Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

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Mr. Oragahn
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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue Feb 07, 2017 12:38 am

2046 wrote:
I don't have to provide anything "contrary" when you plagiarized me.


Actually you do when your claim is that I am now making your same argument (or now "plagiarizing", because you want to escalate the stupid) and I point out that you're wrong in that claim again.
How so? "Your" suggestion is like a copycat of what I wrote, only reworded to look new, including the concept of a shield overload which has always been at the center of the theory I defended since the beginning.
It's your responsibility to correctly read people's posts, not mine.
You need to demonstrate something, not just claim it and post a lot of text that does nothing to aid you in your goal.
What is that "something" I need to demonstrate. All I presented is a theory that allows the audience to perceive irrationnal actions and statements as rationnal ones.
Then, again, that's nothing new.
All you are doing here is trying to reimagine your posts
Ah, you mean those I quoted verbatim proving you were lying through your teeth? I really wonder how you'll get out of that.
... to follow my suggestion
Mine. :)
... which was in opposition to your dumb characters (and alien/unique Elba shield) nonsense, precisely as I predicted you would.
You probably keep thinking that coming up with the idea of shooting at a weak spot on the far side of the shield suddenly solves Scott's apparent complete lack of minimal competence for a prolongated time beforehand; or, in other words, that his very late idea regarding the exploitation of a weak spot "undumbed" his previous him (and anyone around him).

See, it's not without a reason that I pointed out that a lot of time went on before Scott complained even a second time about their inability to get through the shield without killing the people (and I said something along the lines of a full quarter of an episode iirc), until he suddenly thought about shooting at the distant weak spot.
The dumb thing simply being that a man qualified like him, and just like anyone around him at that moment in fact, didn't think for all that considerably long time about the simplest thing to try if they were worried about hiting the dome; that simple idea being to try shooting at the shield without having the asylum being in gunsight too. Hence my theory that they didn't suggest that because they knew that shooting here or 20 km away wouldn't change a thing, since the problem wasn't that they'd risk punching through the shield and hit the dome, but that the shield itself was a liability to the people in the asylum because of a certain risk of overload.
That is, shooting at a spot in Wisconsin where the asylum was, or Alabama, Alaska or Puerto Rico wouldn't change a thing to the problem at hand.
This is the rationalization that undumbs them, see?

I don't blame Scott for not quickly coming up with the idea of shooting at the weak spot. I blame him for simply not having the very, very simple idea of trying to shoot at another spot to avoid hitting the asylum in the case they'd punch through. And McCoy's concerns are all the more stupid without a proper rationalization.
It's already very elementary.
The general premise you aim for is that the Elba shield is different/strange or weak/useless and, by either or both, not applicable to other worlds at all. You argue this via the assorted nonsense discussed and any other shade or mud you can desperately grasp for.
The argument is simple. Regardless of any other argumentation about it, this shield is unique, never seen anywhere else within the UFP. That alone should bury your claim of some ubiquitousness regarding the UFP's so called planetary shielding tech.
On top of that, I don't need to challenge that the UFP have plenty of planetary shields: it's already challenged on its own. There's enough indirect evidence of that, in the form of a particularly conspicuous absence of evidence of their existence that you are yet to acknowledge.
My premise is that the shield is normal and fine for its purpose, and while it can be penetrated with bad results of unspecified cause, perhaps unique to Elba thanks to the poison and dome, your nonsense arguments are still nonsense.
Oh, then please tell me what is so nonsensical about my suggestion that the shield itself was the problem? What is so absurd about my suggestion that an overloaded shield would result in the destruction of the generator and kill the people? Thus that it didn't matter where you tried to shoot at the shield (unless you could find a spot where you may apply less firepower)? What is so silly about the idea that the shield worked under severe stress only by the fact of being stretched to cover such a vast area when it's not supposed to?
It's nothing ridiculous nor far fetched. It also relies on a rather well known SF trope, the system that is overtaxed beyond the recommended parameters.
Note: like any system, there obviously are margins of safety, some of tolerance and then critical thresholds one shouldn't reach or trespass.

As for your position, it is as awkward as it is problematic:

"and while it can be penetrated with bad results of unspecified cause": sure, but we needn't add unnecessary parameters either to a simple problem: Punch through shield people die. The hypothesis that adds the less will be the best. What could be the probable "unspecified cause" resulting from parameters such as: a starship shooting at a shield, the risk of killing people in a super solid dome if trying to punch through said shield, and the system that generates the shield? With all the elements we have and without adding other parameters, the shielding is the likeliest culprit.
In fact, why would there be such a problem to begin with if it were "normal and fine"? That premise you recently adopted and described just above isn't even internally consistent!
Really, what a terrible shielding system. For example, if we were to look at the systems used to protect ships, I'd have to ask since when do ships automatically kill all their crew as soon as shields get overwhelmed by enemy firepower, not because of the enemy's weapon blasting through the naked ship, but because of an effect triggered by the simple use of the shielding system alone?
Random Trek episode: "[UFP ship bridge] WORF: Sir, we lost our shi–" KABOOM!! _end of episode and the entire series.
There would certainly be nothing normal and fine in that!

"perhaps unique to Elba thanks to the poison and dome": what? how so? These parameters (poison and dome) don't even begin to contribute to the risk, that "unspecified cause" you mention. The poisonous atmosphere isn't a problem until you crack the dome, either from the inside or the outside. As for said dome, as we know, it is very sturdy and has withstood a nearby strong nuclear blast without noticeable consequences so unless the E-C dropped biggatons directly on it, there would be no problem to be found there either; it is a reliable structure.

What is interesting is that despite most of your time spent deriding my work and observations, you finally admited, through your described premise, that there's actually enough room for theories because there clearly are things the characters take for granted which remain hidden to the audience. For instance, as you said, the "unspecified cause" that would kill the people in the asylum if the shield would get exposed to such firepower as to be pierced. And as you discovered when you read the transcript much earlier on, the fact that Scott and McCoy already knew that the shuttle they may have sent through the force field couldn't fly... is another piece of knowledge they held, just like that, without any explanation. The fact that there's a hidden context solidifies the legitimacy of the theory I provided, one that allowed me to produce a rationalization of this mess.
I don't force you to accept it, but I simply don't agree that there's no problem in character behaviour if we limit ourselves only to what we can read in the transcript.
the stupid behaviour was noted for two other things


Oopsies. You forgot you were trying not to argue dumb characters, here?
What are you talking about?
So what is it? What other than bleedthrough could possibly worry Scott so much that if they shot at the force field and put a hole through it, it would kill people in the asylum?


I thought you were the one saying that I wasn't reading your posts. Oy. Did you seriously miss the whole concept of generator overload? I described it as a pressure cooker in the dome ages ago.
I am expecting an original suggestion, not thievery. As for "ages ago", you mean 1/3 of this page I presume...
Bleedthrough damage and generator overload are two possibilities, though those aren't the only ones. For all we know the mere power drain could cause issues with environmental controls, or whatever.
You're adding extra parameters that are not mentionned and I don't see how they're useful or even better than the ones I use and which are already provided by the show.
The ironical part is that even your rather vague and curious suggestion about dangerous environmental factors conforms with the shield system being a problem the moment it's being fired at by a high profile UFP starship. This –again– completely flies in the face of your claim that this system was "normal and fine." Obviously, it is not. Make up your mind.
We are not told the mechanism of death so must conjecture, but that doesn't mean we get to just make stuff up and assume characters are stupid for not following it, as you do. Be reasonable, for a change. You'll start agreeing with me a lot more.
Be my guest. :)
It wouldn't be so funny if you hadn't recently decided that your position, your premise, is also based on the idea that shooting anywhere at the shield with considerable firepower would be the reason why the lives of people located in the dome would be lethally endangered.
You're being confused. I guess that's the side effect of stealing ideas and claiming them as yours, you lose track of what you stood for.
Now –and you're going to hate me for that– this fact would actually turn out to reinforce my point


LOL . . . thanks for demonstrating the talking-out-both-sides-of-your-mouth thing.
How clever!
You focus on throwing another ad hominem instead of actually just replying to the whole sentence, with the part about Voyager being a science vessel not making the Mawasi's and Nihydron's cases any better regarding their shielding.
Nevermind, at this point I don't expect anything better from you than these deplorable manners.
Fact remains that the complete protection of a planet is totally unnecessary, proved by the very episode.


Incorrect. I have demonstrated that your spot-protection concept won't have any effect based on examples from the episode that you haven't seen and pretend not to understand.
What is that? Two, three lies in such a single sentence? Not particularly good ones either.
First of all, you didn't demonstrate anything. You haven't begun trying to counter what I said. You just make empty claims and that's about it.
Secondly, you have not provided a single example showing me wrong regarding the sufficiency of limited-area protection, simply because the only examples you could pick are the one involving Voyager not being affected by the wake and managing to withstand direction exposure to the beam for some time, both showing that as long as a temporally upgraded shielding system works, assets and people inside that protected volume don't get erased from space-time. Period.
Finally, I didn't pretend anything along the lines of not understanding the episode. Quit seeing malice everywhere.

So, now.
Care to prove how acres of forest, some desert, a sea or an ocean being hit by the temporal weapon will affect temporally shielded assets, especially in any negative way?
Care to show why protecting the people and artificial assets, not random natural elements, wouldn't be enough?

For the reminder and to borrow your words, we're talking about the "spot-protection" concept here and what would exactly need to be protected versus what could be left exposed, not the merits of the shielding technology's chances to defeat the TWS' beam, which is another topic I also covered (the one which we see you handwave in point 1 a few lines below).
Now, your little formating choice is interesting but it's just a way for you to avoid replying to points I make.


Maybe if you weren't just trolling I might spend more time.
Even when I rightfully accused you of trolling, I addressed all your points and didn't hide behind this accusation to snipe entire sections of yours posts.
I am still waiting for your counter-argumentation or an answer on:


1. Request irrational. I might as well discuss with you how many electrons via copper conductor it takes to kill a man. That's not how it works.
Sorry but it's a rationnal point to make unless the shield technologies, from ship to limited ground area to planetary coverage, fundamentally change solely based on the size of what has to be protected. It's at least a very good what if. That is, what if the planetary shield was more or less just a bigger shielding system than what is found on a ship or used to protect limited zones? It's not definitive but it demonstrates that would the technology more or less simply scale up, we shouldn't expect miracles at all.
You don't address that because I suspect you know that your point requires that aliens, with subpar shielding tech and limited resources, should yet have, contrary to all expectations, sturdy planetary shields capable of tanking the temporal beam and therefore would prove capable of surviving the effects of a temporal incursion.

