Starfleet Jedi

So which of the 2 universes is the more powerful the original one or the movie alternate one?

If you are comparing TOS-Prime to TOS-Alt, it's likely that TOS-alt is more powerful given than it has bigger ships, more warp cores, and possibly more powerful weapon(though there is nothing to quantify TOS-Alt technology firepower). Certainly TNG-Prime is still more powerful as demonstrated by the Narada's easy defeats of TOS-era Klingon and Federation starships.
-Mike

If it's based on the same era, I would say that the Alt Universe is more powerful, due to the larger ships and number of warp cores in those ships. They could be used to make at least the phasers and shields more powerful.

TOS-ALT is the more advanced reality, through in twenty to thirty years I'd wager it will look as dated and retro as The Original Series-TOS, with a host of cool features TOS-Prime couldn't replicate. Transporters have the distinction of both being superior, post Scotty formula and multi-light year beaming, and inferior, pre Scotty formula and having trouble locking onto a dozen people standing still on a planet's surface. Firepower wise it should be stronger as already mentioned but I really didn't get a sense of any display worthy firepower and so going strictly with TOS-prime versus TOS-ALT I would have to give firepower to TOS-Prime with the asterisk pending additional data of the ALT universe. That's my two cents worth anyway.

More warp cores could also be perhaps because they somehow hit a maximum efficiency with a given structure, and making it bigger for the equivalent of twice the volume represented less gains than literally strapping two cores together.

Note that I didn't watch the movie, but as I get it, with the arrival of the Naranda some years ago, the military of the UFP might have gone up a slightly different way, perhaps putting the emphasis on numbers and more weapons rather than high-quality exploration ships.

I think it's pretty irrefutable that Alt-Trek is more powerful because - let's face it - Abrams wanted a big dick to wave alongside Star Wars.

It's a bit of a mixed bag really, some things (transporters, effect of shields) seem far less powerful than before. Some things (sheer ammount of phaser shots fired in a period, speed of the ships) seem far more powerful than before. And some seem to be unresolved - phaser shots still don't do enough damage when they hit stuff even though there are many more fired.

On the plus side, ST now has rather impressive point defense - the E-Alt shot down something like 25-50 missiles heading towards Spocks vessel with zero misses. Accuracy is generally very high for the Federation side in this movie (although Spocks Jellyfish seemed less accurate), warp drive is insanely fast and with some wiggling you get beaming capabilities far in excess of the old 40.000 KM limit.

On the down side hand phasers are pretty much useless now, managing to deal even less collateral damage than before and looking like well, pea shooters. Other than that beaming now takes aaages and fails when you so much as blink, weapon damage to the Narada was severely underwhelming for the ammount of shots fired (though that could just be the Romulan ship having much better shields) and tractor beams seem to be gone. Shields seemed really ineffective (I couldn't even tell the difference between them up or down. But that could also have to do with Weapons strength of the enemy). Oh and sick bay/medicine now resembles (in a old-style-Bones-voice) 'the dark ages'.

One last thing: what's with the plastic curtains?

In all some things look more powerful, but lot of things at least look lots more clunky and decidedly less advanced. Orbital skydives or not ;)

By reading all of your posts guys, I really get the vibe that alt-Trek has put the emphasis on the industrial might and less on the technological progress.

By the way, I reread my post and it seems rather negative. So let me say two things to make sure everyone knows my point of view:

1) I found the movie a lot of fun, even if it seems to have made Trek less advanced in some areas (yet more advanced in others)

2) It was hugely refreshing to see a starship shoot the hell out of the missiles fired at it (and even more so when the same tactic was used to protect Spocks ship). Point defense is a good thing and I'm glad to see at least someone in the world of Trek finally agrees ;)

(and I still don't get the curtains :P)

Roondar wrote: On the plus side, ST now has rather impressive point defense - the E-Alt shot down something like 25-50 missiles heading towards Spocks vessel with zero misses. Accuracy is generally very high for the Federation side in this movie (although Spocks Jellyfish seemed less accurate), warp drive is insanely fast and with some wiggling you get beaming capabilities far in excess of the old 40.000 KM limit.[.quote]

We can at least forgive Spock's accuracy since his weapons were on a fixed arc and he had to aim the whole craft to aim the weapons. Besides given the urgency of the situation and how unfamiliar he was with the craft I bet he was less concerned with accuracy and more concerned with volume of fire and just getting that damn drill.

