Prometheus/MVAM

[Tyler]

posted on January 23rd, 2011, 12:33 am

Last edited by Tyler on January 23rd, 2011, 12:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

1 ep, 1 ship, 1 day, counts to me as 1 example.

A D'deridex and a Nebula are not the same ship... the Nebula is the one I'm talking about; crippled in seconds despite being undamaged when attacked.

it has never been shown to be able to separate/unsep automatically. every time picard wants sep he tells his crew, who then start tapping away at their buttons. he doesnt ask the computer to do sep. and every time the galaxy sepped, both halves were controlled from their respective bridges. any ship, sepped or not sepped, can be crudely automated.

When Picard first ordered it, Riker was expecting the Computer to handle it before Picard told him he wanted a manual seperation.

Either Riker or someone else. Or was it in BoBW it was mentioned?

you cant discredit something that hasnt happened. i said its possible it has a lack of effect, you are not capable of disproving that. we have 1 episode where mvam was used, it would be a mistake to extrapolate from such limited, low quality (they used phasers at warp, the bonchune didnt seem to bother with shields yadda yadda), evidence. we can only talk of what is possible. what COULD be written into a story. and it is certainly possible that mvam wasnt effective enough.

Were we watching the same episode? Because I quite clearly remember it butchering the Bonchune in a few seconds when the Romulans tried the ability.

u just quoted me giving 4 reasons why they are vastly different, im not going to repeat them all again. you havnt rebutted any of those reasons, just repeated your point.

Nothing to rebutt, the procedure is the same without the automated attack at the end. There's only so many ways for 'one ship splits to multiple ships' to differ. The sections differ, the purpose is decided by those, the procedure of seperation is the same.

There's only so many ways for latches to unhook and Impulse engines/Thrusters to move a part away. You're getting the seperation action and the purpose of the ship mixed-up.

then why dont all fed ships automate all the time? obviously its not as easy as you make it out to be. automating things like day to day running doesnt constitute automating ship to ship combat. yes they could program the galaxy to fly in a circle and fire phasers at anything green and shaped like a bird, but any romulan with a brain would have battle tactics, something the computer couldnt keep up with.

I never made it out to be easy, Geordi said the Galaxy was the most complex ship ever built. I never said computers were tactical geniuses, even Prometheus still needed to be told who to shoot. I brought up Galaxy automation as proof that automating a ship was well-within Starfleets abilities.

Last time 'all automated all the time' came up, I brought up the M-5 incident.

i was referencing the neck of a connie, a torpedo could cut a connie saucer off if it hit that thin neck. im creating a straw man out of your argument at galaxy sep and mvam are very similar by pointing out that cutting the saucer off a connie would count as a saucer sep and would be similar to mvam.

That's not saucer sep, though, that's battle damage. Strange thing to compare... That's like comparing being shot by someone is suicide since they both kill you.

However, concept art of the Enterprise-A actually has it performing saucer seperation.

[Anonymous]

posted on January 23rd, 2011, 12:58 am

Last edited by Anonymous on January 23rd, 2011, 12:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

A D'deridex and a Nebula are not the same ship...

riiiight, the 1 ship is the prommie... on 1 mission.

When Picard first ordered it, Riker was expecting the Computer to handle it before Picard told him he wanted a manual seperation.

no he wanted manual reintegration in the pilot, from riker, which is just reintegration with riker doing everything himself without the computer helping at all. normal reintegration would most likely involve button pushing and less work. reintegrating the prommie was auto, tell the computer to do it, dont need to push buttons.

Were we watching the same episode? Because I quite clearly remember it butchering the Bonchune in a few seconds when the Romulans tried the ability.

yes that did happen. it doesnt matter though because:
1) evidence is weak, comes from a naturally weak show, involves much crazy science, that ep has numerous issues such as phasers at warp and no shields
2) even if it was really strong evidence, its not a strong basis to extrapolate from. you cant extrapolate from 1 episode that the prommie has to be a success. it is possible that it was a failure, and up to story writers to decide whether they want the prommie or not.

Nothing to rebutt, the procedure is the same without the automated attack at the end. There's only so many ways for 'one ship splits to multiple ships' to differ. The sections differ, the purpose is decided by those, the procedure of seperation is the same.

