychologically capable of sacrificing a friend in order to save the ship if need be. However, yes, you are correct that it should not have been her, but rather Data, at the helm for the entire sequence.

So, you have to attend Star Fleet Academy; unless you take the correspondence course, and then you'll be able to skip several ranks. Good plan.

 

 

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It has been said that all science is either physics or stamp collecting

Just imagine the Stamps you can collect in in the name of Science by enrolling at Starfleet Correspondence University

Ex Astris, Scientia Et Vectigal Notat

By the way, if anyone happens to have a 3 Strip of Gold Pressed Latinum first day of issue cover of Zek Fishing from the Zek on Risa series, it's a fake
The lowest value stamp from that series was the 8 strip Zek's Lost Flip-Flop

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10 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
13 hours ago, ijuin said:

As for crashing with the top up, what little control they had during descent was being used by Data to put them into the safest orientation for the landing.

He did indeed appear to be surmising that he needed to. Note, though, that this always happens. Fictional space has an orientation, and ships are always upright. When two meet in battle, they are both oriented with the top in the same direction. It's not just Star Trek. Look at the big battle scenes in Star Wars; all the ships have the same 'up'. This, among other things, seems tactically unsound.

Which part of sphere - or cube - is "up"?

And in battles, ships actually DO change orientation. But it's true that they do it much less than they could. Basically, space battles are modeled as airplane battles.

It could be argued that agreeing to specific "up" would have advantages for diplomatic reasons, but keeping that "up" in battle seems suboptimal.

It almost seems that even after centuries, StarFleet captains still didn't adapted to threedimensional thinking. Something Ender got very fast: "Enemy gate is down".

... not that we saw that much of that thinking in the movie ... but at least one good case.

10 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Although, for not being designed to land, the saucer seems oddly aerodynamic.

Aerodynamic shapes are aesthetically pleasing. That may be only reason starfleet (and romulan) designers needed.

 

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11 hours ago, hkmaly said:

And in battles, ships actually DO change orientation.

That clip's battle has more orientation changes than most, and you can see it adds to the sense of actually being in space, but it is mostly a conventionally unified 'up' among all of the participants, with minor changes during maneuvers. Not really a counterexample.

 

11 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Which part of sphere - or cube - is "up"?

For the death star, pretty clearly outward, just like a planet. In that case, it made sense, they were lobbing bombs toward the center. Just like Ender's "the enemies door is down", the target is down. Works well for the second death star.

The cube, not so much; from what we've seen it has an internal 'up'. And they always manage to transport upright, which makes sense, the transporter would have to be awful smart about things like that or you'd transport embedbed in walls or hanging in the air, getting the orientation right should be a part of it's function.

I'd go with 'the cube is large enough to think of it like the death star when attacking it, up is outward, down is inward'.

 

11 hours ago, mlooney said:

The part that has the dish for the world killing laser gun.

That could be viewed as 'outward', if you are in spherical coordinates.

 

11 hours ago, hkmaly said:

It almost seems that even after centuries, StarFleet captains still didn't adapted to three dimensional thinking.

Kirk criticizes Khan for that in one movie, then beats him with what is essentially a submarine maneuver, marginally 3D; 1D in a third direction.

 

11 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Basically, space battles are modeled as airplane battles.

Yes, basically. Airplanes mostly keep their orientation, especially with long range missile weapons, less so in a dog fight. But the environment they fight in has an orientation. Climbing costs speed and fuel, and diving, while it has it's advantages, must be closely monitored and quit before the ground is encountered.

So it makes somewhat adequate story telling, is perhaps not so jarring in small encounters, but in large ones, like your post, you have to wonder.

 

12 hours ago, hkmaly said:

It could be argued that agreeing to specific "up" would have advantages for diplomatic reasons, ...

The view screens could do that, if it is of any import. You'd want that for the face to face talks. Although, if I can mess with my settings so I'm sideways at meetings, ...

 

12 hours ago, hkmaly said:

... but keeping that "up" in battle seems suboptimal.

... Something Ender got very fast: "Enemy gate is down".

... not that we saw that much of that thinking in the movie ... but at least one good case.

Yes, and Ender is a genius hero for wrapping his head around that.

There was quite a bit in the battle school, when they were doing suited battles.

The movie (and the book) was exceptional in that it actually incorporated space tactics.

 

12 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Aerodynamic shapes are aesthetically pleasing. That may be only reason starfleet (and romulan) designers needed.

They were certainly the only reasons the human designers needed for the TV series.

I am not a fan of the earlier ship designs in Star Trek. Thrust should be oriented such that it intersects the center of mass, otherwise it produces torque. All of the early designs do not appear to have this right.

