Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

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Mike DiCenso
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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mike DiCenso » Sun Mar 12, 2017 6:56 pm

How does Archer know the extent of Klingon outpost or colony shields? At the very least it covers this large an area.


Note the marked out areas on the computer graphic showing the three main settlements:

Image

If the shields have to protect each of those individual outlined areas, that's pretty amazing, and the two images help us set lower and upper limits. Still impressive given this is the 22nd century.
-Mike

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Mon Mar 13, 2017 1:42 am

Unfortunately those aren't the settlements. One of the Augments points to the lower right shape and says there are two settlements there and a third in the top region. The region on the lower left is evidently unoccupied.

So, I don't think we can claim shields of that size.

Edit: Oh, wait, wrong episode. Re-used graphic?
Edit-Edit: Nevermind, same place both times. Carry on.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Wed Mar 15, 2017 6:27 pm

sonofccn wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote: Sonofccn simply decided to end the discussion for reasons that are his own and was apparently satisfied with what the episode told him. Sonofccn's doesn't seem to have any problem with the UFP putting sensitive, backfiring shield generators in place where they'll kill the people they're meant to protect. Fine.It's still dumb, especially since it could be easily avoided, but okay.
I would find the above a gross oversimplification. At the time we ended our debate I believe I made suitably clear my disagreement with your analysis specifically your stance that the generators will automatically kill those they are meant to protect. To quote myself from earlier:

"Since the shield generator and the colony were one and the same on a hostile, toxic planet it isn't too surprising overpowering one could have negative results for the other. This is a universe with exploding console syndrome after all.
There is actually no reason why anything bad should happen. It is, in fact, pretty surprising. The episode itself has even proved the dome to be capable of withstanding a nearly point blank range explosion of a considerable magnitude, without any negative consequence for the people inside it.
Would the poisonous atmosphere turn into a problem for the inner sanctum once the shield would drop –despite the fact thus far that the dome survives very well surrounded by that deadly environment– it would strongly point to the shield system being directly responsible, and being very faulty. A fault being neither a secret nor a surprise to people like Scott.
More saliently nothing in the episode suggests the shield is some special, unique or rare piece of technology, nor explain why an asylum with a handful of inmates would warrant such a device. "
Correct.
That I chose to focus on arguing that Elba II example was canon rather than going into the weeds debating the statement that "if a planetary shield generator were to blow up... it would be pretty nasty" should not be taken as being in agreement with it.

-Respectfully, Sonofccn
OK.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Mar 16, 2017 2:51 am

2046 wrote:
Darth Spock wrote:I should feel guilty normally, but it seems like this thread already took a turn to the theatrical a while back, complete with direct commentary to the audience.


Pointong out unreasonableness *to* him didn't seem effective at producing reasonableness, so I opted not to (when I remembered to break the old habit of doing so).

I actually still plan on doing a write-up akin to the one I did for the SonOfCCN reference wherein I follow a specific subtopic of discussion and all the twists and turns. I think it would be fascinating.
Even our resident cop on the block seems to have opted to just let the "titans of the old days/crotchety old bastards" finish slopping each other upside the head.


I hate that he was put in that predicament. It's a tricky situation to moderate in such a scenario.
So you. So slimy. So disgusting. You remind me of those insidious and manipulative characters in Disney movies who display sympathy towards hurt people, pretending to share their pain and being their best counselors, when they're just faking it while you could hear the cogs of their brains clicking and calculating all favourable outcomes in exploiting the weakness of others.
Better. You're like that abject and repulsive Grima Wormtongue.

Image

That admirably sums it up. :D :D

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by sonofccn » Thu Mar 16, 2017 6:10 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote:There is actually no reason why anything bad should happen. It is, in fact, pretty surprising. The episode itself has even proved the dome to be capable of withstanding a nearly point blank range explosion of a considerable magnitude, without any negative consequence for the people inside it.
Would the poisonous atmosphere turn into a problem for the inner sanctum once the shield would drop –despite the fact thus far that the dome survives very well surrounded by that deadly environment– it would strongly point to the shield system being directly responsible, and being very faulty. A fault being neither a secret nor a surprise to people like Scott.
Other than a baseless assertion that the shield is "faulty", and therefore as consequence is somehow useless in your eyes, I am not quite sure what you believe you're responding too. In the portion quoted I made no speculation regarding the nature of the danger only that, in part, it could be something specific to the context of Elba II. Whether it is the extreme proximity of the population, shield generator and reactor to one another compared to what Earth would have or the fact the atmosphere in question is highly toxic and an otherwise harmless crack in the dome would prove fatal to the occupants.

On a more broader front I don't have a problem with theorizing regarding the minutiae of a show's background, provided one remembers fanon exists to explain what we see not dictate it, but your efforts in this thread, and the previous Cylon one, seem more interested in discarding anything incongruent with your presupposed conclusion, namely that the Federation can't shield their planets, than actual analysis. Hence your various assertions that Elba II is a testbed for new technology/ was tampered with by Garth/ is critically flawed/ is from some greater alien civilization. And I probably missed one or two. If there is a logic to your madness I do not see it.

-Respectfully, Sonofccn

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Thu Mar 16, 2017 10:49 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote:[
So you. So slimy. So disgusting. You remind me of those insidious and manipulative characters


Classic projectionism from the guy who has argued out of every side of his mouth in this thread, dancing between sides in the same post at times, often arguing by way of mere shade-throwing against points or persons without any evidence to back it up, and always circling back around to the same "conclusion" no matter what. As disgusting as your methods have been in this thread, I would like to thank you for the above . . . I wear it like a badge of honor to have earned such ire from the likes of you.

Again, had you been a reasonable person, you'd have toned down the interpersonal nonsense when asked, you'd have made my repetitions unnecessary, and you wouldn't have turned yourself up to 11, thereby making it prudent to put your errors in reasoning and argumentation on full display.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Mar 16, 2017 3:00 pm

2046 wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:[
So you. So slimy. So disgusting. You remind me of those insidious and manipulative characters


Classic projectionism from the guy who has argued out of every side of his mouth in this thread, dancing between sides in the same post at times, often arguing by way of mere shade-throwing against points or persons without any evidence to back it up, and always circling back around to the same "conclusion" no matter what. As disgusting as your methods have been in this thread, I would like to thank you for the above . . . I wear it like a badge of honor to have earned such ire from the likes of you.

Again, had you been a reasonable person, you'd have toned down the interpersonal nonsense when asked, you'd have made my repetitions unnecessary, and you wouldn't have turned yourself up to 11, thereby making it prudent to put your errors in reasoning and argumentation on full display.
You don't even know what projecting means. All of things, I'm certainly not the one latching onto the legs of any other participant in this thread, mere member or mod, or even some imaginary friend, in order to rally them to my righteous cause whilst pointing fingers at the opposition because they're hurting and stealing our pressshious super ubiquitous planetary shield technology.
You just label as "unreasonnable" anything that doesn't suit your views and blast that motto out like a broken record. Not helpful.
Your problem is that you don't fancy The Conclusion so you're going to whine whine whine on and on and on...

And to substantiate all of this (because otherwise it wouldn't be funny), here comes the rest.








Point II (Year of Hell, Bluffing)

We won't agree obviously.
Repeating Chakotay's first sentence was only a truthful warning is just you obviously denying the strong plausibility of a deception of Annorax. I'm not even saying that it's the only way to understand Chakotay, but that it's a logical interpretation. Yes, we could stick to Chakotay making a general statement, which is pretty much what you've done but from my point of view this requires denying about everything regarding the plot.
Still, most of what I had to say about that specific point has been detailed on page 5 already (here and there).
2046 wrote:
Thinking of it, had Chakotay been totally unaware of the mutiny, he still could have made the very same statement, word for word, if he wanted to convince Annorax to forget about his mad quest.


