The Reapers in 22nd Century Star Trek

[User1401]

I did read the thread, and I saw a wildly differing spectrum of warp speeds. Contradictions are unfortunately unavoidable; ultimately a contradiction that breaks the plot of a couple specific episodes without shrinking given distances (which is possible) is preferable to a contradiction which breaks the plot of an entire TV show without expanding distances (which is not possible; changing 70,000 light years to, say, 700,000 lightyears would mean Voyager was well outside the Milky Way).

[Mike DiCenso]

You missed the point again. It's not the distance that matters nearly so much as the lack of navigational data. Again, "Year of Hell", "Hope and Fear", and "Q2", all make this point. We can even reasonably speculate that Neelix's help cut 5 years off the initial 75 year estimate, which is why from "Eye of the Needle", onwards, 70 years seemed to be the bench mark time.

This is why all the 10,000c plus range estimates are mostly found in the Federation or other well-charted areas.

I mean, what is there not to understand? It's canon, and the high-end examples are not a mere one or two episodes, but dozens.
-Mike

[User1401]

You missed the point again. It's not the distance that matters nearly so much as the lack of navigational data. Again, "Year of Hell", "Hope and Fear", and "Q2", all make this point. We can even reasonably speculate that Neelix's help cut 5 years off the initial 75 year estimate, which is why from "Eye of the Needle", onwards, 70 years seemed to be the bench mark time.

This is why all the 10,000c plus range estimates are mostly found in the Federation or other well-charted areas.

I mean, what is there not to understand? It's canon, and the high-end examples are not a mere one or two episodes, but dozens.
-Mike

What quotes from "Year of Hell", "Hope and Fear", and "Q2" support this idea?

An off-hand statement by the operations officer does not change the projected travel time. But here's a quote to that effect as well, which happens after "Eye of the Needle":

Season 2, episode 4, "Elogium":

JANEWAY: It might take us a long time to get home.
CHAKOTAY: If it does take seventy five years, we're going to need a replacement crew in about half that time.

And a separate distance that corroborates the 70,000 lightyears in 75 years number. Season 4, episode 2, "The Gift":

JANEWAY: On screen. Where are we?
PARIS: Nine point five thousand light years from where we just were.
JANEWAY: She's thrown us safely beyond Borg space. Ten years closer to home.

Which results in a speed of 950c; 1900c if you're generous and assume only half their time is actually spent at their maximum sustainable speed.

[Picard]

None of these are in Federation space.

[Mike DiCenso]

What quotes from "Year of Hell", "Hope and Fear", and "Q2" support this idea?

If you had bothered to read the Warp Speed List thread, you'd have your answer. I'll give you a little link here.

Three separate instances. We don't know if the "Hope and Fear" data resulted in any improvement for certain, but the fact that Starfleet, knowing about the 5 year improvement from "Year of Hell", made an attempt at it, shows it is possible, and Q gives Janeway the data when Voyager is 30,000 light years closer to home, reinforcing this.

An off-hand statement by the operations officer does not change the projected travel time. But here's a quote to that effect as well, which happens after "Eye of the Needle":

Season 2, episode 4, "Elogium":

JANEWAY: It might take us a long time to get home.
CHAKOTAY: If it does take seventy five years, we're going to need a replacement crew in about half that time.

And a separate distance that corroborates the 70,000 lightyears in 75 years number. Season 4, episode 2, "The Gift":

JANEWAY: On screen. Where are we?
PARIS: Nine point five thousand light years from where we just were.
JANEWAY: She's thrown us safely beyond Borg space. Ten years closer to home.

Which results in a speed of 950c; 1900c if you're generous and assume only half their time is actually spent at their maximum sustainable speed.

Actually, there are more quotes that support the 70 year number. From "Dark Frontier":

Captain's Log, Stardate 52619.2. We got another twenty thousand light years out of the transwarp coil before it gave out. I figure we're a good fifteen years closer to home.

That's an average speed of 1,333 c, or 400 c faster than if they had to take 75 years (average 933 c).

Also, in "The Raven" there is this:

CHAKOTAY: She may plan to take the shuttle back to Borg space.

JANEWAY: Ten thousand light years from here? I don't think so. No, something else going on. We're missing a piece of the puzzle.

So, since you put so much stock on Janeway's word over everyone else, Voyager in just four episode (four weeks approximately) traverses 500 light years for an average of 6,517 c.

Then there's this from "Distant Origin":

VEER: It's the plasma signature. Scanners have found a match. A ship ninety light years away. There are 148 lifeforms aboard, travelling at warp six point two.

Voyager is moving routinely along at warp 6.2, not warp 9, much less 9.975. So they were never really going at full speed all the time.

Oh, another bit of evidence in Ensign Kim's favor is this from "One":

SEVEN: The nebula extends for at least one hundred ten light years. Possibly more.

JANEWAY: At the least, it would take us well over a month to get through it and more than a year to get around it.

If by "well over a month", Janeway means 40 days, then a little over 1,000 c, which fits well with 70,000 light years in 70 years, and at the end of the episode, the trip through the nebula took actually one month:

PARIS: Well, after a month with only the Doc for company, I can understand it.

So slightly faster than expected, if Paris is to be believed. But whatever else, their journey through the nebula had to have taken around a month for Paris to round down and not get contradicted, and it would've been just as easy for him to have said "after a month and a half" as well. And indeed, Seven states in her log entry near the episode's end that 29 days had gone by, and the rest seems to take place over a day or two at most.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

22nd century ships never engaged STL targets while at warp, and the Reapers are capable of much higher FTL velocities than 22nd century Alpha Quadrant powers (~10,000c)

Never? Wanna bet? Fallen Hero has the Mazarite ships firing on the NX-01 while at warp:

REED: They're charging weapons.

ARCHER: Polarize the hull plating. (the Mazarite ship fires several charges at Enterprise) What the hell is he doing? Hail him.

HOSHI: He's not answering.

REED: Port hull plating's offline.

TRAVIS: They're closing, fast.

