Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

So? Tachyons are cool, they stay. Tachyons are one of the cooler things of star trek, remove them and it falls apart.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

" Narf:
Hey, anyone want to create a rational and consistant ST universe?"

Your opinion of coolness has nothing to do with rationality or consistency.

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Now, I have no objections to having cloaked ships emit tachyons, provided that they are in fact tachyons, and the side effects are taken care of.

For example, if ships can emit and detect tachyons, why aren't they used for FTL communications? Less energy to make the message go faster seems to be a huge advantage.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

So tachyon could be used for detecting Romulan ships. Sounds ok to me since their clock shifts them slightly out of phase. I remember a couple TNG shows about that. One with Geordi and Roe, and one about Rikers former ship.

How about the Klingon ships, do they work differently? Maybe some kind of exhaust detection would work good for them. Though I'm still not sold on them just thinking exhaust conainment was unimportant.

SJ: I was thinking that if they could store, or block the energy then they should also be able to use some of it for power. Kind of like recycling, to extent the time they could remain cloaked. Not that it means a whole lot as it is sci-fi, but at least then the energy used wouldn't melt them in a calculation (x gigawatts heats up y Kg to Zº in t minutes). The longer they stay cloaked the more they emit, untill it is finally detectable.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

Because tachyons are hard to form a coherent message with? Or to modulate, for that matter. Klingon ships stole their cloaks from the romulans. And I think SJ is talking about heat buildup.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

I assumed it was heat build up, still could be used in this way though, couldn't it?

Someone should talk to Narf about using "rational" "consistant" and "Star Trek" in the same sentance. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

Using the energy they generate efficiently is always a good goal.
And the less they generate from fuel stores, the less they have to store in their hull.

However, entropy prevents you from recycling energy.

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You can easily have different detection methods for romulans or klingons.
The design decision of how to get rid of the heat generated on your ship would turn out differently for both. Internal politics, probably at the forefront.
"Design X was chosen because the company which designed it was located it the home province of the current governor", for example.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

They use a warp core to travel FTL, powered by matter-antimatter reaction using dilithium to regulate it. They have artificial gravity, and energy shields. Makes entropy less of a "this won't work" problem, in relation to the rest of it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif I do know what you mean though.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

If they were able to reverse entropy on a closed system like a cloaked ship, they'd have no need for fuel at all...

Also, I don't see any evidence that the "warp core" does anything out of the ordinary...
It just generates gobs of energy via simple matter/antimatter annihilation (with a technobabble reaction mediator).

As far as I can tell, the nacelles do all the FTL work.
The "fact" that the impulse drive and even the computer core use the same type of TB field when running off of simple fusion or emergency battery power is also telling.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

Stop Picking On Star Trek! Ours is not to question why, it is simply to stare blankly and watch and to think not!

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

What is a TB field? That last sentence that Suicide Junkie said, I did not understand that. What do you mean telling?

The nacelles are powered by the energy from the matter/antimatter reaction system, using the high-energy plasma flow to create the warp field.

And yes, they have to worry about enthropy. Only about a third of power that goes into the warp nacelles actually moves the ship.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

TB = Technobabble.

And one of the nifty side effects is that you don't absolutely need an antimatter reactor. It is by far the most compact and powerful energy source, of course, but not absolutely critical for limping home.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

Impulse drive uses the fusion engine like a regular fusion drive... This would be the exhaust, probally. Hmmm. Computer core operates faster than light, using some form of warp field I think.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

The impulse drive supposedly generates fractional warp fields in order to allow the ship to zoom around without time dilation effects and huge thrust plumes during those 1000g accelerations to significant fractions of c.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

That's highly energy-inefficient. Why would they have those openings on the rear of the saucer section and battle section, then? They don't use warp fields near planets, because it's not always accurate. A little mistake, and bam, you run smack into a planet.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

Why don't you go look it up in your tech manual then? Its not like they're going fast enough that they'll not see a planet coming.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

6.1, Impulse Drive

Two main impulse engines on the back of the saucer section, one strip on the battle section labled Main impulse engine.

