Remove ads

To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

Linked contents
To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) Starfleet Ship Design Bureau, Refit ("To Boldly Go...")
Reader mode
Simon_Jester said:
Understood. I'm not going to keep kvetching about this, it's simply a point I wanted to make, that we shouldn't go from "the Cardassians never used cloaks in canon" to "therefore, they won't use them here."

The way I figure it, there's a 'period of maximum danger' defined by the question "If the Cardassians really did learn some significant things from their time in possession of Chang's combat cloak, how long would it probably take them to design a reverse-engineered version?"

My gut feeling is that if they're going to be successful in such an undertaking, it would take them something like 5-10 years from the time they got a good look at the cloaking device themselves to the time they duplicated it. If they haven't accomplished the goal by that time, then it seems more likely that they ran into fundamental theoretical or practical issues and gave up. Or that they simply never really tried to reverse-engineer the combat cloak in the first place. Maybe for fear of damaging it somehow.

Another way of looking at it is: If the Cardassians DID start a "research cloaking" tech right around the time they obtained the combat cloak, when would they finish it? My best guess is "about five to ten years after they started it." Which means we're arguably entering that period of maximum danger right now. If the Cardassians don't seem to have cloaking devices in 2320, I'll be a lot more comfortable in predicting they never will. But we're moving into exactly the time window when they might try refitting ships with cloaking devices and using them to deniably harass us.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I think we'll get some notice in advance if the Cardassians are developing a cloak. They'll either have to design a whole new ship or refit, or start adding modules to their ships. We should be able to detect either of those by having Intelligence focus on their ship buildup.

It also helps that Chang's device was blackboxed to suck a degree that the Syndicate didn't make any progress towards reverse engineering it in all those years they had it. Learning anything from it will take a while.
 
Last edited:
Torgamous said:
Yeah, but there's still a major flaw there.

Cardassian: I want to go home.

Risan: Okay.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yeah.

The way I figure it, Risa is a great place to send Cardassians who are, for lack of a better term, just normal people. People who meet the following three criteria:
1) People who we're trying to legitimately convince that the Federation way of life is superior.
2) People we have reason to think are susceptible to being convinced.
3) People who are unlikely to stage badass commando escape attempts when left to their own devices.

So Risa is a good place to send defectors (e.g. Gul Miran). Probably a good place to send Cardassian civilians. It is not a great place to send captured guls, Obsidian Order agents, and so on.
 
Because they have a kickass catchphrase. They assimilate cultural distinctiveness, too, after all. Doesn't mean they have to assimilate the biological stuff if they don't want it.

Algalon said:
I think we'll get some notice in advance if the Cardassians are developing a cloak. They'll either have to design a whole new ship or refit, or start adding modules to their ships. We should be able to detect either of those by having Intelligence focus on their ship buildup.

It also helps that Chang's device was blackboxed to suck a degree that the Syndicate didn't make any progress towards reverse engineering it in all those years they had it. Learning anything from it will take a while.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Hopefully you're right, and it's true that we DID find out about the Kadak-Tor in time to react to it. But I wouldn't put it entirely past the Cardassians to keep something utterly secret from us and spring it on us at the last minute. We THINK we know everything about them courtesy of our own efforts and the information we got from Miran and her officers. But we can't rule it out, especially since their information was current as of the end of 2309.

Assuming they can build berths as fast as we do, the Cardassians could have already built a 'Bolthole' facility for secret R&D and construction that didn't even exist when Miran was last fully plugged into Cardassian rumor networks, and that she might not have known about even if it had existed.

Again, plan for capabilities, not for intentions- and I don't think anyone should rule out the Cardassians' capability for hitting us with nasty surprises.
 