The war birds at least have the pylons for the ward nacelles right, they look like the are built to transfer lateral force. The spindly struts on the original Enterprise look like they should snap right off. They are oriented to look like they are the opposite of designed to properly transfer the force. Other things the war birds do right; small small command an control center, as you would expect in space, also smaller target, not the huge, flamboyant disc that is extraneous weight to haul and easier to hit. Although, even with that, I don't get why in the battle scene you posted, when one of the Federation ships gets hit in the saucer, but not in the command center (nor in engineering, which is not in the saucer), why is it a fatal blow? Also, why does said dying ship suddenly veer of to the side? A dying object in space should keep going in the same direction.

The ships got much better later on in the franchise. Too bad the original design was so iconic.

 

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17 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:
12 hours ago, hkmaly said:

It almost seems that even after centuries, StarFleet captains still didn't adapted to three dimensional thinking.

Kirk criticizes Khan for that in one movie, then beats him with what is essentially a submarine maneuver, marginally 3D; 1D in a third direction.

As I ranted about before, if you only have 2 spaceships, it's linear.  (2 points make a line).  If you have 3 ships, it's planer and it's only when you have 4 or more ships do you really have 3d combats happening.   I think about these sort of things due to my hobby of writing SF role playing games.

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1 hour ago, mlooney said:

As I ranted about before, if you only have 2 spaceships, it's linear.  (2 points make a line).  If you have 3 ships, it's planer and it's only when you have 4 or more ships do you really have 3d combats happening.   I think about these sort of things due to my hobby of writing SF role playing games.

What you're saying is true, and actual shallow 3D maps really well as a 2D map in Traveller, the orientation of each combatant are significant and not constrained to the 1D separation of the two, not to mention the movement vectors. With two combatants, you end up with three orientation dimensions each, a velocity and an acceleration each, minimum, although a missile would want higher order movement data, and then 1D separation, so 11D or more. So if you're asking "how far away are we?", 1D is enough, but not in a battle.

This is already true on Earth, related to shooting down airplanes and moving robotic manipulators.

All mitigated by considerations like, "Thust is always in the direction of the nose of the ship." Collapse two dimensions, one for each combatant.

I'm thinking, though, that level of detail would be counterproductive in a RPG. Keeping things simple for story telling is a goal.

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3 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

What you're saying is true, and actual shallow 3D maps really well as a 2D map in Traveller, the orientation of each combatant are significant and not constrained to the 1D separation of the two, not to mention the movement vectors. With two combatants, you end up with three orientation dimensions each, a velocity and an acceleration each, minimum, although a missile would want higher order movement data, and then 1D separation, so 11D or more. So if you're asking "how far away are we?", 1D is enough, but not in a battle.

This is already true on Earth, related to shooting down airplanes and moving robotic manipulators.

All mitigated by considerations like, "Thust is always in the direction of the nose of the ship." Collapse two dimensions, one for each combatant.

I'm thinking, though, that level of detail would be counterproductive in a RPG. Keeping things simple for story telling is a goal.

Edge of Imperial Space, my current SF RPG uses 2D map with vector movement for space combat, regardless of the number of ships or missiles in play.  If there was a simple way of doing 3d combat with minis I would use that.  

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14 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
On 6/6/2020 at 1:44 AM, hkmaly said:

And in battles, ships actually DO change orientation.

That clip's battle has more orientation changes than most, and you can see it adds to the sense of actually being in space, but it is mostly a conventionally unified 'up' among all of the participants, with minor changes during maneuvers. Not really a counterexample.

Therefore the next sentence.

14 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

The cube, not so much; from what we've seen it has an internal 'up'.

We saw very little of it ; it's entirely possible the cube is internally divided to six pyramids with independent "up", or even more complicated solution.

15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

And they always manage to transport upright, which makes sense, the transporter would have to be awful smart about things like that or you'd transport embedbed in walls or hanging in the air, getting the orientation right should be a part of it's function.

Before transporting, they need to scan the target location to find walls and detect direction of gravity, yes.

15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
On 6/6/2020 at 1:44 AM, hkmaly said:

It almost seems that even after centuries, StarFleet captains still didn't adapted to three dimensional thinking.

Kirk criticizes Khan for that in one movie, then beats him with what is essentially a submarine maneuver, marginally 3D; 1D in a third direction.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
On 6/6/2020 at 1:44 AM, hkmaly said:

Basically, space battles are modeled as airplane battles.

Yes, basically. Airplanes mostly keep their orientation, especially with long range missile weapons, less so in a dog fight. But the environment they fight in has an orientation. Climbing costs speed and fuel, and diving, while it has it's advantages, must be closely monitored and quit before the ground is encountered.

So it makes somewhat adequate story telling, is perhaps not so jarring in small encounters, but in large ones, like your post, you have to wonder.

Yes.

15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
On 6/6/2020 at 1:44 AM, hkmaly said:

It could be argued that agreeing to specific "up" would have advantages for diplomatic reasons, ...

The view screens could do that, if it is of any import. You'd want that for the face to face talks. Although, if I can mess with my settings so I'm sideways at meetings, ...