There's only so many ways for latches to unhook and Impulse engines/Thrusters to move a part away. You're getting the seperation action and the purpose of the ship mixed-up.

there are 4 points to rebut, and ur attempt to rebut them is weak. the procedure is not the same.

2 different purposes: 1 is a combat manoeuvre, 1 is giant escape pod
2 different results: 1 is 3 independent ships, 1 is normal ship and giant escape pod.
2 different expectations of how often it will be used: 1 rarely for emergencies, 1 regular combat tactic
2 different ideas/ethos: 1 is defensive, 1 is offensive

you cant argue that these 2 are similar, mvam is inspired by saucer sep, but it isnt similar. having 3 ships that all must be warp and combat capable on their own is different from having the warp and combat capable bit on its own with an escape pod. mvam is far more complex.

there are plenty of plausible reasons a story writer could have for the prommie's mvam being a failure.

maybe the bolts that hold the parts together had to be made of extremely expensive metal to take the strain of repeated and habitual sepping/unsepping. the cost is too damn high! the galaxy only did it rarely, and its bolts could be cheaper. thats just one example. there are others, maybe it just randomly crashes like windoze?



that is why saucer sep being successful doesnt imply mvam has to be successful. they are too different.

saucer sep wasnt even considered a tactically clever thing to do, the odyssey didnt do it when it went up againt the jemhadar, it dumped its non essential people at ds9 and then ran off whole to fight. saucer sep was successful only as an emergency manoeuvre, to serve as a quicker and easier to use escape pod. that success as an escape pod cant be used to justify the success of an offensive battle tactic such as mvam.

I never made it out to be easy, Geordi said the Galaxy was the most complex ship ever built. I never said computers were tactical geniuses, even Prometheus still needed to be told who to shoot. I brought up Galaxy automation as proof that automating a ship was well-within Starfleets abilities.

automating ships properly is obviously not within starfleets capabilities as they have never been seen or mentioned doing it. the prommie had a massive advantage in the battle vs the romulans, it was a 6-3 fight after sep with 2 notoriously great defiants in the battle. even my laptop could win that fight. from the vfx we saw the computer simply shot phasers at the ship while flying towards it. not exactly clever. automation at a crude level.

That's not saucer sep, though, that's battle damage. Strange thing to compare... That's like comparing being shot by someone is suicide since they both kill you.

thats why straw man is a fallacy

---

EDIT: image corrected.

posted on January 23rd, 2011, 1:36 am

riiiight, the 1 ship is the prommie... on 1 mission.

1 ship, 2 tests of the ability.

no he wanted manual reintegration in the pilot, from riker, which is just reintegration with riker doing everything himself without the computer helping at all. normal reintegration would most likely involve button pushing and less work. reintegrating the prommie was auto, tell the computer to do it, dont need to push buttons.

I'm going with Memory Alpha, which mentions both auto and manual options.

yes that did happen. it doesnt matter though because:
1) evidence is weak, comes from a naturally weak show, involves much crazy science, that ep has numerous issues such as phasers at warp and no shields
2) even if it was really strong evidence, its not a strong basis to extrapolate from. you cant extrapolate from 1 episode that the prommie has to be a success. it is possible that it was a failure, and up to story writers to decide whether they want the prommie or not.

Evidence is weak? 1 ship attacked an enemy and crippled it in seconds, which shows the ability is capable of doing what is intended. It also worked a second time

On a side note, the phasers at warp isn't an issue; that's a Constitution Refit-exclusive flaw.

there are 4 points to rebut, and ur attempt to rebut them is weak. the procedure is not the same.

2 different purposes: 1 is a combat manoeuvre, 1 is giant escape pod
2 different results: 1 is 3 independent ships, 1 is normal ship and giant escape pod.
2 different expectations of how often it will be used: 1 rarely for emergencies, 1 regular combat tactic
2 different ideas/ethos: 1 is defensive, 1 is offensive

you cant argue that these 2 are similar, mvam is inspired by saucer sep, but it isnt similar. having 3 ships that all must be warp and combat capable on their own is different from having the warp and combat capable bit on its own with an escape pod. mvam is far more complex.