Guess what, O? You just shot yourself in the foot. This is a correct statement and completely contradictory to your claim. Chakotay could make this logical surmise and know nothing more. And y'know what? That wouldn't be a bluff either.
Sorry, I didn't paste the entire text I wrote. I acknowledge this single sentence is confusing regarding the point I was making beforehand.
I thought of what it could sound like in a different context, one with Chakotay unaware of the mutiny, in order to illustrate the elements that do matter once we're back to the episode's real context.
In order for a deception to exist, one has to know there is a truth but also being holding it back to some degree.
I didn't say the mutiny wouldn't happen, only that Chakotay could have said the same thing even if he wouldn't be aware of it. In this different context, he wouldn't know of the truth. There would be no plotting on his side. His statement could be taken as a plain truthful statement.
This conclusion is the one you pick, but for an episode that presents a clearly different situation. Essentially, your position hinges around a grossly incomplete acknowledgement of the episode's facts.
You only know that as a being part of the audience.


Nope. It is the reality of the situation. A bluff isn't defined by the bluffee, nor a warning by its recipient, before the outcome is determined, as Oragahn tries to do. It is based on the truth-value of the warning or, having none, the bluff.
As an audience, we can know the truth value in advance, a la peeking at the poker player's cards to see if he really has a good hand or to raise on or whether he is just holding random garbage and hoping to bluff a win out of it. In this case, we happen to know that Chakotay is holding the cards in advance, but by the end of the battle *everyone* knows it.

(Well, at least until the timeline is excised by Janeway's victory. But, lest you latch on to that as a lifeline, Oragahn, do note that I refer only to the knowledge of characters in the timeline being followed . . . the YoH timeline was still excised by not-a-bluff.)
How does that even begin to debunk my point? Especially the part involving Annorax's logical tactical conclusion as a consequence of Chakotay's statement, which you could at least deign to address to some degree.
You simply entirely miss the point about being the audience vs. not being part of it (like being in Annorax's shoes for one).
You, again, literally sniped 2/3 of a post that detailed this part. It's very easy to pretend being right when you don't even try to respond to the arguments.

Of course acknowledging this strong plausibility of deception would mean that Chakotay's statements should be seen as less reliable, because he would not be there to make strictly truthful statements as if he were picking facts from the book of Astropolitics and the use of Military Assets in the Delta Quadrant, but actually playing mind games with a deluded man he wants to convince to stop.
I also don't think I made any secrets about the implications of my arguments either. So I find it quite amusing how you "expose" this like some conspiracy gonzo as if there was anything inherently manipulative and sick about my position, only to make it look less acceptable. It's just another way to try to ridicule the statement instead of actually dealing with its content.

The fact remains that Chakotay knew Janeway had zero options to ever hope grabing even an ounce of a half-arsed victory short of a trick that was totally out of her control. The obvious attempt at a deception by Chakotay here would have been to have Annorax think Janeway actually did.
The bluff would be revealed simply when Annorax would have the confirmation that Janeway indeed couldn't harm the TWS but that someone on his ship had planned to backstab him, something he didn't imagine possible (again, we've seen how Annorax is a trusty fella).
From a general point of view, Chakotay's statement would apply to any normal situation where a Starfleet ship would possess weapons or tech to defeat a defensive system and would have been simply direct and true. From a contextual point of view strictly relevant to the episode in question and the plotting that was going on, his statement is simply incorrect.
I think it's a very straight forward understanding of the situation, although I'm not adding much to what I already said many times. From the moment this subtopic started, your entire position has been to deny any exchange on that point by never ever once consider what Annorax would obviously be led to believe.




2046 wrote:III. Don't mess with my Elba II, too

I see that Oragahn was unable to help himself. Now, not only is the shield dumb by design, but additionally it was wrapped around the planet by the evil genius Garth, making it weaker.
It's a suggestion, a theory. No more no less. It just happens to use elements we know of too, like the utter non-existence of force fields of that size in the UFP, the complete non-use of anything even larger than a small theater shield by the Klingon military to protect a top priority compound on their most important military world, and the link between shield surface area and strength, the later which even if it weren't confirmed in Trek, would still be a valid point to make simply in the face of physics.
How large was the shield supposed to be initially? Just wondering, because if the Enterprise-D shields get perilously weak at an extension of five kilometers (presumably tubular), it seems to me that the thousands of spherical kilometers one would expect from a planet would have meant the shield could've tanked novae until extended.
How could we know?
As part of a modification, the strength-size ratio would have to be very linear for the most part and also benefit from a high joule:area ratio too.
Ship shields logically are mounted from the very beginning of the construction and part of the blueprints. Meanwhile, a theater shield (which I think we know can even be deployed iirc what has been provided in this thread) would tend to remain more flexible, generally because it's a separate system of its own and meant to cover structures on the ground that come in various shapes and sizes and cover different surface areas.
And indeed, why extend it at all, except to satisfy Oragahn's irrational insistence that planetary shields must not exist?
I described it as part of Garth's gamble. The lethal consequence of dropping the world encompassing force field was quite obvious and no one would try to defeat it under such conditions.
I don't think I claimed it was a fantastic and ideal suggestion.
After all, despite knowing how dangerous it would be to the people in the dome if the shield were to be defeated in some fashion, Scott and McCoy still go for it.
At face value, it makes no sense at all. It's silly. We just know of the weakness but that alone tells us nothing. So we have to extrapolate why they'd do that despite the high risk of casualties.
The entire episode is almost an endless quest of necessary extrapolations.

After all, it is the episode wherein Garth literally claims that a flask he holds contains a powerful explosive that would completely destroy that planet or something equally retarded, if he were to simply drop the flask on the ground. Yeah, I mean, he really cooked that from within an isolated asylum. What the hell do they store there??
When was the last time you heard of the US stockpiling nuclear fuel for explosives in a supermax prison, alongside all the necessary tools to actually make the explosive workable?
Mmm... well, they may actually be using antimatter or at the very least fusion fuel. Okay, whatever. The guy created a megahyperantimatter then. With tools you'd expect to find in an asylum. The guy is some kind of Tony Stark.

So yes, that's exactly the kind of guy who could very well pull that kind of extreme gamble I described.

Oh and he also turned a medical chair-thing into an auditive torture device.
On the one hand, you try to make it seems as if you are not drilling down into speculation but merely going with the most basic facts provided.
Characters clearly know about the killing attribute. I don't speculate on that.


You most certainly do. You have decided that the shield kills people when phasered down.
I said I don't speculate on the characters knowing about the killing attribute. It means what it means. The rest is called a theory and yes, that is speculative.
Alternatives with greater explanatory power and less nonsense exist.
Do they? :|
That is, within the confines of a shield design that is "normal" and "fine" to re-use your words:
Generator overload and detonation? Shield projectors installed on the dome surface that might blow? Shield generator being air-cooled by poisonous atmosphere?
All promptly debunked in this post, towards its end (unless again, once ascribing to one of those ideas, you wouldn't mind the implication of UFP engineers being complete idiots of the highest order).
Therefore, for your normal and fine shield to stand on, you went looking for even more dubious and absurd conditions like... super explosive atmosphere, or super explosive crust, etc., none of which even fit with the episode either.
:/

It's even more absurd when you think that the best way to build a prison is actually to let it float in space, next to star. You get both vacuum and lethal radiations as ubiquitous and natural elements to reduce the chances of evasion. Stack a shield on that that only covers the prison-station, not a whole damned useless planet, and you're done.
an explosive atmosphere... you think it would have been mentionned.


Why? There was no mention of why shuttles couldn't fly in the atmosphere, a detail your speculation leaves out.
My speculation doesn't even have to mention that element, although I reported it as soon as I read the transcript of that crazy episode, and that's starting with the older thread.

An explosive atmosphere... they mention the poisonous nature of it, so you'd expect them to mention the explosive property too, especially considering that the plot involved a starship shooting nuclear-level beams at a force field with the intent of going through it.
In fact, that speculation is unnecessary because an explosion occured inside said atmosphere and never triggered a world wide fire apocalypse.