On the down side hand phasers are pretty much useless now, managing to deal even less collateral damage than before and looking like well, pea shooters. Other than that beaming now takes aaages and fails when you so much as blink, weapon damage to the Narada was severely underwhelming for the ammount of shots fired (though that could just be the Romulan ship having much better shields) and tractor beams seem to be gone. Shields seemed really ineffective (I couldn't even tell the difference between them up or down. But that could also have to do with Weapons strength of the enemy).

With hand phasers, I might argue that that's a good thing. You ever wonder why the claims of Riker's "taking out half the facility" never really came to fruitition? Because tactically speaking there's little use of a hand weapon that can demolish a building. That's not what hand weapons are for. In fact, collateral damage tends to be a bad thing period, hence why they call it "collateral damage." Hence Imperial blasters: they can take chunks out of walls but they do little damage over a wide area, they're clearly an anti-personell weapon and it appears that alt-verse hand phasers are following suit (and perhaps hand phasers period all along).

As for shots against the Narada, do keep in mind it is a 24th-century vessel that wiped out an entire Federation fleet just hours previous (and even a 24th-century combined Federation/Klingon fleet, going by the prequel comic).

ILikeDeathNote wrote:

Roondar wrote: On the plus side, ST now has rather impressive point defense - the E-Alt shot down something like 25-50 missiles heading towards Spocks vessel with zero misses. Accuracy is generally very high for the Federation side in this movie (although Spocks Jellyfish seemed less accurate), warp drive is insanely fast and with some wiggling you get beaming capabilities far in excess of the old 40.000 KM limit.[.quote]

We can at least forgive Spock's accuracy since his weapons were on a fixed arc and he had to aim the whole craft to aim the weapons. Besides given the urgency of the situation and how unfamiliar he was with the craft I bet he was less concerned with accuracy and more concerned with volume of fire and just getting that damn drill.

Don't get me started on that. Building a spaceship that can fire in just one direction and when it does fire manages to shoot all over the place does not make it better.. It makes it worse ;)

On the down side hand phasers are pretty much useless now, managing to deal even less collateral damage than before and looking like well, pea shooters. Other than that beaming now takes aaages and fails when you so much as blink, weapon damage to the Narada was severely underwhelming for the ammount of shots fired (though that could just be the Romulan ship having much better shields) and tractor beams seem to be gone. Shields seemed really ineffective (I couldn't even tell the difference between them up or down. But that could also have to do with Weapons strength of the enemy).

With hand phasers, I might argue that that's a good thing. You ever wonder why the claims of Riker's "taking out half the facility" never really came to fruitition? Because tactically speaking there's little use of a hand weapon that can demolish a building. That's not what hand weapons are for. In fact, collateral damage tends to be a bad thing period, hence why they call it "collateral damage." Hence Imperial blasters: they can take chunks out of walls but they do little damage over a wide area, they're clearly an anti-personell weapon and it appears that alt-verse hand phasers are following suit (and perhaps hand phasers period all along).

When your modern day ray gun can't beat a 20th century gun in effective destructiveness you are going in the wrong direction. ST Alts handphasers did nothing at all (so far as I saw) to anything not made of flesh. Your average modern-day gun will shoot through a thin wall (or, say, a car) no problem, leaving a nice hole and making sure the people you fight can't just hide behind everything they fancy.

As for shots against the Narada, do keep in mind it is a 24th-century vessel that wiped out an entire Federation fleet just hours previous (and even a 24th-century combined Federation/Klingon fleet, going by the prequel comic).