You can. But, besides video meetings, it can be useful for cases where, for some diplomatic reasons, you want to exchange shuttles instead of transporting. And in general, if people who have troubles thinking in 3D are common, aligning to same "up" is a reduction of "alien" feeling, which may be good idea in diplomacy ...

... and, well, there might be diplomats - even starfleet diplomats - who get nauseous when looking at ship positioned differently. Now, sometimes you WANT to confuse the other side like that, but usually you don't.

15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
On 6/6/2020 at 1:44 AM, hkmaly said:

Something Ender got very fast: "Enemy gate is down".

... not that we saw that much of that thinking in the movie ... but at least one good case.

Yes, and Ender is a genius hero for wrapping his head around that.

There was quite a bit in the battle school, when they were doing suited battles.

The movie (and the book) was exceptional in that it actually incorporated space tactics.

Yes, Ender is a genius.

I was commenting that it was better in the book because the movie needed to be shortened too much.

15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
On 6/6/2020 at 1:44 AM, hkmaly said:

Aerodynamic shapes are aesthetically pleasing. That may be only reason starfleet (and romulan) designers needed.

They were certainly the only reasons the human designers needed for the TV series.

I am not a fan of the earlier ship designs in Star Trek. Thrust should be oriented such that it intersects the center of mass, otherwise it produces torque. All of the early designs do not appear to have this right.

15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

The spindly struts on the original Enterprise look like they should snap right off. They are oriented to look like they are the opposite of designed to properly transfer the force.

Remember that most time, federation skips were supposed to be for exploration, not battle. I think the starfleet designers overthough that.

However, specifically the warp naceless ... they are not rockets. They don't produce thrust. They generate subspace field. And, presumably, they were not exactly safe to be around, and putting them on pylons might make easier to get rid of them if they were going to explode.

15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

The war birds at least have the pylons for the ward nacelles right, they look like the are built to transfer lateral force. The spindly struts on the original Enterprise look like they should snap right off. They are oriented to look like they are the opposite of designed to properly transfer the force. Other things the war birds do right; small small command an control center, as you would expect in space, also smaller target, not the huge, flamboyant disc that is extraneous weight to haul and easier to hit.

That said, I like the war birds design more too. And it OBVIOUSLY makes more sense for battle because Romulans ALWAYS think about battle.

15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Although, even with that, I don't get why in the battle scene you posted, when one of the Federation ships gets hit in the saucer, but not in the command center (nor in engineering, which is not in the saucer), why is it a fatal blow?

Federation starships in general are very easy to explode. Remember that no matter where they are hit, there is good chance some console on bridge will blow up. Must be some fatal flaw in basic design.

However ... I don't think it was fatal. I mean, assuming it's the same ship we speak about ... I think that after being hit near the midle of saucer, there was another hit near the back, into engines (yes, there are some engines in back of the saucer). And even that might not necessary be fatal in "everyone aboard dead" sense, although it probably made it unable to continue fighting.

15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Also, why does said dying ship suddenly veer of to the side? A dying object in space should keep going in the same direction.

Gas / air leakage creating unexpected thrust?

I think this battle, being in DS9, actually can be explained relatively well, there are however cases where something similar happens and there is no explanation possible.

12 hours ago, mlooney said:
13 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

What you're saying is true, and actual shallow 3D maps really well as a 2D map in Traveller, the orientation of each combatant are significant and not constrained to the 1D separation of the two, not to mention the movement vectors. With two combatants, you end up with three orientation dimensions each, a velocity and an acceleration each, minimum, although a missile would want higher order movement data, and then 1D separation, so 11D or more. So if you're asking "how far away are we?", 1D is enough, but not in a battle.

This is already true on Earth, related to shooting down airplanes and moving robotic manipulators.

All mitigated by considerations like, "Thust is always in the direction of the nose of the ship." Collapse two dimensions, one for each combatant.

I'm thinking, though, that level of detail would be counterproductive in a RPG. Keeping things simple for story telling is a goal.

Edge of Imperial Space, my current SF RPG uses 2D map with vector movement for space combat, regardless of the number of ships or missiles in play.  If there was a simple way of doing 3d combat with minis I would use that.  

I'm pretty sure there isn't.

Even using computer 3D combat gets confusing fast. At least until you have true 3D holoprojectors like on Star Trek, and based on how bad are their captains at utilizing 3D space, they STILL didn't train enough on them. :)

Wait one more point ...

13 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

All mitigated by considerations like, "Thust is always in the direction of the nose of the ship." Collapse two dimensions, one for each combatant.

Would be quite stupid limitation, but what you see in most movies is even worse: MOVEMENT is always in the direction of the nose of the ship. That's true for airplanes, mostly, because airplane which is not moving in direction of it's nose is effectively crashing already, they are not stable like that. For star ship however that's not true at all, their inertia is quite big but they can't use wings to maneuver, they need to use thrust  ...