All of this when we don't even have enough evidence to know if Chakotay was telling the truth or was even correct, hardly making his statement a reliable source.

Also, if Chakotay was thinking of planetary shields (when he said "they" could protect their planets), the aforementionned parameters (shitty shield tech and scarce military resources) would tend to show that he was bluffing too since the aliens would never be able to effectively protect their home worlds despite the augmentations.
All in all, the case for planetary shields is rather weak in that episode.
2. Nonsensical. The Krenim temporal weapon-ship altered things across thousands of parsecs, and presumably even beyond. The wake is the trigger for the change as observed. Your calculations are faulty due to incorrect premises.
There is a problem, surely. It's probably a contradiction.
The temporal wake's speed is caped because of Annorax's very words. And as I said, I didn't grasp the low hanging fruit by using visuals, which would really put a quick end to your position (and I recognize that it is problematic in regards to the episode's self consistency).
But I can try to provide a new high end figure that would bridge both elements and therefore allow for some reconciliation.
Not exactly super convincing but it avoids rejecting some parts of the script.

Assuming that the action that takes place on the bridge of Voyager resumes quickly after the temporal incursion against the Garenor home world...
YoH transcript wrote: [Krenim Timeship - Bridge]

OBRIST: We are within range of the Garenor homeworld.
ANNORAX: Set temporal coordinates. Full power to the weapon. Prepare for total erasure of the species.
OBRIST: Targeting the focal point. Ready.
ANNORAX: Fire.
(The ray spreads around the planet then off into space.)
OBRIST: Temporal incursion in progress.
ANNORAX: Trace elements?
OBRIST: Diminishing.
ANNORAX: Counter indications?
OBRIST: None so far. Organisms and structures are being eradicated.
ANNORAX: Track the temporal wavefront as it passes through the system. I want to monitor every change in the timeline as it occurs.
OBRIST: Yes, sir.

[Bridge]

TUVOK: Captain, the Krenim warship is in pursuit, but their weapons are not powered.
JANEWAY: They don't know what to do with us now that we're shielded against their torpedoes.
KIM: Captain, there's some kind of spatial distortion heading toward us. Sensor readings are erratic. I can't identify the phenomenon.21
CHAKOTAY: What's the source?
KIM: Unknown. But it originated approximately twenty light years from our position. It looks like a shockwave in the fabric of space-time.47
JANEWAY: Tom, get us out of here.
PARIS: We'll never outrun it, Captain.59
JANEWAY: Maybe our new shields will help. All hands, brace for impact.70
TUVOK: You were correct, Captain. The temporal shielding has protected us. The wave front has passed.
Assuming a slower FTL speed in system (perhaps gravity slows it down) and a sudden acceleration outside of it after a short timeframe (all for the sake of Annorax and Obrist not being moron who don't know how their toy works), let's say the wake took a small time to cross the system Obrist was ordered to monitor. It's not an elegant solution but it allows for the conservation of more script material.

The wake is already moving after the impact, so we have to account for that before the wake quits the system. That would be 18 words after impact, 42 words total after Obrist replies.
I use the same ratio as before to obtain a duration: 3 words per second.
42 / 3 = 14 seconds.
I count 70 words since Kim began noticing the weirdness. With the usual rate of 3 words per second, plus the original intra-system duration, that's a total of 37.333(...) seconds to cover 20 LY.
So the speed is:
S = 20 / 37.333(...)
S = 0.5357 LY/s

It would cover 46,285.7 LY within a day.
The Krenim empire spanned 16,300 LY (5,000 parsecs).
Assuming a perfect disk, it would cover the full diameter within 0.35216 days, or almost eight and a half hours.

Ignoring visuals, assuming a wake about to leave the system when Annorax orders Obrist to track it as it passes through said system, and assuming an incredible acceleration once out-system, we could conclude that as far as the Ram Izad case goes, Voyager was hit by the wake but most likely did so whilst being shielded. In this case, we can consider that the calculations were changed to compensate for Voyager since the restauration was very good this time.
If Annorax and Obrist would do the same about Mawasi and Nihydron temporally shielded assets, the effects wouldn't veer off from what was calculated, unless this compensation can only be done on the basis of a former collection of data as it happened with Voyager. Or Annorax will assume that their targets may be temporally shielded now.

On a sidenote, the Krenim TWS took around three days to cover 20 LY.
Their warp 6 would be around 2,435 c.
3. Go watch some Star Trek. I don't have to educate you on how to debate my point. Two ships were sent to stop a genocide and resulting interstellar war. This is basic to the movie. If you have a counterargument, make it. Otherwise, shut your trap.
No, you made the claim it was relevant and used it as a counter-argument, so you provide the evidence or retract. A vague reference doesn't count.
I expect, at the very least, a properly commented transcript.
4. Already answered, as you have already admitted.
Already answered? When exactly? Secondly, I don't see how I could admit that you had answered it since I've repeatedly been asking for you to clarify your point.
Remember:
You wrote: Oh, and "nations/territories" is correct, because while cities = planets, a space civilization doesn't exactly have rural areas.
How am I not supposed to think you were claiming ecumenopolises for these aliens when you say "a space civilization doesn't exactly have rural areas"? Or, as I said, I may have misunderstood your point.
Hence my requests. You've been throwing accusations over several posts instead of spending your time more productively to detail your thoughts.

Anyways, just forget about it. I'm not going to waste my time any longer on that thing.
What remains is that for Chakotay's second line, we must assume that "they" meant the Mawasi and Nihydron, which remains inconclusive as to whether they'd use theater shields or planetary ones.
In any case, the only reason I am replying at this point is just to mock and embarrass you. I really shouldn't do that, though, because it is just feeding the troll with the attention you crave.
Sure way for sullying a thread I guess. Image

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2046
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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Tue Feb 07, 2017 4:52 am

Blah blah blah, the liar of the thread now claims I am lying, blah blah. As noted previously, from time to time you decade to be a contrarian and argue ridiculous stuff, but you usually have the good sense to shut up before all respect is lost. This time, you haven't, and so that seeming goal has been achieved. Congrats. I shall never trust anything you say.

You're still trying to pretend my idea was your idea (even the pressure cooker notion I posted from a thread *years ago * that *you linked to* is now somehow your idea), and then acting wounded by ad hominems as "deplorable manners" when you are literally spending paragraphs trying to convince yourself that you meant what I said, which has exceptionally little to do with the meat of the discussion but is great for poisoning the well.

The funny thing is that you make clear you don't get what I was talking about. You're still going on about Scotty being dumb for not trying shooting at the weak spot until late in the episode. But that's silly. He's not dumb, and if an overload is an overload, then it doesn't matter where it is caused. The result, assuming for the moment that the overload causes something bad, is the same.

As I said a couple of posts ago, "I presented a specific and nuanced idea of specific frequency technobabble. Hitting the shield on the opposite side of the planet at its weakest point would obviously prevent bleedthrough, meaning that is obviously not the problem. Overloading the generator by penetrating the shield should be the case no matter where it was overloaded, barring more complication or nuance to the idea (hence mine), so that simplistic idea is obviously not the problem either. And our characters aren't stupid, so we should also discount that idea unless we literally have no other choice. We have other choices."

And as I posited, if there is a deeper technobabble reason why overloading the shield opposite the generator will leave the noted "margin of safety", such as in the example provided where the potential cause of a bad result might have a frequency out of phase with another contributor to the bad result. By analogy, touching a properly activated tuning fork of the appropriate frequency to a glass might shatter it, but if you hit the tuning fork wrong in the activation phase it might not.

Nowhere does any such concept appear in your blatherings about Scotty's stupidity, alien shields, et cetera. Even in this last post, you go on about it just being the "elementary" idea of shooting at the weak spot.

So no, I give zero sh* *s about your claims of lying or plagiarism on my part, because you are, based on your other acts of dishonesty in this thread, simply trying to imagine something to smear me about.

Similarly, you imagine the Elba shield is some wildly different animal because of the unknown result that will kill the people via unknown mechanism. And yet in so doing, you ignore the mechanisms of death available in the unique environment of Elba II, including a poisonous atmosphere and a protective dome. Could the result be generator overload and detonation, resulting in a pressure cooker inside the small dome? Maybe. But that doesn't negate the shield's usefulness on other planets. Could it be that the shield projectors were installed on the dome surface and might blow, cracking the dome? Maybe, but again, that doesn't negate the shield's utility. Perhaps the shield generator is air-cooled by poisonous atmosphere and the concern is that without active control by the presuned-dead asylum personnel, penetration and overheat could release toxic gas into the dome before the phasering is complete. Maybe, but again, this doesn't negate the utility of the shield on other worlds.

By the way, that's like two additional ideas that also aren't yours, by my rough who's-counting. Oh, but silly me, I am sure I am plagiarizing. That, or your uses of the terms "plagiarize" and "lie" make about as much sense as your foolishness with the term "bluff", which you are still wrong about despite the various corrections and examples provided.

As for the rest of your post, it is similarly riddled with stupid, and I am not even counting your insertion of the Enterprise-C in TOS. Your "secondly" in reference to spot-protection has jack all to do with my argument, for instance. Then you ask me to prove a thing I have not claimed. Then you do math that supports my point yet continue to argue against it, and so on. Then you double-down on Nemesis ignorance as a defense when the whole context was provided, and even that effort on my part was more than was deserved. Amd so on, ad nauseum.

To borrow a quote from US politics, "delete your account".

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Feb 09, 2017 7:54 pm

2046 wrote:Blah blah blah, the liar of the thread now claims I am lying, blah blah. As noted previously, from time to time you decade to be a contrarian and argue ridiculous stuff, but you usually have the good sense to shut up before all respect is lost. This time, you haven't, and so that seeming goal has been achieved. Congrats. I shall never trust anything you say.
I don't think challenging claims that thus far had not been challenged means that any new opinion is produced just for the sake of being different.
You thought the overall case for a large presence of planetary shields was a long proven thing. As it turns out, it was actually far from being proven, but simply rarely challenged on this forum.
You're still trying to pretend my idea was your idea (even the pressure cooker notion I posted from a thread *years ago * that *you linked to* is now somehow your idea), and then acting wounded by ad hominems as "deplorable manners" when you are literally spending paragraphs trying to convince yourself that you meant what I said, which has exceptionally little to do with the meat of the discussion but is great for poisoning the well.
It was pretty much necessary because from my point of view, it was true. I indeed totally forgot that I had replied to your suggestion in that older thread.
Now that you have mentionned that older thread directly, I went checking it and you are correct. To that, you have my sincere apologies. Amongst the suggestions I had put forth back then, the idea of the overload wasn't mine.
That said, it came very late in this thread and isn't tantamount to the case in question.