All explosions are equal, then? Fascinating.
Maybe you believe the explosion that killed Marta was moderate?
Transcript time (again):
SULU: There's been an explosion on Elba Two!
SCOTT: Point nine five!
MCCOY: It must've wiped out everything.
So now the explosive atmosphere would also only react beyond a given threshold superior to: random wild fire, thunder storm, superbomb made by Garth that "must have wiped out everything", any explosive that Enterprise's crewmembers could carry (like, say antimatter charges of some kind, easily kilotons or more), volcano's pyroclastic explosion (which can reach into the megaton range) and last but not least, meteorite reentry or impact (again, megaton range or more). And of course we'd have to believe that the energetic density of that atmosphere would also prove to be high enough to defeat the dome in case a chain reaction would be triggered.
So that's three elements: kaboomy atmo + threshold above all known natural causes and a number of artificial ones but still under the Enterprise's firepower + sufficiently high energetic density so once the kaboom begins the dome is destroyed.
There's actually a reason why I mention Occam's Razor.

Besides, for this wild idea to work, shooting on the other side of the planet would somehow conveniently not result into a chain reaction actually spreading right back to the dome. Perhaps that's another parameter we may add to that already strenuous and obligatory list of yours, right?
And if there was a maximum range to the chain reaction before it would weaken, why not mention it and therefore try to shoot say 100 km away from the field's focal point right above the dome? And how could transporters even work in that potentially 50~100 km thick fiery soup now? And this, and that...

It really is simple. The ranking for the lethal causes first starts with the ship's phasers: guys shoot through the force field but hit the dome or too close to it and that kills people. Even the dialogue would perhaps support this as Scott says Kirk Spock and any other living being would be destroyed, which is an odd choice of words unless there's something perhaps very kaboomy about the event. However, the problem is easily avoided by simply shooting 5 km away from the dome. It's stupid enough it cannot be that. So we look elsewhere for another explanation.
Secondly, it's the shield. For some reason, defeating the shield triggers a mechanical failure that directly affects the dome. I covered that part too and no options make sense if one wants to claim that the shield is normal and fine, all of them having the designers being ultimate dumbfucks.
So it either leaves us with an extrapolation that uses things that could be possible with a notch of tolerance regarding elements not being pointed out; like, "oh crap, mad dude has literally stretched the shield to unsafe levels that are massively taxing the generator, we can't take the risk of punching through the shield, it would kill all people down there" but can be accepted because it's physically possible and relies on other pieces of evidence outside of this episode.
Or randomly fly with completely exotic factors that are far more demanding in terms of assumptions, which are directly contradicted by the episode unless you add even more ifs and buts for these factors to work, and yet manage to paint a picture that still leaves us pondering the wiseness of the UFP engineers; after all, we could agree on the merits of why a poisonous atmosphere could make for an extra barrier against evasion from a hardened dome, but it really becomes silly to think that an explosive atmosphere would ever be accepted as a safe and decent parameter against evasion when it's detrimental to the safety of everybody down there and that there wasn't any massive obligation to even build a prison there to begin with (see my point about a space prison above).

So moving on...
OK, your new defense now is to throw a huge amounts of speculation, most of which doesn't even work (but you don't care), in opposition to the simple facts that we're given.


This is the ballsiest line of Oraghan's post. The dude's been speculating up a storm and declaring everything in Trek canon stupid if it contradicts him (or just pretending not to know it), but when counterspeculations are provided that show his speculations to be unnecessary, why all the sudden he takes offense at the huge amounts of speculation and claimed opposition to simple facts.

Remember, too, that this is the same guy who wanked himself into a tailspin to try to prove Chakotay was being dishonest about something . . . anything! . . . in Year of Hell, damning me for refusing to consider the contents of amd states of minds in relation to reactions to warnings. Now, all the sudden, he adopts KISS principles.
Are you arguing the case of Elba II's shield or Year of Hell? Please make your mind up.
KISS works when there is no need to go beyond it.
It's more like a reorganized and more readable presentation of points and evidence to dodge the usual quote-quote format of posts that is usual in such discussions. Got a problem with that now? o_O
With YoH we have no need to speculate, so Oragahn does. With Whom Gods Destroy we are clearly missing pertinent facts, so Oragahn demands we ignore facts.
LOL, what a load of nonsense.
It is just so obnoxious. He'll never give up. Even if I transported him to the Trek universe (he may need a visit to Elba II, actually) and let him interview people, he'd call them liars if what they said wasn't what he wanted to hear.
Aaaaaaaand more BS. :)
He claims his is "a measured claim that doesn't require extremely exotic attributes." Except it does, insofar as explosive shield generators unobserved in all of Trek canon otherwise and which he himself decries as stupid.
Except that the suggestion I made says that we have never seen a shield pushed to those insane limits and that is the cause of the lethality of its failure after a successful bombardment. Other than that, yes, I don't recall a ship exploding after losing shields (which would rather defeat all of your propositions that involved an explosion of the shield generator of some sort), a point I already made here, on page 2.

Although Trek is notorious for exploding consoles but that's another thing...
Meanwhile, one of my speculative options at least has precedent, as well as greater explanatory power for the episode's other details, besides.
Such as?
I mean, aside the fact that it does not even mesh with the episode to boot, as I have proven in my earlier post and in my reply a few paragraphs above.
Oragahn's claim ignores canon in favor of the insisted-upon stupidity, and his counterattack is to pretend that all explosions are equal to each other.

It's absurd, but when O decides to go off the reservation, as he does from time to time, he doesn't screw around.
That was a fine list full of hot air I believe.










2046 wrote:III-A. Elba II Leftovers

Regarding the additional posts…
Mr. Oragahn wrote:And now we can add dumb liberators to the list of dumb people in the Trek universe.


I am old enough to remember when he pretended he wasn't assigning stupidity to Trek characters.
What? :)
How many times have you tried that tired dodge, Robert?
Skipping a couple of nonsensical lines, we come to a good one:
You mean skipping relevant arguments. AKA sniping.

Just quoting myself and emphasizing the elements you left out.
Me wrote:And now we can add dumb liberators to the list of dumb people in the Trek universe.
See, if liberators were to come, they'd logically note the same problem Scott and McCoy observed.
Also, would they be in touch with Garth, they'd also know what to avoid doing, probably because Garth would have told them.

And would they be incapable of having the asylum personnel lower the shield whilst Garth would be held prisonner inside a cell, then too bad for them, plan ruined.
But that would not be a relevant suggestion because in the episode, Garth was in control of the asylum.
And would they be incapable of having the asylum personnel lower the shield whilst Garth would be held prisonner inside a cell, then too bad for them, plan ruined.


Ah, see, he *can* even.
Point?
But that would not be a relevant suggestion because in the episode, Garth was in control of the asylum.


Oops, nevermind, maybe he can't.
Can't what?

We were talking about the design of the shield. The context of the part he quoted and replied to specifically referenced the design concept, from his dumb-by-design assertion versus my tongue-in-cheek counterpoint. A lunatic taking over the asylum was, I'd wager, not considered part of the normal operations by design, but I will at this point go ahead and defer to Oragahn's greater experience with asylums.
What the heck are you talking about? In fact, who are you talking to? You're replying to me and then the next paragraph, you mention me in the third person?? Is that your imaginary friend listening, again? :3
Whatever your point is, make it clear.
Additionally, O suggests that Occam's Razor favors his view.
It's based on external canonical data that relates to shields and even a rather logical physical principle (stretching something thin weakens its structure).
In the end I'm not dedicated to that theory to the point of not being open to sensible and working alternatives. It's just that it's possible and leaves UFP engineers unscathed because every single other explanation you provided simply failed on that department.

