Alongside the psi-regulator and gravity sense (including warp field calculations), I'd say a translator and some variety of communications that works through a vacuum.
The Voyage Without
- Thread starter Hiver
- Start date
Ace Dreamer
Verified Reality User
- Location
- Between The Unknown & The Known
Possibly worth thinking about more some of the (short) Taylor Varga author omake, like the meeting and repairs with Scotty, the vacuum-lizards Apollo 13 rescue, the Area 51 second-hand alien-tech trolling, etc., etc. The thing started with a 'Luna Varga'/Worm cross, with the limiters taken-off the Varga, full-on Taylor Hebert doing Queen of Escalation, then the nitro booster was fitted, the nuclear power-train, and the FTL drive... (Metaphorically speaking.)
Arguably, including Lizards that can look down at Godzilla, chomp on Cthulhu, dragons (*cough* Breksta *cough*), shoulder dragons (Pern-style), multiversal magic (from DSR), pre-Big Bang stuff... might be said it got a bit... out of hand.
(Got so large and complex even though the author wants to write more, they need to do re-reads of the equivalent of a more than twenty-novels (80k words each) of work to ensure they're consistent with prior...)
Some... might object that. on occasion, stories get... silly. (Tis The Season)
This story dragon, likely quite happy to never, ever, have anything to do with the (Taylor Varga) Family.
Arguably, including Lizards that can look down at Godzilla, chomp on Cthulhu, dragons (*cough* Breksta *cough*), shoulder dragons (Pern-style), multiversal magic (from DSR), pre-Big Bang stuff... might be said it got a bit... out of hand.
(Got so large and complex even though the author wants to write more, they need to do re-reads of the equivalent of a more than twenty-novels (80k words each) of work to ensure they're consistent with prior...)
Some... might object that. on occasion, stories get... silly. (Tis The Season)
This story dragon, likely quite happy to never, ever, have anything to do with the (Taylor Varga) Family.
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Not in any normal circumstances. Gravity is consistent enough that it's perfectly safe to just assume it rather than measure its variations for normal practical purposes. Measuring it is occasionally scientifically useful, or useful for an engineer who is responsible for managing an artificial gravity system apparently.
It might also be useful for an interplanetary flier. Combined with the absurd computational power of the device, it might let a dragon instantly infer the astrography of a solar system from local observation?
(Or maybe an interstellar flier who uses it to tune the warp fields they're generating via an as-yet undiscovered capability.)
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- Location
- Omniverse #1345
Also useful for "Am i going the right way?" Defined by "heading towards slightly higher gravitation gradients.
Ace Dreamer
Verified Reality User
- Location
- Between The Unknown & The Known
All that, and the navigation, and...
Gravity sense is arguably the, critically required, conscious sensory side of a psionic gravity manipulation capability. The 'infant' part of this might be controlling (reducing) your own effective mass, to enable flight with a wing-area woefully inadequate to that task.
This should reasonably, at least, develop to be fully-vectored, to allow agile reaction-less movement in micro-gravity - this may already be in use on an unconscious level (note the lack of squashed (because, to a dragon, they're squishy) humanoids in the confined spaces of ships).
The limits? An Impulse Drive equivalent seems reasonable. With that, at least Navigational Shields, or micro Space debris could easily be fatal. Some form of FTL, not necessarily exactly like a Warp Drive, eventually? More drastically, the ability to move quite large objects, possibly while sitting inside them, like a Shuttle (or bigger?), as if were just moving yourself?
Interestingly, most Trek-tech seems to use subspace for its dirty tricks, this gravity-wrangling might avoid that. Which, might confuse a lot of "It must use subspace!" scientist-types.
Really, we don't know. And, it's always possible, different members of Astro Draconus (to coin a species name) might develop different strengths, in different directions?
(Astro Gravitico Draconus? Dunno.)
I don't see and you didn't argue any reason for this requirement.
Ace Dreamer
Verified Reality User
- Location
- Between The Unknown & The Known
Any manipulation capability without feedback is... of limited utility. The basic way any effectively-controlled action works.
Military example? Artillery performing indirect fire (say in WW 1) - feedback from 'spotters' is critical (no matter what some theorists, of the time, would have you believe).
Most technology works by performing manipulations with little or indirect feedback. Lots of fantasy abilities to generate effects don't include bonus senses too.
