Star Trek VS Other Sci-Fi unfair?

[Lucky]

I came across this a little while ago, and have been meaning to post it here to see what you guy think of this analysis of Star Trek.

Bringing Star Trek into any kind of debate like this with other popular science fiction universes resolves the conflict right off the bat.

The thing to understand is that most popular science fiction universes are designed to appeal to the "yahoo" factor with zipping space fighters going up against huge capital ships and similar things. Star Trek on the othr hand was designed around a much more realistic version of space combat, especially when you understand it.

The thing to understand is that in space things like mass and weight don't matter after a certain level of development. Space fighters are more or less impractical, as cool as they might be, because speed is a matter of power output. The humn logic of "smaller means faster" doesn't apply, as a big ship, with bigger engines, and a bigger power plant is going to be able to move faster than a small ship with a smaller power plant. What's more a small ship having less energy isn't going to be able to produce weapons that are viable against a bigger ship while powering it's other systems.

This is why in Star Trek's canon you really don't have space fighters, though various video games and such have added them. Simply put the fighters could never catch a ship to engage it.


You might say "okay, but we're dealing with concepts, and obviously these other forces have things like Space Fighters whcih somehow work"... but that gets into another not-so-little point. Despite how things look in Star Trek at times, the battles are taking place at ranges of tens of thousands or even millions of miles. They aren't the kind of close range engagements that allow the use of space fighters, where guns are firing a couple of miles, or some really ginornous weapon might be able to fire a couple thousand.

It's also important to note that in Trek, the blast radius on the weapons is also crazy. Remember that back in the original series when Kirk did that whole mafia episode he stunned multiple city blocks by sitting his ship's phasors to stun. In "The Next Generation" there was an episode whe the crew was being psychicly manipulated (by this alien disgused as a crew member that just appeared and yet was somehow accepted as having been there all along) so they would use the weapons on their ship to resolve a war between that race and another relatively primitive species. It was pointed out that a single federation Torpedo can pretty much wipe out a continent, and they could have resolved a war that had been going on centuries with a trivial effort.

The point of this is that against most other science fiction universes, a Star Trek level ship, from any species, can pretty much sit back at a ridiculous range, beyond what most of those civilizations are probably capable of with sensors, and pretty much sweep their guns back and forth and kill everything. No chance of a counter attack, and really even without a cloaking device in play it's unlikely that the guys on the receiving end would even know what hit them. It would be one second their fleet was there, another second massive energy pulses come in and blow everything to chunks.

Blowing up planets is also a trivial matter for Star Trek, it's just that even the bad guys don't see a point in doing it (a waste of perfectly good planets that could be conquered). Indeed, one of the things The Federation does is use their technology to REPAIR planets and stars and such, with the chance of destroying them by accident in the course of the repairs being the risk. There was a whole episode of TNG based around such a planetary repair, with the central drama that a scientist from that planet working with them was due for execution due to his age, and requested asylum until his work was done (A variation on "Logan's Run"). Pretty much every ship in Trek is potentially a "Death Star" capable of coring a planet if they really want to.

On the field of special abillities, most other science fiction universes have orders of guys with special powers who are fairly rare. While they don't show up as cast regulars, Star Trek has entire races of powerful psionics like the Betazoids who can **** brains if they want to (but usually when they are around, combat isn't the episode theme). You might wind up with like one Jedi or psionic per planet per generation in most science fiction universes, in Trek they have trillions of them living in their own little mini-empires. This is to say nothing of the rare psychic of other races as well that does the same basic thing, in TNG they had an episode called "Tinman" where there was a really powerful human psychic working with The Federation.

In terms of personal weapons and the general nature of technology, the reason why phasors are called "phasors" is because they use what are called "phased particles" or simply put they manipulate a broad spectrum of matter and energy through multiple dimensions. This is why a phasor is supposed to be capable of such diverse, and physics defying things, because by phasing particles it can perform limited changes to reality. This is also how phasors can be "modulated" to penetrate shields and such, by sending the energy to it's target through a parallel dimension the target doesn't have a counter-energy field availible to stop. Weapon and shield modulations and frequencies being a matter of trying to match or avoid relative dimensions and power outputs. What this means is that most defenses used by various science fiction races, either personal or on ships, are largely irrelevent. Crude energy shields and such DO exist in Trek (again think of the primitive space faring races where a couple of Torpedos would have ended a war that was going on for centuries) they just don't matter a hill of beans against the real empires that the stories revolve around. Arguably most science fiction universes would count as "primitive starfaring civilizations".