Then again, as I previously said, if you want to go with straight face value, then we have a wide planet-encompassing force field somehow cast by a device itself controlled from inside the asylum. It was thought to be defeatable by the Enterprise (no duration specified). Scott and McCoy think they could blast through it but it would kill people in the asylum. No explanation ever given as to why that would happen, but it's an obvious consequence to Scott and McCoy (and no one else on the bridge disagrees). The shield also has a weakness on the other side of the planet which Scott and McCoy think could be defeated by the Enterprise's weapons. In fact, the weakness of the force field would allow a shuttle to be sent to the surface. For some reason, it's not suggested to continue using the shuttle beyond the landing zone. When trying to shoot at the force field on the far side of the planet, they're still concerned about the safety of the people in the asylum. They fire at the weak spot but fail to punch through the field.


The dialogue is also strange to some degree, with the use of the verb to destroy when refering to not only some people but also any other living thing on Elba Two:
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?
Plus Sulu says something and McCoy's answer sets what would seem to be contradiction regarding the idea of the force field actually preventing things from getting through (although what is blocked is beaming, from teleportation to phasers, which is perhaps an interesting clue to investigate):
SCOTT: No breakthrough?
UHURA: No, Mister Scott. Still no response from the planet.
SCOTT: Sensor readings?
SULU: The force field is weakest on the far side of the planet. We can send down a shuttlecraft carrying a team in environmental suits.
MCCOY: It won't work, Scotty. They'd have to cover thousands of miles through poisonous atmosphere before they'd ever reach the asylum.
SCOTT: Aye, you're right. Even if they made it, they couldn't carry anything powerful enough to break through the asylum dome. Only the ship herself could do that.
MCCOY: Probably kill Jim and Spock.
SCOTT: Doctor, they may already be dead.
Sulu reports the weakness of the force field and immediately affirms that a shuttle transporting some personnel could therefore be sent down. McCoy replies that the people would have to walk thousands of miles.
So they'd obviously be deployed on the ground, but the shuttle could mysteriously not be used to reach the asylum!
So at that moment, shooting through the force field isn't a requirement. It prevents people from being beamed up or down, but doesn't stop a shuttle from deploying people on the ground, yet for some reason the shuttle can't be used to fly to the asylum and, in the end, the Enterprise still tries to shoot through the force field.
It's a rather complicated combination of attributes right there.

All in all, this weird force field is a type of technology simply never ever seen again elsewhere in the UFP, even when strongly expected; quite the contrary in fact, and is equally absent from all other major factions of the alpha quadrant.
Last edited by Mr. Oragahn on Thu Mar 16, 2017 4:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Mar 16, 2017 3:08 pm

2046 wrote:(Edit: This is the point-by-point I have been noting as coming up.)
Mr. Oragahn wrote:
2046 wrote:IV. Odds and Ends

1. You still claim an inherent contradiction in my position yet fail to adequately define one that isn't based on your own groundless assertions.
Prove they are groundless.


They're based only on your conjectures as applied to my words. Pro-tip: I don't agree with your conjectures.

2. You say you apologize for a misunderstanding and that you aren't trying to BS your way out of things, but that's BS because it is what you spent the whole thread doing.
So I spent the "whole thread" to BS my way out of things?


Yes. My favorite example is that even when caught throwing shade on the Elba shield based on a not-even-a-warship being theoretically able to bring it down, you later claim Voyager is a warship when you think it helps you regarding Year of Hell and alien ship counts, claiming Voyager as a "battered warship" so as to make them want to send more ships, in your mind. And when this is mentioned again in this post, your response is to try to BS your way out of it with a smokescreen about internal volume utilization:

The Enterprise not being a warship, she can only compensate for the room used for other purposes by actually making the overall ship bigger, or using a technology superior to what the Klingons or Romulans use on their own warships.


Meanwhile, earlier, you tried to have it both ways with Voyager, which incidentally is illegal in most sectors:
When you consider the ratio size / weapons, it's also pointing towards a warship design with, heck, some labs tacked on for an official civil veneer.

Now –and you're going to hate me for that– this fact would actually turn out to reinforce my point bceause, regarding the comparison of ship shields, we'd have an UFP science vessel largely outmatching alien warships, which in return paints an ever worse picture of these aliens' shielding technology.


So yes, you are BS'ing your way through the thread, as per the above example, the bluffing example, the after-action I did of you versus SonOfCCN on some specific points, and more I can dredge if needed. It's not only bad debating, it is offensively dishonest. You'll seemingly do anything to prop up your case.
Do you want me to actually summarize the several times I actually admited being wrong, explaining why and moving on?


Unlike you, I am not trying to be a time vampire. The most important element is whether your conclusions ever change. Thus far, there's no evidence they ever could.
Funnily, you keep making plenty of self-generous claims about your love for honest and decent debating and your humble will to recognize your mistakes, but you've done none.


By that logic I would still be arguing bleedthrough.
However, while I don't try to jump on any occasion to make such claims, I actually do admit my mistakes.
That's the difference between you and me.


You're bluffing.

For any who might be interested at this late point, consider the below. First, we have the the unproven belief, stated as fact, that the Elba shield was a technological disaster.
I don't state it as fact. Stop lying through your teeth.


"There is simply one, just one example of a shield covering an entire planet as far as the UFP is concerned, and even the YoH case is not as solid as previously thought {… }
So we have one single type of planetary shield that has all the dramatic flaws I have described. It's fixed, weak and dangerous to the people or assets it has to protect, and we haven't even dealt with how long it may take to have a shield of that size raised.
Okay. It's canonically illogical and absurd.

Mind you, only Elba is canonically shown to have such a shield.
The rest is pure conjecture.
If you want to say it would be stupid for the UFP not to have such shields on their more important worlds, I'd tell you that it would be immensely stupid to design and use shields that way to begin with. Being a canon rigorist swings both ways."

That looks like a claim of fact to me, along with the "mess the shield of Elba was" that I referred to, but maybe you'd like to BS your way out of that now.
I have countless times said it was a theory, but insisted it was a necessary one.


The word "theory" does not appear in the first five pages of the thread, nor does the reasonable-sounding tone above match your behavior herein. Now, if you were to here go back and find statements that might be reconstrued as you suggesting you were speculating (as opposed to damning others for it), well, that *would* be more in keeping.
I'm baffled to see Trekkies consider the UFP to be so ruthless towards its own population


That statement only applies to your own nonsense speculations.
(I guess the communist shtick does pour through the cracks after all),


(Is this throwing shade or just obfuscating with total bullcrap, perhaps trying to draw me away from the shield stuff because he knows that commie nonsense is one of my pet annoyances?)
You using Sonofccn's post as a shield to avoid dealing with the problem won't make said problem go away.


This is such awesome horsecrap, I can't even tell what the hell it means. How exactly would I be using it as a shield? Were I to point to it alone and not reply beyond that, maybe you'd have a point, but it came in at the end of a four-post beating in which I threw it in as an additional example of your bad behavior in the thread.

Of course, Oragahn is the same chap who, when I scolded him for acting like a jerk in front of the new guy, claimed I was desperately seeking assistance from others, so . . . yeah, sure, I used it as an inhuman shield. Whatever.
Basically he simply means that the Federation has chosen planetary shields even for an application that could've lived with lesser shielding, contrary to O's claim that the Federation would choose otherwise.
He's also saying that the Federation prefers to install backfiring devices devices right next to a population it's meant to protect when this could have been easily avoided. So we have ruthlessness doubled with absolute stupidity x2 {… }


Bzzt! Wrong again, Ossu . . . I mean, Oragahn.

Your conclusion, not his, is the "backfiring" thing. Ergo, that is not what he said, but a further conclusion you wish to be so about what he said.
{… } they put it too close and they protect a whole planet which is tactically absurd and a waste of power{…}


That's a conclusion, too, and shade-throwing against Trek folk who you really need to be idiots for your BS to fly.

Going further, SonofCCN correctly assaults Oragahn's baseless claim altogether, noting a complete lack of evidence that the shield would pose a danger to a spread-out populace. I would later hammer this point, as well.

Oragahn's response to the point of civilian use?
So you're playing dumb on purpose? Its use by a madman dives right into the idea of said same madman using the shield in some unsafe way.


