STAR TREK: A Long Road (Voyager Fix It Quest)

Model DC.14F said:

I just want you to know, this is causing me to have flashbacks to when the MLP fandom was at its perk, and I'm not sure how that makes me feel.

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DragonCobolt said:

One of his crewmates was a dolphin!

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Model DC.14F said:

I just want you to know, this is causing me to have flashbacks to when the MLP fandom was at its perk, and I'm not sure how that makes me feel.

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A few pages back we had a short discussion in the thread about Starfleet phaser rifles and how because of their size they were not fit for use in shipboard actions. The assumption was that Starfleet phaser rifles were oversized and unwieldy which was a position that I myself held. The truth however, as I found out, is that phaser rifles aren't quite as big as most of us seem to think they are.

If one searches startrekpropcollector.com for the auctions of the various Starfleet phaser rifles that were used throughout the franchise's history they will find that the dimensions stated are comparable to those of modern small arms. Due to the peculiarities of prop construction, budgets, stunt props, and the existence of "hero" and background props there is a variance of upwards of two inches when it comes to the size of these props but certain measurements still come up more often than others. For the sake of simplicity I will be treating those numbers as the proper sizes.

Let us begin with the smallest Starfleet phaser rifle, the blocky "LEGO" phaser rifle first introduced in The Next Generation. This rifle is a mere 25 inches long which for reference is 3.3 inches longer than an MP5 with its stock collapsed. The longest rifle is the "EVA" phaser rifle, so called because in First Contact it was carried by Picard and his crew when they conducted a spacewalk on the hull of the Enterprise-E. That rifle comes in at a hefty 36 inches. Despite that the EVA rifle is still areound 2 to 3 inches shorter than a classic M16. All the other rifles including the compression phaser rifle featured in early Voyager, the two normal phaser rifles introduced in First Contact, and the Nemesis phaser rifle all measure 33 inches. 33 inches just so happens to also be the length of an M4 carbine if its stock were fully extended.

Starfleet phaser rifles as it turns out are proportioned fairly well for close quarters combat. If so though, why bring up the topic of small arms in a proposal? Well that's because there exists a phaser rifle in Star Trek that's even better suited for the CQC role and one that we might already have few examples of in inventory.



Allow me to present you with the Bajoran phaser rifle. Coming in at 25 inches it would be justifiable for you to initially be confused as to why I consider it a weapon better suited for close in fighting than any of Starfleet's own rifles, things however become clearer on learning that 8.5 inches of that 25 inch rifle belongs to the weapon's skeletal stock. Remove that and the Bajoran rifle becomes a mere 16.5 inches. That is eight inches shorter than the similarly stockless TNG phaser rifle. For an idea of how small that actually is an MP7 with a collapsed stock is 16.3 inches long.

I suspect the Bajoran rifle is as short as it is because it unlike other phaser rifles takes advantage of that fact that it is a phaser and stacks its internals vertically rather than laying them out horizontally. A traditional firearm has to lay out its mechanisms lengthwise because it fires bullets loaded from a magazine that must travel from one end of the weapon to the other. A phaser doesn't. The projectile it fires forms at its muzzle. The Bajorans appear to have realized this fact and built a rifle to take advantage of it. Where most other rifles in Trek are a couple of inches tall, excluding grips and mounted devices, the Bajoran phaser rifle is a whopping 7 inches. A bit of quick, dirty math reveals that that added depth grants the Bajoran rifle the same volume to dedicate to internal mechanisms as a Starfleet phaser rifle.

Since the Bajoran phaser rifle is... well, Bajoran, there is a decent chance that Brian's Maquis cell were equipped with some. Depending on how close the Maquis are with Bajor in quest canon Brian may even have been given the rifle's replicator pattern. That would go a long way to easing manufacture of additional copies of the weapon and any undertaking to build off the design to produce a more advanced close quarters rifle.