However, tell me, if you knew the truth all that time, that you were the older author of it, why didn't you just prove it simply –instead of playing games and being vague– with a link and/or a quote the way I did it at large a few posts ago? FYI, I don't waste my time going over an entire thread if I don't think being right too, as I have better things to do with my free time.
I actually hope you remembered it lately otherwise it would mean that you were the one knowingly poisonning the well by letting this unresolved error continue.
But if you just remembered being the author lately, then you'll also understand that it's possible I too forgot about the origin of this idea. When I thought of it, I really believed to be the one who came up with it (I simply forgot during the course of the thread that I wasn't the author of it).

That said, to do things properly, I also took the time to review the entire thread since the moment I refered to Elba II.

I notice that I got confused at some point for good reasons. I was arguing that Elba II didn't represent a good example of large shielding because of its inherent issues.
You claimed there were none.

Logic simply dictated that if the shield wasn't the problem, then the cause had to be external and that would obviously be the only position you could argue from. That is why I got fixated with the impression that you were claiming the people in the dome would be killed because the ship would hit the dome after punching through the shields.

But no. Unfortunately for me, I wish I had realized much earlier on that your claim regarding Elba II's case had consisted of nothing more than a self-contradiction, visible as soon as here:
You wrote:Also, reviewing the Elba II situation, there's nothing wrong with the bloody thing. The Enterprise considered defeating the shield over the asylum but the likely bleedthrough from defeating it could have destroyed the facility.
You wrote:Whatever the case, while it may not be ideal under all circumstances and conditions, there's certainly nothing wrong with the basic concept, especially where one could use it outdoors and further from one's population center.
The thing is, a shield system that kills its people is not reliable, is not acceptable, is not normal and fine, whatever the reason it does that (overload, power drain, etc.).
The "basic concept" as you put it was one of a shield system that, under its current use, was a 100% lethal sword of Damocles hanging above the very people it was meant to protect.

Had I realized the contradiction of your statement that early in the thread, I'd have saved myself much trouble. This whole mess has solely been caused by the fact that you both claimed the shield system to be normal and yet you also recognized the considerable danger it would represent the moment it would be defeated through sufficient firepower, and just handwaved this problem with a solution: placing it elsewhere. You obviously completely handwaved the fact that it had not been put elsewhere.
As I had pointed out as soon as here on page 2, nobody would put such a dangerous piece of hardware that close to people.

I'd hate to imply that UFP engineers are total decerebrates for putting such a shield generator inside or too close to the asylum. Wouldn't you agree?
After all, considering how the causality between the shield crumbling and people dying was really conspicuous to people on the Enterprise's bridge, it's hard to believe it wouldn't be known by the people who designed that stuff.
And then, logically, the builders of the whole place wouldn't put such a dangerous thing there, but would have actually put the generator far enough so that even when the shield would be beaten –and whatever that would trigger– people would not be endangered to the point of certain death.
But since they didn't, it requires a solid explanation.

The only explanation is that this problem was not supposed to occur. This system, which under circumstances such as those observed in the show is clearly known to be an absolutely lethal danger by Scott & Pals if ever beaten, was nonetheless put that close to the people of the asylum, because the designers didn't consider the obvious lethal conditions to ever present themselves. In fact, we could go as far as to say that they should never had! In other terms, the way it was used was simply neither the right nor the smart way it was meant to be used. That is why this shield wasn't operating under its normal parameters imho.

So what could possibly make this shield system safer?

First of all, we know that even the Klingons didn't bother to protect a most important military building on their fortress-world with more than a threater shield.
Secondly, we've seen with the example concerning the Enterprise-D that stretching shields even weakens them (that is rather logical).
So obviously, trying to provide a good protection against a large starship's firepower –or even a warship– across such a vast area would really push the shield to its limits and prove to be a total waste.

As we can see, there would be no obvious gain to protect the entirety of a desolate world like that. It really adds well to the idea that the shield around Elba II was pushed to its extreme: there's simply not enough advantages to have such a shield protecting a whole poisonous planet when all that needs to be protected and blocked is access to an asylum (that seems rather small considering the population within) and perhaps an area around it. It would also have the likely benefit of making the shield stronger and, therefore far more able to cope with such things as heat diffusion for example.
So much that even if it were to be defeated, the engineers knew well that all that would happen would be that the shield would drop, eventually the generator (and all necessary extra hardware) would burn, but within tolerable margins that would not turn the whole asylum into a death trap.






Also, regarding my insistence on the stupidity of shooting at the shield while also risking hitting the asylum in the process, it is due to this paragraph I'll requote:
You wrote:Also, reviewing the Elba II situation, there's nothing wrong with the bloody thing. The Enterprise considered defeating the shield over the asylum but the likely bleedthrough from defeating it could have destroyed the facility.
Which I now understand differently. It sounded like you were saying the Enterprise was firing at the shield at a spot atop the asylum. Not seeing the contradiction in your claim back then, I understood that you were implying the dome would be hit even with a grazing shot or some nuclear-like explosion nearby. This is also why I wanted to remind you of the actual sturdiness of the dome, which also pushed me to tell you that in such a case, it would be stupid from Scott not to fire at another spot, just to avoid landing a phaser blast or torp on or near the dome.
What you meant by bleedthrough, at first sounded like you refered to the firepower pouring through the shield and eventually hitting the dome or somewhere close. I was led to believe that because you were claiming the shield system was ok, so I saw your remark as a claim that the dome itself would be hit by weapon fire bleeding through the shield's "skin".
But it was not bleedthrough through the shield itself you had in mind, but through the generator, right?
So just to be clear, in that sentence I quoted, now I think you assumed the existence of a mechanical property where some portion of the firepower would be released by the nearly generator, right into the facility. Could this be substantiated? Did you have any evidence that a shielding system would even do that, this kind of backfiring?


You're still going on about Scotty being dumb for not trying shooting at the weak spot until late in the episode.
No. As I said multiple times, I don't blame him for not thinking about the weakspot sooner. But I can see now why you think such a thing, based on what I described above that quotation.
Thinking of it, now that I see the essential contradiction of your position, almost the entirety of what we exchanged back and forth regarding Elba II can be ignored. In place, anyone should read what I wrote in that post and remember those two things:
  1. Scott didn't suggest shooting at another spot right off the bat after complaining that punching through the shield would kill the people in the asylum. Meaning that outside of the weakspot related idea that came much later, shooting at any other area of the force field wouldn't change anything. So the shield is the lethal problem.
  2. 2. When shooting at the weakspot on that planet encompassing field, opposite to the asylum, McCoy was concerned about the safety margins regarding the survival rates of the people in the asylum. Once again, this proves the shield is a problem.
Similarly, you imagine the Elba shield is some wildly different animal because of the unknown result that will kill the people via unknown mechanism. And yet in so doing, you ignore the mechanisms of death available in the unique environment of Elba II, including a poisonous atmosphere and a protective dome.

1. Could the result be generator overload and detonation, resulting in a pressure cooker inside the small dome? Maybe. But that doesn't negate the shield's usefulness on other planets.
2. Could it be that the shield projectors were installed on the dome surface and might blow, cracking the dome? Maybe, but again, that doesn't negate the shield's utility.
3. Perhaps the shield generator is air-cooled by poisonous atmosphere and the concern is that without active control by the presuned-dead asylum personnel, penetration and overheat could release toxic gas into the dome before the phasering is complete. Maybe, but again, this doesn't negate the utility of the shield on other worlds.
1. Then again kuddos to the UFP personnel for putting such a generator inside the dome. A wonderful display of idiocy.
2. The external explosion would need to be considerable in order to damage the dome, especially considering what it tanked earlier on when Garth blew up that chick. You would not want a properly designed shield to generate such explosions in case they were put under stress. Not inside a city, not even outside one, even less inside a ship. Yet the UFP would put it right on top a building? So clever...
3. Again, a smart design that is, bringing inside the sealed dome the very poison the entire structure is meant to keep outside, when the logical solution... would have been to leave that generator out, perhaps even more exposed to air than if put inside a sturdy thick-walled dome.

At some point you'll have to admit that no matter the suggestion you come up with in order to explain the unfortunate side effect of that shield going down, it's always going to suck becacuse if the shield is dangerous like that, it wouldn't be where it is to begin with unless 60 defines the standard IQ across the UFP's entire engineering department.

The only reliable utility to that shield, one that does not threaten the people under the shield, is the combined impossibility to land by craft (the shield is a barrier), the blocking of transportation via beaming plus some original effect such as the blocking of antigravitational systems. None of that requires the shield to engulf the entire planet though.
But as a battle shield, its unique and terrible disadvantage does not make it useful, but a severe liability.
As for the rest of your post, it is similarly riddled with stupid, and I am not even counting your insertion of the Enterprise-C in TOS.
Ah yes sorry for that, had a brain fart, was thinking Connie and put a -C there for Connie. :/
Then you double-down on Nemesis ignorance as a defense when the whole context was provided, and even that effort on my part was more than was deserved.
"Whole context"? You mean a vague reference to a small portion of the plot without further details?
You are the one who brought Nemesis as a supposedly relevant case, proving that even in case of immense danger, like what happens in YoH, even a political power such as the Romulan Empire wouldn't dispatch more than two warships to deal with the issue, as a normal procedure for which we shouldn't be surprised of the decision to use so few war assets in such dire times; even when the defending party would have the benefit of say, at least one to possibly nine days of preparation ahead, if not more.
So you are yet to prove that it is the normal procedure against such threats. In other words, that the small number of ships sent there is an affair of choice (a usual method) and not due to some other reason.
It's your claim, so it's up to you to defend it, not me. Otherwise I'll simply consider that you have no point.

I'll see if I can provde a KISS version of my arguments regarding Year of Hell and Chakotay's claims.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Fri Feb 10, 2017 4:14 am

To summarize your post:

1. "I can't BS my way out of this so I'll admit I was wrong but I'll still claim it is all your fault."
2. "I still can't be bothered to watch or even read the transcript of Nemesis because I might have to acknowledge your point."

#1 is supremely ironic because you still can't comprehend what you are reading. When bleedthrough damage was being discussed in this thread I posited a thought regarding bleedthrough. Later I explicitly rejected bleedthrough as a possibility. However, now you act as if I am in the middle of a contradiction right now. That's just dishonest.

Taking it from the top, we are not told the mechanism of death. We know that phasering the shield to the point of its failure will cause death unquestionably, while phasering the shield down on the other side of the planet *might* not. We can surmise a few things beyond that and take educated (or uneducated/ridiculous/dishonest) guesses beyond that, but that's it.