You had not started that claim (Garth-modding the shield) by that point. You are trying now to retroactively insert a modicum of reason where none existed. Your claim was that the shield was so dumb and dangerous the Federation wouldn't use it on populated civilian worlds.
Did I say that the problem was in keeping the shield up?


Wouldn't it going or being worldwide be a shock?
You also make it sound that they never ever switch it off, which would be rather stupid. Oh wait, they precisely switched it off in the episode in order to let people be beamed down.


You're the one who suggested it wouldn't be up normally, hence my point. Now you switcheroo and strawman me by claiming "normally" equals "always", and despite the fact that I *just effing gave* an example of it being lowered for landing, pretend that you are "WINNING" by pointing out that it was lowered for landing.

So what we have there is a Self-Reversal Strawman Jump with a Twist. I await the figure skating judges awarding you 10s for that.

As for Dagger of the Mind, is that a new reference you're also going to leave unsubstantiated and yet pretend it proves anything or what?


Y'know, that bullcrap was old the first time you used it. Asylums keep shields up normally, per "Dagger of the Mind" amd "Whom Gods Destroy". If you want to make a counterclaim, go make it. Otherwise, feigning conplete ignorance of Trek and/or basic context will get you nowhere except to make you look even more foolish. What, do I need to find you discussing Dagger like I did your prior feigned ignorance of Nemesis?
Not a Federation ship. *sigh*


That was your baseline. You even use it again right after saying the above!

Page 1: "Considering the power it's ought to use regarding the shield strength per zone and the overall total resistance against nuclear-level firepower... and that ships alone carry gigatons worth of antimatter... something tells me that if a planetary shield generator were to blow up... it would be pretty nasty.
I mean, simply put, either you have a super wide shield that still kills people locally and can only repel the firepower of one single ship like the Connie using phasers only (and perhaps a spread of torps for the icing) and... that's not great. I don't know how much AM the Connie carried but I'd say you'd need at the very least that amount of AM to cover the power expenditure. I think you'd reach in the hundreds of megatons and considering how fast the bombardment go, you may not have anytime to move people around to safe zones. "

Page 5: "Now, a Federation ship is likely to have a lot of AM aboard. A shield generator, in order to be to repel massive firepower, would logically need to have at the very least just as much, if not far more antimatter.
Since a Federation ship would find herself probably carrying the equivalent of hundreds to thousands of petajoules worth of energy, an explosion of a shield generator caused by an overload triggering a destruction of the AM containment would lead to an explosion into the gigaton range.
And I'm just considering the fuel expenditure needed for a very limited defense duration or small quantity of ships, nothing even remotely close to an attack by a large fleet or even a siege!
It is not a problem one could just dismiss."

Don't lie so transparently.
The shield generator has to run on its own reserves, right?
In the case of an explosion caused by something (overload?), chances are that the fuel reserves would blow up too.


Why? Do shields use antimatter batteries? And besides, if drained down, won't the antimatter be gone?
blah blah


Sudden conjecture on how shields repel attacks and are powered is just more nonsense conjecture. And after all, by your argument, starships should explode on shield failure, and you're at least able to acknowledge that they don't.

Well, you were before . . . you wanna shift on that, now, too?
No.


You're still arguing it over paragraphs, claiming alternative ideas are magical and that your claim cannot be easily dismissed, so yes.
In the end, if you want to play it the canon-face-value-stop fundie way, I just have to remind you, again, that Elba II is unique


Wait, I thought you thought it wasn't. You won't even acknowledge facts about the planet that are relevant. And, after all, won't its shield always kill civilians no matter what? So what the hell?
That is a lot of words to avoid dealing with the obvious problems.


That's what I have been pointing out about your posts.
It is truly desperate of you to claim that I dug myself into a hole of some kind.


Ballsy statement from the guy who claimed I was crying out for help by telling you to act better around the new member, even suggesting I was claiming to have personally brought a guest and that such a claim was low of me.

"Looking for support now? That really does sound desperate. :)"

"Wait. Are you saying you brought a guest and I'm disrespecting this person??
Come on Robert, you can't possibly be reaching that low... :|
Is there an argumentation fallacy known as Appeal to the Plebe's Support, because you certainly are very fond of using it. :)
Although it seems to be more about a conflation of a soft ad hominem and a quest for a moral high ground."

The good news for you is that you are bound to have reached the core, so maybe your continued digging can only cause your altitude to increase.


Now here comes the reply to the point-by-point post.

Regardless of what you say and how much you try to wiggle out of this fact, Enterprise does waste room for other purposes than strictly naval combat related ones and is regarded by Kirk himself as a science vessel. Any ship 100% dedicated to war but with the same volume would be more powerful and have a better chance of blasting through the force field of Elba II which even the Enterprise was thought to be able to overcome.

You quote me, saying I BS my out of things for the whole thread, yet don't even begin to prove it. A quotation plus a claim doesn't cut it, no matter how many times you repeat it.
I also sufficiently covered my opinion regarding Voyager's status and role as a Starfleet ship, you're free to look it up, no point repeating myself.

When I state and openly admit that I've been wrong and had to correct my former statements and was ready to prove it, you ignore it whole and claim it does not count until I actually admit being wrong on the final conclusions that annoy you. There is nothing more to add to this.

You haven't actually and explicitely renounced the bleedthrough idea, claiming it to be wrong, as far as I can recall.

You then cite me as part of a post when I give a batch of observations and interpretations regarding what we may gather about what the shield system entails. I don't claim it to be a fact, it's just my observation and what I get from the show, but it's nowhere explicitly shown nor described as such in the episode.
The worst fact is that although the discussion evolved and we went back and forth on several points, you quote me using present tense because I'm refering to the point we've reached, and you try to corner me by using a quotation from page one.

As for the word "theory" not appearing in the first five pages of the thread, I suggest you upgrade your search skills.
Btw, wow, just attacking me on the use of word "countless".

My remark about the UFP being ruthless regarding its own denizen may be part of my reply to what sonofccn said. After all, iirc, he did formulate such a claim.
Communism has largely proven to be a plague to the nations that experienced it, with countless millions ruthlessly sacrificed for the sake of ideology and parasitism from a few.
The comparison was just too tempting.

As for the "new guy", I still don't have an effin' clue as to whom you're talking about. But yes, it was particularly crass from you to introduce him and accuse me of having no respect for this mythical person I'd actually love to put a name on.

Oh, I also see that you have exposed me. You know my true external board identity. :)

And no, Sonofccn didn't deny the possibility of a backfiring shield system (only said we only know for sure it's limited to the scale of threatening only an asylum-worth quantity of people), and more or less described it as acceptable (the UFP has no moral qualms blabla).
To me that sounds like ruthlessness. Especially since no one in this thread has been able to provide a reason as to why the shield system (if it is the cause of death) couldn't be installed in a place where it would never ever threaten anyone.
Anyway, if Son wants to talk about that, I suggest you let him do it himself.

Garth modifying the shield is actually an idea I already refer to on page 1.
http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/view ... 184#p54184
I don't mention Garth explicitely in that post though.
But I do here: http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/view ... 401#p52401 (which is the thread I refer to).
Now, specifically about the theory, the shield being worldwide could indeed be a shock, or maybe not if it's known to be doable but simply never done because very dangerous and generally tactically useless in circumstances involving warships. However, it's not a perfect suggestion. Yes, ultimately one could always find holes in it.
Then again I didn't claim it was perfect, only necessary.

Now you claim I'm the one who suggested the "[shield] wouldn't be up normally". Where exactly?