ARCHER: Aft torpedoes. Return fire.

REED: No effect. They're using some kind of energy shielding.

T'POL: Direct hit to Engineering, subsection 12. We've taken damage.

ARCHER: Would the phase cannons be more effective?

REED: Undoubtedly, but we can't fire them at warp.

ARCHER: What do you mean, we can't fire them at warp?

REED: Particle discharge, sir. It would destabilize our warp field and most likely blow out both our nacelles. I've been working on the problem, but I haven't quite-

ARCHER: Drop to impulse. Deploy the aft cannon.

Later, the NX-01 by the time of "Shockwave, Part 1 and 2", the NX-01 can fire at warp, but so can the Suliban:





So you were saying?
-Mike

[User1401]

If you had bothered to read the Warp Speed List thread, you'd have your answer. I'll give you a little link here.

Three separate instances. We don't know if the "Hope and Fear" data resulted in any improvement for certain, but the fact that Starfleet, knowing about the 5 year improvement from "Year of Hell", made an attempt at it, shows it is possible, and Q gives Janeway the data when Voyager is 30,000 light years closer to home, reinforcing this.

Well, let's compile these. Seven's astrometrics improvement takes five years. How much distance had Voyager covered by the time Kes tossed them through Borg space? Her leap of 9,500 ly from their original distance of 70,000 ly leaves 60,500 ly. Does each season of the show cover roughly a year? If so, they probably covered 2800 lightyears up until that point ((70,000/75)*3). So roughly 57,700 ly remaining, to be covered in roughly 62 years. With Seven's improvement to navigation, it's 57 years. 57,700ly/57 years=1012c. An improvement over the original 933c estimation, to be sure, but not astronomically so.

"Hope and Fear" is unquantifiable, as we don't even know if these improvements add anything to their projected time after Seven's improvements (which Hayes is not aware of).

"Q2" is fairly unquantifiable itself, but we at least know for certain that it does help, so we can make a low end guess. Q, with all his knowledge of the cosmos, just takes away a few years from the trip with his data. I'll assume that your number of Voyager traveling 30,000 light years is accurate, leaving 40,000 still on the trip. Dividing that by their pace with Seven's improvements, that leaves 39 years still on the trip. Let's assume that Q's data takes off roughly 3 years from the trip. Voyager's pace gets bumped up to 1111 light years per year.

While navigational data certainly seems to help, there is no sign that it allows Voyager to increase its speed by double or an order of magnitude, and they don't seem to expect it either.

An off-hand statement by the operations officer does not change the projected travel time. But here's a quote to that effect as well, which happens after "Eye of the Needle":

Season 2, episode 4, "Elogium":

JANEWAY: It might take us a long time to get home.
CHAKOTAY: If it does take seventy five years, we're going to need a replacement crew in about half that time.

And a separate distance that corroborates the 70,000 lightyears in 75 years number. Season 4, episode 2, "The Gift":

JANEWAY: On screen. Where are we?
PARIS: Nine point five thousand light years from where we just were.
JANEWAY: She's thrown us safely beyond Borg space. Ten years closer to home.

Which results in a speed of 950c; 1900c if you're generous and assume only half their time is actually spent at their maximum sustainable speed.

Actually, there are more quotes that support the 70 year number. From "Dark Frontier":

That's an average speed of 1,333 c, or 400 c faster than if they had to take 75 years (average 933 c).

How does that support the 70 year number? That's well after they had gone through the area that Neelix supposedly gave them navigational data for. They would not be going the same speed over those 20 years as they had when you say the number dropped to 70 years.

As for the speed in general, it's still in the general ball park as the original number (or the original number modified to reflect Seven's improvements). I'm comfortable assuming Voyager crewmembers (and writers...) aren't speaking precisely all the time. They could be broadly estimating. But you don't get a change of an order of magnitude by estimating.

Also, in "The Raven" there is this:

CHAKOTAY: She may plan to take the shuttle back to Borg space.

JANEWAY: Ten thousand light years from here? I don't think so. No, something else going on. We're missing a piece of the puzzle.

So, since you put so much stock on Janeway's word over everyone else, Voyager in just four episode (four weeks approximately) traverses 500 light years for an average of 6,517 c.

It's not a matter of taking Janeway's word over Harry Kim's (and it was Chakotay who said 75 in Elogium btw, not Janeway). You presented Harry Kim's number as if it represented a concrete change in the trip time's estimation simply by virtue of happening later. (it doesn't even really contradict the original number, anyways; 70 falls within 75, so stating the trip will take 70 years is still technically correct). Chakotay's statement happens after Harry's, negating that reason for it to stand as a revision of the estimated travel time.

Then there's this from "Distant Origin":

VEER: It's the plasma signature. Scanners have found a match. A ship ninety light years away. There are 148 lifeforms aboard, travelling at warp six point two.

Voyager is moving routinely along at warp 6.2, not warp 9, much less 9.975. So they were never really going at full speed all the time.

A few moments later in the episode we get this:

JANEWAY: Report.
CHAKOTAY: We've completed long range scans. If we maintain our present course we'll enter a region of heavy tetryon radiation within two days.

They may have slowed down in order to make these scans. Regardless, even if we assume all these numbers apply to around Warp 6 -- we still get around 2,000c or less for Warp 6. Which is what 22nd century Trek ships were usually bound to.

Oh, another bit of evidence in Ensign Kim's favor is this from "One":

SEVEN: The nebula extends for at least one hundred ten light years. Possibly more.

JANEWAY: At the least, it would take us well over a month to get through it and more than a year to get around it.

If by "well over a month", Janeway means 40 days, then a little over 1,000 c, which fits well with 70,000 light years in 70 years, and at the end of the episode, the trip through the nebula took actually one month:

PARIS: Well, after a month with only the Doc for company, I can understand it.