... they got it correct in few scenes in Babylon 5, but I think it didn't lasted long.

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15 hours ago, mlooney said:

Edge of Imperial Space, my current SF RPG uses 2D map with vector movement for space combat, regardless of the number of ships or missiles in play.  If there was a simple way of doing 3d combat with minis I would use that.  

I've seen some schemes with tokens for height that were simple enough mechanically, but about zero for visualization. I think 2D representation of space is good enough, for a game, for the most part. 

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2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

We saw very little of it ; it's entirely possible the cube is internally divided to six pyramids with independent "up", or even more complicated solution.

I recall several forays into a Borg cube in the shows and some in the movies, and there's always a local 'up', but you're right, that does not reveal the overall layout of the cube.

 

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

An interesting application of that.

 

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

You can. But, besides video meetings, ...

You've got to set priorities.

 

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yes, Ender is a genius.

OSC thinks so.

 

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Remember that most time, federation skips were supposed to be for exploration, not battle. I think the starfleet designers overthough that.

You can believe every Federation propaganda flyer you read. They are a military corp, a space Navy, if you will, in armed warships. You can give an armed warship a humanitarian mission, but it's still a naval vessel.

 

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

However, specifically the warp naceless ... they are not rockets. They don't produce thrust. They generate subspace field. And, presumably, they were not exactly safe to be around, and putting them on pylons might make easier to get rid of them if they were going to explode.

Since the technology does not actually exist, it is a bit ludicrous to argue at length about it. I believe part of the issue may be conflicting sources. One early star trek novel I read described the nacelle's as being made of antimatter. Ludicrous. Pointless. Irresponsibly hazardous.

What we actually know: The warp nacelles house the warp engines. Not the only engines on the ship, but the primary motive power for interstellar flight. No amount of thrust is going to move a star ship interstellar distances in a Star Trek reasonable amount of time. Some messing with the space around them has to be involved.

That does not negate the need for some thrust. I've seen several references to the engines acting as Bussard ram jets, and I believe it was referenced on the show. That is sufficient for interstellar travel, but not on Star Trek schedule. So they also bend the medium. We have little experience with that. I think it's safe to say, though, that there are forces involves, even if it is space itself somehow dragging the ship along.

So, the ship moves forward, for the most part based on whatever hocus pocus in in the nacelles. The nacelles are causing that, f=ma, thrust is involved. And those spars are not designed to handle a forward thrust. It is elementary statics. You want to long part in the direction of the force. On TOS, they are orthogonal to the force. Total fail. NG got it much better; the pylons are swept, and are much thicker in the direction of force.

I'm not sure your last bit follows; even on the pylons, they are too close for safety. and you have to leave them far behind if they are imminently going to explode. The pylons just take longer to climb down.

 

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Federation starships in general are very easy to explode. Remember that no matter where they are hit, there is good chance some console on bridge will blow up. Must be some fatal flaw in basic design.

The compensators will fail just enough for everyone to stumble back and forth, but not enough for anyone to be squashed into a flat smear.

 

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

(yes, there are some engines in back of the saucer).

The separable saucer makes little sense. It was canon in TOS, though you never saw it. I guess at some point they had to show it. It's not for emergencies, per Generations; that should have been, "Eject the damaged core", no movement of personnel, which was ludicrous anyway, and you save more of the ship. IIRC, in one earlier NG, the saucer was detached to do orbital station keeping when the bottom went off on some errand. Seems it you wanted this capability, something other than crippling both halves of your ship would be better.

So you said you did not like TOS; I was young when TOS first aired, and there was nothing else like it. Cheesy though it may be, I will remember it fondly for boldly going where no show had gone before. That said, much of the Star Trek canon is, "Let's do this", "Oh, that was dumb", "Nah, we can rationalize it."

"Oh, dear, our engines are disabled. Let's use the impulse engines!" Not specified in great detail what these are, but the warp engines are offline. Interstellar distances. You are not going to get there in your lifetime unless you are bending space. Maybe interplanetary distances, certainly station keeping in orbit, most assuredly maneuvering into a space dock, where warping space is prohibited, but not for going  home.

 

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Gas / air leakage creating unexpected thrust?

Well, sure, the hull was breached, they are venting. Seemed like venting upward sent them sideways.

 

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Would be quite stupid limitation, but what you see in most movies is even worse: MOVEMENT is always in the direction of the nose of the ship. That's true for airplanes, mostly, because airplane which is not moving in direction of it's nose is effectively crashing already, they are not stable like that. For star ship however that's not true at all, their inertia is quite big but they can't use wings to maneuver, they need to use thrust  ...

And yet aerodynamic maneuvers in space are a stock in trade in most sci fi movies. I'm looking at you, original Battlestar Galactica.