Last edited:
Random Member said:
Why would the Borg ever want to assimilate the Vogons?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Honestly, I feel like the Vogons would be one of the hardest species to assimilate. These are the people who Nature looked at and was so repulsed that she gave up on evolving them entirely. They still ended up the dominant lifeform on their planet. Vogons are known for two things, their awful poetry, and for being the most sheer bloody-minded creatures in the galaxy. They make a sport out of being as obstructive and uncooperative as possible. If you stuck Borg implants on a Vogon within a day the implant would be begging the other Borg to take it off this hideous body.
 
Sorry, I'd forgotten that relevant detail. My apologies.

That being said, there is a distinction between them having encountered telepaths and them having routine enough access to telepaths that they can reliably train high-ranking members of the State to resist telepathy.

Anyone who flies around in a universe where TOS is canon is, sooner or later, going to encounter some psychics, somewhere, at some time. That's a given. It never really crossed my mind that the Cardassians would be entirely ignorant of telepathy. Or that other starfaring species with 'deep history' in Star Trek like the Klingons and the Orions would be.

The question is, do they have regular access to the support of significant numbers of reasonably reliable telepaths when and as needed? The way the Federation has access to the entire species of Vulcans and Betazoids?

If so, Scott Linderley has a whole new level of headache to worry about.
 
Simon_Jester said:
The question is, do they have regular access to the support of significant numbers of reasonably reliable telepaths when and as needed?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Do they need the telepaths' support? For all we know there might be a race of telepaths on the other side of Cardassian space that they have been skirmishing with for decades/centuries. Given enough time countermeasures could be derived.


I think it's worth noting that everyone is forgetting a third options. It might be that rather then natural biological resistance or specific anti-telepathy training the mental conditioning given to Cardassian soldiers and operatives coincidentally also protects against telepaths. Coinicences can and do happen, especially in such a large and amazing galaxy.
 
Leila Hann said:
With regards to Cardassians and psi-resistance, I mentioned in a couple of my omakes that they've encountered telepaths before.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Aenar are also telepathic, so it shouldn't be that complex an adaptation. Probably Trek's fear of biological augments is the only reason why Andorians aren't telepathic as a race as well.
 
On TOS Telepaths, it'd be kinda crazy if the Cardassians or Yrillians had some sort of accident and spawned their own Gary Mitchell. Like how fucking nuts would that be?
 
Leila Hann said:
The Cardassians seem like the types to obsessively develop countermeasures to everything they encounter.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I am 100% with you on this. The trick is, how do you prepare a defense against telepathy that works well unless you can calibrate it against real live telepaths? The Cardassians might have solved this problem, I'm not trying to deny that. But it seems like that would be difficult, and that tends to make it a priori less likely as an explanation than "Cardassian resistance to telepathy Just Happened somehow, it's a coincidence," or "the Cardassians have access to some telepaths, watch out."

Iron Wolf said:
On TOS Telepaths, it'd be kinda crazy if the Cardassians or Yrillians had some sort of accident and spawned their own Gary Mitchell. Like how fucking nuts would that be?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That would be awesome and has probably already happened to the Yrillians, at least, given how long their species has existed.

UberJJK said:
Do they need the telepaths' support? For all we know there might be a race of telepaths on the other side of Cardassian space that they have been skirmishing with for decades/centuries. Given enough time countermeasures could be derived.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That's possible, but it would still be hard to create effective anti-telepathy measures without the cooperation of telepaths. How would you know it was working? How would you know if your attempts to refine the techniques weren't actually making them worse?

I think it's worth noting that everyone is forgetting a third options. It might be that rather then natural biological resistance or specific anti-telepathy training the mental conditioning given to Cardassian soldiers and operatives coincidentally also protects against telepaths. Coinicences can and do happen, especially in such a large and amazing galaxy.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That is a very interesting possibility. I like it.

However, it basically maps back to my option (1), namely that the Cardassians "just are" resistant to telepathy by coincidence. In which case (to go back to the original point) you can't use "this Cardassian has telepathy resistance" to deduce "therefore, they are a high-level operative of the state." Not if the training in question is a routine element of boot camp or whatever.

