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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) Starfleet Ship Design Bureau, Refit ("To Boldly Go...")
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Simon_Jester said:
I actually disagree. ThoughtMaster has exhibited some very Cardie/Sydraxian thought patterns (i.e. unleashing the Biophage as a last gesture of pure nihilistic vengeful evil upon a victorious enemy). The problem is that he doesn't seem to understand that other people react intelligently to dangerous situations. He expects them to just stand there and let themselves be surrounded and threatened.
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Um, from my perspective, I doubt that the Cardassians would be creative enough to dream up such an idea. Not to mention that said species is one who would submit when faced with opposition, while my idea was based upon the belief of fighting till your last breath, and ensuring that if you are to perish, than make sure the one who killed you doesn't get the chance to savor their triumph.
 
UberJJK said:
You know while I get that it's canon and all, or at least Voyager canon, I never really got how a supernova can threaten a starship with the tech level of the Federation. From what I can tell even massive supernovae peak at something like 25% the speed of light. Given that we're talking about ships with warp drives and FTL sensors there is no way a supernova could threaten them unless they were right next to the star when it went off.

Even if you say a collapsing star disrupts warp fields the Enterprise-A was able to hit between 30% and 50% the speed of light at full impulse in TMP. More then enough to out run a supernova.
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I think Courageous was studying the star itself up close, when it happened.
 
Regarding the trial combat. Our ship had several advantages, and was somewhat lucky. The only Evasion in the fight - by our Explorer. The big hits - we had more of them (one 7+ and more 6+s than they did)

Edit:

Regarding Courageous, I am going to await more information before pointing fingers at Mentats. It could be 'natural', it could be Mentats, it could be the Romulons testing proto-Red Matter, it could be the Cardassian Fairy God Mother waving her wand (she was supposed to be aiming at the GBZ, but her aim needs work)
 
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UberJJK said:
Even if you say a collapsing star disrupts warp fields the Enterprise-A was able to hit between 30% and 50% the speed of light at full impulse in TMP. More then enough to out run a supernova.
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Time for the ship to react is still measured in seconds and Explorers are not known for agility. All it has to do is be within, say, fifteen to twenty lightseconds of the star.

EDIT: Arguably more. A reaction time of up to two minutes could be justified by it happening on a dogwatch or being misinterpreted at first considering artificial core collapse is not something most people expect.
 
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AKuz said:
If the Romulans had any fucking idea how dangerous they are they would have rolled in decades ago and used the Mentats to build new weapons and shit.

It can safely be assumed that if the Romulans know of the Licori, or at least enough about them, they would have invaded to seize the Licori stockpiles of Mad Science decades ago.
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That is dependent on them not mistaking the Mentants for Federation scientists poking things with a stick.
 
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SNRK

@OneirosTheWriter flubbed the battle.

Turn 0 - Ship SFS Serene is firing upon Ship USS S'harien
Damage roll - Hitpower 0.82 vs Shields 60.00

And it didn't matter at all.

Turn 40+ appears to be the source of much of the shot disparity...

Turn 40 - Ship SFS Serene is firing upon Ship USS S'harien
Damage roll - Hitpower 1.68 vs Shields 16.22
Ship USS S'harien Shields reduced to 14.54
Turn 41 - Ship USS S'harien is firing upon Ship SFS Serene
Damage roll - Hitpower 7.06 vs Shields 1.00
Ship SFS Serene Shields reduced to 0.00
Turn 42 - Ship SFS Serene is firing upon Ship USS S'harien
Damage roll - Hitpower 0.39 vs Shields 14.54
Ship USS S'harien Shields reduced to 14.15
Turn 43 - Ship USS S'harien is firing upon Ship SFS Serene
Damage roll - Hitpower 1.76 vs Shields 0.00
Ship SFS Serene reduced to 10.00 Hp
Turn 44 - Ship USS S'harien is firing upon Ship SFS Serene
Damage roll - Hitpower 2.24 vs Shields 0.00
Ship SFS Serene reduced to 7.76 Hp
Turn 45 - Ship SFS Serene is firing upon Ship USS S'harien
Damage roll - Hitpower 1.69 vs Shields 14.15
Ship USS S'harien Shields reduced to 12.46
Turn 46 - Ship USS S'harien is firing upon Ship SFS Serene
Damage roll - Hitpower 5.80 vs Shields 0.00
Ship SFS Serene reduced to 1.96 Hp
Turn 46 - Ship SFS Serene is attempting to retreat! Will retreat on turn 53!
Turn 47 - Ship USS S'harien is firing upon Ship SFS Serene
Damage roll - Hitpower 0.69 vs Shields 0.00
Ship SFS Serene reduced to 1.26 Hp
Ship 0 has taken casualties: 0/1/0 out of 7/4/4
Turn 48 - Ship USS S'harien is firing upon Ship SFS Serene
Damage roll - Hitpower 0.56 vs Shields 0.00
Ship SFS Serene reduced to 0.70 Hp
Ship 0 has taken casualties: 0/2/0 out of 7/4/4
Turn 49 - Ship USS S'harien is firing upon Ship SFS Serene
Damage roll - Hitpower 1.07 vs Shields 0.00
Ship SFS Serene reduced to 0 Hp!
Ship 2 has taken casualties: 2/0/0 out of 7/4/4