When I was a kid, there was a cheesy cartoon, Space Angel. The art wasn't too bad, but it was all stills, zoom in, zoom out. For all of that, it was one of the few things I've seen that got maneuvering in space right. They fired thrusters near the nose and tail to turn the ship, then used main thrust to move.

 

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

... they got it correct in few scenes in Babylon 5, but I think it didn't lasted long.

What could have been ... Babylon 5 was written as a five year series, with a plotted story line. TV with a story line that begins and ends is common in British TV, but is rare in America. Near the end of it's run, it became unclear that it would have the full five years to complete the story, so the writers rushed the end, then added new material, diluting what was once a coherent vision.

 

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3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

However, specifically the warp naceless ... they are not rockets. They don't produce thrust. They generate subspace field. And, presumably, they were not exactly safe to be around, and putting them on pylons might make easier to get rid of them if they were going to explode.

Furthermore, Federation starships are not held together by the strength of their physical structure--they are held together by forcefields--the "structural integrity fields". The structure only needs to hold on its own under relatively low strain because when the ship has power, the forcefields provide 99% of the strength.

As for the shapes of ships, apparently streamlining is meaningful for warp travel--keeping your frontal area reduced, for example, would reduce "how much" space you need to contract in front of the ship, and therefore the amount of energy required. The more-streamlined shapes probably allow for greater energy efficiency.

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6 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I've seen some schemes with tokens for height that were simple enough mechanically, but about zero for visualization. I think 2D representation of space is good enough, for a game, for the most part. 

I though about that, but it's hard enough to vector movement in 2d with out adding the problems of vectors in 3d.  With 2d vector movement you can do a fairly accurate analog version using 3 counters per ship and a bit of string.  I'm not sure how you would do 3d using the analog methods.

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I like how Mayday (Traveller-related GDW Box game) handled movement. Each turn, your default future move was based on your current position marked by your token and your velocity; use a second 'future position token' to show this. You can apply thrust to modify your velocity. Planetary masses apply gravity as non optional thrust based on distance. Mark modified future position with a third kind of token. Everyone update their current position and default future position. It is very quantized, restricted to hexes, with enough resolution to work.

Triplanetary is similar, with grease pens.

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1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I like how Mayday (Traveller-related GDW Box game) handled movement. Each turn, your default future move was based on your current position marked by your token and your velocity; use a second 'future position token' to show this. You can apply thrust to modify your velocity. Planetary masses apply gravity as non optional thrust based on distance. Mark modified future position with a third kind of token. Everyone update their current position and default future position. It is very quantized, restricted to hexes, with enough resolution to work.

Triplanetary is similar, with grease pens.

That's the basic system I use, however it's modified to use figures, not counters and is free form, not tied to a hex grid.

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19 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
23 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Remember that most time, federation skips were supposed to be for exploration, not battle. I think the starfleet designers overthough that.

You can believe every Federation propaganda flyer you read. They are a military corp, a space Navy, if you will, in armed warships. You can give an armed warship a humanitarian mission, but it's still a naval vessel.

Compared to Romulan or Klingon ships, they are optimized differently. First federation ships optimized for war as Defiant.

19 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
23 hours ago, hkmaly said:

However, specifically the warp naceless ... they are not rockets. They don't produce thrust. They generate subspace field. And, presumably, they were not exactly safe to be around, and putting them on pylons might make easier to get rid of them if they were going to explode.

Since the technology does not actually exist, it is a bit ludicrous to argue at length about it. I believe part of the issue may be conflicting sources. One early star trek novel I read described the nacelle's as being made of antimatter. Ludicrous. Pointless. Irresponsibly hazardous.

What we actually know: The warp nacelles house the warp engines. Not the only engines on the ship, but the primary motive power for interstellar flight. No amount of thrust is going to move a star ship interstellar distances in a Star Trek reasonable amount of time. Some messing with the space around them has to be involved.

That does not negate the need for some thrust. I've seen several references to the engines acting as Bussard ram jets, and I believe it was referenced on the show. That is sufficient for interstellar travel, but not on Star Trek schedule. So they also bend the medium. We have little experience with that. I think it's safe to say, though, that there are forces involves, even if it is space itself somehow dragging the ship along.

The warp fields form a subspace bubble distorting the spacetime continuum. The forces applied to the inside of the bubble may be minimal or zero ... or the other way, infinite. In article about intertial dampers it's mentioned that starship can't jump to warp speed without them - possibly, the pylons don't need to transfer any power because without the dampers, nothing would be sturdy enough, and with them, it's irrelevant.

19 hours ago, ijuin said:

Furthermore, Federation starships are not held together by the strength of their physical structure--they are held together by forcefields--the "structural integrity fields". The structure only needs to hold on its own under relatively low strain because when the ship has power, the forcefields provide 99% of the strength.

And structural integrity fields, yes.