The point is that when you look at the numbers, and the way the concepts are defined (and demonstrated in the series) there really isn't much popular televised/movie-based science fiction you can stack Trek up against (there are however things in books).


If you say whip out the old ship book from Last Unicorn Games for "Star Trek: TNG" and say the ship stats from D20 Star Wars, and look at what the weapon ranges have listed in actual distance (ignoring game mechanics which aren't compadible) you can sort of see where I'm coming from. The same applies to pretty much any science fiction universe that has some kind of hard info for it. RPG mechanics generally seeking to emulate stuff from tech manuals and released design notes for the canon. Sometimes they are pointless when the only measurement is subjective to the game, but if you have solid, real-world distances and such definded, it becomes usable for making a point.


I'm sure that even if people read this rant, 15 seconds later fanboyism will take over, as nobody really wants a definitive answer, but I figured I might as well try.

Also incidently, I'm not a huge Trek fan, I like a lot of science fiction universes a heck of a lot better than Trek. I'm simply trying to be objective. Most people who get into these things tend to think in terms of "OMG, the Death Star can destroy planets" or Inquisitors inflicting extrminatus, which are epic things in their own universes, and while they might sort of have the realities of trek in the back of their mind from various episodes they saw, it rarely "clicks" that stuff like that really isn't epic in Trek, it's stupidly easy, it's just viewed as a pointless waste. Nobody is going to level a valuable type M planet without the most extreme reasons for doing so. In cases where a planet is infested by something they can't deal with, they will usually just quarantine it and check back once in a while to see if it's gone, or if they can find a way to deal with the problem.

[General Donner]

I came across this a little while ago, and have been meaning to post it here to see what you guy think of this analysis of Star Trek.

Sounds like the guy didn't really put a lot of thought into his stuff. He seems to be saying basically, "Trek wins because it's Trek."

Bringing Star Trek into any kind of debate like this with other popular science fiction universes resolves the conflict right off the bat.

The thing to understand is that most popular science fiction universes are designed to appeal to the "yahoo" factor with zipping space fighters going up against huge capital ships and similar things. Star Trek on the othr hand was designed around a much more realistic version of space combat, especially when you understand it.

Yeah, realistic. About as much as Star Wars, Stargate, 40k. Which is to say not very.

The thing to understand is that in space things like mass and weight don't matter after a certain level of development. Space fighters are more or less impractical, as cool as they might be, because speed is a matter of power output. The humn logic of "smaller means faster" doesn't apply, as a big ship, with bigger engines, and a bigger power plant is going to be able to move faster than a small ship with a smaller power plant. What's more a small ship having less energy isn't going to be able to produce weapons that are viable against a bigger ship while powering it's other systems.

This is a somewhat genuine point. However, he ignores the factors that might allow a fighter to be dangerous, if not necessarily practical. (Say, torpedoes.)

This is why in Star Trek's canon you really don't have space fighters, though various video games and such have added them. Simply put the fighters could never catch a ship to engage it.

DS9 has fighters, unless I'm mistaken. And that's the most "military" canon Trek you get.

You might say "okay, but we're dealing with concepts, and obviously these other forces have things like Space Fighters whcih somehow work"... but that gets into another not-so-little point. Despite how things look in Star Trek at times, the battles are taking place at ranges of tens of thousands or even millions of miles. They aren't the kind of close range engagements that allow the use of space fighters, where guns are firing a couple of miles, or some really ginornous weapon might be able to fire a couple thousand.

Except most battles we see in Trek are in fact, taking place at a couple of kms with slow moving beam weapons. Just like Star Wars, Stargate, 40k etc. TOS is the exception, mainly because they couldn't afford the FX for the battles, hence we don't have visuals for them.

The dialogue does often speak about much larger distances than we see. However, I'd rather go with what we see than what people keep telling us in those cases. Though I don't know if this site has a policy saying otherwise?

It's also important to note that in Trek, the blast radius on the weapons is also crazy. Remember that back in the original series when Kirk did that whole mafia episode he stunned multiple city blocks by sitting his ship's phasors to stun. In "The Next Generation" there was an episode whe the crew was being psychicly manipulated (by this alien disgused as a crew member that just appeared and yet was somehow accepted as having been there all along) so they would use the weapons on their ship to resolve a war between that race and another relatively primitive species. It was pointed out that a single federation Torpedo can pretty much wipe out a continent, and they could have resolved a war that had been going on centuries with a trivial effort.

Yes, they can wipe out whole cities with their weapons, Just like Star Wars, Stargate, 40k etc.