Which indeed appears to be some combination of Serene trying to run away due to taking hull and/or the Serene taking hull disabling its weapons...


Now, I'd like to take a moment here. Obviously I don't have access to the guts of the combat program so I can't actually critique it. But my understanding is that each turn a ship fires, it deals damage equal to a random % of its Combat rating.

If we proceed on the assumption that that % is drawn at random at equal probability from 1-100, then the average is 50.

So a point of combat adds ~.5 damage per firing turn.

By comparison a point of shield adds 10 shield. There's also regeneration which factors into that somehow, but I'm just a catgirl and I don't fucking understand high energy physics.

Somebody do the math on that and optimize I don't have time T_T
 
Night said:
Time for the ship to react is still measured in seconds and Explorers are not known for agility. All it has to do is be within, say, fifteen to twenty lightseconds of the star.
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I'd say more like two or three light seconds. Remember we're looking at a peak velocity of around 25PSL so every second away from the star gives them four seconds to react.

aeqnai said:
I think Courageous was studying the star itself up close, when it happened.
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It should be noted that if they were studying the star they'd probably have had an extra couple seconds warning since they'd detect the star collapsing before it actually exploded.

Still if they were up close and studying it that would be within the realm reasonably for the ship to get unlucky and react too slow to escape.
 
UberJJK said:
I'd say more like two or three light seconds. Remember we're looking at a peak velocity of around 25PSL so every second away from the star gives them four seconds to react
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Sensor detect-present-data-interpret data by operator (probably more than one way, outcome is improbable costs time)-pass data to commanding officer (outcome is improbable, ask for confirmation, costs time)-commanding officer decides on course of action-pass order to helm-helm reaction time-response time of ship to assume new course-activate maximum sublight-engines spool up.

Simply making the verbal "Core collapse." "Confirm?" "Confirm." costs you three-four seconds to actually say out loud and it's probably going to take more than just those four words to communicate the situation adequately. You can easily lose half a minute trying to do that.
 
If it's the result of some mentat's experiment (which is very likely)...

They really need to attend ethics classes.
 
UbeOne said:
If it's the result of some mentat's experiment (which is very likely)...

They really need to attend ethics classes.
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Ethics don't make you a legend. From a Mentat's perspective, recklessness makes a great deal of sense. You're going to die in under a decade anyways, so no need to bother with safety concerns. No time to do things the slow way. Get results or die trying is the logical choice when the alternative is die anyways. Now their disregard for other's safety is concerning, but not really all that unique. Our own history shows that without laws barring them from certain experiments scientists will try just about everything, even without the spectre of death hanging over them.
 
I'm pretty sure we've heard mention of mentats and supernovas before. Wasn't the big reason cited by the Ked Paddah for the declaration of war that mentats were making supernova weapons (or experiments that could be used as weapons) and using them too close to Ked Paddah territory? Having another one used around Laio space would pretty clearly point at the mentats.

That said I want to see this investigated much more heavily before we react. It could be a Ked Paddah black op with one of the captured mentats to turn us against the Licori or Romulan plot because Romulans.

It could even be a naturally unstable star that happened to collapse totally by coincidence. Not likely, but it's possible.
 