19 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

So, the ship moves forward, for the most part based on whatever hocus pocus in in the nacelles. The nacelles are causing that, f=ma, thrust is involved. And those spars are not designed to handle a forward thrust. It is elementary statics. You want to long part in the direction of the force. On TOS, they are orthogonal to the force. Total fail. NG got it much better; the pylons are swept, and are much thicker in the direction of force.

You can never get to speeds higher than light with f=ma.

19 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I'm not sure your last bit follows; even on the pylons, they are too close for safety. and you have to leave them far behind if they are imminently going to explode. The pylons just take longer to climb down.

In case of explosion, shorter pylons would be sufficient. There may be different effect in play, though. Also, the warp engines needs to be at specific position so the warp fields will surround the ship.

But, yes, I prefer the later ships as well.

19 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
23 hours ago, hkmaly said:

(yes, there are some engines in back of the saucer).

The separable saucer makes little sense. It was canon in TOS, though you never saw it. I guess at some point they had to show it. It's not for emergencies, per Generations; that should have been, "Eject the damaged core", no movement of personnel, which was ludicrous anyway, and you save more of the ship. IIRC, in one earlier NG, the saucer was detached to do orbital station keeping when the bottom went off on some errand. Seems it you wanted this capability, something other than crippling both halves of your ship would be better.

Did you see multivector attack mode of uss prometheus? That's how the separation can be useful!

And you are right, the separation was not for "simple" core damage. The idea was that in case of hopeless battle, saucer section will separate and escape, while the rest of the ship will confront the enemy. That's why most weapons are in the stardrive section and why it's bridge is named "battle bridge". Would sound like quite logical solution for cases where the ship is far from any help ... except the saucer section has no warp engines so it can't get too far. Oops.

19 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

So you said you did not like TOS; I was young when TOS first aired, and there was nothing else like it. Cheesy though it may be, I will remember it fondly for boldly going where no show had gone before. That said, much of the Star Trek canon is, "Let's do this", "Oh, that was dumb", "Nah, we can rationalize it."

I like TOS. I read all of it. (Granted, that was translation of books which were published in 1991 so it was definitely later than the TV.)

And, well, when TOS first aired it wasn't on our TV's. We actually saw TOS after TNG, so TNG was my introduction to Star Trek.

19 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

"Oh, dear, our engines are disabled. Let's use the impulse engines!" Not specified in great detail what these are, but the warp engines are offline. Interstellar distances. You are not going to get there in your lifetime unless you are bending space. Maybe interplanetary distances, certainly station keeping in orbit, most assuredly maneuvering into a space dock, where warping space is prohibited, but not for going  home.

Yes, impulse engines are used for maneuvering and short distances and can't possibly reach FTL speeds.

19 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
23 hours ago, hkmaly said:

... they got it correct in few scenes in Babylon 5, but I think it didn't lasted long.

What could have been ... Babylon 5 was written as a five year series, with a plotted story line. TV with a story line that begins and ends is common in British TV, but is rare in America. Near the end of it's run, it became unclear that it would have the full five years to complete the story, so the writers rushed the end, then added new material, diluting what was once a coherent vision.

Not speaking about "what could have been" if the Crusade wasn't sabotaged by TNT and then abandoned.

12 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I like how Mayday (Traveller-related GDW Box game) handled movement. Each turn, your default future move was based on your current position marked by your token and your velocity; use a second 'future position token' to show this. You can apply thrust to modify your velocity. Planetary masses apply gravity as non optional thrust based on distance. Mark modified future position with a third kind of token. Everyone update their current position and default future position. It is very quantized, restricted to hexes, with enough resolution to work.

I think this would be best or close to best system to allow the 2D movement in way ships move in space without using computer and fast/simple enough for game. I also saw it somewhere and it PROBABLY wasn't Traveler.

11 hours ago, mlooney said:

That's the basic system I use, however it's modified to use figures, not counters and is free form, not tied to a hex grid.

... well, "not tied to a (hex) grid" sounds EXACTLY as "too much computing to be practical for game".

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1 hour ago, hkmaly said:
12 hours ago, mlooney said:

That's the basic system I use, however it's modified to use figures, not counters and is free form, not tied to a hex grid.

... well, "not tied to a (hex) grid" sounds EXACTLY as "too much computing to be practical for game".

There is no computing done.  It is an analog system the depends on figures or counters to indicate past, current and future location.  A bit of string is used to plot your current vector, which places your future location.  You then apply your move for the current turn to the future location counter.   You then move the past counter to the current location, move the ship figure to the future location, and plot via the string the future location.  Weapons then fire...

 

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1 hour ago, mlooney said:
3 hours ago, hkmaly said:
14 hours ago, mlooney said:

That's the basic system I use, however it's modified to use figures, not counters and is free form, not tied to a hex grid.

... well, "not tied to a (hex) grid" sounds EXACTLY as "too much computing to be practical for game".