The point of this is that against most other science fiction universes, a Star Trek level ship, from any species, can pretty much sit back at a ridiculous range, beyond what most of those civilizations are probably capable of with sensors, and pretty much sweep their guns back and forth and kill everything. No chance of a counter attack, and really even without a cloaking device in play it's unlikely that the guys on the receiving end would even know what hit them. It would be one second their fleet was there, another second massive energy pulses come in and blow everything to chunks.

[Citation needed.]

Blowing up planets is also a trivial matter for Star Trek, it's just that even the bad guys don't see a point in doing it (a waste of perfectly good planets that could be conquered). Indeed, one of the things The Federation does is use their technology to REPAIR planets and stars and such, with the chance of destroying them by accident in the course of the repairs being the risk. There was a whole episode of TNG based around such a planetary repair, with the central drama that a scientist from that planet working with them was due for execution due to his age, and requested asylum until his work was done (A variation on "Logan's Run"). Pretty much every ship in Trek is potentially a "Death Star" capable of coring a planet if they really want to.

Really? I certainly wasn't aware of such capabilities. Then again, I missed most of VOY, ENT and the later TNG. Maybe it's mentioned there. Anyone else know?

On the field of special abillities, most other science fiction universes have orders of guys with special powers who are fairly rare. While they don't show up as cast regulars, Star Trek has entire races of powerful psionics like the Betazoids who can **** brains if they want to (but usually when they are around, combat isn't the episode theme). You might wind up with like one Jedi or psionic per planet per generation in most science fiction universes, in Trek they have trillions of them living in their own little mini-empires. This is to say nothing of the rare psychic of other races as well that does the same basic thing, in TNG they had an episode called "Tinman" where there was a really powerful human psychic working with The Federation.

I don't see where the trillions come from, unless the author invented it. Trek psychics are also not generally all that impressive when compared to some other universes (like Star Wars EU, Stargate, 40k...)

In terms of personal weapons and the general nature of technology, the reason why phasors are called "phasors" is because they use what are called "phased particles" or simply put they manipulate a broad spectrum of matter and energy through multiple dimensions. This is why a phasor is supposed to be capable of such diverse, and physics defying things, because by phasing particles it can perform limited changes to reality. This is also how phasors can be "modulated" to penetrate shields and such, by sending the energy to it's target through a parallel dimension the target doesn't have a counter-energy field availible to stop. Weapon and shield modulations and frequencies being a matter of trying to match or avoid relative dimensions and power outputs. What this means is that most defenses used by various science fiction races, either personal or on ships, are largely irrelevent. Crude energy shields and such DO exist in Trek (again think of the primitive space faring races where a couple of Torpedos would have ended a war that was going on for centuries) they just don't matter a hill of beans against the real empires that the stories revolve around. Arguably most science fiction universes would count as "primitive starfaring civilizations".

Where's this described?

Of course, it's funny that the guy thinks phasers are more "realistic" than "crude" energy weapons in the same post as listing this.

The point is that when you look at the numbers, and the way the concepts are defined (and demonstrated in the series) there really isn't much popular televised/movie-based science fiction you can stack Trek up against (there are however things in books).

Not really, no. Except Star Wars, Stargate, 40k ...

(So OK, 40k isn't popular and televised. Switch it out here for Dr. Who maybe? Both are similar wanky British series anyhow.)

If you say whip out the old ship book from Last Unicorn Games for "Star Trek: TNG" and say the ship stats from D20 Star Wars, and look at what the weapon ranges have listed in actual distance (ignoring game mechanics which aren't compadible) you can sort of see where I'm coming from. The same applies to pretty much any science fiction universe that has some kind of hard info for it. RPG mechanics generally seeking to emulate stuff from tech manuals and released design notes for the canon. Sometimes they are pointless when the only measurement is subjective to the game, but if you have solid, real-world distances and such definded, it becomes usable for making a point.

The author of the post thus far failed utterly to show precisely what made Star Trek unique. Neither its technobabble nor its hard sci-fi cred really stands up to scrutiny in most cases.

It beats the Clone Wars cartoon, certainly. But it's not so vastly different from everything else as this guy seems to think.