So slightly faster than expected, if Paris is to be believed. But whatever else, their journey through the nebula had to have taken around a month for Paris to round down and not get contradicted, and it would've been just as easy for him to have said "after a month and a half" as well. And indeed, Seven states in her log entry near the episode's end that 29 days had gone by, and the rest seems to take place over a day or two at most.
-Mike

Which all fits just fine with the concept that Voyager might spend only half its time at its max sustainable speed on the overall voyage; that would give it a velocity of 2,000c. That's enough to cross the nebula in a month without stopping.

At the very best, you might be able to argue that their projected travel time reflects how fast they would go at Warp 6, spending half their time at warp, hampered a bit by lack of navigational data. You can wiggle 2000c or 3000c out of that and assume that Warp 8, 9, 9.75, etc., are much higher. But ultimately you are still left with 2000c or 3000c for the Warp 6 engines of higher tech 22nd century powers, which the Reapers handily surpass.

Never? Wanna bet? Fallen Hero has the Mazarite ships firing on the NX-01 while at warp:

REED: They're charging weapons.

ARCHER: Polarize the hull plating. (the Mazarite ship fires several charges at Enterprise) What the hell is he doing? Hail him.

HOSHI: He's not answering.

REED: Port hull plating's offline.

TRAVIS: They're closing, fast.

ARCHER: Aft torpedoes. Return fire.

REED: No effect. They're using some kind of energy shielding.

T'POL: Direct hit to Engineering, subsection 12. We've taken damage.

ARCHER: Would the phase cannons be more effective?

REED: Undoubtedly, but we can't fire them at warp.

ARCHER: What do you mean, we can't fire them at warp?

REED: Particle discharge, sir. It would destabilize our warp field and most likely blow out both our nacelles. I've been working on the problem, but I haven't quite-

ARCHER: Drop to impulse. Deploy the aft cannon.

Later, the NX-01 by the time of "Shockwave, Part 1 and 2", the NX-01 can fire at warp, but so can the Suliban:





So you were saying?
-Mike

That's while both are at warp. Not one at warp firing at one at impulse. Ships firing at each other while at warp is a fairly common occurrence in Star Trek; a ship at warp firing at an STL or stationary target is much less so.

[Lucky]

I can't decide whether this is funny or sad. But I'll humor you. Humans have latent psionic powers, sure. But at best they can't use it for anything more than, as Dehner says, a vague sense of future happenings or reading the backs of playing cards. Even that level of ESP seems exceedingly rare as we never see it used. Anything beyond that requires some sort of outside catalyst, like the Great Barrier or the Traveler. It's certainly nothing of the utility of biotics in Mass Effect, the Force in Star Wars, or telepaths in Babylon 5.

You are ignoring the majority of the evidence I posted. What the Traveler says about humans being able to control reality with their thoughts is proven to be true in "Remember Me" and "Conspiracy". Warping space and time with thought is a human power. It normally isn't brought up in debates because the information is spread over a wide number of episodes in a multi-season story line.

The evidence was the very quote you posted. It's clear they are actively approaching light speed; why would they be accelerating at all if not so?

Taking things out of context is the same as lying.

LAFORGE: Plasma injectors are on-line. Everything's looking good. I think we're ready.


RIKER: They should be out there right now. We better break the warp barrier in the next five minutes if we're going to get their attention.


LAFORGE: Main cells are charged and ready.


RIKER: Let's do it.


COCHRANE: Engage.


LAFORGE: Warp field is looking good. Structural integrity is holding.


RIKER: Speed, twenty thousand kilometres per second.


COCHRANE: Sweet Jesus!


(Cochrane has spotted the Enterprise in orbit)


RIKER: Relax, Doctor. I'm sure they're just here to give us a send-off.

They need to reach the warp barrier(which is about the speed of light) before they can go to warp. This is clearly stated The way they talk about the warp barrier like we would talk about the Sound Barrier. You need not be traveling at warp to generate a warp field.

First of all, that's a 23rd century example.

It doesn't matter when an example is from for the Trek side because there are powers who have that level of tech way back in the 22 second century. Humans had crapy tech in the 22 second century. Assumption that technological progression in Star Trek is uniform is incorrect.

Second of all, that example is an odd case of the Klingon ship actually attacking while at warp, not simply enhancing impulse with the warp drive.

"SULU [OC]: Bridge to Captain.
KIRK: Captain here.
SULU [OC]: Captain, the Klingon ship has changed course. It is heading toward us at warp speed.
KIRK: I'm on my way. Battle stations."

[Bridge]

KIRK: Phasers stand by.
SULU: Phasers ready, sir.
SPOCK: Their speed is better than warp six, Captain."

"SPOCK: He's passed us. All shields held.
KIRK: Mister Sulu, bring her to one four three mark two. Keep our forward shields to him.
SULU: Here he comes again, sir.
KIRK: Stay with the controls. Keep our forward shields to him.
SPOCK: Better than warp seven. "

I didn't post a quote talking about the Klingon ship. I posted a quote about the Enterprise capabilities without warp.

Evidence? (And 22nd century evidence, at that)

Best of Both Worlds, Balance of Terror, and Elaan Of Troyius show that Impulse/non-warp alone will let you travel faster then light.

Technological advancement is not uniform in Star Trek, and that means examples as late as the 24th century are easily valid given the OP. This is Reaper VS the entire 22 second century Star Trek galaxy.

Evidence that the Reapers can travel at 10,800c? Sure.

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Codex/ ... pabilities

"The Reapers' thrusters and FTL drives appear to propel them at more than twice the speed of Citadel ships. Estimates of their location in dark space suggest they can travel nearly 30 light-years in a 24-hour period."

Now i want evidence they can use FTl in a tactical manner similar to Star Trek's warp drive. As far as I can tell from my limited knowledge of Mass Effect every faction in the game drops out of FTL and then fights at sub-light, and only have at best light speed weapons.

As for evidence that 22nd century Trek ships can engage STL targets while at FTL, the burden of proof is on you for that.

As far as I can tell, Shockwave parts one and two, and Future Tense have warp combat where a faster ships are firing on a slower ship at warp. Even if the attacking ship is traveling at the speed of light when attacking the Reaper or Collector won't see it do to only having light speed sensors.