Regarding Dagger of the Mind: because you wouldn't do your work and provide the quotations, I grabbed the transcript.
It doesn't seem we're being told anything about that force field other than it being usually up. I'd really like to know what you're trying to prove here with the insistance on force fields around penal colonies being generally up.
Wait. Are you going to claim it's a planetary shield?
Actually, here's quite a silly design:
(Noel makes it to the power control room and finds an off switch but it won't move)
(Noel hides as guards search for her, and when they go she pulls down the master high voltage switch. A guard grabs her)
(the guard turns the power back on again, but when he reaches for Noel she pushes him against the high volt grid and he fries, cutting the power again)

[Transporter room]
BERKELEY: Mister Spock, the force field is gone. I can send you right to the source of the interruption.
Yes, back then, the UFP clearly didn't care much about basic safety measures, so much that messing with an exposed high voltage grid (WTF?) screwed the control systems and switched the force field off.
Imagine the same kind of negligence for security measures in, say, a nuclear plant. Might have explained Tchernobyl though:
"Careful Sergei, you don't want to touch that high voltage gri..."
*Sergei touches the grid, dies*
WARNING! WARNING! CORE MELTDOWN IN 10, 9, 8, 7...

Although I'm generous enough regarding DotM, I'm not going to do your work regarding Nemesis by reading the damned complete lengthy transcript of an entire movie's plot in order to properly assess the value of *your* claim. You said it applies, prove it with direct quotations or shut up.

Gigatons and ships exploding: ah sorry about that, I misunderstood what you were saying.
So yes, indeed, an explosion of the shield generator itself, assuming it's powerful enough to reach the fuel depot, could be enhanced. If the asylum is of a small size and the shield + power plant combined hardware is packed in a same place, it's a very dangerous situation.
As for the shield being drained down, that would be correct if the way the shield is defeated is through attrition. The way shields work isn't exactly clear. It could also just be a question of providing more power than what the capacitors or generators can cope with: can't recharge fast enough... or one square meter of a shield can only cope with x kilotons, etc. If a shield is somehow precharged, it could be sitting on tonnes of antimatter which it couldn't spend at once. There's perhaps a mix of recharge rate and intensity. Since shields often drop by groups of percents until a target is left unprotected, this doesn't jive well with the idea that a shield can provide protection as long as it can be powered, capable of scaling its power consumption up and down between kilotons per second and gigatons per second for example.

Proof you haven't paid attention to my suggestion. Ships wouldn't explode once their shields were brought down because their shields wouldn't be used in a dangerous way that is detrimental to the crew of said ships (contrary to the shield in use on Elba II).

Please tell me what facts about the very planet of Elba II I don't acknowledge? I'm very curious about that. Perhaps I forgot to mention a local exotic nuclear frog? Or did you start counting the rocks around the asylum and I insulted you by not acknowledging that grueling task?
And where did I claim that Elba II's shield wasn't unique. I'm sure I could easily find several quotes where I state it is (unique).
Do the UFP own the tech? Yes. But they used it only once! Bam! :)

You made a silly claim about I having dragged myself into a corner when discussing with sonofccn. For all intents and purposes, our discussion was nothing like what you imagined and my point stood well enough too.
And again, you bring that "new member" thing. You just can't let it go, can you? :)
I'm starting to be worried about you. You say I have experience in asylums? But I'm not the one with imaginary friends I rely on when I'm bruised by words in a debate.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Mar 16, 2017 3:10 pm

2046 wrote:
2046 wrote:It's absurd, but when O decides to go off the reservation, as he does from time to time, he doesn't screw around.
I knew I remembered one such example: http://starfleetjedi.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=406

That thread, from ten years ago, showed several of the same irrational patterns of argumentation we are seeing here, albeit often in greater infancy. There, Oragahn's strongest arguments were in regards to trying to dispute my effort to cohesively understand somewhat disparate canon descriptions of Docking Bay 94, presenting them as wholly contradictory based on his own conclusions because it furthered his goal of embiggening Mos Eisley.

Certainly creating a cohesive concept is always going to be a harder sell than cherry-picking and discarding whatever you don't like, but even with that theoretical upper hand he largely made a mess of his own arguments, engaging in some of the same foolishness we have seen in this thread, such as wild self-contradiction, rejection of canon, rampant speculation treated as fact, and general Tellarite jackassery.

It wasn't until I finally (a) noticed his screenshot sleight-of-hand and (b) loaded up a photo editor to properly demonstrate the flaws in his claims about the in-town shots that I was able to blow his Mos Eisley stuff to smithereens, though he was still trying to claim supertall buildings not unlike Saxton and his unseen Death Star supertrench.

So basically, it was the same sort of dodgy-weavy, weavy-dodgy nonsense based in an effort to muddy the waters and create confusion, all while pushing his own assertions-sans-evidence virtually unchanged. Sounds familiar.

In any case, I will grant one self-contradiction in this thread that seeing JMS talk reminded me of. See, Oragahn is being a trolling time vampire. I have said I don't want to feed such scum. Yet here I am, keeping at it.

Time to stop. Oragahn has no reasonable arguments so it's just me repeating myself in slightly different ways. That's not a good use of my time.
...
Insane.
Simply, insane.
For some reason, perhaps because you feel insecure, so threatened in your position, you're driven to push the already constant character assasination up to whole new heights –beat– this time by going as far as digging a TEN YEARS OLD thread in the most irrelevant way possible regarding the topic of the current thread, just to grab whatever you can salvage as a form of rhetorical buff to make you feel more comfy here.
A thread where no one can verify anything of what you claim because most images can't even be loaded and where you spent most of your time embarrassing yourself over the basic understanding of walls and gouged pits, shadows and CGI tricks and even feeding wild traumatic guesses about who I really am and where I come from: I'm Mange the Swede, I'm from SDN, etc., (or like more recently here) I'm Ossus!
And I'm the one who are not showing any respect to the community here?
Really... that's fucking nuts.

Now may someone please make me a shiny avatar of a "time trolling vampire" that I can use for my profile? It should really embody the principle of Trickster, Devourer of Time or something along those lines.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Mar 16, 2017 4:42 pm

sonofccn wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:There is actually no reason why anything bad should happen. It is, in fact, pretty surprising. The episode itself has even proved the dome to be capable of withstanding a nearly point blank range explosion of a considerable magnitude, without any negative consequence for the people inside it.
Would the poisonous atmosphere turn into a problem for the inner sanctum once the shield would drop –despite the fact thus far that the dome survives very well surrounded by that deadly environment– it would strongly point to the shield system being directly responsible, and being very faulty. A fault being neither a secret nor a surprise to people like Scott.
Other than a baseless assertion that the shield is "faulty", and therefore as consequence is somehow useless in your eyes, I am not quite sure what you believe you're responding too. In the portion quoted I made no speculation regarding the nature of the danger only that, in part, it could be something specific to the context of Elba II. Whether it is the extreme proximity of the population, shield generator and reactor to one another compared to what Earth would have or the fact the atmosphere in question is highly toxic and an otherwise harmless crack in the dome would prove fatal to the occupants.
Ok. As a reply to my concerns about the danger the shield seemed to represent, your reply:
Elba shows the Federation has the capability and no moral qualms with employing it to protect civilians. Not to mention there is no evidence breaching the Elba shield would actually threaten a planetary population as opposed to a, relatively, small asylum worth of people concentrated around the shield emitter.
...sounded like you considered it acceptable that a shield generator could threaten something like the population of an asylum (some fifteen inmates plus the personnel).
Sorry if it's a misunderstanding. But is it?
On a more broader front I don't have a problem with theorizing regarding the minutiae of a show's background, provided one remembers fanon exists to explain what we see not dictate it,
You may be reading too much into Robert's accusations. The discussion about Elba II is lenghty, true, but at no point I ever considered my suggestion to be leaving the realm of sheer fanon. There's quite a world of difference you seem to have missed between defending a suggestion I deem correct and dictating it is such without substantiating such a bold claim.
I also consider a rationalization necessary if we start assessing all the implications of what the episode reveals, just for the sake of things to make sense. However, a suggestion, a theory, will always remain non-canonical and just a bunch of talks in the end.
but your efforts in this thread, and the previous Cylon one, seem more interested in discarding anything incongruent with your presupposed conclusion, namely that the Federation can't shield their planets, than actual analysis.
Aside from Elba II, the Federation has not demonstrated any ability to shield an entire planet, despite the large amount of opportunities it had to do so, when this could have been established very clearly. So it's not a presupposed conclusion, it's just an observation.
The problem seems that for years, some trekkies have been very lazy in their collection of evidence of a regular use of planetary shields and have been jumping wagons hastily.