Feedback control systems are important, but are neither the only way to go nor do they only work with direct perception of the immediate effect. (Consider your own example - artillery spotters don't have a special sense for artillery shells, they just use common senses to see where exploded.)
Kaernetron
Feuergeist
- Location
- Weit, Weit dort Oben
It's still Star Trek. The Breen are the only people (I can think of) who interact with other species using encounter suits. No one else bothers with suiting up, let alone breathing masks.
I believe this oversight can be punished with very little effort on the part of Voyager's (or any other) crew.
Star Trek ships don't weaponize their artificial gravity either, unless the writer this week thinks they should.
tehcrash
Apprentice Supervillain
- Location
- Seattle-ish
This is however Star Trek without transporters. No magitech for easy boarding.
Starfleet has shown ready access to vacuum suits in the previous fics in this series, and the Kazon had to use breaching pods here in this fic, so I would expect that most species need to consider atmospheric concerns when boarding.
67
"Well, they sure are smarter," Carey said where he stood next to me as we watched Zero and One conduct maintenance to the shuttle's main deflector dish.
The order Zero had been given had been 'look after shuttle three'.
The drone had walked up to it, run diagnostics, found a fault I created in the deflector dish, realized it needed more hands and gone fetch One from the charging station in engineering.
Then both proceeded to get to work.
So far, they seemed almost as capable as Huginn and Muninn.
"It's a bit weird that they don't talk though," he then continued after a minute.
I blinked and turned my head to look at him, "...You want them to talk?"
"It's just a bit weird that they give you a PADD with what they want instead of just telling you," he said with a shrug, "Seems like a flaw in case of an emergency."
I liked that my drones didn't babble on. But I also had a visor to make the entire thing more seamless.
"...I'll make adjustments so they can speak to you," I sighed, "Just don't complain when they're not exactly good conversationalists. They're not made to be anything of the sort."
"Just sounds a bit more user friendly," he agreed, crossing his arms as the two drones slowly extracted the deflector dish from the shuttlecraft.
Not to me, but what do I know, I'm not a monkey. Besides, trying to keep humans from anthropomorphising things is a lost cause, I caught people naming their tools.
Might as well let them do what makes them happy.
I should put a section for a nametag on them, where the combadge would be if they were people. If I don't, people will start to mark them themselves to be able to tell them apart.
"I'll leave you to it," I said and headed out of the docking bay.
Another week of testing and then I think we could start production. Fifty or so should give us a nice amount of slack in manpower that we desperately need. It'll free up crewmen from routine maintenance, which would put less pressure on officers and let them do more interesting tasks. Which would increase morale.
The entire thing would ripple upwards and the end result would be me not needing to do twelve hour days anymore and may actually be able to put some effort into trying to find us a way back early.
Alright, that was a bit of wishful thinking.
But if I didn't have the time to actually try, the chance was zero which is a lot worse than almost zero.
Besides, I had seventy years to work at it, surely I'll be able to figure out something to get us home.
'Success! I have invented the wormhole drive! We will be home in less than a week!'
'We arrived two months ago,' says Dinah's grandchild, the current Captain.
'Fuck.'
I wasn't sure if I wanted to be amused or annoyed at that thought, so chose amused. Still, that was an interesting thought. Nobody has ever made a functioning artificial wormhole before, but in theory there was nothing to stop you from doing so. We already messed about with bending subspace using warp drives as a matter of course and a wormhole was basically a fold in spacetime between two points in space, using a tunnel through subspace.
Any thoughts, supercomputer?
I'm hungry,
...Fairly sure that was from me and not the alien supercomputer in my brain. Even so, it was a good idea and I headed for the lounge. It was mid shift, which meant Neelix would be in the mess hall. So I went to the other end of the ship to eat.
As I walked, I played with the gravity sense. I had not dared to try for max size again, that had been seriously too much. But shifting it around, growing and shrinking it was really neat.
It could even let me perceive subspace in a way, if indirectly.
Honestly, this was better than the calculator function, if more circumstantial.
Even so, gecko on the dashboard of a shuttlecraft. Look at me, I'm sunning.
Frustrating.
Grumble grumble.
Entering the lounge, I moved towards my usual table by the window as Huginn changed course and headed for the replicator, soon moving to put a large tray of mixed meats before me. Some cooked in various ways, some raw.
Yum.
"Lieutenant, do you have a moment?"