There is no computing done.  It is an analog system the depends on figures or counters to indicate past, current and future location.  A bit of string is used to plot your current vector, which places your future location.  You then apply your move for the current turn to the future location counter.   You then move the past counter to the current location, move the ship figure to the future location, and plot via the string the future location.  Weapons then fire...

... oh. Right. THAT kind of figures. And strings.

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On 6/7/2020 at 0:44 AM, Darth Fluffy said:

"Oh, dear, our engines are disabled. Let's use the impulse engines!" Not specified in great detail what these are, but the warp engines are offline. Interstellar distances. You are not going to get there in your lifetime unless you are bending space. Maybe interplanetary distances, certainly station keeping in orbit, most assuredly maneuvering into a space dock, where warping space is prohibited, but not for going  home.

I think that we need to distinguish between powerplants and engines here. The warp reactor ("warp core") provides power for the warp engines (those huge nacelles), which are the most power-hungry system on most ships. The impulse reactors are a set of fusion reactors that provide power for the impulse engines (those red glowy things seen on the aft side of the ship), and also provide secondary power to the rest of the ship when the warp core is offline.

Now, the key thing here is that one type of reactor can be used to provide power to the other type of engine if need be. For example, in "Star Trek Beyond" (the third JJ movie), when the Enterprise loses her warp nacelles, Scotty rerouted the warp core's power output to the impulse engines. Likewise, if the warp core is offline (or destroyed), power from the impulse reactors could be diverted to the warp engines--though this would result in them being seriously under-powered and would give a much lower warp factor, e.g. Warp 3 instead of the normal Warp 8 or higher. So, warp travel at relatively low speed is still possible without the warp core, as long as the warp nacelles themselves are still functional.

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6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

... oh. Right. THAT kind of figures. And strings.

Doing vector math "digitally", either with a calculator/computer or by hand would be way harder that moving a figurine and 2 counters about.  The string makes it fairly easy to plot your future location, just put one end on the past location, one on the current location and extend the vector the same length as it is from past to current.  Put counter down.  Move counter to reflect this turn's movement, then move past to current.

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2 hours ago, ijuin said:

For example, in "Star Trek Beyond" (the third JJ movie), when the Enterprise loses her warp nacelles, Scotty rerouted the warp core's power output to the impulse engines.

In the real world, adding more power wouldn't make that much difference in the output of the impulse engines.  I assume that that are designed to take as much power as is reasonable for what ever it is that they use for sub-light movement.   If they aren't why not?

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4 hours ago, mlooney said:

In the real world, adding more power wouldn't make that much difference in the output of the impulse engines.  I assume that that are designed to take as much power as is reasonable for what ever it is that they use for sub-light movement.   If they aren't why not?

An engine’s “rated” power output is not the maximum that it is capable of—it is the maximum “safe” output. Whereas civilian engines are designed to be unable to exceed their rated output as a safety measure, military engines in real life have no such limits—they can be over-driven, though at the risk of excessive strain causing a breakdown. It is analogous to afterburners on a turbojet engine—A lot of extra energy/fuel is thrown into the engine in order to get extra thrust, but at far lower efficiency than normal operation, granting diminishing returns.

In Star Trek, we see the warp engines being over-driven in this manner whenever they go to “emergency” speed, above the rated warp 5.0 (NX-01), 8.0 (NCC-1701), 9.2 (NCC-1701-D), etc.

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12 hours ago, hkmaly said:

You can never get to speeds higher than light with f=ma.

Yes, we've agreed on that, and I mad it abundantly clear that without bending space or some such you were not getting anywhere anytime soon. OTOH, without f=ma, you are not moving at all.

 

12 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Compared to Romulan or Klingon ships, they are optimized differently. First federation ships optimized for war as Defiant.

Meh, they were all designed to look impressive but people who where more artist than scientist. 2001 got space travel right, and at times it is boring; I could not get my kids to sit still to watch it. Star Wars does better that Star Trek in the 'ships look functional' department.

The original Romulan war bird, which I believe was only used in one early episode, had a broad flat back so it could display a war bird emblem (because, as we all know, evolution is always parallel down to the nth detail, so of course Romulans had raptors (original meaning; hawks, eagles, falcons, and such)). And so it goes. Every thing about TOS is 'because it looks cool', not 'because we thought it out and this makes the most sense'. Trying to fit a rational scientific framework is after the fact.

These ships all bend a bit of space time around them. Wouldn't a compact shape, something like an egg, make the most sense? Presumably, this is the most energy costly thing they do, and would be the thing they need to most optimize. Where would you stick the engine? Maybe dead center, because "Hell, if it fails, we're screwed anyway" and "Might as well give it as much shielding as possible".