The only information we have about the First Federation applies to the 23rd century onwards. At the very least, the races seen in "Enterprise" will have to deal with the Reapers before the Reapers have to worry about the First Federation.

BS The First Federation is an example of a group far in advance technologically speaking then the United Federation of Planets.

Sorry, but the Reapers and Collectors lack diplomacy skills which save the UFP a lot of trouble. You can't arbitrarily say a group will or won't rip the Reapers a new one. They will take notice and action because they are a sane and friendly group who trades with other races. What makes the Reaper so dangerous is that they control the technological evolution of the younger races, but in Star Trek most races have better tech including primative back water shit holes like Earth during Archer's time.

That last detail is ridiculous. Star Trek Voyager necessitates that the maximum sustainable speed for a 24th century ship be no more than 2000c. It's established at the beginning that it will take them 75 years to cross 70,000 lightyears. Even if we assume that Voyager spends only 50% of its time at its maximum sustainable speed heading back to Federation space, that's 1866c. If they were capable of 100,000c they could cross 70,000 light years and get back to Federation space in less than a year.

While and outlier, it shows that navigational data can cut travel times greatly. Voyager's 70,000 light years in 70 years requires most of Star Trek not to have happened. It is a massive outlier that the writers corrected by having the travel time shorten by something like 5 to 15 years each time Voyager got better navigational data. We can conclude that the 70 year trip was a worst case scenario.

Voyager's single worst case estimate is a poor example to judge travel times. You don't use damaged, partially supplied, under staffed ship with no way to make proper repairs or resupply as the norm.

Look at how far the Enterprise-D travels between Best of Both Worlds part 2 and First Contact. Best of Both Worlds is season 4 episode 1 and First Contact is season 4 episode 15. First Contact take place on a planet over 2000 light years from Earth, and Best of Both Worlds part 2 ends with the Enterprise-D in dry dock for about a month. That destroy you poorly researched theory as to how fast warp travel is.

And it's clear that when fired at STL torpedoes remain at STL, taking a couple seconds to cross distances of a few kilometers (evidence: about every battle visual in Star Trek...ever...as a random example, have the battle from First Contact!). Torpedoes can maintain FTL speeds if launched at FTL but don't seem able to accelerate to such speeds.

Half life, Generations, Balance of Terror, and Terra Prime would argue otherwise. Weapons fire at STL can easily reach FTL on their own even during the NX-01's time.

Since you bring up Star Trek First Contact, you will note that in spite of a known velocity for the Phoenix it doesn't seem to be going at or damn close to the speed of light.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHvSE2gnwpY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ_Aq0YvBJ0

Ships and things in general don't appear at the proper distances or seem to be traveling at the proper speeds. This is a problem all visual media has, but Star Trek has possible in-universe reasons for thins such as anti-gravity thrusters, warp fields, graviton shields, navigational deflectors(more gravitons plus a lot of other crap)...

And yet somehow a little ship keeps getting by these phenomena day after day. The Enterprise routinely looks for such random phenomena and lifeforms; when they're not looking, these issues hardly ever pop up, especially when factions are focused on waging war against each other. Is the Star Trek galaxy quite a bit weirder than the Mass Effect galaxy? Sure. Might the Reapers lose a few scouts exploring the galaxy? Yes. But it's not going to protect the humans, Andorians, Vulcans, Klingons, etc. from hundreds of ships appearing in their systems before their fleets can respond, or from the subtle mind control devices that the Reapers will slip to them along with technology trades.

I hate to break it to you, but they aren't normally looking for the dangerous stuff when they find it. They just happen across it. Trek powers deal with the negative space wedgies because they have an ungodly understanding of physics, an understanding the Reapers don't have.

The Reapers have nothing to trade beyond Element Zero.

Simple(by star trek standards) scans will detect the mind control technology. We are talking about groups who think nothing of scanning things to the quantum level.

Star Trek has real time faster then light sensors. They aren't blind while traveling faster then light like Mass Effect.

Star Trek powers keep fleets around note worthy planets. The reapers might get the tiny colony on crap hole IV, but they won't get through anything major.

Actually...

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Codex/ ... pabilities

"Reaper power sources seem to violate known physical laws. Reapers usually destroy fuel infrastructure rather than attempting to capture it intact, indicating that Reapers do not require organic species' energy supplies. Consequently, the Reapers attack without regard for maintaining supply lines behind them, except to move husks from one planet to another."

Fuel and infrastructure =/= Element Zero, and Reapers are said to go into Dark Space to sleep in order to conserve energy.

YOu just proved that races in mass Effect don't understand their own world's physics. Heck, what you posted sounds like Star Trek generators like warp cores.

I repeat: The Reapers are big, slow, and fragile targets, and nothing else by trek standards from what I've seen of Mass Effect, and in this scenario destined to lose. We know the Reapers lose because the big boys on the Trek side aren't taking action. To make matters worse for the Reapers, they have no source of element zero. Without element zero they can't do things like make more Reapers, collectors ,or even repair their ships.

The Reapers need Element Zero to make more Reapers, and making more Reapers seems to be the only thing Reapers care about. Element Zero is the basis for all Mass Effect Technology.

If you can ask that, then I want evidence that Trek weapons will have any effect on Reaper defenses.

The kinetic barriers on a Reaper capital ship can shrug off the firepower of a small fleet. Weapons specifically designed to overcome shields, such as the Javelin, GARDIAN lasers, or the Thanix series, can bypass the barriers to some degree. The difficulty is getting close enough to use them -- the surface-mounted weaponry on Reaper ships, similar in principle to GARDIAN, presents an effective defense against organic species' fighters.

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Codex/ ... rabilities
Perhaps you should read your own source.

Anyways:

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Codex/ ... pabilities

"The main gun on a Reaper capital ship dwarfs that of the Alliance's Everest-class dreadnoughts. No dreadnought has yet survived a direct hit from the weapon. Estimates put its destructive power anywhere from 132 to 454 kilotons of TNT."