I looked away from my meal and swallowed a raw chunk of seal to find Tom Paris standing next to the table. I regarded him for a moment before I motioned towards the opposite chair, "if you don't mind me eating."
He shook his head and moved to sit down, "No, of course not," he said and frowned, being quiet for a long moment, waiting for me to swallow a roast chicken, "You don't like me."
I eyed him, "I feel like we had this conversation."
Paris nodded, "We did," he said and sighed, "And... it has been stuck in my mind."
"And?"
He took a breath and then let it out, leaning back in his chair, "...You were right in a way," he said, "That's who I was. It's not who I want to be. Who I am now."
"Words can be as light as a feather or as heavy as a star. There is no way to know which until they meet reality. You say you want to be better? That you are now?" I asked, "Don't tell me about it, just be."
Paris lips pressed together for a second before he nodded firmly once, "Alright," he said, "I... have a favor to ask."
"Asking is free."
"Once you've eaten, I would like you to come with me to see the Captain. There is something I need to tell her and I want you there as an... unbiased witness."
Swallowing a chunk of raw Taranodon, I then tilted my head in question, "I don't like you. I don't trust you. Hardly unbiased."
"Regarding this, I think you would be," he said and crossed his arms, "And I think Captain Janeway would appreciate you being there as well."
"Any hints?"
He shook his head, "Best if I only tell it once."
"Very well."
The order Zero had been given had been 'look after shuttle three'.
The drone had walked up to it, run diagnostics, found a fault I created in the deflector dish, realized it needed more hands and gone fetch One from the charging station in engineering.
Then both proceeded to get to work.
So far, they seemed almost as capable as Huginn and Muninn.
"It's a bit weird that they don't talk though," he then continued after a minute.
I blinked and turned my head to look at him, "...You want them to talk?"
"It's just a bit weird that they give you a PADD with what they want instead of just telling you," he said with a shrug, "Seems like a flaw in case of an emergency."
I liked that my drones didn't babble on. But I also had a visor to make the entire thing more seamless.
"...I'll make adjustments so they can speak to you," I sighed, "Just don't complain when they're not exactly good conversationalists. They're not made to be anything of the sort."
"Just sounds a bit more user friendly," he agreed, crossing his arms as the two drones slowly extracted the deflector dish from the shuttlecraft.
Not to me, but what do I know, I'm not a monkey. Besides, trying to keep humans from anthropomorphising things is a lost cause, I caught people naming their tools.
Might as well let them do what makes them happy.
I should put a section for a nametag on them, where the combadge would be if they were people. If I don't, people will start to mark them themselves to be able to tell them apart.
"I'll leave you to it," I said and headed out of the docking bay.
Another week of testing and then I think we could start production. Fifty or so should give us a nice amount of slack in manpower that we desperately need. It'll free up crewmen from routine maintenance, which would put less pressure on officers and let them do more interesting tasks. Which would increase morale.
The entire thing would ripple upwards and the end result would be me not needing to do twelve hour days anymore and may actually be able to put some effort into trying to find us a way back early.
Alright, that was a bit of wishful thinking.
But if I didn't have the time to actually try, the chance was zero which is a lot worse than almost zero.
Besides, I had seventy years to work at it, surely I'll be able to figure out something to get us home.
'Success! I have invented the wormhole drive! We will be home in less than a week!'
'We arrived two months ago,' says Dinah's grandchild, the current Captain.
'Fuck.'
I wasn't sure if I wanted to be amused or annoyed at that thought, so chose amused. Still, that was an interesting thought. Nobody has ever made a functioning artificial wormhole before, but in theory there was nothing to stop you from doing so. We already messed about with bending subspace using warp drives as a matter of course and a wormhole was basically a fold in spacetime between two points in space, using a tunnel through subspace.
Any thoughts, supercomputer?
I'm hungry,
...Fairly sure that was from me and not the alien supercomputer in my brain. Even so, it was a good idea and I headed for the lounge. It was mid shift, which meant Neelix would be in the mess hall. So I went to the other end of the ship to eat.
As I walked, I played with the gravity sense. I had not dared to try for max size again, that had been seriously too much. But shifting it around, growing and shrinking it was really neat.
It could even let me perceive subspace in a way, if indirectly.
Honestly, this was better than the calculator function, if more circumstantial.
Even so, gecko on the dashboard of a shuttlecraft. Look at me, I'm sunning.
Frustrating.
Grumble grumble.