[Admiral Breetai]

[
Really? I certainly wasn't aware of such capabilities. Then again, I missed most of VOY, ENT and the later TNG. Maybe it's mentioned there. Anyone else know?

this I can attest too in the ep were Q lost his powers Riker basically looks at the falling moon and goes "LOL i CaN HaZ lUnAR as'plosion?"

thinking shattering the moon to pieces would be the easiest and most practical method to stop it from following. Data has to remind him that this would cause moon debris to reign down and slaughter the residents so no he cannot haz it

another Ep was LeForge worrying about using the phasers to burn pollution off a corroded atmosphere for fear of basically setting it on fire and life wiping.

in Pen Pals yiedless Q torps casually drill through a planet...and in another episode Picard remarks on how he thought it was impressive that a fleet of primitive ships the enterprise could pwn easily could shatter a planet converting it into an asteroid field

later on the Defiant could pretty much slag the founders home world and prior to that Romulan and shitty Cardassian ships with Romulan upgrades BDZ the founders old house

In The Chase a klingon BOP basically converts the entire planetary surface oceans included into brown boiling mud inside of two seconds of screen time

in other episodes repairing stars and solar systems is doable and the side effect is star busting if they fuck up (forget the ep name but he's right about that one) in ds9 one scientist revived a dead star in about four seconds

in one episode of Voyager Katherine Janeway purifies an atmosphered that had been polluted by anti-matter warheads for decades or centuries..she does with several modified Torpedoes and she does this in about five minutes

so yeah the ability to both casually destroy and repair planets has been a mainstay of trek technology since..well that retarded ENT season..so for several centuries now

[
Where's this described?

the reality warping phasers? I think the man was smoking something when he was watching trek because that's total bullshit

[Roondar]

I don't view Star Trek's Federation as being capable of defeating all (or even most, there's a lot of book based Sci-Fi which is very powerful indeed) the other universes we see in VS debates.

That said, I've come to the conclusion that judging Star Trek based on the on screen visual effects won't work for me. The scripts/texts are far more consistent in what they can and can't achieve for me.

I've therefore taken the position that the visuals are merely a dramatic representation and not what is actually happening per se (so, if they say they're at 10.000 KM but the screen shows them to be at 2, I take the 10.000 KM one because it fits better with the rest of what they can/can't do - from my perspective).

Hence - I almost never join these debates anymore since this view doesn't fit with well, the debating rules :)

[Mr. Oragahn]

I'd point out that in many SF settings, fighters largely are like a canopy stacked upon a big engine, with some weapons for good measure.
In comparison, Trek capital ships have tiny weeny STL engines.

Plus if fighters are capable of independent FTL trips, and are armed with heavy anti-capital ship weapons, they can harass enemy positions while the main ship cruises around or acts as a bait.

[Praeothmin]

Yeah, the article's basically one giant wankfest for Trek, ignoring tons of material that contradict his position, and ignoring tons of material from other Sci-Fi which again contradict his position...
This articla is basically the "Anti SW vs ST in 5 minutes" at SDN... :)

[Admiral Breetai]

while he did say some things that were true as I highlighted in my post (ps donner hope you found that imformative)

he seems to be smoking something mega for about ninety percent of his article

[Mr. Oragahn]

Dunno... I was in agreement with him until I read the fourteenth word.

[Lucky]

Yeah, realistic. About as much as Star Wars, Stargate, 40k. Which is to say not very.

It depends on your point of view. Star Trek uses guided torpedos/cruise missiles, and light second and higher ranges. Tiny craft just lack the power to overcome the more powerful systems of larger ships, and are easily picked off by insanely accurate point defense..

Star Wars is like world war 2(if that) in space.

40K is just insane in that slave labor is used to load and aim weapons from what I've heard.

Star Gate is much like Star Trek only with less advanced technology generally.

This is a somewhat genuine point. However, he ignores the factors that might allow a fighter to be dangerous, if not necessarily practical. (Say, torpedoes.)

This only makes sense if the fighters carry the same weapons as the larger ships like they do in Star Trek. If fighter weapons are notably weaker then the capital ships it makes no sense to have fighters., but this means smaller craft are very limited in endurance, and may not be able to do more then annoy larger ships expect in large numbers. That's why fighters are rarely used in Star Trek. It's cheaper to build capital ships that are just as fast and maneuverable, but have better shields, armor, and weapons.

DS9 has fighters, unless I'm mistaken. And that's the most "military" canon Trek you get.

The fighters are nigh useless once they fire their 2(?) torpedos, and are easily destroyed in one to two hits from the pathetically weak Cardassians ships.. Sisko sends the fighters to annoy the Cardassians.

Except most battles we see in Trek are in fact, taking place at a couple of kms with slow moving beam weapons. Just like Star Wars, Stargate, 40k etc. TOS is the exception, mainly because they couldn't afford the FX for the battles, hence we don't have visuals for them.

The dialogue does often speak about much larger distances than we see. However, I'd rather go with what we see than what people keep telling us in those cases. Though I don't know if this site has a policy saying otherwise?