The NX-01's phase cannons are rated at 500 gigajoules. 132 kilotons is equal to 552,288 gigajoules. At a bare minimum, just going by the numbers, Reaper main cannons are three orders of magnitude above phase cannons. If Trek races can hurt each other with weapons like that, the Reapers will most certainly be able to hurt them as well, and then some.

Which doesn't prove anything. Remember, Star Trek ships can go to warp in a planet's atmosphere.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-1kkB_qF28

It might take down one or two Reapers, but the Reapers could jump into the atmosphere and approach it on the ground to take it out.

Why should I believe this when Star Trek powers who have better FTL in the tactical sense could not easily do this? Star Trek warp can do what you suggest, and yet it barely worked in canon.

[User1401]

You are ignoring the majority of the evidence I posted. What the Traveler says about humans being able to control reality with their thoughts is proven to be true in "Remember Me" and "Conspiracy". Warping space and time with thought is a human power. It normally isn't brought up in debates because the information is spread over a wide number of episodes in a multi-season story line.

"Remember Me" involves the Traveler, and I saw no evidence of "warping space and time" in the clip of "Conspiracy" you linked to. Regardless of the potential of humans, it's clear that no one really uses such abilities or is really aware of their potential. As such, the possible fact of their existence does not help them against the Reapers. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make with this line of though.


[/quote]Taking things out of context is the same as lying.

LAFORGE: Plasma injectors are on-line. Everything's looking good. I think we're ready.


RIKER: They should be out there right now. We better break the warp barrier in the next five minutes if we're going to get their attention.


LAFORGE: Main cells are charged and ready.


RIKER: Let's do it.


COCHRANE: Engage.


LAFORGE: Warp field is looking good. Structural integrity is holding.


RIKER: Speed, twenty thousand kilometres per second.


COCHRANE: Sweet Jesus!


(Cochrane has spotted the Enterprise in orbit)


RIKER: Relax, Doctor. I'm sure they're just here to give us a send-off.

They need to reach the warp barrier(which is about the speed of light) before they can go to warp. This is clearly stated The way they talk about the warp barrier like we would talk about the Sound Barrier. You need not be traveling at warp to generate a warp field.[/quote]

Really now? It seems they are in an extended process of going to warp (which often involves a near-stationary or very slow moving ship making a near-instant jump past lightspeed on other occasions). Cochrane even says the trademark "Engage".

It doesn't matter when an example is from for the Trek side because there are powers who have that level of tech way back in the 22 second century. Humans had crapy tech in the 22 second century. Assumption that technological progression in Star Trek is uniform is incorrect.

It may be the case that 22nd century powers have that sort of technology. "Maybes" don't prove things. Examples from the 23rd century are not valid evidence for the 22nd century; you need direct 22nd century examples.

]I didn't post a quote talking about the Klingon ship. I posted a quote about the Enterprise capabilities without warp.

What, that the Enterprise wallows like a garbage scow against a starship at warp?

Best of Both Worlds, Balance of Terror, and Elaan Of Troyius show that Impulse/non-warp alone will let you travel faster then light.

Technological advancement is not uniform in Star Trek, and that means examples as late as the 24th century are easily valid given the OP. This is Reaper VS the entire 22 second century Star Trek galaxy.

Non-22nd century examples. It's true that technological advancement is not uniform, but unless you can specifically provide evidence that a 22nd century faction had equivalent tech to the average 23rd century faction, that point proves nothing in itself. As it stands, the factions we see in the 22nd century are a good deal below 23rd century technology. When the more militarized 22nd century Terran Empire recovered the USS Defiant in "In a Mirror, Darkly", the Defiant tore the 22nd century ships apart easily.

Now i want evidence they can use FTl in a tactical manner similar to Star Trek's warp drive. As far as I can tell from my limited knowledge of Mass Effect every faction in the game drops out of FTL and then fights at sub-light, and only have at best light speed weapons.

Essentially the same applies to Star Trek.

As far as I can tell, Shockwave parts one and two, and Future Tense have warp combat where a faster ships are firing on a slower ship at warp. Even if the attacking ship is traveling at the speed of light when attacking the Reaper or Collector won't see it do to only having light speed sensors.

Both are still at warp, though. It won't matter that Trek factions can fire while at warp if Reaper FTL is several times faster than Trek FTL; the Trek factions won't be able to catch them.

BS The First Federation is an example of a group far in advance technologically speaking then the United Federation of Planets.

Uh, what's BS? That the only details we have on the First Federation comes from the 23rd century? Or that the Reapers won't have to worry about the First Federation until after dealing with the 22nd century races we do see? I don't see how the First Federation could quickly become a problem, since the UFP didn't encounter them until the 23rd century.

Sorry, but the Reapers and Collectors lack diplomacy skills which save the UFP a lot of trouble. You can't arbitrarily say a group will or won't rip the Reapers a new one. They will take notice and action because they are a sane and friendly group who trades with other races. What makes the Reaper so dangerous is that they control the technological evolution of the younger races, but in Star Trek most races have better tech including primative back water shit holes like Earth during Archer's time.

That's more of what limits the Mass Effect races, but it isn't what makes them dangerous. What makes Reapers dangerous, aside from technological superiority to the Mass Effect races, are their overwhelming numbers, firepower, and indoctrination, a form of mind control. Before the Reaper invasion in Mass Effect, Reaper technology was circulated through the highest levels of the Batarian Hegemony faction. Reaper technology causes indoctrination over periods of being around it. When the Reapers invaded, batarian leadership was indoctrinated. Defense grids were sabotaged, and their own ships turned on each other. This is also how they exerted influence on the organization called Cerberus -- they manipulated Cerberus into thinking they could control the Reapers, and that this goal was preferable to actually destroying the Reapers. As a result, Cerberus actively fought the Mass Effect races while the Reapers invaded. It's established that the Reapers cause a similar faction to arise in each cycle.