Entering the lounge, I moved towards my usual table by the window as Huginn changed course and headed for the replicator, soon moving to put a large tray of mixed meats before me. Some cooked in various ways, some raw.
Yum.
"Lieutenant, do you have a moment?"
I looked away from my meal and swallowed a raw chunk of seal to find Tom Paris standing next to the table. I regarded him for a moment before I motioned towards the opposite chair, "if you don't mind me eating."
He shook his head and moved to sit down, "No, of course not," he said and frowned, being quiet for a long moment, waiting for me to swallow a roast chicken, "You don't like me."
I eyed him, "I feel like we had this conversation."
Paris nodded, "We did," he said and sighed, "And... it has been stuck in my mind."
"And?"
He took a breath and then let it out, leaning back in his chair, "...You were right in a way," he said, "That's who I was. It's not who I want to be. Who I am now."
"Words can be as light as a feather or as heavy as a star. There is no way to know which until they meet reality. You say you want to be better? That you are now?" I asked, "Don't tell me about it, just be."
Paris lips pressed together for a second before he nodded firmly once, "Alright," he said, "I... have a favor to ask."
"Asking is free."
"Once you've eaten, I would like you to come with me to see the Captain. There is something I need to tell her and I want you there as an... unbiased witness."
Swallowing a chunk of raw Taranodon, I then tilted my head in question, "I don't like you. I don't trust you. Hardly unbiased."
"Regarding this, I think you would be," he said and crossed his arms, "And I think Captain Janeway would appreciate you being there as well."
"Any hints?"
He shook his head, "Best if I only tell it once."
"Very well."
KillerFish
Grumpy Owl, Bird Lawyer
Every so often it's made clear that Zephyr way of thinking just isn't human, despite his upbringing.
What, preferring to get text comms on his HUD rather than verbal chatter? Zephyr might agree that that isn't human, but I don't think I would.
It's just all the silly monkeys going around without a HUD.
Kaernetron
Feuergeist
- Location
- Weit, Weit dort Oben
His brain can emulate monkey logic, but runs on dragon logic by default. It's the little things that drive this home.
A better way to put it might be its human software running on dragon hardware. And that overtime the dragon hardware is converting the human software to become dragon software
I think a LOT of what people are attributing to "dragon hardware" is nothing of the sort.
Zep spent four years working in Starfleet Intelligence. That's really the only thing needed to explain most of his odd tendencies, from not including voices in favor of HUDs (StIn don't need their tools to talk, security risk) to being brusque with low-performing crew (stakes are high, no room for dead weight).
Zep spent four years working in Starfleet Intelligence. That's really the only thing needed to explain most of his odd tendencies, from not including voices in favor of HUDs (StIn don't need their tools to talk, security risk) to being brusque with low-performing crew (stakes are high, no room for dead weight).
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I attribute that one to being an adolescent with shaky emotional stability (not the latter because of the former, though it may not help) who never gets pushed on that because he is (A) very smart and (B) a predator nearly the size of a shuttle.
- Location
- Pale Blue Dot
To be fair, most cultures, if looked at from the outside, contains A LOT of weirdness.
He's coming at it from a few hundred years in the past (and it's not hard to see how culture changes from decade to decade), another universe over, and with four years of Starfleet Intelligence as part of 'how does the place I'm in now work'.
While having dragon instincts and being overworked.
If he had not figuratively "pointed and laughed" in his own mind about some of the things the silly monkeys do, it would have been a screaming red flag that a crash was incoming. People NEED ways to vent. Otherwise the pressure just builds and builds and builds... and BOOM.
He's coming at it from a few hundred years in the past (and it's not hard to see how culture changes from decade to decade), another universe over, and with four years of Starfleet Intelligence as part of 'how does the place I'm in now work'.
While having dragon instincts and being overworked.
If he had not figuratively "pointed and laughed" in his own mind about some of the things the silly monkeys do, it would have been a screaming red flag that a crash was incoming. People NEED ways to vent. Otherwise the pressure just builds and builds and builds... and BOOM.
I was thinking he's been contacted by seska, he's not necessarily actually been the spy so far.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
So is DS9 just not a thing as far as Zephyr knows?
That would be a natural wormhole as far as he knows, not artificial
I think he was implying that the Federation and their peers had never made stable artificial wormholes using technology. The Prophets and other comparable civilizations aren't really peers to the Federation.