Congratulations, you now have magical size changing ships, and dialog that makes absolutely no sense. Do you honestly want to argue the Defiant is multiple kilometers long?

You are thinking about battles like that in "Way of The Warrior", and "Sacrifice of the Angels", but the problem is that Star Trek(especially Deep Space 9) suffers greatly from something called dramatic visuals. This means the visual effects are not accurate. Honestly, you can't close to point blank range when your ships are nearly touching already.

Yes, they can wipe out whole cities with their weapons, Just like Star Wars, Stargate, 40k etc.

The Forgotten
[Command centre]
(Degra is standing with T'Pol as Tucker works lying on the floor by the wall. The main display screen is a maze of fuzz and distortion) 

T'POL: We've been working to reconstruct our database. 

TUCKER: The pounding your ships gave us didn't help much. Try it now. I'm going to reset the optical subprocessors. That might clear it up. When we slipped through your detection grid, we got a look at the weapon you're building. An impressive piece of engineering. Hell, it'd take at least a thousand starships like Enterprise to blow up an entire planet. You know, I'd like to see the telemetry from the probe you launched against Earth. 

T'POL: Increase the data resolution. 

TUCKER: I assume you were watching the attack, calculating the blast yields. Boy, you must have been pretty damn excited. I mean, that beam cut one hell of a swath through Florida. That's the name of one of the places you destroyed. Florida. 

T'POL: Commander. 
TUCKER: Did you actually see the cities burning? The houses, the people being vaporised? I had a sister there. 

T'POL: Commander! 


Whom Gods Destroy
SULU: We can't beam anybody down, sir. The force field on the planet is in full operation, and all forms of transport into the asylum dome are blocked off. 

SCOTT: We could blast our way through the field, but only at the risk of destroying the Captain, Mister Spock and any other living thing on Elba Two.
MCCOY: How can we be powerful enough to wipe out a planet and still be so helpless?

Booby Trap
[Ten forward]
(Wesley and Data are playing 3D chess. Outside is a field of planetary fragments) 
WESLEY: This was the final battle, wasn't it? 

DATA: Neither side intended Orelious Nine to be the decisive conflict.
WESLEY: There's not much left, is there. 
DATA: The destruction is remarkable considering the primitive weapons of the period.

Inheritance
JULIANA: Captain, our situation has worsened since my husband and I first contacted you. The molten core of our planet is not just cooling, it's begun to solidify. 

PRAN: Our gravitational field has been affected. Seismic activity has increased by a factor of three. 

JULIANA: If the cooling continues at this rate Atrea will become uninhabitable in thirteen months. 

LAFORGE: We could minimise seismic activity by creating isobaric fissures and relieving some of the tectonic stress, but that would just be a temporary fix. 

DATA: The only permanent solution would be to re-liquefy the core. 

LAFORGE: These pockets in the magma layer, how close are they to the molten region of the core? 

JULIANA: A few kilometres, why? 
LAFORGE: Data, do you think that's close enough for ferro-plasmic infusion? 

DATA: The procedure will involve using the ship's phasers to drill down through the planet's surface into the pockets, where we would set up a series of plasma infusion units. 

LAFORGE: We'll trigger the units by firing modulated energy bursts down through the shafts. 

JULIANA: I see. Injecting sufficient plasma directly into the core should trigger a chain reaction, and that will reliquify the magma. 

DATA: It should be possible to stabilise the core temperature at ninety three percent of normal. 

PRAN: If it works, the core would remain molten for centuries.

LAFORGE: Data, I'm almost finished reconfiguring the phaser banks. We should be able to start drilling in about an hour. 
DATA: Inform me when you are ready.

DATA: We will be in position over the drilling site in three minutes twenty nine seconds. 
(Juliana rests her hand on his shoulder) 

DATA: These scans indicate that the magma pockets where we plan to set up the infusion units are somewhat unstable. 

JULIANA: I'm going to monitor the density of the rock layers and adjust the strength of the particle beam as we go. That should minimise the seismic stress that we generate while we're drilling. 

LAFORGE: Data, I reconfigured the phasers to create the most highly focused particle beam possible. 

DATA: Thank you, Geordi.

DATA [OC]: The first phaser blast will be approximately nineteen seconds in duration.

DATA: We are within two kilometres of the magma pocket. 

JULIANA: Another five seconds should do it. We've broken through.

DATA: The drilling process has raised the temperature in the magma pockets by almost three hundred degrees Celsius. It will be several hours before it cools enough for us to enter.