As for what firearm Voyager should use to combat enemies with a weakness to old fashioned bullets, my inner Stargate fanboy says we should go with the P90. It is small at a mere 19.9 inches long, has a high rate of fire that benefits from a fifty round magazine, sports integrated sights, is fully ambidextrous, and due to its pistol caliber cartridge is unlikely to cause hull breaches. The P90's top loading magazine while different from those of traditional firearms is closer to how power packs are swapped out on the blocky Starfleet phaser rifle which would also make it easier to familiarize the crew with. Finally picking the P90 would be a neat call back to Stargate's Asgard-Replicator plotline which had as a major story element energy weapons being ineffective against the featured antagonists who were however vulnerable to humanity's primitive chemically propelled firearms.

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As I see it there are three areas in which the Val Jean can be improved. These are firepower, power generation, and armor. Firepower because the Val Jean is an ambush predator whose ability to inflict damage is tied directly to the strength of her alpha strikes, power generation because the Val Jean's greatest strength, her cloaking device, eats up nearly half of the ship's power reserves every time it is turned on, and armor because the Val Jean is unable to raise her shields at the same time that she is using her cloaking device.

Granting the Val Jean more firepower is rather simple. For whatever reason the Cardassians never equipped the ship with photon torpedo launchers. Whether this was something unique to the Val Jean or is a characteristic of all Keldon-class ships is unknown but it does means that it would be possible to bump up the ship's overall firepower by welding on a weapons pod packed with torpedo launchers. What makes things even better is that launching photon torpedoes is an act that costs zero power to do meaning the newly added weapons would not exacerbate the power situation.

Spoiler: Kitbash of how such a weapons pod could look featuring the Miranda's roll bar

Improving the ship's armor should be similarly simple, if time consuming. The Defiant's service record proves that ablative armor is capable of withstanding modern starship grade weaponry, at times without the aid of deflector shields even. Armoring the entirety of the Val Jean in ablative armor would make it far less vulnerable when cloaking and decloaking but that would also be highly time consuming. A compromise that would see less required hours but still an increase in survivability would be one that sees only those sections of the ship containing critical ship systems protected by a layer of ablative armor.

Increasing power generation will be a bit more involved than giving the Val Jean more guns and armor. One method of increasing power generation would be to overhaul the ship's warp core which is a task that is easier said than done. Often times improving an existing design is more difficult than building a more efficient one from scratch and that is when those involved have access to the design specifications. The Voyager crew would have to reverse engineer a Cardassian warp core, learn Cardassian tech, and then figure not just a more efficient design but an efficient design that the current warp core could be upgraded into.

In that context it would be far simpler to create a new warp core, place it into a secondary hull, and have that work in parallel with the Val Jean's original core. It isn't unheard of for a ship to have multiple warp cores. The as yet unbuilt Prometheus's three independent sections were all warp-capable implying that the combined ship had at least three warp cores in total. Going with a secondary hull also has the added benefit of providing an area to put additional systems and weapons. The ability to mount photon torpedo launchers on a secondary hull would invalidate the need for a dedicated weapons pod and save the crew the time and effort that would have otherwise gone into its installation.

Should we want to get particularly ambitious with the refit we could go and equip the secondary hull with its own warp drive and impulse engine and turn it into a section capable of detaching from the ship and conducting independent operations. Like how the Galaxy-classes are able to separate their saucer and drive sections or the aforementioned Prometheus and its three way split.

If one were to go that far there would even be a perfect name for the "new ship." The Cosette.

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We know from the TNG episode "Who Watches the Watchers" that Starfleet duck blinds make use of hologram generators to hide objects from individuals belonging to pre-warp society and it is implied that the same technology is what is used to camouflage the isolation suits that appear the opening of Insurrection.