As for the Cylons, if you allow me this little offtopicness, based on what Scott said would be necessary to punch through Elba II's shield, I can say that a single Basestar is ought to possess enough nuclear firepower for an alpha strike to get the job done. Not that it would be much of an issue since even the smallest Cylon ships are FTL capable and can jump into an atmosphere and also make micro-jumps, and they've been seen to carry nuclear warheads multiple times. A Basestar has something like 250+ Raiders stored in the slots of the outer hull iirc (based on the less disco and more militaristic updated CGI models, the orignal ones being far more generous in the number of hull slots), plus the Heavy Raiders parked in the bays, FYI.
Hence your various assertions that Elba II is a testbed for new technology/
Just as a wild suggestion, you know. Nothing else.
Provided once; I don't feel any need to explore it further.
was tampered with by Garth/
Isn't it possible? He tampered with the audio-chair too. He also built a super duper explosive out of nowhere.
Otherwise, at face value, you've got one kind of a shield that seems to have a strong and direct link to the fact that once defeated –and that no matter where it's being hit– the people it's meant to protect will die.

Fanon: maybe that would be why the UFP didn't bother using that tech elsewhere, huh?
is critically flawed/
Well, aside from appealing to an exploding atmosphere, crust or perhaps a transphasing invisible worldwide population of pissed off killer elves, all rather flimsy excuses that would somehow *cough* explain *cough* why people in the asylum could be killed even if the Enterprise were to defeat the shield from the opposite side of the planet, the one glaring link in all of that is the shield, really. Isn't it?
is from some greater alien civilization.
I suggested that? Maybe. It's a funny one though. :)
And I probably missed one or two. If there is a logic to your madness I do not see it.

-Respectfully, Sonofccn
My madness?
Makes the "-Respectfully, Sonofccn" sign of politeness all the more awkward now, I suppose.
I had no intention of triggering you though. Sorry. :(

Besides, you will now call me Lord Oragahn. Is that firmly understood?

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Mar 16, 2017 5:04 pm

Mike DiCenso wrote:How does Archer know the extent of Klingon outpost or colony shields? At the very least it covers this large an area.


Note the marked out areas on the computer graphic showing the three main settlements:

Image

If the shields have to protect each of those individual outlined areas, that's pretty amazing, and the two images help us set lower and upper limits. Still impressive given this is the 22nd century.
-Mike
The picture on the linked website shows something like an isolated small town.
The settled areas could be a loose collection of such small towns. That would account for the millions of souls in total (say, the population of Switzerland spread over three large land areas).
Each one of those small towns, or at least the main ones, could have their own theater shields.
Hence "this place" would mean this small town the characters were in.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Fri Mar 17, 2017 3:31 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote:
2046 wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:[
So you. So slimy. So disgusting. You remind me of those insidious and manipulative characters


Classic projectionism from the guy who has argued out of every side of his mouth in this thread, dancing between sides in the same post at times, often arguing by way of mere shade-throwing against points or persons without any evidence to back it up, and always circling back around to the same "conclusion" no matter what. As disgusting as your methods have been in this thread, I would like to thank you for the above . . . I wear it like a badge of honor to have earned such ire from the likes of you.

Again, had you been a reasonable person, you'd have toned down the interpersonal nonsense when asked, you'd have made my repetitions unnecessary, and you wouldn't have turned yourself up to 11, thereby making it prudent to put your errors in reasoning and argumentation on full display.
You don't even know what projecting means. All of things, I'm certainly not the one latching onto the legs of any other participant in this thread, mere member or mod, or even some imaginary friend, in order to rally them to my righteous cause whilst pointing fingers at the opposition because they're hurting and stealing our pressshious super ubiquitous planetary shield technology.
You just label as "unreasonnable" anything that doesn't suit your views and blast that motto out like a broken record. Not helpful.
Your problem is that you don't fancy The Conclusion so you're going to whine whine whine on and on and on...


Me: "Meh, I'm done repeating myself to someone who isn't listening."
O: (post after post of voluminous regurgitated nonsense)

QED.

Oragahn, your fantasy of my seeking aid elsewhere is just that. Long, long before I went third-person on you, you were claiming that fantasy, as I have quoted. To pretend that you are ignorant of it now is just more of the same fantasizing. I wanted you to stop embarrassing yourself and the board in front of the new member (and everyone else besides). That's what I said and that's what I meant, and no amount of your self-serving re-imagining of my motivations in making that statement will change that . . . just as no amount of desperate re-imagining will turn Chakotay's statement into a bluff, or nullify the observed existence of Federation planetary shielding in the Star Trek canon, et cetera ad nauseam. The whole thread is really based on you imagining something and refusing to give up the fantasy no matter the cost.

Besides, I used to tank threads where I had virtually all of SDN sniping at me from every angle. Do you really think I would cry for help over the likes of your dishonest sniveling and your paper-thin, laughable arguments?

As for the rest, I skimmed it. I laughed a lot. I didn't see anything truly worthy of reply, but I'll reread it later. However, unless you've massively upped your game, I don't see where your arguments (with apologies to the word for abusing it so) will get anywhere.

Free advice:

1. Work on your reading comprehension. Think before you type. If you aren't clear on something, go back and read it again. Don't knee-jerk and decide the other person is stupid or lying, even when you think slinging the claim will help you.

2. Work on your critical thinking skills. You are masterful at evasiveness and dodging points, but that's not the same thing, but perhaps could be a starting point for the skill. This leads us to:

3. Work on your intellectual honesty. If your argument is "if B then A" and B is shown false, you don't necessarily have to concede that A is impossible right then but you also shouldn't try to claw your way to maybe-A by dishonesty, shade-throwing, ignoring the impossibility of B by embarrassing nonsense, et cetera.

Have a nice day.

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2046
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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Fri Mar 17, 2017 6:02 pm

Not sure if it was necessary, but I made a separate thread for contrasting the two leading concepts that have emerged from the thread regarding Elba II's shield:

http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/view ... f=8&t=8734

Maybe in a new thread we can get some better behavior, and not require topically-curious readers skimming for X, Y, or Z to also see "idiot", "liar", and so on. Certainly in my case it tempts my posting-trigger-finger.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue Apr 18, 2017 10:25 am

2046 wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:You don't even know what projecting means. All of things, I'm certainly not the one latching onto the legs of any other participant in this thread, mere member or mod, or even some imaginary friend, in order to rally them to my righteous cause whilst pointing fingers at the opposition because they're hurting and stealing our pressshious super ubiquitous planetary shield technology.
You just label as "unreasonnable" anything that doesn't suit your views and blast that motto out like a broken record. Not helpful.
Your problem is that you don't fancy The Conclusion so you're going to whine whine whine on and on and on...


Me: "Meh, I'm done repeating myself to someone who isn't listening."
O: (post after post of voluminous regurgitated nonsense)

QED.

Oragahn, your fantasy of my seeking aid elsewhere is just that.
You've been constantly posing as the righteous one with the superior moral attitude, all that after you started the hostilities with sniping whole paragraphs and accusing me of looking for flaming on the basis of "wacky contrarianism", all the while using a passive-aggressive tone, all of which was absolutely uncalled for.