NullVoid said:
Aenar are also telepathic, so it shouldn't be that complex an adaptation. Probably Trek's fear of biological augments is the only reason why Andorians aren't telepathic as a race as well.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Aenar are telepathic, but they're also blind and for all we know may suffer from health problems or something. We know they can interbreed with normal Andorians, but we don't know what health issues and complications may arise from that.

That said, there is other evidence. If TOS is to be believed, there are human telepaths (Is There in Truth No Beauty spells it out, and Where No Man Has Gone Before singles out Mitchell and Dehner for conversion into demigodhood because of their high esper ratings). This was in keeping with 60s-era notions that psionic abilities were a likely, logical outgrowth of advancement in human potential. By the 80s this was less widely accepted, so in the TNG era you don't see so much evidence of psychics except for specific species where this is a common trait (Vulcans, Betazoids, etc.)

Anyway, on the basis of TOS, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there are actually quite a few species in the galaxy where individual telepaths are a thing, including the Cardassians. The catch is that this maps back to my option (2)... Namely, we need to be aware that the Cardassians probably have access to psychics.

It still boils down to either:

1) The Cardassians are naturally resistant, and/or have some routine treatment for their species that coincidentally interferes with telepathy, OR...
2) The Cardassians have access to telepaths they can rely on to train their elite in anti-telepathy protocol... in which case we need to watch out for those telepaths taking a more active role.

There are options (3) and so on, I'm sure, such as "the Cardassians spent centuries fighting telepaths of some kind and exterminated them all, but have still memorized the defense techniques they learned." But they all strike me as less probable.
 
Now I want the Kzin to be expanding on the other side of Cardassian space. They have occasional telepaths, and are such a different diplomatic style to the Federation that they are likely to be a headache for Cardassia (and would be a motivating factor for races in that area to affiliate with Cardassia too).
 
Option 4 is one you've forgotten @Simon_Jester : The Cardassians have formalized anti-telepath training to a series of mental exercises and meditations that anyone can learn, given time and effort, with or without an actual telepath to test themselves against. Now, that's bad, but it's also not as bad as it could be-no Cardassian-afiliated psychics need to exist for this to be true.

It would imply that it is pretty easy to develop anti-psi measures though.
 
Last edited:
The Cardassians are resistant against telepathy because that's better for the plot at keeping them as relevant opponents in diplomatic negotiations. And that is the real, real reason.
 
I'm totally on board with Briefvoice's answer, it's simply that different narrative explanations for why they have this ability have different mechanical results we should be aware of.

At least, if we assume the game runs on internal logic, which I do, because I respect the QM and also because I want to continue having any fun.
 
Vehrec said:
Option 4 is one you've forgotten @Simon_Jester : The Cardassians have formalized anti-telepath training to a series of mental exercises and meditations that anyone can learn, given time and effort, with or without an actual telepath to test themselves against. Now, that's bad, but it's also not as bad as it could be-no Cardassian-afiliated psychics need to exist for this to be true.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
No, they still needed telepaths when those exercises were being developed, otherwise you're proposing that they just made up some stuff and got it right by accident.
 
They needed the telepaths then. They do not, however, need them now.

The Cardassians have been around the block, it's entirely possible that they may have encountered and since disposed of a group of telepaths that was no longer useful to them after they learned how to defend themselves against telepathy.
 
Look at it this way. If Cardassians had telepathy as common practice in their espionage, we would have noticed by now. If one of those two unknown affiliates is telepathic, we'll hear about it soon enough.

Personally I go with them simply being a species that is coincidentally harder for Betazoids to read, coupled with some training that probably mostly is intended to control emotional reactions and aid in preventing giving away things in negotiations via regular 'tells'.

I know we tend to view the Cardassians as being blunt, but they are actually pretty good at manipulation. Even in this quest, if you look back at some of the early logs featuring Cardassians they are very smooth players who are excellent at remaining cool lizards under stress.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top