Since not all living organisms are limited to seeing in the visible spectrum it would make sense that even this limited camouflage – limited compared to genuine cloaking – would still be capable of fooling thermal and infrared scans. Presumably the more exotic Trek style sensors available to warp-capable societies wouldn't be fooled though. That would explain how everyone in Insurrection was able to keep track of those people wearing isolation suits with ease other than the technologically regressive Ba'ku. It could also explain why isolation suits and duck blinds don't trigger the "no cloaking devices" clause of the Treaty of Algeron. They might not be advanced enough to qualify as one any more than a ghillie suit does.

An isolation cloak that crew members could leave in their transporter buffers and throw on quickly could prove useful. While as stated before it is unlikely to withstand close scrutiny from sensors, people rarely default to those in day to day operations outside of high security areas. A foot patrol is more likely to visually sweep an area if they aren't on the alert for a potential break in. In such cases an isolation cloak would be sufficient for staying hidden. Even in cases where an enemy is aware of the cloak it would still help in the way camouflage is supposed to by breaking up the wearer's silhouette and forcing pursuers to slow down to confirm their target. Being hologram based an isolation cloak could even be used to disguise the wearer as something or someone else, a feat that would not be possible with a more traditional cloaking device.

Beyond all that the isolation cloak would also be useful as a means of avoiding detection by animals. It may not be a common risk but it is one none the less. In canon Voyager, Hogan was infamously killed by a Hanonian land eel in the episode "Basics, Part II." An isolation cloak would help crew members avoid detection by carnivorous predators and allow them to more easily move past territorial creatures without drawing their ire.

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In the battle between the Eloise and Breen flotilla it was revealed that inertial dampeners are part of the reason why starships in the quest's version of Star Trek move more like aircraft and less like Starfuries. When R'lash disabled the Eloise's inertial dampener it allowed her to swing the Bird-of-Prey on its axis while preserving its initial velocity. Doing so allowed R'lash to forgo hitting the Breen vessel's strengthened forward shields in favor of firing the Bird-of-Prey's forward firing weapons into the frigate's rear.

That stunt along with the 2003 reboot of Battlestar Galactica are illustrative of the usefulness of Newtonian maneuvers. Viper pilots in Ron Moore's Voyager nBSG regularly take advantage of physics to pull of a myriad of maneuvers from flipping an entire 180 degrees to engage their pursuers head on to simply using their fighter's thrusters to strafe their targets. Voyager's own fighters would benefit from being able to conduct similar such maneuvers.

The problem with turning off the inertial dampeners though is that it leaves those manning the craft susceptible to g-forces. R'lash herself nearly blacked out during her maneuver only just barely managing to cling to consciousness for long enough to pull it off. G-suits would help in this regard, helping to keep pilots conscious whenever the inertial dampeners are shut off. Preferably the suits would be designed with a sealed helmet in mind to provide breathable atmosphere in case of emergencies, but frankly even the ones used in the 21st century would be an improvement over what the pilots have now, which is nothing.

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This proposal is a bit different the others because it's less a project and more of a policy change. Voyager already has working personal shields but at the moment they are only handed out when it is decided that their use is warranted. While I understand why this is the case from a gameplay perspective it still bugs me from a storytelling one.

With Voyager stranded in the middle of the Delta Quadrant, far from home and any reliable source of reinforcements or replenishment, while skirting the space of hostile civilizations one of which is the Borg, it would make sense for the crew to take all available measures to try to avoid casualties of any variety. With there only being so many trained personnel in the fleet, Voyager is in a position where even a handful of short term casualties could prove to be vastly detrimental. For example, if the Doctor were somehow disabled, Voyager would lose access to a good number of advanced lifesaving medical techniques until he could be brought back online.

Phasers are already standard issue for away teams despite them being offensive weapons. A purely defensive device like a personal shield should not be at odds with Starfleet ideals. In space, raising shields is generally accepted as a sensible precaution by most involved, with lowering one's shields considered a major display of trust. Meanwhile powering weapons is universally seen as a hostile act.