What you wouldn't do is stick a long spar on the front of your ship that needed would be contained in that warp field, unless for some reason, your entire engine section was lethal and needed to be separate, in which case, what's up with the broad, thick wings? The Discovery in 2020 was long for that reason, but the living section was a ball, and the spar was just that, a long structure for transferring force from the engines way in the back. (basically a tower, if you view thrust as 'down', and it does indeed look like a utility tower)

So, I ask you, which of these two scenarios makes more sense:

A. The federation thinks that dragging along a bunch of extraneous whatever is good ship design.

B. "Hey, you know what would look cool? A saucer. Space ships are saucers, right?" "Nah, it's been done. The Jupiter II was a saucer." "Well, maybe we could have a saucer that's part of a ship." "That could work." "I'll stick it on top."

I might design a ship that looked like the Enterprise. It would be much smaller, and you'd drive it from the bottom section. The removable saucer section would be for delivering the pizzas.

 

12 hours ago, hkmaly said:

The warp fields form a subspace bubble distorting the spacetime continuum. The forces applied to the inside of the bubble may be minimal or zero ... or the other way, infinite. In article about intertial dampers it's mentioned that starship can't jump to warp speed without them - possibly, the pylons don't need to transfer any power because without the dampers, nothing would be sturdy enough, and with them, it's irrelevant.

And structural integrity fields, yes.

In case of explosion, shorter pylons would be sufficient. There may be different effect in play, though. Also, the warp engines needs to be at specific position so the warp fields will surround the ship.

 

6 hours ago, ijuin said:

I think that we need to distinguish between powerplants and engines here. The warp reactor ("warp core") provides power for the warp engines (those huge nacelles), which are the most power-hungry system on most ships. The impulse reactors are a set of fusion reactors that provide power for the impulse engines (those red glowy things seen on the aft side of the ship), and also provide secondary power to the rest of the ship when the warp core is offline.

Now, the key thing here is that one type of reactor can be used to provide power to the other type of engine if need be. For example, in "Star Trek Beyond" (the third JJ movie), when the Enterprise loses her warp nacelles, Scotty rerouted the warp core's power output to the impulse engines. Likewise, if the warp core is offline (or destroyed), power from the impulse reactors could be diverted to the warp engines--though this would result in them being seriously under-powered and would give a much lower warp factor, e.g. Warp 3 instead of the normal Warp 8 or higher. So, warp travel at relatively low speed is still possible without the warp core, as long as the warp nacelles themselves are still functional.

Reminder, this is fiction. All the retcon in the world doesn't change that. The plotmovium of the week does not make it actual science.

Do we have real world counterparts? Yes, we do. We have structural integrity fields. It's called strength of materials. Do we have inertial dampers? Why, yes, we do. We have cushions, and body orientation, and restraints. Do we have multiple engines as sources of power? Yes, that as well.

Consider, in Star Trek, the fields are able to hold an atmosphere against the vacuum of space, yet a shuttle can arrive and depart though it. Orly? And this makes more sense than, oh, an airlock? Or better yet, what we currently do, dock on the outside and come in through a sealed passageway?

The inertial dampers of Star Trek implies anti-gravity technology, and indeed we briefly see that in use in one movie. It should be ubiquitous. Star Wars gets that.

Where are the robots? We have one android character, his failed brother prototype, his failed daughter, ... did I miss any? They should be all over the place. Star Wars get that.

Warp field; well, we don't really know, but compact would make sense, see above.

Extra engines, generally dedicated to a specific purpose, and power is not generally reroutable. Reroutablity of power is costly on a mobile platform. It works fine on the ground on our non movable electric grid. It works well in a large facility, like the pneumatic distribution systems that used to be in vogue, or the huge stream plant that powered the archaic steel mill I once worked in. An airplane or ship may have extra engines, and be somewhat functional if they are not all working, but they don't swap power between them. And they are hampered in their mission.

All of this, though is essentially superfluous. Gene Roddenberry created a vehicle too tell stories. He had an agenda, but it was not about creating great science fiction, it was about social narrative. That is was enjoyable space opera as well, eh, that's kind of gravy.

Also, the things that are missing in Star Trek, like robots? Cost.

 

14 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Did you see multivector attack mode of uss prometheus? That's how the separation can be useful!

I don't recall it. Seems like if you disconnect the saucer near the battle, you're leaving a very vulnerable target. If you leave it a good distance away, you are stranding it if you get destroyed, and at the very least are committing to backtrack and pick it up.

I'm going to stick with someone though it looked good, and everything else is rationalization.

 

14 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I like TOS. I read all of it. (Granted, that was translation of books which were published in 1991 so it was definitely later than the TV.)

And, well, when TOS first aired it wasn't on our TV's. We actually saw TOS after TNG, so TNG was my introduction to Star Trek.

If you ever see the episodes, you will probably cringe, and wonder how anyone ever watched them. The production values were not up to current standards, and William Shatner's portrayal of Capt. Kirk is notoriously over the top. Mostly, the stories are pretty good, and Early NG is a recap of a few.

 

 

 

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