Now, since we know phasering the shield down equals death or almost-death, we assess possible reasons for death from phasering down this shield, contrary to most other shields. That means we should take all the facts of the Elba facility and planet into account.

Understand that hypotheses fall into major and minor categories, here. Bleedthrough and facility explosion constitute two major categories, but others are possible. Under the facility explosion hypothesis are multiple other sub-hypotheses, such as shield system explosion, power generator explosion, and other possible variants.

Sub-sub-hypotheses about shield system explosions include simple generator overload and explosion (with possibilities under that heading including the pressure cooker, the dome surface explosion, et cetera) among other ideas.

(Oh, and your sudden interest in who came up with what is just bonkers, and I think it more than safe to acknowledge the fact that it was only a means of slinging mud via the plagiarism nonsense. Nobody gives a crap about whose ideas are referenced (I have certainly never give you crap about referencing mine, whoch you acknowledge doing in this thread), and to suddenly demand every post have footnotes for even minor sub-sub-hypotheses is the fastest possible way to stifle conversation, so screw that stupidity.)

What you're trying to do is drill down a few levels of conjecture and declare the shield worthless and the characters stupid, the latter of which you now lie about openly and even add more stupid "decrebrates" to your list. Beyond that, though, many of your conjectures are baseless, and even if we accept them they don't nullify the utility of the shield. You pretend your explosive shield generator can't live anywhere on a planet, but that's just nonsense. The one generator could live anywhere on the surface, so long as it was far enough away from a population center to withstand something north of "point nine five", survivable by a small domed facility housing maybe fifty people tops, and which wasn't exactly a lot per the explosion observed. Even if it would be a multiple-megaton blast, Antarctica would be a fine spot, for example.

Of course, that's not me saying I agree with your speculation. I am pointing out the vast flaws in what I will charitably call your reasoning.

As for #2, it is your claim that the Nihydron and Mawasi fleets are negligibly small based on two ships each appearing alongside Voyager against a potentially existential threat. I pointed out several examples of potentially existential threats being met by a couple of ships or less for regimes we know to have thousands of vessels. Donatra's ships in Nemesis constitute one such example. You claim your abject and intentional ignorance of Nemesis represents just cause to ignore the whole point, demanding I go beyond my thorough description of the strategic situation at the climactic battle of the film. You even claim that by not doing so I am refusing to back up my claim.

A completely proper response to such insidious behavior would be "eat shit, you dishonest little troll." However, I think the paragraph above shows the absurdity of your position adequately.


I think that covers the majority of your BS from that last post. I see you threaten to write more about "Year of Hell". If you wish, do so. However, any discussion of "Year of Hell" that doesn't feature acknowledging your flagrant falsehoods regarding the definition of "bluff" is a non-starter.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Fri Feb 10, 2017 11:35 am

You had so much to disagree with in that last post I forgot to finish my point about you not reading correctly. See, I never argued that I had created the overload hypothesis that you now credit me for. Credit for basic brainstorm reasoning is irrelevant. I did take great explicit amusement at your claimed ownership of the pressure cooker idea, though, given that I had noticed it in a skim of the prior thread.

In your last post, however, you take my explicit amusement over the pressure cooker plagiarism nonsense and decide I own the overload concept, too (maybe I was the first to state it, but whatever) . . . and conclude that (a) this was in fact what I explicitly referred to and (b) was secret knowledge I held to beat you over the head with, insidiously.

So, you were both wrong and paranoid. Both feature the same bad reasoning issues, too.

For the record, I am not out to get you, I just wish you'd stop trying to make old trolls like SWST seem calm and reasonable. At this point you might as well be going all-caps.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sat Feb 25, 2017 12:32 am

2046 wrote:To summarize your post:

1. "I can't BS my way out of this so I'll admit I was wrong but I'll still claim it is all your fault."
2. "I still can't be bothered to watch or even read the transcript of Nemesis because I might have to acknowledge your point."
1. I spent an entire post apologizing for my mistake in misunderstanding your position, and thus explaining why a lot of what was exchanged was based on this misunderstanding and thus remains rather useless now that I saw the inherent problem of your position.
Essentially, one could just ignore the last two or three pages regarding the specific point of Elba II.
I don't need to BS my way out of this. I admited my mistakes and I am not saying it is all your fault either.

2. You are the one who made a claim that Nemesis was relevant to Year of Hell's Mawasi and Nihydron limited engagement against the TWS. You –and no one else– have to prove that and explain how. That is the way it works. I'm not going to do your work. You've got a cognitive issue if you really believe that I should watch the entirety of Nemesis or read its transcript in order to counter a claim that you are yet to prove relevant. Again, a vague reference to some event isn't enough. I very much doubt you're that old to have forgotten the rules of debate.
How many posts is it now that you have refused to substantiate your claim? Three? Four? I'll have to assume that you cannot.
#1 is supremely ironic because you still can't comprehend what you are reading. When bleedthrough damage was being discussed in this thread I posited a thought regarding bleedthrough. Later I explicitly rejected bleedthrough as a possibility. However, now you act as if I am in the middle of a contradiction right now. That's just dishonest.
You rejected bleedthrough, right; if I'm correct, you followed that by trying other explanations. Perhaps you rejected them too? I don't remember but okay. Still, none work and none will ever work for a simple reason. You try your best to claim that there's no technical/engineering issue with the shielding system on Elba II, yet the Enterprise crew easily knew about the lethal threat posed by that grounded, passive defense system. If they knew about it as if it were that obvious (and clearly nothing in the episode suggests that this threat is some very arcane effect), then certainly the people responsible of building it and installing it on Elba II would have also known of the problem. Much more than the crew of a starship in fact.
And so being smart, they wouldn't put the shield generator anywhere close to the asylum because they'd know that the moment the shield hardware would be stressed, it would be about as dangerous itself as the torpedoes or beams used to punch through it.
You claim it's normal and not an issue, I say it's not normal because the issue is extremely clear and conspicuous to Scott and McCoy.
But if you want to claim that the UFP has a habit of putting sensitive backfiring shield systems close to population centers they're supposed to protect, be my guest.
Taking it from the top, we are not told the mechanism of death. We know that phasering the shield to the point of its failure will cause death unquestionably, while phasering the shield down on the other side of the planet *might* not. We can surmise a few things beyond that and take educated (or uneducated/ridiculous/dishonest) guesses beyond that, but that's it.

Now, since we know phasering the shield down equals death or almost-death, we assess possible reasons for death from phasering down this shield, contrary to most other shields. That means we should take all the facts of the Elba facility and planet into account.

Understand that hypotheses fall into major and minor categories, here. Bleedthrough and facility explosion constitute two major categories, but others are possible. Under the facility explosion hypothesis are multiple other sub-hypotheses, such as shield system explosion, power generator explosion, and other possible variants.

Sub-sub-hypotheses about shield system explosions include simple generator overload and explosion (with possibilities under that heading including the pressure cooker, the dome surface explosion, et cetera) among other ideas.
Emphasis mine.
Guessing what causes the death is not necessary. What matters is that we know that the crew of the Enterprise knew of that causality without a shadow of doubt, and you recognize that too.
So would UFP engineers, unless they're hopelessly dumb.
(Oh, and your sudden interest in who came up with what is just bonkers, and I think it more than safe to acknowledge the fact that it was only a means of slinging mud via the plagiarism nonsense. Nobody gives a crap about whose ideas are referenced (I have certainly never give you crap about referencing mine, whoch you acknowledge doing in this thread), and to suddenly demand every post have footnotes for even minor sub-sub-hypotheses is the fastest possible way to stifle conversation, so screw that stupidity.)
I think it's a matter of courtesy to recognize who came up with an idea. And as such, it was equally necessary for me to apologize for forgetting about you being the original author of the overload idea.
It's still a good one, but we tend to differ on why it would happen (although you reject it).
I claim that the way this shield is used is unusual in order to explain why the UFP engineers wouldn't be stupid enough to put the superrisky hardware that close to people when knowing about the triggered lethal attribute.
What you're trying to do is drill down a few levels of conjecture and declare the shield worthless and the characters stupid, the latter of which you now lie about openly and even add more stupid "decrebrates" to your list. Beyond that, though, many of your conjectures are baseless, and even if we accept them they don't nullify the utility of the shield.
It kills the people it's supposed to protect the moment one single ship manages to punch through.
Well, a shield system that comes with that kind of "feature" is stupid.
And if this killing parameter was known by UFP engineers, then they'd certainly do everything possible to settle the device in such a fashion that if the shield were to fail, it would still not kill the people it's meant to protect.

Let's take a contemporary example. Even modern engineers, when coming up with the idea of EXPLOSIVE reactive armour, knew that they were looking for a way to protect tank crews whilst stacking explosives on its outer hull! That is, they went as far as to use an explosive system as a defense, an extreme solution, only because they knew it would actually increase the survival rates of crews against kinetic impactors and other shaped charges (yes, only that).
But that Elba II shield, it's like if Roman legionaries used a shield which, if penetrated by an arrow fired by a longbow, would blow up and kill something like five nearby legionaries in a dramatic release of fire, shrapnel, acid or stuff. Point? They'd never use it on any battlefield. It would be deeply retarded.

So are UFP engineers incredibly stupid?
Or maybe the shield they built and installed was never meant to be used in such a way that it would turn into a friendly-fire weapon with a 100% lethality the moment it would go down?
You pretend your explosive shield generator can't live anywhere on a planet, but that's just nonsense. The one generator could live anywhere on the surface, so long as it was far enough away from a population center to withstand something north of "point nine five", survivable by a small domed facility housing maybe fifty people tops, and which wasn't exactly a lot per the explosion observed. Even if it would be a multiple-megaton blast, Antarctica would be a fine spot, for example.