The Omega Directive
TUVOK: Calibration complete. Phase modulator. Detonator circuits? 

KIM: On standby. 

TUVOK: We're ready to load the gravimetric charge. 

KIM: This looks like enough for a fifty isoton explosion. 

TUVOK: Fifty four, to be exact. 

KIM: What are we planning to do, blow up a small planet? 

TUVOK: I don't know. 

KIM: This warhead isn't standard issue. Who designed it, the Captain? 

JANEWAY: Mister Kim, you ask too many questions. Change of plans, Gentlemen. Increase the charge to eighty isotons. 

TUVOK: Aye, Captain. 

JANEWAY: Harry, when you're done here, give B'Elanna a hand with the shuttlecraft. She's reinforcing the hull. 

KIM: Right. Ensign Hickman thinks it's Species eight four seven two. 

TUVOK: Pardon me? 

KIM: That's his theory. There's an opening in fluidic space, and Captain Janeway has to shut it down. Want to know what I think? 

TUVOK: No. 

KIM: I think there's a type six protostar out there, and the Captain's planning on detonating it and opening up a wormhole to the Alpha Quadrant. In theory, it's possible, and because she doesn't want to get our hopes up, she's not telling anybody. 

TUVOK: Then I wouldn't suggest getting your hopes up. 
KIM: Then what do you think it is? 

TUVOK: I do not engage in idle speculation. 

KIM: Come on, Tuvok, aren't you curious? 

TUVOK: Yes, but we have a task at hand. The phase modulator.

Obsession
KIRK: Antimatter seems our only possibility. 

SPOCK: An ounce should be sufficient. We can drain it from the ship's engines and transport it to the planet surface in a magnetic vacuum field. 

KIRK: Contact medical stores. I want as much haemoplasm as they can spare in the transporter room in fifteen minutes. 

GARROVICK: Yes, sir. 

MCCOY: I presume you intend to use that haemoplasm to attract the creature? 

KIRK: We must get it to the antimatter. It seems attracted to red blood cells. What better bait could we have? 

SPOCK: There is still one problem, Captain. 

KIRK: The blast, yes. 

SPOCK: Exactly. A matter-antimatter blast will rip away half the planet's atmosphere. If our vessel is in orbit and encounters those shock waves 

KIRK; A chance we'll have to take, Mister Spock.

The sonic disruptor from "A Taste of Armageddon". It's out put was equal to "18^12 decibels" . As I recall that is more energy then some claim the Death Star's superlaser puts out.


It's a good thing shields that cover entire planets are used in Star Trek.

[Citation needed.]

Star Trek ships have real time FTL sensors."The Wounded"

Star Trek has weapon ranges in the millions of kilometers."Basics, Pt. I"

A class-8 probe can travel at warp 9 under it's own power, and it is basically a photon torpedo."The Emissary"

There are multiple instances where phasers are used at warp to target things beyond the warp field implying that phasers may be FTL.

Then there are things like "Titan's Turn" which are treated as if it were just going over the speed limit.
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Titan's_Turn

Then there is the fact that turning on the shields makes the ship invisible to 20th century Earth sensors, and seemingly immune to electromagnetic radiation do to gravity manipulation.

http://www.st-v-sw.net/images/Trek/Movi ... ni0369.jpg

Tomorrow Is Yesterday
SPOCK: We've achieved a stable orbit out of Earth's atmosphere. Our deflectors are operative, enough to prevent our being picked up again as a UFO. And Mister Scott wishes to speak to you about the engines.

Future's End
KIM: According to astrometric readings the year is 1996. 

CHAKOTAY: The late twentieth century. 

PARIS: Captain, they had surveillance satellites during this time. 

JANEWAY: Maintain a high orbit and modulate the shields to scatter their radar. We don't want to alarm the natives.

TORRES: Interferometric dispersion is online. That should take care of any radar detection. And I've configured the shields to disguise our visual profile. Unless somebody gets right on top of us, we should look like a small twentieth century aircraft.

Keep in mind that 1990s Earth in Star Trek has a higher tech level then the real world because of time travelers among other things, Voyager was in a state of disrepair since the first episode, and various Enterprise have sat in orbit around near warp capable planets, and not been seen.

Really? I certainly wasn't aware of such capabilities. Then again, I missed most of VOY, ENT and the later TNG. Maybe it's mentioned there. Anyone else know?

Planetary destruction, and killing everything on a planet is a good way to anger the UFP

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Terraforming

There are some hints that they use technologies based on the Genesis device by the time of Deep Space 9

I don't see where the trillions come from, unless the author invented it. Trek psychics are also not generally all that impressive when compared to some other universes (like Star Wars EU, Stargate, 40k...)