I did do that actually ;)
It's just that Trek has a long-standing history of the FX guys managing to make impressive sounding weaponry that supposedly is capable of fearsome feats of destruction look quite timid in what it actually achieves on screen. Even though those same ships are seen as a more than credible threat to planetary systems and are said to be able to pretty much destroy all life on a planet if not 'destroy' the planets themselves outright.

Now, most Sci-Fi* gets that wrong in the same way (just look at space combat in SW, ST and then look at space combat in B5. B5 is the least advanced of the three in weaponstech, but when these ships fight it actually looks like they do tremendous damage to themselves and others. This does not happen so much so in ST or SW if at all - barring doomsday weaponry of course).

*) It's not just ST and SW that get it wrong, but they're convienent examples considering the site ;)

Roondar wrote: 2) It was hugely refreshing to see a starship shoot the hell out of the missiles fired at it (and even more so when the same tactic was used to protect Spocks ship). Point defense is a good thing and I'm glad to see at least someone in the world of Trek finally agrees ;)

It's not the first time this has been shown in Trek. As far back as TOS' "Patterns of Force" the Enterprise shoots down a missle fired at it. A year later, this is repeated in "For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky".

In the TNG-era, we have the E-D shooting down a missile in "The Price" and destroying several Lysian drones in "Conundrum".
-Mike

ILikeDeathNote wrote: With hand phasers, I might argue that that's a good thing. You ever wonder why the claims of Riker's "taking out half the facility" never really came to fruitition? Because tactically speaking there's little use of a hand weapon that can demolish a building. That's not what hand weapons are for. In fact, collateral damage tends to be a bad thing period, hence why they call it "collateral damage." Hence Imperial blasters: they can take chunks out of walls but they do little damage over a wide area, they're clearly an anti-personell weapon and it appears that alt-verse hand phasers are following suit (and perhaps hand phasers period all along).

Actually, I have to agree with Roondar, there are excellent reasons why you would want a hand phaser that can burn through a wall or demolish half a building. Primarily from a technological standpoint, having phasers being no better than your average slug-thrower makes Star Trek... or Star Wars appear suprisingly primative. Where's the advancement? Why not stay with a light sub-machine gun, if beam weapons can do no better? The other thing that invalidates your arguement is that from TOS to TNG we have seen that phasers are very versitile weapons owning to the fact that they have many different settings ranging from simple light stun all the way up to explosive decoupling and disintigration/vaporization. It's not like the phasers are only set so that they go around dishing out destruction on the scale of a modest-sized building.

As for the ineffectiveness of hand weapons in the movie, as a counterpoint I would say that the Romulan disruptor rifles that Kirk and Sulu used to take out the drilling platform showed some fairly impressive damage capability.
-Mike

Roondar wrote: Other than that beaming now takes aaages and fails when you so much as blink

I didn't notice a whole lot of difference beyond dramatic license for the beaming sequences. It was a bit unusual for the transporter to fail to grab Amanda the way it did, though I can't recall a similar circumstance in ST:ENT, TOS-Prime or the TNG-era for comparison.

Roondar wrote:Shields seemed really ineffective (I couldn't even tell the difference between them up or down. But that could also have to do with Weapons strength of the enemy). Oh and sick bay/medicine now resembles (in a old-style-Bones-voice) 'the dark ages'.

The shields don't flare in a TNG-era manner, that is for sure. Given how powerful the Narada was, I'am not suprised that even modestly upgraded TOS-era shields could hold out against it. Also this is hardly the first time in Trek that we have seen where shields don't even so much as flicker when hit with overwhelming firepowe; much of the DS9 Dominion War battles have taken this liberty.

Sick bay look like the "Dark ages"? I don't think so. It looked kind of like the TMP-style sick bay rather than the TOS-prime, and I really did not notice all that much of a difference in what McCoy did as far as applying medicine than what he did in the field in TOS-Prime or in sick bay.
-Mike

The shields in this movie acted like the shields in The Undiscovered Country. The shields where still up, but the Klingon Torpedos where still damaging the hull. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KwTW6EzY1c