Of course, that's not me saying I agree with your speculation. I am pointing out the vast flaws in what I will charitably call your reasoning.
All of that is correct aside from the fact that I didn't pretend such a thing. Otherwise I wouldn't have written the post you replied to.
Anyway, the whole exchange between you and me has involved a lot of misunderstandings by now. I'll restate my point:
There's a glaring issue with the shielding system (you may again say there's no issue but that would be pure denial of an obvious problem/danger that we both know does exist, just as well as competent characters do). Somehow partially solving it would require the system to have been put far enough from the people it was meant to protect.
The UFP had access to:
- radio.
- electronic and quantum cables.
- subspace communications.
- automated systems.
- tunnels with possible forcefields but at the very least sealed doors.
- turbolifts.
- vehicles.
- teleportation.
More than enough ways to manage such a dangerous system from a safe distance.
Yet it wasn't done that way.
So either the UFP counts a lot of Assholes in their ranks, or what happened on Elba II was exceptional and the shield was never meant to be stretched around an entire planet (because the huge planetary coverage is what makes it unique and puts it at odds with ALL other observed ground shields in that quadrant of space); doing so put it way beyond any decent safety margin.
As for #2, it is your claim that the Nihydron and Mawasi fleets are negligibly small based on two ships each appearing alongside Voyager against a potentially existential threat. I pointed out several examples of potentially existential threats being met by a couple of ships or less for regimes we know to have thousands of vessels. Donatra's ships in Nemesis constitute one such example. You claim your abject and intentional ignorance of Nemesis represents just cause to ignore the whole point, demanding I go beyond my thorough description of the strategic situation at the climactic battle of the film. You even claim that by not doing so I am refusing to back up my claim.
Thorough description? Who are you kidding? All you have said thus far is that:
You wrote:Indeed, the entire Romulan Empire sent all of two ships to stop a genocide and war with Earth in Nemesis.
You wrote:Two ships were sent to stop a genocide and resulting interstellar war.
You'd be delusional to either think it's some kind of remotely exhaustive description that would even begin to explain why it's relevant to YoH.

You are the one who brought Nemesis as a supposedly relevant case, proving that even in case of immense danger, like what happens in YoH, even a political power such as the Romulan Empire wouldn't dispatch more than two warships to deal with the issue, as a normal procedure for which we shouldn't be surprised of the decision to use so few war assets in such dire times; even when the defending party would have the benefit of say, at least one to possibly nine days of preparation ahead, if not more.
So you are yet to prove that it is the normal procedure against such threats. In other words, that the small number of ships sent there is an affair of choice (a usual method) and not due to some other reason.
I'm still waiting for a description of the Nemesis case you refered to as counter-evidence as to why we should expect no more than two warships to defend an entire species from being totally erased in one shot. What data did they have? Did they take the threat seriously? Were they sure that two ships would be enough?
Adding to that: had they properly assessed the threat level? Did they even have the resources to spare more than two ships for that mission? Where there more ships available? Etc.

Aside from Nemesis, you also clearly mentionned Code 1 something Lazarus and the Romulan Incident of 2364 (here).
Then again, it's up to you to prove that they're relevant. Still, let me ask some questions, in the vain hope that you may begin to substantiate your claims, at last:
What of these cases? Were the very powerful and incredibly threatening foes clearly identified as "engageable" threats and known to have a weak spot to exploit in a brief amount of time in order to defeat them with a starship's conventional weaponry or something similar?
A completely proper response to such insidious behavior would be "eat shit, you dishonest little troll." However, I think the paragraph above shows the absurdity of your position adequately.
I think that covers the majority of your BS from that last post. I see you threaten to write more about "Year of Hell". If you wish, do so. However, any discussion of "Year of Hell" that doesn't feature acknowledging your flagrant falsehoods regarding the definition of "bluff" is a non-starter.
Still on that? Don't be foolish.
Definitions of bluff completely encompass the notion of letting an adversary or oponent think someone else possesses some abilities or knowledge as part of a subterfuge, when they actually don't. As I demonstrated a bazillion times now, unless you want to claim that Chakotay was also including the possibility of a mutiny in his statement (and that would only make his claim 50% true), then he made a claim regarding what Janeway & Pals, and with the help of no one else, could do. Sure, you could also include an inference to some last-moment ally, an omnipotent being like the Great Pink Unicorn, that would also bring down the temporal core with rainbow beams and let Janeway fire at the TWS. But I think it's fair to say that tactically relevant suggestions have to be about what is reasonnable and seriously likely to happen in a naval engagement, not about silly and wild assumptions.
So what Chakotay did was to exploit the attack by making Annorax believe Janeway & Pals had found a way on their own to get through the TWS's defense and damage it –independently of any betrayal or any other internal action– which we both know was not true at all.
You conveniently ignored that for pages despite the fact that my claim is very logical. There's more than enough reasons to doubt the truth of Chakotay's statement. You can forget the whole argumentation regarding the bluff if that makes you happy and perhaps focus on the sole notion of deception, because I demonstrated that it's a very valid way to understand his claim.
I personally find it completely mad to go with the idea that in Chakotay's mind, he would even include the possibility of a mutiny in his remark (that's the only way to bring a nugget of truth to his claim), since that would mean he wouldn't consider this parameter could make Annorax grow suspicious to the point of thwarting the whole very precarious plan. It would, again, be completely stupid.
Chakotay's claim is certainly meant to have Annorax believe Janeway & Pals have something up their sleeve, but it's also obviously meant to lead Annorax to believe the guys attacking have weapons or some tech to get through the temporal field, not have Annorax now muse about the likeliness of a betrayal after two centuries of loyal service from his crew, that would then have him keep a closer eye on the temporal core.
If you were in Chakotay's boots, the very last thing you'd want to do would be to somehow allude to the only workable trick you possess to win. You wouldn't be that daft.

2046 wrote:You had so much to disagree with in that last post I forgot to finish my point about you not reading correctly. See, I never argued that I had created the overload hypothesis that you now credit me for.
As far as I know, you're the one having typed it here for the first time so that makes you the author of it. And... that's all. :)
Credit for basic brainstorm reasoning is irrelevant. I did take great explicit amusement at your claimed ownership of the pressure cooker idea, though, given that I had noticed it in a skim of the prior thread.
And as I said, you have my honest apologies for that.
In your last post, however, you take my explicit amusement over the pressure cooker plagiarism nonsense and decide I own the overload concept, too (maybe I was the first to state it, but whatever)
I just said you're the author of it. No need to speak about some kind of "ownership". That's silly.
. . . and conclude that (a) this was in fact what I explicitly referred to and (b) was secret knowledge I held to beat you over the head with, insidiously.

So, you were both wrong and paranoid. Both feature the same bad reasoning issues, too.
I simply said that *if* you remembered bringing this idea first, then you knew how to easily prove doing so, so it would have been very quick and easy for you to quote yourself from the older thread, or post a link.
Nevertheless, I understand, you made lots of claims about having a higher moral standpoint (starting grovelling as soon as Mike stepped in the thread), yet also recognized multiple times taking a lot of amusement from such situations... that is, letting things turn sour, instead of sticking with your claimed civil and superior posture, being reasonnable and putting an end to what would obviously be undoubtedly incorrect. Plus, since you hardly bother posting quotations (still waiting you on your Nemesis and else claims), it's obvious this silly situation would go on for several rounds before I would actually reread the old thread again and see my mistake, then apologize.
My point was that either you knew but didn't put an end to this dispute soon enough in an apt way (because of inner LOLs and giggles, quite akin to trolling in fact), or you forgot about it too and so you shouldn't blame me for authentically forgetting about it.

As for the rest of my post, I detailed how I failed to consider and realize soon enough the possibility of a glaring contradiction in your claim, one where you claim there being no issue about the shield design, yet went on providing several explanations as to what would cause the unquestionable problem, and yet despite the supposed cleverness of the design, not even realizing that it required the UFP engineers to be complete morons for still putting the generator where it was.
Actually, wouldn't that make it two contradictions in one?
For the record, I am not out to get you, I just wish you'd stop trying to make old trolls like SWST seem calm and reasonable. At this point you might as well be going all-caps.
WAIIIT BRO UNTIL I PSOT MY DEIDCATED MESSAGE ABOUT YER OF HELL!!1!

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Sat Feb 25, 2017 2:11 pm

Replying to each subject individually as time permits . . . after all, you took like two weeks with your last post:
Mr. Oragahn wrote: 2. You are the one who made a claim that Nemesis was relevant to Year of Hell's Mawasi and Nihydron limited engagement against the TWS. You –and no one else– have to prove that and explain how. That is the way it works. I'm not going to do your work. You've got a cognitive issue if you really believe that I should watch the entirety of Nemesis or read its transcript in order to counter a claim that you are yet to prove relevant. Again, a vague reference to some event isn't enough. I very much doubt you're that old to have forgotten the rules of debate.
How many posts is it now that you have refused to substantiate your claim? Three? Four? I'll have to assume that you cannot.

As for #2, it is your claim that the Nihydron and Mawasi fleets are negligibly small based on two ships each appearing alongside Voyager against a potentially existential threat. I pointed out several examples of potentially existential threats being met by a couple of ships or less for regimes we know to have thousands of vessels. Donatra's ships in Nemesis constitute one such example. You claim your abject and intentional ignorance of Nemesis represents just cause to ignore the whole point, demanding I go beyond my thorough description of the strategic situation at the climactic battle of the film. You even claim that by not doing so I am refusing to back up my claim.
Thorough description? Who are you kidding? All you have said thus far is that:
You wrote:Indeed, the entire Romulan Empire sent all of two ships to stop a genocide and war with Earth in Nemesis.
You wrote:Two ships were sent to stop a genocide and resulting interstellar war.
You'd be delusional to either think it's some kind of remotely exhaustive description that would even begin to explain why it's relevant to YoH.

You are the one who brought Nemesis as a supposedly relevant case, proving that even in case of immense danger, like what happens in YoH, even a political power such as the Romulan Empire wouldn't dispatch more than two warships to deal with the issue, as a normal procedure for which we shouldn't be surprised of the decision to use so few war assets in such dire times; even when the defending party would have the benefit of say, at least one to possibly nine days of preparation ahead, if not more.
So you are yet to prove that it is the normal procedure against such threats. In other words, that the small number of ships sent there is an affair of choice (a usual method) and not due to some other reason.
I'm still waiting for a description of the Nemesis case you refered to as counter-evidence as to why we should expect no more than two warships to defend an entire species from being totally erased in one shot. What data did they have? Did they take the threat seriously? Were they sure that two ships would be enough?
Adding to that: had they properly assessed the threat level? Did they even have the resources to spare more than two ships for that mission? Where there more ships available? Etc.


This is hilarious from stem to stern.

1. The attempt to move the goalposts . . . now you demand I prove "normal procedure".
2. The attempt to demand I provide Romulan threat assessments, fleet resources and deployments, et cetera.
3. The feigned ignorance of Nemesis, which basically does have two warships sent to defend an entire species from being erased in one shot, despite your assorted posts on Nemesis in the past.
3A. My favorite is in http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/view ... f=8&t=1632 where you say "Like in Nemesis, where (…)", which is the same sort of 'sinful' use of a reference I made, albeit with less context.

Indeed, by analogy, this is like you saying no Star Wars vessel can destroy a planet. I rebut by noting the Death Star, and you pretend not to know anything about it despite your prior posts showing familiarity with ANH, demanding all sorts of gobbledygook designed solely to waste my time.

