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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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AKuz said:
EDDINGTON DID NOTHING WRONG!!!!!
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So we're psychological thriller villains? :V

"Borg assimilation is inefficient. We don't force assimilation - when we are done with you, you will assimilate yourself."

I am vaguely reminded of this Mirrorverse idea I had once, where the Federation was this seemingly vast benevolently enlightened entity that straddled Alpha and Beta Quadrants...only it was in reality ruled by the genetical ubermensch Auguments of Sol, with Klingons as battle thralls and Vulcan-Romulans acting the role of Vorta. The Changelinks are friendship-loving underdogs that must fend off the impending "enlightenment" of Gamma Quadrant by the Federation and their latest allies, the Cardassians.
 
TyrialFrost said:
There's "good" and there's UFP Galaxy Police, sticking their beaks into others spheres of influence and constantly at war with all the non-aligned states we interfere with.
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If we affiliate with an alien species, by definition they are doing it voluntarily, associating with us voluntarily. We do not coerce or threaten anyone into affiliate status.

If someone wants to be our affiliate, and has a problem because someone is threatening them, great, us solving that problem is totally okay. If it turns out the original threat was our affiliate's fault to begin with, we can sort that out, just like we sorted out the Caitian-Dawiar War.

And the idea that we should let Group A harass or hurt Group B because affiliating with Group B would be 'sticking our beaks' into Group A's "sphere of influence..." Well, I'm pretty sure that's not what you meant because that would be silly.

lbmaian said:
Given what we know of Starfleet Logistics Command's budget from the Shipyard Ops vote, that 5pp may actually not be the political dewlmaking to convince the member fleet for access time; it could just be the political cost of marshalling the resource acquisitions for constructing that freighter.
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Or it could be a mix of both?

lbmaian said:
(I know you're excluding hiveminds, but what's so wrong about them? They're like the extreme communist wet dream that human biology just couldn't hope to aspire to... until now :V)
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The wrongness comes from the nonconsensual character of the Borg, specifically. If the Apiata were a hivemind and weren't trying to forcibly convert others into more worker-bees or something, it wouldn't be a problem.

Whereas the Borg? Well, they're not just a hivemind, I think they're what the Culture novels call a "hegemonizing swarm." They're a big spacegoing thing that seemingly exists only to make itself bigger (though if they were that big, and that advanced, they couldn't be that OLD and have it still make sense). The Borg don't really have culture, they take from others very heavily but don't seem to create much themselves. Their own drones rhapsody about how wonderful being a Borg is but that just means the Collective has wires hooked up to the pleasure centers of their brains...

It's like, the Federation won't actually ask you to give up anything you really valued. If you value it more than you want to associate with them, you can keep it. They will not hold any guns to your head, there is no coercion.

The Borg? They don't even bother to hold a gun to your head and force you to choose. They just turn you into one more networked entity and dissolve your culture and history into their databases.

The problem isn't that they're a hivemind. It's that they're an asshole hivemind.
 
lbmaian said:
(I know you're excluding hiveminds, but what's so wrong about them? They're like the extreme communist wet dream that human biology just couldn't hope to aspire to... until now :V)
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nocarename said:
Violent and paranoid single species empires stand up as the next entry into history, when they aren't multi-species caste systems or aggressively recruiting hiveminds.
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Simon_Jester said:
The problem isn't that they're a hivemind. It's that they're an asshole hivemind.
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Just so. Adjectives matter. See bolded for where the problems arise.
UbeOne said:
"The Federation is worse than the Borg, for the Borg are upfront with their assimilating, while you guys do it so subtly, everyone loves you for it!" :V
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This is what happens when you abandon independent R&D. You fall behind on the tech curve somewhere. The Borg fell behind in xenopsych and diplomacy. The Dominion, at least, seems to do their own, if less mad science inclined, research.

If you want to argue counterparts (voluntary, multi-species alliance) , maybe the Breen? But we don't see a lot of them... anywhere that I'm aware of really. Never wandered into the parts of the novels where the Breen seem to get talked up, so.
 
nocarename said:
The Dominion, at least, seems to do their own, if less mad science inclined, research.
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The Dominion has fallen behind in their own areas too.

They've been warp capable and conquering for at least 2000 years. And they're biotech skills are clearly off the charts. But apart from that their only notable technology is their long distance beaming.

They've got no transwarp technology. Their weapons and shields are only slightly more advanced than Federation baseline. And they seem completely taken aback by the Federation ability to adapt (first to their weapons, and then to the Breen energy dampening tech).