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Nervos Belli said:
Ethics don't make you a legend. From a Mentat's perspective, recklessness makes a great deal of sense. You're going to die in under a decade anyways, so no need to bother with safety concerns. No time to do things the slow way. Get results or die trying is the logical choice when the alternative is die anyways. Now their disregard for other's safety is concerning, but not really all that unique. Our own history shows that without laws barring them from certain experiments scientists will try just about everything, even without the spectre of death hanging over them.
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Oh god.

They're not just mad scientists, they're mad scientist Juicers from Rifts? I never looked at it that way but holy shit that's terrifying.
 
Nervos Belli said:
Ethics don't make you a legend. From a Mentat's perspective, recklessness makes a great deal of sense. You're going to die in under a decade anyways, so no need to bother with safety concerns. No time to do things the slow way. Get results or die trying is the logical choice when the alternative is die anyways. Now their disregard for other's safety is concerning, but not really all that unique. Our own history shows that without laws barring them from certain experiments scientists will try just about everything, even without the spectre of death hanging over them.
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If this is the Licori, that's going to have to change. Regardless of what the Licori have to say about it.

Yeah, that very probably means either permanant occupation or getting rid of Mentats. That's acceptable. Because anything less than genocide is acceptable if truely needed to prevent causal, reckless use of system-killing tech.

And if it created a stellar event that crippled or killed an EC Excelsior with shields optimized for stellar events, I don't think anything else in system is likely to survive.
 
Yeangst said:
It's thematic concern for me, rather than an actual analysis of gods/square parsec or whatever. They're beyond time and space (though can be killed by humans with Civil War replica weapons), but does that keep them from disagreeing, or trying to meddle at the same time. I guess if there were billions of Gods who never took an interest in material, warp capable civilizations, it wouldn't be an issue, but if there were 5 different gods who all liked to interact with starfleet cpatains, but never interacted with each other, or were associated with each other in any way, that's just too crowded a conceptual space for me.
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Actually that was explicitly Q killing Q and the muskets were an analogy so that Janeway could understand, and not actual muskets. IIRC
 
OneirosTheWriter said:
An elaborate performance of the original Torqui Leb Lagan, the Qloathi "Ride" that gives their modern explorer class its name, has been staged for our edification. It was a ... satisfactory experience. The pyrotechnic display in the third act could have used some poly-arcyanic structures to acquire the proper appearance of early photonic weaponry. Nonetheless, it was an adequate stand-in given the health concerns involved.

In other news, the Serene and the S'harien will face off in a battle exercise tomorrow.
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"Torqui Leb Lagan, presented by the Royal. Tickets starting from ninety credits. Explosives Whisperer Approved."
 
SuperHeavy said:
Star Trek super science strikes again, the good news is that nothing caused time to flow backwards or spawn space demons.
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Leslie: "I dunno, I'm hoping it WAS one of those two. Time flowing backwards isn't really all that bad once you get used to it, and if it's Rosie versus space demons I'd take odds on Rosie. Blown up, though... is just plain blown up."

Kaizuki said:
So a point of combat adds ~.5 damage per firing turn.

By comparison a point of shield adds 10 shield. There's also regeneration which factors into that somehow, but I'm just a catgirl and I don't fucking understand high energy physics.

Somebody do the math on that and optimize I don't have time T_T
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Well, if you get to fire 20 shots in a battle, each point of combat is doing 0.5 points of damage per hit. 10 points. Allow for evasion, and the breakeven value for a point of combat versus a point of shields is somewhere between "fired 20 shots before shield failure," and "fired 25." Shots after shield failure are less valuable.

In MOST of the battles we've seen under the new combat engine, battles last long enough for most ships to reach this threshold, but not vastly longer. This suggests that Combat is still roughly balanced against Shields- not vastly more valuable, but not vastly less valuable. Subtracting 1C from all your ships to add 1L, even if that were reliably possible (it may not be) probably wouldn't have a huge effect on performance. But the reverse is also true
 
I would like to note that "artificial core collapse" isn't quite the same as "supernova," just from a scientific point of view. If you somehow induce a core collapse in a small to medium main sequence star, there is no reason to expect a 'boom' of the same order as a supernova of the sort we understand.

On the other hand, the sheer weirdness of Star Trek exotic physics means the results could be if anything WORSE.
 
What if the hypothetical mentat was experimenting with subspace weapons?
 
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