4. As you continue your suggestions that I have cognitive issues and delusions (though of course by this point I have given as good as I have received), let me simply note that your behavior in this thread is not merely obtuse or intentionally obnoxious, but insultingly stupid. You literally are a case study here on how to be a dishonest debater.

Aside from Nemesis, you also clearly mentionned Code 1 something Lazarus and the Romulan Incident of 2364 (here).
Then again, it's up to you to prove that they're relevant.


Hmm, how could events of existential import met by only one ship of thousands apply to a debate over whether existential events met by two ships indicate fleet numbers? I wonder.
Still, let me ask some questions, in the vain hope that you may begin to substantiate your claims, at last:
What of these cases? Were the very powerful and incredibly threatening foes clearly identified as "engageable" threats and known to have a weak spot to exploit in a brief amount of time in order to defeat them with a starship's conventional weaponry or something similar?


My, my, the time vampire is hungry!

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Sun Feb 26, 2017 2:18 am

II. Re: Bluffing
Still on that? Don't be foolish. {...} Definitions of bluff completely encompass the notion of letting an adversary or oponent think someone else possesses some abilities or knowledge as part of a subterfuge, when they actually don't.
Ah good, you finally comprehend bluffing, at least denotatively. Thing is, the only relevant ability per Chakotay was the "do some damage" bit. And indeed, Chakotay was deadly-truthful. Ergo, it is not a bluff.
So what Chakotay did was to exploit the attack by making Annorax believe Janeway & Pals had found a way on their own to get through the TWS's defense and damage it –independently of any betrayal or any other internal action– which we both know was not true at all.
You conveniently ignored that for pages despite the fact that my claim is very logical.
Your claim is *not* logical. Chakotay provided no information, nor was any required, on the nature or origins of the damage to be expected, but for the fact that if Janeway was attacking then damage was to be expected. Chakotay's statement was correct. Only by grossly reimagining the scene can you arrive at overwrought nonsense about Chakotay knowing that Annorax knows that he knows that he knows that he knows that he knows about this or that, and fears this other thing but he knows that too, and dammit drink the effing iocane-laced wine already, you great fool.

As a result, Chakotay was not bluffing. Therefore, as Janeway's attack began, Chakotay's first warning that damage to the weapon-ship could occur was truthful. As a result, you cannot throw shade on his second warning about the Nihydron and Mawasi protecting their planets via temporal shielding as just another dishonest statement of Chakotay's, because Chakotay has yet to make a dishonest warning to him.

What this means is that if you want the second warning to be a lie, you'll have to provide a real reason to disbelieve it . . . simple association with another lie doesn't work, because the claimed other lie isn't one.

This is not a difference of opinion. You are wrong. I will happily continue explaining that fact to you in as many different ways as needed, because you deserve the merciless beating for your insultingly dishonest and foolhardy behavior in this thread.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Sun Feb 26, 2017 1:59 pm

III. Elba II

Regarding the Elba shield, you have wisely chosen to focus on what you think is a bulletproof position, compared to the wild claims and theorizings you have previously preferred. So now, the shield is just dumb by design.

The amusing part of that (besides your whole "I never said Trek characters were dumb" thing that you had, in fact, kept saying, and which you now assign to other, unseen characters) is that it defeats your argument that the shield is a one-off and cannot be used elsewhere. The Elba II planetary shield could've been designed and hooked up by monkeys . . . but it still proves planetary shielding is a thing, which is all the example ever was used for in the first place.

By analogy, even stipulating for the purpose of the analogy your claim that it's dumb by design, we can point to any number of real-life design flaws with potentially-lethal consequences that we may wish to describe as idiotic. Those do not disprove the utility of the basic technology elsewhere, or the use of the basic technology elsewhere . . . nor is the presence of the design flaw necessary elsewhere. (e.g. "Fukushima's reactor required active cooling! Nuclear power is dumb and no one would poasibly use this alien tech elsewhere!" would be your argument.)

All that having been said, your position is still the thing that's actually dumb, to wit:
Guessing what causes the death is not necessary. What matters is that we know that the crew of the Enterprise knew of that causality without a shadow of doubt, and you recognize that too.
It kills the people it's supposed to protect the moment one single ship manages to punch through.
Well, a shield system that comes with that kind of "feature" is stupid.
Look at the two quotes above. Do you see the problem? 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. Then, you claim it is the shield that kills people. That's the very speculation you were pretending not to engage in!

Let's toss out some other speculations just to give counterexamples. Suppose, for instance, that the very atmosphere of Elba II is not just toxic, but like the non-toxic atmosphere of the Paraagan colony in "Shockwave"[ENT1], was actually explosive under certain conditions, like excesses of energy release. In this case, phasering down the shield means detonating the whole atmosphere, the .95 concern for the dome was based on the worry that the atmosphere would ignite, and even Garth's uber-explosive sand starts to make better sense. Certainly the fact that the shuttles shouldn't fly is also notable, here. Similarly, Scotty's plan to phaser down the shield at the weak point might've been with the hope of not igniting the atmosphere, or igniting it and then running like hell to the other side of the planet to beam everyone up before they died in an atmospheric explosion (hence the "margin of safety").

In such a case, having a planetary shield makes a rather good amount of sense. Indeed, given that it's a small dome and a planetary shield is generally not necessary nor used to shield small facilities on the surface of planets, the notion of the explosive atmosphere is actually chock-full of explanatory power because it even explains why they have a planetary shield *at all*, along with a dome of sufficient strength that only starship weaponry can penetrate. After all, if the air was just poison, a simple inflatable dome could otherwise suffice.

So there is one example of an idea where phasering down the shield results in death unquestionably, yet there is nothing at all wrong with the design whatsoever.

A similar outcome would result if the surface was in some way explosive, a la the "land mines" from "The Apple"[TOS2]. Other external forces could also be in play, such as gravitational anomalies likely to wreck the dome (see "The Masterpiece Society"[TNG5]), which might even explain the shield and dome if deadly asteroids were constantly flying about, not to mention shuttle flight issues and equipment transport problems on the surface, as well as the comoactness of the facility. Or, if the planet had an incredibly high gravity and shield failure would likely equal even momentary power failure due to that particular design, the result would be everyone suddenly getting smooshed when the normal gravity was re-established (which would only require a particular understanding of grav plating and that artificial gravity could be transmitted out to the surface for a moment for the Marta demonstration, the latter of which has been surmised for other examples). This would allow a "margin of safety" if Scotty calculated that a gentler phaseting down elsewhere might not interrupt power like a brute-force attack would.

As I said before, "Now, since we know phasering the shield down equals death or almost-death, we assess possible reasons for death from phasering down this shield, contrary to most other shields. That means we should take all the facts of the Elba facility and planet into account."

While I meant at the time that we really need only ponder the dome and the toxic atmosphere, but the fact that the well-nigh impenetrable dome *and* the planetary shield exist should tell us something, too. That is to say, if we are going to speculate, which we have to because the reason isn't spelled out, at least try to account for everything.

(Indeed, even given your dumb-by-design assertion, my tongue-in-cheek assertion that the shield was great because if you bring it down you destroy everything you might want is itself not actually a bad point if you go by the rule of taking all the facts into account, because one of the facts of this place is that it houses the *criminally insane*, including psychotic imperialist warlords.

Think about it. If Garth's old followers wanted him back out to re-embark on a rule of the galaxy, wouldn't it make sense to have a final failsafe of the place scuttling itself should the followers bring enough firepower to bear to actually defeat the place's defenses?)

In any case, I think there's sufficient material above to disprove your nonsensical assertions to anyone.
Last edited by 2046 on Sun Feb 26, 2017 6:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Sun Feb 26, 2017 2:21 pm

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.

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.

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. With that belief in mind, Oragahn argues that the Federation would reject the option of a single planetary shield in favor of a patchwork approach. Note SonofCCN's response:
Mr. O wrote: Considering the mess the shield of Elba was when covering an entire planet, I'm quite sure the Federation would rather opt for a redundancy of local shields to protect the civilians.


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.


The response is top-notch, even if the "moral qualms" phrasing seems a little odd without the rest of the message as context. 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.

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?

At that very moment in the show, it wasn't used by civilians nor the UFP but by a mad man.
We simply don't know if the UFP would use it that way.


The first sentence is an appeal to horsecrap. The asylum having been taken over by a madman is completely irrelevant. The context of the show, as well as "Dagger of the Mind" before it, is that asylums keep shielding up normally. Otherwise Kirk might've balked at faux-Cory's raising of the shield upon their landing.

Beyond that, he makes a voluminous claim that any shield overload event would make for gigatons of blast based on total antimatter stores of a Federation ship, as if it would have to be a 1-for-1 energy output by the shield and that it would inexplicably still have all the energy left to explode with once breached.

In short, he obfuscates and makes up a patently silly notion of how things work, treating it as gospel.

SonofCCN kills it on the response to the no-civilian-use horsecrap, though leaving an opening for Oragahn to blunder through:
Uh...its a Federation asylum. They built/installed the shield. At no point does Garth, egomaniac that he is, claim to have tampered with let alone "improved" the shield. So barring evidence from the episode Garth had modified or otherwise used the shield abnormally we can accept the shield was acting within its normal parameters.


And his response to the voluminous nonsense of the gigaton gospel is epic:

I am perfectly happy to debate and speculate about the particulars and operations of Elba-Two until your blue in the face. No problem at all. However, since I have no desire to clutter up these posts more than I have too, first things must come first. I'm sorry if you personally think Elba-Two is "fishy" or nonsensical. I truly do and I do enjoy your speculations and theorizing.

But that doesn't make it less canon. Even if I agreed with you that it was total nonsense on stilts it would still be better than the most brilliant dissertation of fan fluff. I am open to a concrete counter-example, a showing where the Federation tried and failed to shield a planet for instance or how they marveled at an example of one, but otherwise I remain steadfastly convinced of my position. 

If all you are going to do is reiterate how much Elba-Two doesn't make sense I politely advise you to save your breath. Our difference of opinion is insurmountable.


This is one of the more polite pistol-whippings I have seen.

Oragahn latches on to the life-preserver of Garth modifying the shield, despite having no evidence, claiming the only alternative is a stupid design that will necessarily create a multi-gigaton explosion if breached (still providing no evidence for his 'gospel of the gigaton' besides his own say-so). In other words, rather than retreat from any position that has no evidentiary support, he rushes headlong into making them false binary choices.

This brand of reasoning continues throughout this thread, along with argument by shade-throwing . . . continually asserting a thing is bad with only tenuously-related claims. Moreover, Oragahn almost literally takes every position possible that he thinks can correspond with his view, even mutally-contradictory ones . . . not as an evolving understanding (a la my rejecting bleedthrough) but actively, message-by-message, flipping back and forth, often in the same posts (e.g. Federation ships are and are not warships depending on the needs of his shade-throwing).