Now I'm not saying the Dominion isn't more advanced. They clearly are. Their Industrial base is insane, and they can field forces that can stalemate the three great Alpha Quadrant powers. But for 2000 years of technological development as a warp capable species?
 
Cteatus said:
The Dominion has fallen behind in their own areas too.

They've been warp capable and conquering for at least 2000 years. And they're biotech skills are clearly off the charts. But apart from that their only notable technology is their long distance beaming.

They've got no transwarp technology. Their weapons and shields are only slightly more advanced than Federation baseline. And they seem completely taken aback by the Federation ability to adapt (first to their weapons, and then to the Breen energy dampening tech).

Now I'm not saying the Dominion isn't more advanced. They clearly are. Their Industrial base is insane, and they can field forces that can stalemate the three great Alpha Quadrant powers. But for 2000 years of technological development as a warp capable species?
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Everyone deals poorly with Federation adaptation and diversity. The Borg deal poorly with Federation adaptation and diversity. This is no surprise.

I also suspect that the Dominion focuses on having more than enough forces everywhere instead of trying to shuffle around forces every time they deal with a problem. The better for putting down resistance movements in occupied territories without disrupting other plans. With less pressure on developing fast ships from a doctrinal stand point and until they hit the wormhole, not any known neighbours with an even vaguely comparable industrial base, a certain degree of stagnation is inevitable.

Do you think we should send gift baskets out to neighbouring powers? Like, the Klingons and Romulans get notes thanking them for helping to drive sensor development and the Cardassians one for promoting greater industrialization, or is that too flippant?
 
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nocarename said:
Everyone deals poorly with Federation adaptation and diversity. The Borg deal poorly with Federation adaptation and diversity. This is no surprise.

I also suspect that the Dominion focuses on having more than enough forces everywhere instead of trying to shuffle around forces every time they deal with a problem. The better for putting down resistance movements in occupied territories without disrupting other plans. With less pressure on developing fast ships from a doctrinal stand point and until they hit the wormhole, not any known neighbours with an even vaguely comparable industrial base, a certain degree of stagnation is inevitable.

Do you think we should send gift baskets out to neighbouring powers? Like, the Klingons and Romulans get notes thanking them for helping to drive sensor development and the Cardassians one for promoting greater industrialization, or is that too flippant?
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I dunno, that honestly sounds like something Sulu might do.
 
nocarename said:
Do you think we should send gift baskets out to neighbouring powers? Like, the Klingons and Romulans get notes thanking them for helping to drive sensor development and the Cardassians one for promoting greater industrialization, or is that too flippant?
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Way too flippant. We owe them our thanks for the kadak-tor as well, it would just be rude of us not to mention that.
 
Cteatus said:
The Dominion has fallen behind in their own areas too.

They've been warp capable and conquering for at least 2000 years. And they're biotech skills are clearly off the charts. But apart from that their only notable technology is their long distance beaming.

They've got no transwarp technology. Their weapons and shields are only slightly more advanced than Federation baseline. And they seem completely taken aback by the Federation ability to adapt (first to their weapons, and then to the Breen energy dampening tech).

Now I'm not saying the Dominion isn't more advanced. They clearly are. Their Industrial base is insane, and they can field forces that can stalemate the three great Alpha Quadrant powers. But for 2000 years of technological development as a warp capable species?
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I think what happened to the Dominion is that they became complacent but not ultimately complacent, once they had enough technology that they could brute-force squash anyone near them with better technology. The Changelings run the Dominion, and they aren't really tool-users by instinct as far as I can tell. They still recognized on general principles that developing better ways to do things was probably a good idea, but it didn't seem urgent enough to be worth sending dedicated research ships off into the unknown or poking spatial anomalies.
 
Simon_Jester said:
I think what happened to the Dominion is that they became complacent but not ultimately complacent, once they had enough technology that they could brute-force squash anyone near them with better technology. The Changelings run the Dominion, and they aren't really tool-users by instinct as far as I can tell. They still recognized on general principles that developing better ways to do things was probably a good idea, but it didn't seem urgent enough to be worth sending dedicated research ships off into the unknown or poking spatial anomalies.
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Remember how loosely the Dominion is organized. It took years just to find someone who could/would contact the people who could speak on on behalf of the Dominion (the Vorta). It's overriding policy to most of the species who are dominated is to give them a bunch of harsh restrictions on what they are allowed to do and then barely contact them for years at a time. Under the circumstances new technology can only be disruptive to the status quo, and the Founders are all about the status quo.
 
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