10 km/second² acceleration for the impulse engines, which is reached by a small driver coil to do a small distortion of the space around the enterprise, allowing speedy acceleration. Interesting. Normal impulse operations are limited to 0.25c, for time dilation reasons. Impulse drive is much more efficient that warp drive, however, at 85% efficency at 0.5c.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

While efficiency of scale makes sense for the bigger drive, trying to run it too far below or above its designed "sweet spot" will naturally drop efficiency into the crapper.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

Like warp drive, which is why it's more efficient to stick to intergral warp factors...

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

Of course, we can completly redesign that.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

OK, I can see noone liked my ideas on cloaking devices, so I'll say no more about that part of it for now. How about we just enjoy the TB for what it is concerning them, and use exhaust and tachyons, depending on the situation, and not disect it too much.

The engines seem to make sense when described in terms of efficiency, but if they use a low intensity warp field for impulse, why do they have to worry about time dialation. I thought warp fields were supposed to fix that problem. Do they need a field strenght high enough to reach warp 1 before it effects time, or am I missing someting else?

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

Warp fields fix the problem because they're not traveling faster than light, as far as physics are concerned. The low intensity warp field for impulse is to make the enterprise seem lighter, and thus have more acceleration.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

Ah, I get it now. Thanks for to explanation.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

Of course, unless you're dealing with omega particles, it doesn't really matter.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

How's that?

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

Because when an omega particle explodes, it creates a field that you cannot use warp drive in.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

oh, yeah, now I remember that. From a voyager show, isn't it? Something about and uncontrolable reaction that destroys subspace, I think.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

I think it interferes with subspace somehow. Not destroy it, since if you destroy subspace, then you'd be left with no normal space...

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

Oh, OK. It's been years since I saw the show.

Speaking of this topic. Are we keeping Omega particles in Narf's ST. I think we talked about leaving the whole Voyager series out, but I don't think that was in the poll. I don't have any problems with keeping them, but a few things would probably need to come out. Anyone else?

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

I think Voyager needs to run away from most fights with the borg, instead of kicking their butt every time.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

The problem with running away from "Teh Borg" is that they can run harder and faster than you can. And they wont stop. Ever.

Something I did forget, tachyons have their own inherent causality problems. As in very serious, casual loop type problems, if they exist in classical sci-fi terms. Of course they don't, being products of special relativity theory they are far more complex.

For this reason I'm changing my mind and going exhaust route, which bypasses any possibilty of temporal rubbish.

What am I saying? Warp drive has awful problems of it's own so it doesn't matter does it?

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

HEY! No erasing tachyons just because they have time travel! Temporal 'rubbish' makes for an interesting plot line, when used correctly!

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

When has it been used correctly? Very rarely is the answer and when it's bad it's awful.

Besides this is about a consistent Trek. Time travel cannot be consistent in any causal universe.

Tachyons can only got so quick and conform with relativity if they have negative mass. This makes interaction with them (like detecting them) somewhat tricky. What you end up doing is trying to detect the result of collisions and other such things. Hence the lack of evidence (bar one debated incidence).

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

So, have tachyons have negative mass? Don't have any problems with it.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

Hmm...Could the energy shields in ST be artificial (Quantum) mass?

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

Energy shields are pretty hard to rationalize.
But at the very least we can try to make them consistent.

Are they leaky or solid?
Limited charge, or work until the generator is damaged?
What is allowed to penetrate?

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

The shields in star trek use gravitons, projecting a force on incoming weapons. Beam weapons are refracted and disappated. Technically, they are leaky, as the more they are damaged the more leaks through. But armor dissapates the damage that goes through quite nicely. They work as long as energy can be fed to the shields, and can be redirected from other systems, such as weapons or life support. Subspace weapons penetrate them, however subspace weapons have unpredictable effects on life.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

Various episodes sure do like to throw in the solid-but-limited-charge thing though.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

Bah. Leaky shielding when it gets into the 10% region.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

Of course, there are also many episodes that use the perma-leaky shielding.

Shields are almost certainly based on a plotiton field. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

What about the large battles in DS9? I don't remember seeing shields on anyones ships during them. I could understand if Dominion ships could penetrate Fed shields, but it didn't seem like there were any on dominion ships.

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

That's because they didn't have the budget for a real space battle.

Besides, we're not exactly going canon here...

Re: OT: Revised Edition Star Trek
 

Canon is good. We just take the majority of the canon, and take out the tiny parts that conflict with the majority.