No further discussion happened between the two of them. I thought at first it was my fault for interrupting, which is partially true, but looking at the above it now dawns on me that there was more to it. See, Oragahn really turned on the charm with personal obnxiousness in responses to me, as well as demanding more than my short messages he was getting. I think this ill behavior was an effort to escape from the threads of conversation with SonofCCN, with whom he had argued himself into a corner.

As I noted previously, normally I wouldn't have entertained his foolishness for so long, choosing instead to leave him babbling to himself, but this time I stuck with it precisely because he was being such a dishonest *and insulting* jackass. In other words, his escape chute versus SonOfCCN (poke and goad me, the impatient guy) backfired on him this time.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Feb 26, 2017 3:39 pm

2046 wrote:II. Re: Bluffing
Still on that? Don't be foolish. {...} Definitions of bluff completely encompass the notion of letting an adversary or oponent think someone else possesses some abilities or knowledge as part of a subterfuge, when they actually don't.
Ah good, you finally comprehend bluffing, at least denotatively.
Pricelss. My point is still the same and has always depended on the notion of a deception. You may disagree with me on the deception part but don't lecture me about what a bluff entails, thanks. Especially after I provided quite a number of definitions to support my reason for thinking it was a bluff.
Thing is, the only relevant ability per Chakotay was the "do some damage" bit. And indeed, Chakotay was deadly-truthful. Ergo, it is not a bluff.
We are currently assessing the value of Chakotay's words, in what state of mind he was, what he was trying to achieve and how. You ignore the how (using plausibilities) and its implications.
At the very best, he was 50% truthful because of the necessity of his statement to be believable (a good bluff has to, otherwise it's weak).
You still entirely deny the context of who he was trying to manipulate, and that Janeway could only do damage because of a mutiny (that is the only and whole truth), something no one sane in Chakotay's position would ever allude to considering what was about to happen. The attacking squadron had no way to achieve that damage on their own.

I have considered all possible interpretations and weighed their likeliness. You, on the other hand, conveniently ignore everything but the option you fathom, the one where the whole contextual statement can only be true if it includes the mutiny parameter.

It's possible Chakotay even hesitated saying anything, although that is speculation and wouldn't weigh anything under the scope of presenting evidence, but it's still good to imagine what would have gone through his mind before he decided to jump on the occasion. Let's say that he thought "well, those ships are coming and they're seemingly hostile, let's be subtle enough to nudge Annorax into thinking that their agressive stance is due to Janeway and her allies having found a technology or method of their own that will allow them to damage the Temporal Weapon Ship, then see if I can make Annorax stand down or, at least, ponder the point of this battle. Yeah, let's try that and see if he bites."

Well of course, as we've seen, he didn't bite but that doesn't mean it wasn't worth the try.

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.
So what Chakotay did was to exploit the attack by making Annorax believe Janeway & Pals had found a way on their own to get through the TWS's defense and damage it –independently of any betrayal or any other internal action– which we both know was not true at all.
You conveniently ignored that for pages despite the fact that my claim is very logical.
Your claim is *not* logical.
Prove it. Explain properly the lack of logic.
Chakotay provided no information, nor was any required, on the nature or origins of the damage to be expected...
Of course! Otherwise he'd have to reveal that it would be due to a mutiny. He just made an ambiguous enough statement and hoped Annorax would believe the attacking people had means of their own to deal some damage, the rather obvious conclusion anyone would reach.
In fact, if he wanted to tell the truth (the opposite of wanting to be deceptive), he could have just said that a mutiny was brewing, the temporal core would be deactivated and it would allow Janeway to damage the ship.
The very fact that he wouldn't spill it already proves that he'd be up to something.

The point remains that if he's trying to have Annorax stand down, he has to be believable to the person he wants to manipualte.
but for the fact that if Janeway was attacking then damage was to be expected. Chakotay's statement was correct.
Not from the perspective of what Annorax would obviously be led to conclude.
The fact remains that Janeway & Pals had absolutely no way whatsoever to deal any damage without assistance from within the TWS ship itself.
It's interesting because the statement contains a general element that is true (otherwise it wouldn't be believable) which, in this context, actually is used as part of a mind play to deceive someone that the opposing party holds power on their own merits.
Only by grossly reimagining the scene can you arrive at overwrought nonsense about Chakotay knowing that Annorax knows that he knows that he knows that he knows that he knows about this or that, and fears this other thing but he knows that too, and dammit drink the effing iocane-laced wine already, you great fool.
You try to ridiculize by some unnecessary complexity what is very simple.
Chakotay obviously intended Annorax to believe Janeway had a tech or method of their own to deal damage. Remotely hinting at the possibility of a mutiny when the whole plan hinges on the success of that mutiny would be pathologically dumb.
It would be even more stupid considering the great trust Annorax had in both his crew and even Chakotay. In order to be effective, any baiting by suggestion of a plausible defeat would certainly not include betrayal as a cause. Again, Annorax was way too trusty for that.
As a result, Chakotay was not bluffing. Therefore, as Janeway's attack began, Chakotay's first warning that damage to the weapon-ship could occur was truthful.
You only know that as a being part of the audience.
However, Chakotay isn't trying to convince the audience.
He's trying to convince a character with limited knowledge of what is going on. This perspective seems to completely elude you, although you may be doing it on purpose too.

Put yourself in Annorax' boots for a moment. Someone tells you, captain of the Krenim TWS and its crew, that this alien called Janeway (and her allies) wouldn't attack if she didn't know how to deal damage to the TWS.
What are you obviously going to think?
You'll think of something that makes sense, that is tactically relevant and plausible. Not some improbable and preposterous cause.
You're going to conclude that Janeway (and her allies) has weapons or tech that will ignore or at least greatly reduce the protection provided by the temporal field, regardless of how, when and where she got hold of that sudden game changing ability.
That's the straightforward conclusion that any captain of a ship would consider. Also, knowing that Voyager moved from the status of being a non-relevant element to one that had temporal shielding that messed up with your calculations would certainly lead you to think with even greater conviction that this wretched Janeway and her crew have again found another technological evolution to not only protect themselves, but now also endanger your very sweet ship. It's very, very believable.
In light of this obvious conclusion, it would be revealed that what one would be led to believe would prove to be absolutely incorrect.
Hence the deception. Ergo, a bluff.
What this means is that if you want the second warning to be a lie, you'll have to provide a real reason to disbelieve it . . . simple association with another lie doesn't work, because the claimed other lie isn't one.
Both statements by Chakotay happen during the same event, close to each other. The point I made is that Chakotay uses a specific formulation to confuse Annorax through his first statement. This casts doubts about the certainty of his second statement too, since he's clearly trying to (again) influence Annorax that the fight is pointless. In other words, his methodology is the same and isn't about stating truths but plausibilities.
This is not a difference of opinion. You are wrong. I will happily continue explaining that fact to you in as many different ways as needed, because you deserve the merciless beating for your insultingly dishonest and foolhardy behavior in this thread.
Ooh, shivers. Please, no.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Feb 26, 2017 4:37 pm

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.
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?
Do you want me to actually summarize the several times I actually admited being wrong, explaining why and moving on?

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.
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.
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. I have countless times said it was a theory, but insisted it was a necessary one.
With that belief in mind, Oragahn argues that the Federation would reject the option of a single planetary shield in favor of a patchwork approach. Note SonofCCN's response:
Mr. O wrote: Considering the mess the shield of Elba was when covering an entire planet, I'm quite sure the Federation would rather opt for a redundancy of local shields to protect the civilians.


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.


The response is top-notch, even if the "moral qualms" phrasing seems a little odd without the rest of the message as context.
I love it. Although I'm baffled to see Trekkies consider the UFP to be so ruthless towards its own population (I guess the communist shtick does pour through the cracks after all), he's done the exact same mistake you did.
You using Sonofccn's post as a shield to avoid dealing with the problem won't make said problem go away.
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 (they put it too close and they protect a whole planet which is tactically absurd and a waste of power as we've seen that strength grows with smaller coverage), stacked on the fact that the Elba II shield is unique, that no planetary shield was ever seen before or again in the entire quadrant, even directly contradicted by the fact that the Klingons themselves didn't protect their fortress world with anything like that and opted for a theater shield.
Or maybe the Klingons are super cretins too? Right?
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?

At that very moment in the show, it wasn't used by civilians nor the UFP but by a mad man.
We simply don't know if the UFP would use it that way.


The first sentence is an appeal to horsecrap. The asylum having been taken over by a madman is completely irrelevant.
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. Please try to follow.
The context of the show, as well as "Dagger of the Mind" before it, is that asylums keep shielding up normally. Otherwise Kirk might've balked at faux-Cory's raising of the shield upon their landing.
Did I say that the problem was in keeping the shield up?
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.
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?
Beyond that, he makes a voluminous claim that any shield overload event would make for gigatons of blast based on total antimatter stores of a Federation ship,
Not a Federation ship. *sigh*
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. If it were antimatter, I don't need to explain how its wild release in the atmosphere of a planet would be bad news, especially if the UFP are dumb enough/have no moral qualms in putting the backfiring generators inside population centers or closeby.
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.
as if it would have to be a 1-for-1 energy output by the shield and that it would inexplicably still have all the energy left to explode with once breached.
It's a logical thing to consider. The other solution would be to have the shield generator contain massive capacitors charged over a longer time, but then again since the shield would need to repel a considerable amount of firepower, we would still bump into the problem of said generator still needing to have access to gigatons worth of fuel.

Now perhaps the shield magically manages to repel 1 megaton shots with 1 kiloton worth of energy, I don't know. That sounds unlikely but well... mind you, 10~100 kilotons released next to a city is surely going to cause a lot of damage.
In short, he obfuscates and makes up a patently silly notion of how things work, treating it as gospel.
No.
SonofCCN kills it on the response to the no-civilian-use horsecrap, though leaving an opening for Oragahn to blunder through:
Uh...its a Federation asylum. They built/installed the shield. At no point does Garth, egomaniac that he is, claim to have tampered with let alone "improved" the shield. So barring evidence from the episode Garth had modified or otherwise used the shield abnormally we can accept the shield was acting within its normal parameters.


And his response to the voluminous nonsense of the gigaton gospel is epic:

I am perfectly happy to debate and speculate about the particulars and operations of Elba-Two until your blue in the face. No problem at all. However, since I have no desire to clutter up these posts more than I have too, first things must come first. I'm sorry if you personally think Elba-Two is "fishy" or nonsensical. I truly do and I do enjoy your speculations and theorizing.