I suppose one could make the argument that shields prevent scanning and thus the presence of personal shields could be considered inflammatory because of that, however that would mean keeping shields up at all time and that runs contrary to how shields are used in Star Trek. Shields are raised in Star Trek during or in anticipation of combat. Crew would no more activate shields in non-combat situations than they would whip out their phasers.

There should be no ideological reason for Janeway or any of the crew to be opposed with making personal shields standard issue. The only reason that I can think of for personal shields to be limited is logistical and even then I find it difficult to believe that a Sovereign-class starship like Voyager would be unable to at the very least supply enough for the fleet's away teams.

I suppose I would settle for a sensible reason why personal shields have to be handed out on a case by case basis.

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Starfleet's standard issue environmental suits are far from the best EVA suits out there in fiction. They're primarily made of cloth leaving them vulnerable to punctures and tearing, lack self-sealing mechanisms meaning any damage incurred will result in a loss of atmosphere or exposure to contaminants, and when worn the suit's helmet connects to the rigid chest piece leaving the wearer unable to turn their head left or right without also moving their upper body. Not being armored and not having a self-sealing mechanism makes this suit particularly dangerous to use in combat as one would only wear an environmental suit into combat when exposure to the environment is hazardous if not outright lethal. What makes things worse is that it wouldn't even take direct weapons fire to create a hole in these suits. Ensign Boimler's environmental suit was ripped open at the shoulder in "First First Contact" when he struck a bulkhead while underwater.

While it may seem like overkill, I believe that there is merit to the idea of replacing the current environmental suits aboard Voyager and the Val Jean with fully sealed suits of power armor. For one thing it would mean that crew members would no longer be a single mistake away from fatal exposure since armor designed to withstand weapons fire is going to hold up against most roughhousing. Just as important though is that the added strength that is characteristic of power armor would allow for the suit to carry additional systems without burdening the wearer.

A powered suit could come equipped with thrusters for use in zero-g environments. The levitation boots Spock uses in The Final Frontier are proof that Starfleet has the technology to make propulsion systems powerful enough to grant an adult humanoid the ability to fly small enough to fit into a pair of boots. Person scale anti-gravity devices aren't unheard of either. There exist anti-grav harnesses and while they aren't spoken about in detail we know from context clues that they are worn and they work to keep falls from becoming lethal, possibly in a manner similar to the spell Feather Fall from D&D. The two technologies combined could be enough to allow the suit to achieve sustained flight, provided that it were light enough of course.

Unlike in Mass Effect, Star Trek doesn't have access to a material that lets people manipulate the mass of objects but it does have warp cores. In both TNG and DS9 the cast made use of warp fields to make objects lighter and for it to be easier to influence them. A low level warp field could be wrapped around the suit to lower its weight assuming thrusters and anti-grav alone weren't sufficient to lift the suit off the ground. Of course in order to be able to raise a warp field the suit would need to be equipped with a warp core and field coils. In the Lower Decks episode "An Embarrassment of Dooplers" Rutherford and Tendi have a working scale model of the Cerritos complete with a functional warp core, indicating that it wouldn't be impossible to make a warp core small enough to fit in a powered suit.

The addition of a warp core means more than being able able to raise a warp field, it also means an increase in power generation. Among the things that core could power are deflector shields. Shields that can draw power from the suit are bound to be stronger than those of personal force fields that dependent on a smaller, more limited power source. As an aside deflector shields can also be used to generate a low level warp field, which is what Chief O'Brien did in "Emissary." The additional power could also be used for inertial dampeners to mitigate the risks of flying the impact of forceful landings.

Extending the suits' legs with digitigrade stilts could further help with shock absorption. The longer legs would additional benefit on foot traversal by increasing the wearer's stride, letting them go further distances without expending as much energy. Anti-grav would help compensate for any stablility issues that arise from the use of digitigrad legs. The suit's thrusters too could help on the ground granting the user a burst of speed, working to propel them further forward when in a run, or extending the height or reach of a jump.