Other factions probably will take notice of the Reapers, but that doesn't mean they will be immediately hostile towards them. The Reapers can take advantage of this by spreading indoctrination through technology exchanges (or even just conveniently leaving technology around for Star Trek races to recover). This will result in some factions being sabotaged from within or opposing anyone who tries to destroy the Reapers.

While and outlier, it shows that navigational data can cut travel times greatly. Voyager's 70,000 light years in 70 years requires most of Star Trek not to have happened. It is a massive outlier that the writers corrected by having the travel time shorten by something like 5 to 15 years each time Voyager got better navigational data. We can conclude that the 70 year trip was a worst case scenario.

Voyager's single worst case estimate is a poor example to judge travel times. You don't use damaged, partially supplied, under staffed ship with no way to make proper repairs or resupply as the norm.

Worst case scenario? From "Caretaker, Part 2": "Even at maximum speeds, it would take seventy five years to reach the Federation." I don't see any sign of it being a "worst case scenario". And stop distorting details to fit your argument; at best improved navigational data resulted in a 5 year improvement, no more, and certainly not 15 year improvements.

And an outlier? There is evidence for low and high speeds all over Star Trek. When you call over 1/5 of the franchise's source material an "outlier", it makes me wonder what it takes to not be an outlier.

Look at how far the Enterprise-D travels between Best of Both Worlds part 2 and First Contact. Best of Both Worlds is season 4 episode 1 and First Contact is season 4 episode 15. First Contact take place on a planet over 2000 light years from Earth, and Best of Both Worlds part 2 ends with the Enterprise-D in dry dock for about a month. That destroy you poorly researched theory as to how fast warp travel is.

What's your evidence on the time that elapses between BoBW part 2 and First Contact? If we take the 1111c number I arrived at in the earlier post, double it and increase it by an order of magnitude to account for things like navigational data, Voyager not spending all its time at warp, and not moving at top speeds like warp 9 or 8, you can get 22,220c. That's enough to get the Enterprise to the planet in First Contact in about a month. And it still leaves Warp 6 and lower (the velocity most 22nd century Trek factions are bound to) at about 2000c or lower.

Half life, Generations, Balance of Terror, and Terra Prime would argue otherwise. Weapons fire at STL can easily reach FTL on their own even during the NX-01's time.

Mostly non-22nd century examples, though Terra Prime comes up as an Enterprise episode, so could you elaborate on that one? And regardless

Since you bring up Star Trek First Contact, you will note that in spite of a known velocity for the Phoenix it doesn't seem to be going at or damn close to the speed of light.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHvSE2gnwpY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ_Aq0YvBJ0

Ships and things in general don't appear at the proper distances or seem to be traveling at the proper speeds. This is a problem all visual media has, but Star Trek has possible in-universe reasons for thins such as anti-gravity thrusters, warp fields, graviton shields, navigational deflectors(more gravitons plus a lot of other crap)...

At the point where Riker says "approaching light speed" the only thing for comparison is the Enterprise, which assuredly could be matching the Phoenix's speed.

I hate to break it to you, but they aren't normally looking for the dangerous stuff when they find it. They just happen across it. Trek powers deal with the negative space wedgies because they have an ungodly understanding of physics, an understanding the Reapers don't have.

They happen across it because they're exploring. You know, the whole "Boldly go where no one has gone before" bit. The fact that they keep surviving is more of a sign of the limited threat these anomalies actually present; they're fairly easy to solve.

The Reapers have nothing to trade beyond Element Zero.

Considering all the applications of Element Zero, it's quite an interesting thing to trade. Everything from big guns to shields to FTL communication can be done with it.

There's also quantum entanglement communication, unrelated to eezo, which provides instant communication between two mobile communicators anywhere in the galaxy with no linking infrastructure. Even by the 24 century Trek factions have not come up with a technology like that.

Simple(by star trek standards) scans will detect the mind control technology. We are talking about groups who think nothing of scanning things to the quantum level.

Can you provide evidence that 22nd century Star Trek factions can detect indoctrination? Or that they would even know to look before it was too late? High resolution scanning doesn't mean you can tell that something is wrong, or why it is wrong.

Star Trek has real time faster then light sensors. They aren't blind while traveling faster then light like Mass Effect.

This is a fair point. But it is balanced out by the Reapers being faster than 22nd century Trek ships.

Star Trek powers keep fleets around note worthy planets. The reapers might get the tiny colony on crap hole IV, but they won't get through anything major.

The Systems Alliance had several fleets protecting Earth, and it didn't do them much good.

Fuel and infrastructure =/= Element Zero, and Reapers are said to go into Dark Space to sleep in order to conserve energy.

YOu just proved that races in mass Effect don't understand their own world's physics. Heck, what you posted sounds like Star Trek generators like warp cores.

I repeat: The Reapers are big, slow, and fragile targets, and nothing else by trek standards from what I've seen of Mass Effect, and in this scenario destined to lose. We know the Reapers lose because the big boys on the Trek side aren't taking action. To make matters worse for the Reapers, they have no source of element zero. Without element zero they can't do things like make more Reapers, collectors ,or even repair their ships.

The Reapers need Element Zero to make more Reapers, and making more Reapers seems to be the only thing Reapers care about. Element Zero is the basis for all Mass Effect Technology.

I should point out that Element Zero is not consumed when it is used to create various mass effect fields; it does degrade over time, but that takes centuries. Still, it's a fair point that the Reapers won't be making much of anything without a source of element zero. So, for the sake of discussion, let's say the Reapers also start out in control of a few neutron star systems with element zero refineries, enough to let them pursue their goal of making more Reapers.

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Codex/ ... rabilities
Perhaps you should read your own source.

It wasn't a serious question, it was to highlight how preposterous your questionwas.

Which doesn't prove anything. Remember, Star Trek ships can go to warp in a planet's atmosphere.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-1kkB_qF28

There is obviously not the sort of friction or other physical reactions one would expect from simply accelerating to the speed of light; otherwise, there should be devastating shockwaves that destroy the local area of the planet's surface.