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Psychokinesis

The trillions is likely an exaggeration, but there are entire races that are par with high end of other settings. They range from being able to feel emotions to being high level reality warpers/N.R.O.B.

Most psychics in Star Gate have short ranged powers generally. Even high end races like the Nox would not that impressive in Star Trek.

Star Wars force users are not very powerful. What's shown in the EU often is at odds with higher canon, and force like powers are common enough that Star Trek powers have built devices that make it so those powers won't work.
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Telekineti ... ion_collar

Heck, a universal translator reads a person's mind.
Metamorphosis
(Spock is working on the Universal Translator. It is basically a metal tube nearly a foot long, that can be held in the hand.) 

COCHRANE: What's the theory behind this device? 

KIRK: There are certain universal ideas and concepts common to all intelligent life. This device instantaneously compares the frequency of brainwave patterns, selects those ideas and concepts it recognises, and then provides the necessary grammar. 

SPOCK: Then it translates its findings into English. 

COCHRANE: You mean it speaks? 

KIRK: With a voice or the approximation of whatever the creature is on the sending end. Not one hundred percent efficient, but nothing ever is. Ready, Mister Spock?

The highest end psychic I know of in 40K(The God Emperor of mankind) can be matched or surpass by a few races like the Ocampa, and that is ignoring races like the Q.

Where's this described?

Of course, it's funny that the guy thinks phasers are more "realistic" than "crude" energy weapons in the same post as listing this.

I honestly have no idea where most of that came from, but i don't see where he/she claimed phaser are realistic. One interesting thing is that the word phaser was created because the writers realized lasers could not do everything they wanted the weapon/tool to do as I recall.

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Laser

Memory Alpha while not 100% correct is a good place to get a general idea, and from there you can go to a place like http://www.chakoteya.net/index.html and read the transcripts, and http://www.trekcore.com/ has screen captures for every episode. If you're lucky you can even find entire episodes on a place like Youtube.

But Phasers are strange. You can fire solid objects from them, they often impart a sizable amount of kinetic energy, can easily be turned into shield generators, they can be used to transfer energy from one ship to another, they are seemingly faster then light, and the list of oddities goes on....

You've gotta love a tool that has settings that range from the often ignored annoy setting to the make that aqueduct disappear setting.

Phasers are likely a combination of mundane laser, exotic particle beam, plasma projector, force field generator, and some sort of projectile launcher in one small package.

Not really, no. Except Star Wars, Stargate, 40k ...

(So OK, 40k isn't popular and televised. Switch it out here for Dr. Who maybe? Both are similar wanky British series anyhow.)

That is debatable. I'm sure you've looked through the various threads on those settings at this site, right?

The author of the post thus far failed utterly to show precisely what made Star Trek unique. Neither its technobabble nor its hard sci-fi cred really stands up to scrutiny in most cases.

He did a pretty good job actually, but did not source his/her claims, and some of those claims are seemingly come out of nowhere.

It beats the Clone Wars cartoon, certainly. But it's not so vastly different from everything else as this guy seems to think.

Have you ever read the Star Wars canon policy? The cgi clone wars cartoon is only slightly below G-level canon, and above C-level canon.

[sonofccn]

It depends on your point of view. Star Trek uses guided torpedos/cruise missiles, and light second and higher ranges. Tiny craft just lack the power to overcome the more powerful systems of larger ships, and are easily picked off by insanely accurate point defense..

No any real claim that Trek was made more "realistic" is just plain silly. Its a tv show in essence projecting the romaticism and sense of exploration of like the 18th and 19th century out into the wild frontiers of space. Accurate "realistic" combat was the least of the writers concerns.

Secondly the use of cheap, expendable auxillery crafts to swarm and take down larger vessels is not inherently "unrealistic"/inferior to a more 19th century order of battle as Trek demostrates. Smaller ships have lower mass and are therefore easier to accelerate and alter course IIRC, momentum is a killer in space I'm told, and due to their lesser investment can be built in high numbers and maintained for a fraction of your big warship.

Lastly while they have demostrated popping warships at three hundred thousand kilometers they do not demostrate such ranges all the time and it is foolish to assume otherwise. In several battles they closed very close up.

This only makes sense if the fighters carry the same weapons as the larger ships like they do in Star Trek.

No, they merely have to hit with similar firepower or such. Or are cheap enough to produce they can overcome firepower issues through sheer volume of fire ect.