With how often scenarios arise where transporters cannot be used be it because the ship is under attack and unable to lower shields or because an area is saturation in some manner of plot radiation a powered suit that can be used for long term, long distance exploration isn't a bad idea. Shuttles can't land anywhere and a single shuttle can only carry a group if they are all gathered together. Wheeled vehicles can't fit into the same places that people can and cannot drive over sufficiently rough ground. An away team equipped with powered suits could cross vast distances without the need for vehicles and would have a better chance at long term survival if they happened to end up isolated from Voyager.

A suit capable of flying also opens up new possibilities. Crew could be deployed from high altitude out of shuttles and instructed to fly down to the world below themselves. They could also be deployed from treetop height without the shuttle landing. In cases where people need to be evacuated but shuttles are unable to find a suitable landing site nearby suited crew could ferry evacuees into shuttles. While on the topic of evacuation the fully sealed suits would also allow the wearers to rescue people trapped in hazardous environments, with their augmented strength being used to clear away debris and if need be to carry out the wounded.

Alternatively the suit could come equipped with a miniature tractor beam similar to how RIGs in Dead Space can be equipped with kinesis modules. In the early TNG episode "The Naked Now" Wesley ended up creating a tractor beam emitter small enough to be carried in two hands that was capable of lifting up a chair. A carefully adjusted tractor beam could move debris without shifting it and lift up a wounded person with less risk of causing them further injury. A built in tractor bean would be ofuse during EVAs as well for much the same reasons kinesis modules are popular in Dead Space's industrial sector.

Speaking of Dead Space the suit could be equipped with holographic emitters, though unlike in the other franchise where suit holograms are used to project heads up displays it could be used here to bring the Doctor out into the field. When that happens the suit's shields could shift from forming a protective barrier around the suit to forming force fields around the Doctor's projection granting him the solidity necessary to treat his patients. When not being used to receive the Doctor's help the emitters could be used to conjure up distractions and mask the suit from sight via holographic camouflage.

The suit doesn't have to be bulky like 40K's power armor. Smaller suits have the benefit of being able to go places regular people can and they tend to be proportioned closer to a humanoid which makes them less strange and therefore less threatening. Bigger suits are harder to get flying and with what DC has stated on how phasers can punch through armor there isn't much of a point to heavily armored suits either. The weight that would have gone to layers of ceramite equivalent would be better used on the previously mentioned equipment.

A transparent faceplate could help in letting others see that the wearer is themselves a living being and an individual, but done wrong it can do the opposite. I dunno about anyone else but personally I find those helmets that only show a person's face and not the rest of their head a little off putting. It reminds me of when Peter Weller's RoboCop takes off his helmet. While it could be argued that opaque faceplates work to make people faceless I don't necessarily agree that has to be the case. The human brain is very skilled at seeing faces where it shouldn't and I suspect that is a trait that is true for Trek's other humanoid races as well. If a helmet is designed to have a face it will register to people as having a face and the kind of face that it is intended to resemble will more determine whether it turns the wearer into a faceless mook or a noble knight.

Spoiler

The technology, technical know how, in-character motivations, and inspiration needed to birth this hypothetical suit are all present. There already exist assistive exoskeletons like the one used by Melora Pazlar. The abundance of neural scanners and interfaces available to Starfleet sidesteps the need for intrusive implants like the Black Carapace. Amy is intimately familiar with the ins and outs of power armor having used it in her timeline of origin. Alex mentioned an interest in having more protection in the aftermath of Voyager's boarding. Harry just had a magical – in more than one sense – experience that taught him the exhilaration of flying. Danara is looking for a way to thank the Doctor for freeing her from the prison of her mind. Even the digitigrade legs don't come out of nowhere with Voyager having aboard it at least one Xindi-Insectoid security officer.

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samdamandias said:

Rider? 'e 'ardly knows 'er!

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