And yes, you also repeatedly took as many witnesses/proxies/allies as possible: you tried to get Mike in your pocket, then reached for support by invoking Iscander, then "readers", later on "a valuable guest", even sonofccn, plus your blog's audience and once again Mike ("I hate that he was put in that predicament. It's a tricky situation to moderate in such a scenario."). Aawwwwwww.
Such non-forced, touching compassion.
And when all that quite deplorably failed, you rolled back to a truly desperate attempt at direct character assassination by digging up a flipping decade old thread (!) that had obviously left you psychologically wounded to a degree I had never imagined possible.
It's time for you to learn to live in a world where people disagreeing with you are not automatically doing so as if animated by some wicked backstabbing motive and an appetite for shiting all over the place. I thought that after around two decades of debating, you'd have come to realize that.
Long, long before I went third-person on you, you were claiming that fantasy, as I have quoted. To pretend that you are ignorant of it now is just more of the same fantasizing. I wanted you to stop embarrassing yourself and the board in front of the new member (and everyone else besides). That's what I said and that's what I meant, and no amount of your self-serving re-imagining of my motivations in making that statement will change that . . . just as no amount of desperate re-imagining will turn Chakotay's statement into a bluff, or nullify the observed existence of Federation planetary shielding in the Star Trek canon, et cetera ad nauseam. The whole thread is really based on you imagining something and refusing to give up the fantasy no matter the cost.

Besides, I used to tank threads where I had virtually all of SDN sniping at me from every angle. Do you really think I would cry for help over the likes of your dishonest sniveling and your paper-thin, laughable arguments?
I too dealt with shitstorms and faced hordes of rabid fans who had mods on their side at SBC, which for all intents and purposes had a population greater than SDN, when debating Star Wars, Warhammer 40000 and even Halo, when all of these SF/space opera universes were at their peak of inflationism. But how is that an excuse for your shitty behaviour, sweetie?
As for the rest, I skimmed it. I laughed a lot. I didn't see anything truly worthy of reply, but I'll reread it later. However, unless you've massively upped your game, I don't see where your arguments (with apologies to the word for abusing it so) will get anywhere.

Free advice:

1. Work on your reading comprehension. Think before you type. If you aren't clear on something, go back and read it again. Don't knee-jerk and decide the other person is stupid or lying, even when you think slinging the claim will help you.

2. Work on your critical thinking skills. You are masterful at evasiveness and dodging points, but that's not the same thing, but perhaps could be a starting point for the skill. This leads us to:

3. Work on your intellectual honesty. If your argument is "if B then A" and B is shown false, you don't necessarily have to concede that A is impossible right then but you also shouldn't try to claw your way to maybe-A by dishonesty, shade-throwing, ignoring the impossibility of B by embarrassing nonsense, et cetera.

Have a nice day.
Why don't you apply that to yourself?
Besides, you don't need to mention the skimming though, it's been clear since your first replies.

Thankfully, that other thread dedicated to Elba II will allow us to deal with this specific topic rather clearly and quickly (I hope).

As for Year of Hell and Chakotay's attempts at convincing Annorax, I said it's a bluff and explained why at length, particularly on accounting for Annorax' perspective (which is what actually does matter). A thing you never did, so you kept stating it's not a bluff, etc., despite Janeway not possessing anything of her own to damage the TWS (the trick she exploited was totally out of her control and would never be a logical tactical parameter Annorax would ever consider). For a bluff not to exist, Janeway should have had weapons that could go through the TWS' defenses. She didn't.
You use teraton-BDZ-like absolutism regarding the meaning of what it entails to protect planets, rejecting the simple fact that an entire planet needs not be shielded, only the people and most of what they built, and that would clearly suffice in considering the world protected from the perspective of the people trying to defend themselves. I also gave many other examples regarding why providing partial protection to an entity will often be voiced as being the equivalent of providing protection to the whole of it.
The TWS does not affect wilderness at large, and if anything gets affected, it actually regenerates the land by making it pristine; i.e. reverting back to a state before it was affected by any action by the alien species targeted for temporal erasure.
Not going with the obligatory planetary shielding also has the logical advantage of making shields stronger when they're smaller, instead of uselessly stretching them across entire oceans, mountains and else, all totally irrelevant against what the TWS' beam does.
Plus you ignored the demonstrated weakness of the Nihydron and Mawasi shield tech which logically points to ground shields not being good enough too, so Chakotay's warning would just be conjecture and not exactly reliable.
And finally, even if we would accept the idea that calculations were updated to take into account the temporal wrench a time-shielded Voyager represented, once it was realized that such an update was the reason calculations were initially thrown off track, this doesn't change a thing about the fact that spreading the upgrade data like wild fire across this entire region of the quadrant would keep creating new parameters and making Annorax's quest harder week on week, with any single mistake in taking into consideration this entire nest of evolving parameters having the potential to completely screw the near entirety of temporal incursions. Which again, from Annorax's perspective, may have been understood as "my plan is thwarted". That would not make Chakotay's remark necessarily technically accurate to the comma, but would be enough to inject a healthy amount of doubts into Annorax's mind, which fits logically in the attempt at having him stand down.
Not to say, again, that the grammatical construction of Chakotay's second remark isn't fantastic, because if "they" = "home worlds", then the sentence sounds rather stupid. So we have to assume that "they" refers to the aliens themselves, which weakens the reliability of the sentence as far as evidence is concerned for planetary shields. This just adding icing on the cake and proving that Chakotay wasn't exactly looking for authoritative and accurate technical assessments but actually delivering quick sentences as part of a mind game which aimed at convincing Annorax to reconsider his actions, all that during an extremely tense situation.
All in all, the pro planetary shield interpretation is just too weak to be accepted as the one and true interpretation.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Tue Apr 18, 2017 9:14 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:And yes, you also repeatedly took as many witnesses/proxies/allies as possible: you tried to get Mike in your pocket, then reached for support by invoking Iscander, then "readers", later on "a valuable guest", even sonofccn, plus your blog's audience


I am so glad I was on the toilet while reading this. It made "laughing till you pee" (or worse) sooo much less messy.

Since mere mention of other people is a desperate cry for help in your delusional and seemingly paranoid mind, let me just tell you that Captains Kirk, Garth, and Janeway are all on my side thanks to such diplomatic efforts, and I have quotes from First Officers Spock and Chakotay wherein they make assorted colorful references to your claims. Chakotay even referred to bovine excrement and Spock described it as a logical assessment. Also, Annorax is embarrassed to report that he is your father, because he found your BS so annoying he went back in time and grudged your mom, thus inadvertently fulfilling a self-actualizing temporal loop of crazy epic fail.

Hey, it's no less absurd than your claim.
It's time for you to learn to live in a world where people disagreeing with you are not automatically doing so as if animated by some wicked backstabbing motive and an appetite for shiting all over the place.


I don't make that assumption. I draw that conclusion when the evidence is clear. I have disagreed with most everyone on the same side here at one time or another, sometimes passionately, and I have sometimes been in the wrong either factually or behaviorally and apologized when appropriate. Recent examples include (but are not limited to) using the EU scaling for Disney-canon interdictors, a factual error, and me getting totally triggered by something from SonOfCCN inasmuch as the argument style, for which I apologized. (Please note that these references are not cries for help, though if you wish to persist in your buffoonery you may declare them so.)

However, none of those cases involved the other party engaging in your grand combination of disrespectful insults, character attacks, unwavering unreasonableness, base dishonesty, conspiracist-level lunacy, et cetera. I don't react well to that combo, which is what inspired ST-v-SW.Net to begin with.

You wanna talk about people needing to learn things after over a decade? Well, there you go. Learn that. Such behavior doesn't make me slink away, as you may have found success with against others elsewhere. As seen by my increased participation in the thread, it makes me that much more determined to not only be on the right side, whichever that may end up being (for unlike you, the facts are my guide), but to make damn sure you hear about exactly why you aren't. And, being no angel and with my oatience worn thin over the years, I will happily give as good as I get in the rudeness department, and escalate if warranted.

Not that your mind would ever change, of course, as your BS about bluffing proves. That's why I'm done with you. You and your kind are worthless to me but for idiot-proofing my work and seeing just how far slimy debaters will sink.

But please, continue your mudslinging and nonsense for my amusement. I will be sure to sit upon the toilet for the health benefits of such lovely laugh-inspired cleansing.

Edit: That said, I would urge you to take your response to PMs so as not to continue sullying the board with this nonsense.

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