That's why fighters are rarely used in Star Trek. It's cheaper to build capital ships that are just as fast and maneuverable, but have better shields, armor, and weapons.

I find this statment hard to believe. Not only that a run of the mill starship is more manuverable than a Peregrin fighter. In addition fifty such vessels would employ only fifty pilots a fraction of what a normal sized vessel would require in wartime and a fragment of the resource comitment and when one is scrubbed the rest of the squadron functions without loss.

The fighters are nigh useless once they fire their 2(?) torpedos, and are easily destroyed in one to two hits from the pathetically weak Cardassians ships.. Sisko sends the fighters to annoy the Cardassians.

So? As long as they inflicted damage beyond their cost they are doing their job.

Judging from this, which appears to be more or less the battle with only new audio spliced over, starting @ 1:40 we are talking about squadrons of four or five fighters attacking a cruiser and losing about one or two fighters per pass it seemed to me. Very small comitment and they seemed to be doing some real damage.

Star Trek ships have real time FTL sensors."The Wounded"

Star Trek has weapon ranges in the millions of kilometers."Basics, Pt. I"

A class-8 probe can travel at warp 9 under it's own power, and it is basically a photon torpedo."The Emissary"

In Wounded they could "see" the Maxwell's ship but they couldn't engage it at all and there is no indication they had the "resolution" to even start some sort of firing pattern.

Please cite the revelant portions of Basics, pt.1 where they engaged at millions of kilometers.

For Emissary being basically a photon torpedo is immaterial. We have seen combat. We know the ranges they engage at and cross system warp capable torpedoes are the exception not the norm.

There are multiple instances where phasers are used at warp to target things beyond the warp field implying that phasers may be FTL.

We can see phasers they don't move at FTL except inside a warp bubble. Striking a sublight target from warp implies extremely fine precision in targeting not super fast weaponry.

Then there is the fact that turning on the shields makes the ship invisible to 20th century Earth sensors, and seemingly immune to electromagnetic radiation do to gravity manipulation.

Actually Toress makes it seem it requires more than merely turning on your shield. She had to modify, and presumbly so did Mr. Spock, it to fool radar. But this is all here or there we are not talking about pitting a starship against 20th century Earth and 40k, Stargate, Starwars etc all have sensors far surpassing mere radar.

The trillions is likely an exaggeration, but there are entire races that are par with high end of other settings. They range from being able to feel emotions to being high level reality warpers/N.R.O.B.

I'm not aware of many reality warpers living inside the Federation, merely telepaths. A race like the Betazoid is a poor substitue for for a jedi or a psyker.

and force like powers are common enough that Star Trek powers have built devices that make it so those powers won't work.
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Telekineti ... ion_collar

Unfortantly, if such things exist in any number, are only useful for dealing with prisoners not a combat situation.And the first guy who tries to put one on a jedi will jump back with at least one arm less than what he started with.

The highest end psychic I know of in 40K(The God Emperor of mankind) can be matched or surpass by a few races like the Ocampa, and that is ignoring races like the Q.

1. We don't really know the limits of the God Emperor. Its all myth and legend. On one hand he can be strangled by a Ork Warboss. On the other he can curbstomp a guy who can flay a squad of space marines with nary a thought.

2. THe only Ocampa I can think of that could roughly be called similar would be Kes. She developed her powers far beyond what was normal of her race so your comparison is immaterial.

He did a pretty good job actually, but did not source his/her claims, and some of those claims are seemingly come out of nowhere.

The guy did a crummy job. Empty assertions that Trek was more realistic and therefore "better", assuming high end feats, unsupported claims such as trillions of betazoids like members and erronous data besides. Half a life was about restarting a dying star not a planet, the only trek episode with scientist must die because he's too old that I am aware of, in Tinman Tam Elbrun was a betazoid and an unusually powerful one etc.

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Motor Torpedo Boat's were scrapped after WW2 and would be worthless now we have goalkeepers ect that can track fast moving aircraft let alone a armed speed boat.

I always felt the same applied to trek in regards their use of larger ships only but i still thought the fed attack fighters were cool when they first appeared.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

Somewhat OT: whenever taking on upper tier (relative to visual sci fi) franchises such as WH40K, few question SW ICS calcs being taken into account. But when challenging a lower tier (in terms of power) franchise like ST or B5, 90% of the debate turns into Trekkies bashing SW weapon yields.

[Praeothmin]

And here goes the bullshit again...

[Mr. Oragahn]

Our local troll is back?
I cannot tell since I have a custom script that blocks his posts.

[Mike DiCenso]

Yup.
-Mike