Why should I believe this when Star Trek powers who have better FTL in the tactical sense could not easily do this? Star Trek warp can do what you suggest, and yet it barely worked in canon.

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Codex/ ... of_Palaven

"The Reapers countered instantly. Their destroyers performed a jump of their own to the skies above Palaven, beginning orbital strikes of turian cities. The turians, forced to defend the planet, found themselves in a pitched battle far from the relay, from which emerged a seemingly endless line of Reaper ships. After massive casualties, Coronati ordered retreat."

While not exactly jumping into the atmosphere, the point is that the Reapers can quickly jump into a position where they can bombard the surface of a planet. The verteron array might catch one or two Reapers, but the Reaper can quickly respond and take it out. It's not something that really helps Earth's chances (assuming it isn't taken offline by indoctrinated agents in the first place)

[Mike DiCenso]

Well, let's compile these. Seven's astrometrics improvement takes five years. How much distance had Voyager covered by the time Kes tossed them through Borg space? Her leap of 9,500 ly from their original distance of 70,000 ly leaves 60,500 ly. Does each season of the show cover roughly a year? If so, they probably covered 2800 lightyears up until that point ((70,000/75)*3). So roughly 57,700 ly remaining, to be covered in roughly 62 years. With Seven's improvement to navigation, it's 57 years. 57,700ly/57 years=1012c. An improvement over the original 933c estimation, to be sure, but not astronomically so.

That is still five definitive years off of the trip home, and it represents a greater or nearly half reduction than some of the superbeing (Kes, who gave them 9,500 ly) , space anomaly (the one in "Night" let them skip 2,500 ly), and subspace catapult (2,000 ly/2years) shortcuts. It also represents one quarter and half of the transwarp (20,000 ly) and slipstream drive (10,000 ly) gains.

So it's not as trivial as you are trying to make it out to be. But Let's look at the other examples.

"Hope and Fear" is unquantifiable, as we don't even know if these improvements add anything to their projected time after Seven's improvements (which Hayes is not aware of).

Actually, Hayes would have been aware of Voyager's situation as Janeway would have sent that with the reports of the ship's position and status via the Hirogen subspace array and the EMH in "Message in a Bottle", which kept them in communication with Starfleet fora short while until the disabling of the network in "Hunters", and the garbled message data they got back was the plot point of the episode "Hope and Fear". So likely knowing about the navigational improvement from YoH, it is interesting that Starfleet still attempted to send that data.

"Q2" is fairly unquantifiable itself, but we at least know for certain that it does help, so we can make a low end guess. Q, with all his knowledge of the cosmos, just takes away a few years from the trip with his data. I'll assume that your number of Voyager traveling 30,000 light years is accurate, leaving 40,000 still on the trip. Dividing that by their pace with Seven's improvements, that leaves 39 years still on the trip. Let's assume that Q's data takes off roughly 3 years from the trip. Voyager's pace gets bumped up to 1111 light years per year.

The 30,000 light year number is what they had left to go, not what they'd travelled, and it is as reasonable as any number give since VOY often waffled on the distances and time estimates at various points. But that number is used in three episodes; "Live Fast and Prosper", "Imperfection", and "Inside Man", so I'd say it's fairly solid. As for quantifying what Q gave them data-wise, the "few years" Janeway states that it will shave off means at least 2 years were taken off. So 7 years total have been shaved off this way. That's pretty good overall considering and the gains via improved data start equaling those listed above and even surpasses others by a significant amount. If a few years means 4 years, then that number goes up to 9 years, which is nearly as good as Kes' 10,000 ly jump and the 10 years gained via slipstream. I don't think we can push the number past 5 years, since that is at the ragged edge of what most people might consider as being only a few years. So if they started with 75 years, then got 8 years shaved off, that means 1,044c, but if the journey was only 70 years (as per Kim and supported by various subsequent references since), then 1,129c. If ten years was shaved off, that can be bumped a bit higher to 1,166c, or at least a 233c gain.

If Neelix's guidance really did help, as did Haye's Starfleet data, then we could potentially add another 7-10 years to that. So 20 years knocked off means an increase to 1,400c or better.

While navigational data certainly seems to help, there is no sign that it allows Voyager to increase its speed by double or an order of magnitude, and they don't seem to expect it either.

Again, the evidence and argument is that when Voyager was able to obtain good navigational data at any point in the journey, it was able to shave off years from the estimate, which it did. Also, the theory is valid for explaining away the huge discrepancies between Voyager's slow journey home and the ridiculously huge speeds obtained while in Federation and charted territories. Voyager did not do better simply because obtaining the data they needed all the time due to the limitations of their resources at hand and being unable to obtain that data since they were almost always dealing with unfriendly aliens who aren't likely going to share something that critical with them.

How does that support the 70 year number? That's well after they had gone through the area that Neelix supposedly gave them navigational data for. They would not be going the same speed over those 20 years as they had when you say the number dropped to 70 years.

As for the speed in general, it's still in the general ball park as the original number (or the original number modified to reflect Seven's improvements). I'm comfortable assuming Voyager crewmembers (and writers...) aren't speaking precisely all the time. They could be broadly estimating. But you don't get a change of an order of magnitude by estimating.

The estimate was much higher than even when Seven's and the other estimates are taken into account, and you damn well know it supports the 70-year number because it fits in well with the one year equals one 1,000 light years covered.

It's not a matter of taking Janeway's word over Harry Kim's (and it was Chakotay who said 75 in Elogium btw, not Janeway). You presented Harry Kim's number as if it represented a concrete change in the trip time's estimation simply by virtue of happening later. (it doesn't even really contradict the original number, anyways; 70 falls within 75, so stating the trip will take 70 years is still technically correct). Chakotay's statement happens after Harry's, negating that reason for it to stand as a revision of the estimated travel time.