But that doesn't make it less canon. Even if I agreed with you that it was total nonsense on stilts it would still be better than the most brilliant dissertation of fan fluff. I am open to a concrete counter-example, a showing where the Federation tried and failed to shield a planet for instance or how they marveled at an example of one, but otherwise I remain steadfastly convinced of my position.

If all you are going to do is reiterate how much Elba-Two doesn't make sense I politely advise you to save your breath. Our difference of opinion is insurmountable.


This is one of the more polite pistol-whippings I have seen.
It's actually nothing short of saying yes, it may be totally stupid, but it's canon.
Yes, it is canon. And yes, it is stupid.
Apparently, you completely miss the point that all of this is not me rewriting the episode, but me advancing sensible rationalizations in order to make sense out of what is inherently silly.
If you want to settle on "yes, it's dumb but I'm fine with it", ok, no problem.
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; and therefore invite you to prove that the UFP uses planetary shields elsewhere.
Good luck.
Oragahn latches on to the life-preserver of Garth modifying the shield, despite having no evidence, claiming the only alternative is a stupid design that will necessarily create a multi-gigaton explosion if breached (still providing no evidence for his 'gospel of the gigaton' besides his own say-so).
It's a logical supposition. But even if those big explosions don't happen, you have not dealt with the fact of the stupidity of the shield's coverage and its placement.
In other words, rather than retreat from any position that has no evidentiary support, he rushes headlong into making them false binary choices.
That is a lot of words to avoid dealing with the obvious problems.
This brand of reasoning continues throughout this thread, along with argument by shade-throwing . . . continually asserting a thing is bad with only tenuously-related claims. Moreover, Oragahn almost literally takes every position possible that he thinks can correspond with his view, even mutally-contradictory ones . . . not as an evolving understanding (a la my rejecting bleedthrough) but actively, message-by-message, flipping back and forth, often in the same posts (e.g. Federation ships are and are not warships depending on the needs of his shade-throwing).
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.
No further discussion happened between the two of them. I thought at first it was my fault for interrupting, which is partially true, but looking at the above it now dawns on me that there was more to it. See, Oragahn really turned on the charm with personal obnxiousness in responses to me, as well as demanding more than my short messages he was getting. I think this ill behavior was an effort to escape from the threads of conversation with SonofCCN, with whom he had argued himself into a corner.
It is truly desperate of you to claim that I dug myself into a hole of some kind. 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.
If you want adopt the same position, then do so and let's close that Elba II talk.
As I noted previously, normally I wouldn't have entertained his foolishness for so long, choosing instead to leave him babbling to himself, but this time I stuck with it precisely because he was being such a dishonest *and insulting* jackass. In other words, his escape chute versus SonOfCCN (poke and goad me, the impatient guy) backfired on him this time.
Can't wait to read that fantastic book you're writing!!! :)
I cannot satisfy myself with those small yet appetizing teasers you drop here and there.
Don't forget to share the ISBN btw!!!! ;)

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Feb 26, 2017 5:14 pm

The code told me that one message had been posted since I started replying. I didn't see this point.
Dealing with it right now.
2046 wrote:III. Elba II

Regarding the Elba shield, you have wisely chosen to focus on what you think is a bulletproof position, compared to the wild claims and theorizings you have previously preferred. So now, the shield is just dumb by design.

The amusing part of that (besides your whole "I never said Trek characters were dumb" thing that you had, in fact, kept saying, and which you now assign to other, unseen characters) is that it defeats your argument that the shield is a one-off and cannot be used elsewhere. The Elba II planetary shield could've been designed and hooked up by monkeys . . . but it still proves planetary shielding is a thing, which is all the example ever was used for in the first place.

By analogy, even stipulating for the purpose of the analogy your claim that it's dumb by design, we can point to any number of real-life design flaws with potentially-lethal consequences that we may wish to describe as idiotic. Those do not disprove the utility of the basic technology elsewhere, or the use of the basic technology elsewhere . . . nor is the presence of the design flaw necessary elsewhere.
If there is no problem with the design itself, there is a problem with where it was put. You're just moving the problem from A to B but it's still there.
Still, I consider that the placement of the generator regarding what it's meant to achieve is part of the design phase. If you want to nitpick of that, fine.
All that having been said, your position is still the thing that's actually dumb, to wit:
Guessing what causes the death is not necessary. What matters is that we know that the crew of the Enterprise knew of that causality without a shadow of doubt, and you recognize that too.
It kills the people it's supposed to protect the moment one single ship manages to punch through.
Well, a shield system that comes with that kind of "feature" is stupid.
Look at the two quotes above. Do you see the problem? 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.
Then, you claim it is the shield that kills people. That's the very speculation you were pretending not to engage in!
If it's not the shield that is directly responsible (then what else praytell? you're adventuring into speculation now), then the shield failing still is still somehow responsible of the death of these people anyway.
Doesn't really matter if it's A -> Z or A -> B -> C -> Z because it all starts with A (shield defeated) and ends with Z (people of the asylum certainly killed).
Let's toss out some other speculations just to give counterexamples.

Suppose, for instance, that the very atmosphere of Elba II is not just toxic, but like the non-toxic atmosphere of the Paraagan colony in "Shockwave"[ENT1], was actually explosive under certain conditions, like excesses of energy release. In this case, phasering down the shield means detonating the whole atmosphere, the .95 concern for the dome was based on the worry that the atmosphere would ignite, and even Garth's uber-explosive sand starts to make better sense. Certainly the fact that the shuttles shouldn't fly is also notable, here. Similarly, Scotty's plan to phaser down the shield at the weak point might've been with the hope of not igniting the atmosphere, or igniting it and then running like hell to the other side of the planet to beam everyone up before they died in an atmospheric explosion (hence the "margin of safety").
In such a case, having a planetary shield makes a rather good amount of sense. Indeed, given that it's a small dome and a planetary shield is generally not necessary nor used to shield small facilities on the surface of planets, the notion of the explosive atmosphere is actually chock-full of explanatory power because it even explains why they have a planetary shield *at all*, along with a dome of sufficient strength that only starship weaponry can penetrate. After all, if the air was just poison, a simple inflatable dome could otherwise suffice.

So there is one example of an idea where phasering down the shield results in death unquestionably, yet there is nothing at all wrong with the design whatsoever.
I don't speculate that Garth was mad, that the UFP knows how to stretch shields (and this makes them weaker), that no one else, not even the Klingons, use planetary shields (especially when they're heavily expected), nor that the atmosphere of Elba II is poisonous and the people in the asylum were sure to die once the shield would be defeated.

On the other hand, an explosive atmosphere... you think it would have been mentionned.
In fact, that speculation is unnecessary because an explosion occured inside said atmosphere and never triggered a world wide fire apocalypse.
A similar outcome would result if the surface was in some way explosive, a la the "land mines" from "The Apple"[TOS2].
Clearly didn't happen either after the .9 explosion noted by Uhura.
Other external forces could also be in play, such as gravitational anomalies likely to wreck the dome (see "The Masterpiece Society"[TNG5]), which might even explain the shield and dome if deadly asteroids were constantly flying about, not to mention shuttle flight issues and equipment transport problems on the surface, as well as the comoactness of the facility. Or, if the planet had an incredibly high gravity and shield failure would likely equal even momentary power failure due to that particular design, the result would be everyone suddenly getting smooshed when the normal gravity was re-established (which would only require a particular understanding of grav plating and that artificial gravity could be transmitted out to the surface for a moment for the Marta demonstration, the latter of which has been surmised for other examples). This would allow a "margin of safety" if Scotty calculated that a gentler phaseting down elsewhere might not interrupt power like a brute-force attack would.

As I said before, "Now, since we know phasering the shield down equals death or almost-death, we assess possible reasons for death from phasering down this shield, contrary to most other shields. That means we should take all the facts of the Elba facility and planet into account."

While I meant at the time that we really need only ponder the dome and the toxic atmosphere, but the fact that the well-nigh impenetrable dome *and* the planetary shield exist should tell us something, too. That is to say, if we are going to speculate, which we have to because the reason isn't spelled out, at least try to account for everything.

(Indeed, even given your dumb-by-design assertion, my tongue-in-cheek assertion that the shield was great because if you bring it down you destroy everything you might want is itself not actually a bad point if you go by the rule of taking all the facts into account, because one of the facts of this place is that it houses the *criminally insane*, including psychotic imperialist warlords.

Think about it. If Garth's old followers wanted him back out to re-embark on a rule of the galaxy, wouldn't it make sense to have a final failsafe of the place scuttling itself should the followers bring enough firepower to bear to actually defeat the place's defenses?)

In any case, I think there's sufficient material above to disprove your nonsensical assertions to anyone.
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.
Now, I did speculate that Garth pushed the shield coverage. It seemed to be a sensible idea back then. Of course it required this being possible, which I didn't know. But at least nothing disproved it. And now, I know the UFP knew how to do that. It's also a measured claim that doesn't require extremely exotic attributes.
You, however, decide to go with such a claim about an extra planetary exotic attribute (they happen from time to time but exceptions don't make rules), so that a phaser beam hitting the atmosphere or the ground would trigger some kind of grand catastrophe (a chain reaction, etc.). This is rapidly debunked by the very episode itself. Twice, in fact, because of the .9 explosion that happened and that at no time Scotty and McCoy rejected the idea of using explosives on the dome to get through because of some unusual planetary or even regional property.

Now, that was a lot of debate going on for an episode that wasn't well thought through.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Feb 26, 2017 5:38 pm

Regarding Elba II, I think it's going to boil down to good old Occam's razor.

Also, about those very speculative suggestions you made: this is another case of the UFP being extremely dumb (oh... again) for putting their asylum on a place that would blow up, disintegrate or whatever, the moment some explosion would happen in the atmosphere or on the surface. Volcanic activity and meteorites would be problmeatic I suppose. Let's not talk of storms. Or just an accident about some power generator sploding.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Feb 26, 2017 5:55 pm

(Indeed, even given your dumb-by-design assertion, my tongue-in-cheek assertion that the shield was great because if you bring it down you destroy everything you might want is itself not actually a bad point if you go by the rule of taking all the facts into account, because one of the facts of this place is that it houses the *criminally insane*, including psychotic imperialist warlords.

Think about it. If Garth's old followers wanted him back out to re-embark on a rule of the galaxy, wouldn't it make sense to have a final failsafe of the place scuttling itself should the followers bring enough firepower to bear to actually defeat the place's defenses?)
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.

However, putting the shield generator into a state that makes it a major threat to the people of the asylum would create a extreme-hostage scenario that would mesh with the gamble of a crazy man like Garth.

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