It can represent a solid change. Five years is not trivial, despite the way you try to paint it. If someone said you can either take 75 years to get home, or 70, which would you take? And five years was a big deal to everyone in "Year of Hell". Furthermore, I've presented a fair amount of evidence that the 70 year number is more likely to be the correct one.

But more interestingly, Janeway in "Year of Hell, Part 1" says this:

ANNORAX [on viewscreen]: I am Annorax of the Krenim Imperium. We've transferred your crewmen to my vessel for further analysis. Your ship does not come from this quadrant.

JANEWAY: We come from Earth, a planet sixty five thousand light years from here. We're on our way home.

So was Voyager hurled 70,000 or 80,000 light years? So which is it. And remember, as per your own statements and logic, this is from the captain herself.

Also, I'm going to stop and remind you that you still haven't addressed the many examples of high warp speed in Federation and well-charted territories that I linked to in the Warp Speed List thread. In fact, this is important as DS9 in "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" gives us what an Intrepid-class starship can do speed-wise as seen when the USS Bellerophon makes the run from Deep Space Nine to Romulus (shown in the "The Hands of the Prophets" graphic as being on opposite side of the Federation from each other) in less than a week. Even if the Federation was only 200 light years wide, not the canonically stated 8,000, it would still require over 10,000c.

A few moments later in the episode we get this:

JANEWAY: Report.
CHAKOTAY: We've completed long range scans. If we maintain our present course we'll enter a region of heavy tetryon radiation within two days.

They may have slowed down in order to make these scans. Regardless, even if we assume all these numbers apply to around Warp 6 -- we still get around 2,000c or less for Warp 6. Which is what 22nd century Trek ships were usually bound to.

But the problem with your idea is that because they are always within uncharted territory, Voyager would have to
slow down constantly to do scans like that. Furthermore, we know from episodes like "Demon", "Survival Instinct", "The Haunting of Deck Twelve", and "Nightingale", that Voyager must stop very frequently for resupply of fuel, food, and to do extensive maintenance. Not to mention, they've stopped to do exploration for it's own sake on more than one occasion. All that adds into their actual time.

But more importantly, they are not going full speed, and they are also slowing down even more and coming to stops very frequently. Not to mention, you still have not addressed the speed issues brought up in the Warp Speed Lists thread where in Federation and well-charted territory, we have many numerous examples of speeds in the tens of thousands of c range. All this has to be tied together, you cannot cherry pick and disregard the rest because you do not like them.

Which all fits just fine with the concept that Voyager might spend only half its time at its max sustainable speed on the overall voyage; that would give it a velocity of 2,000c. That's enough to cross the nebula in a month without stopping.

At the very best, you might be able to argue that their projected travel time reflects how fast they would go at Warp 6, spending half their time at warp, hampered a bit by lack of navigational data. You can wiggle 2000c or 3000c out of that and assume that Warp 8, 9, 9.75, etc., are much higher. But ultimately you are still left with 2000c or 3000c for the Warp 6 engines of higher tech 22nd century powers, which the Reapers handily surpass.

No, you can get quite a bit more out of it than that. Coming to stops for days or weeks on end, having to creep along at warp six, or maybe even only warp two, like Voyager does here in "Scorpion, Part 2"

KIM: They're dead in the water. about five point two light years from here.

JANEWAY: Cause?

TUVOK: Unknown.

JANEWAY: Mr Paris.

PARIS: Captain.

JANEWAY: Set a course for their position. Warp two.

This is rather interesting as warp 2 should be so slow that it would take nearly four months to get there. Now maybe they accelerated once underway to higher speeds, but there is no indication of such when they get to the site later on. So this issue is very complex, certainly Warp six seems reasonable as a constant speed, but they may even be going slower, or having to waste time going around nebulae or other anomalies. So Voyager does not provide anything other than a conservative speed estimate. When looking at how fast warp is, look at when they are on home turf. For example, the NX-01 in "Broken Bow", despite the numbers given, made the trip from Earth to Qo'nos, then got side-tracked, went across 15 light years to get to Rigel X, then went over to a gas giant, and then resumed back to Qo'nos, all within one month's time. Qo'nos, from the only canonical map seen in Trek, is thousands of light years from Earth, yet the pokey warp 5 NX-01 can make it in four days. How is that possible? Again here the navigational data is important, as Vulcan gave them the Vulcan data base with charts to make the journey.

And there is this from "Horizon":

T'POL: The planet's orbit has shifted, taking it between two gas giants. Their gravitational pull is causing its core to superheat.

ARCHER: Starfleet thinks it will be covered with erupting volcanoes by the end of the week.

TRAVIS: This system's almost thirty light years behind us.

ARCHER: Admiral Forrest assures me it's only a temporary detour.

TUCKER: Some geologic fireworks. Could be fun.

ARCHER: Set a course.

TRAVIS: Aye, sir.


So 30 light years divided by 7 = 1,564. No warp speed is given, but since warp 3 to 4.5 were routine speeds, and time was critical, we'll be conservative and assume 4.5 is what they did. So warp 4.5 is equal to at least 1,564c. That's almost twice what you assign to Voyager at warp 6.

How can this be?

Later in the episode, we learn that the NX-01 will make it to the planet with "time to spare" even though they take time to drop off Ensign Mayweather onto the UES Horizon, and really they had less than a week to get there, so we can comfortably assume 5 days or less, or 2,190c at warp 4.5. This is over 1/5th of your 10,000c speed for the Reapers, and this is the performance of a slow, weak ship by 22nd century Trek standards.

Also, according to the Mass Effect Wiki, the Reapers are believed to be capable of traveling that fast (30 light years in a day). Was it ever actually demonstrated? Are there other examples? If so, how long can it be maintained?

That's while both are at warp. Not one at warp firing at one at impulse. Ships firing at each other while at warp is a fairly common occurrence in Star Trek; a ship at warp firing at an STL or stationary target is much less so.

Actually, it still means the possibility exists since firing through one's warp field can have disruptive effects, and since Reed and Trip solved that problem, hitting a ship at STL is merely a matter of targeting at that point.
-Mike