I wasn't rebutting them as there's nothing to rebutt. Latches unhock, engines fire-up, seperation complete. No difference, no matter how complex the ship splitting up happens to be.

The ship is designed to seperate for a different reason, the seperation happens the same way. What the ship does after has nothing to do with the seperation, neither does what the ship is designed for.

there are plenty of plausible reasons a story writer could have for the prommie's mvam being a failure.

maybe the bolts that hold the parts together had to be made of extremely expensive metal to take the strain of repeated and habitual sepping/unsepping. the cost is too damn high! the galaxy only did it rarely, and its bolts could be cheaper. thats just one example. there are others, maybe it just randomly crashes like windoze?

You'd need seriously bad luck to get a ship that randomly seperates considering how many back-ups and procedures Starfleet (supposedly) has on everything. Along with all the back-ups of the bock-ups.

Either that or piss off the wrong person...

that is why saucer sep being successful doesnt imply mvam has to be successful. they are too different.

The seperation isn't and different, only the attack added to the end and the auto-reintergration. All of which a Galaxy could handle.

saucer sep wasnt even considered a tactically clever thing to do, the odyssey didnt do it when it went up againt the jemhadar, it dumped its non essential people at ds9 and then ran off whole to fight. saucer sep was successful only as an emergency manoeuvre, to serve as a quicker and easier to use escape pod. that success as an escape pod cant be used to justify the success of an offensive battle tactic such as mvam.

Canon says otherwise, where saucer seperation was used in tactics a copule of times. Pre-Wolf 359 Borg encounter in particular comes to mind. Having a command centre with 2 heavily-armed 'battle drones' is useful for damaging multiple shields, getting more weapons than the combined ship can use at the same time to one shield or getting multiple targets at once.

Not 'tactically-unsound', more 'circumstantial use'. What you're actually fighting would be another thing to look out for.

automating ships properly is obviously not within starfleets capabilities as they have never been seen or mentioned doing it. the prommie had a massive advantage in the battle vs the romulans, it was a 6-3 fight after sep with 2 notoriously great defiants in the battle. even my laptop could win that fight. from the vfx we saw the computer simply shot phasers at the ship while flying towards it. not exactly clever. automation at a crude level.

Crude automation is still automation, which is a step in the right direction. Nemesis showed an automated attack with the random '0-elevation' spread that Worf had the computer do. Starfleet can automate just fine, they just can't replace real crews. Oberths and Constitutions could operate with only about 5 people and the computer doing most of the work, though only an Oberth did that in proper service

thats why straw man is a fallacy

A fallacy true, but strawmen can actually strike back with surprising efficiency... not that the creator intended for that.


Agree to disagree? We're both too set in our views to agree, and this discussion has been around longer than we've known each other. Your image link also doesn't work.

posted on January 23rd, 2011, 5:55 am

for the record the prometheus class or that same ship itself has been seen in more then one star trek ep...
voyager Endgame....the ship is in the end of that ep... and also seen in enterprise occurring during the 26th century battle with the sphere builders. and the  USS Cerberus served as Admiral William Ross's personal flagship in a book.

posted on January 23rd, 2011, 6:17 am

also in all star trek the crew or even a single crew member can control the ship with little more then voice commands provided that there is no damage or a complex task has to be preformed. but day to day operation on a ship with systems running at 100 % im sure one crew mender could manage to run the ship for quite some time. so computer power is star trek is not a reason that the mvam would not be used. 

posted on January 23rd, 2011, 9:54 am

It would have taken YEARS of research to make this possible. Therefore, Starfleet, in their wisdom, wouldn't have decided to build the damn thing without proof that it would at least be useful to some extent. The concept was proven with saucer sep, the technology developed from there, kinda like polaroid cameras became cell phone cameras. They then proved it with the prototype. As for magic bolts blowing to separate, the tech manuals and such and so forth provide that the saucer was held on by massive clamps.

According to Moore's Law, computers would have been able to handle those computations. After all, even the "poor" AI of FO has multiple ships doing all kinds of stuff, 400-500 years in Starfleet's relative past.

The EntD, being a ship with civvies, would have needed to take precautions to not kill the dumb civvie that HAD to use the turbolift during a battle before separation. The fully military prommie, however, would have been drilled in the actions of it, better prepared for it, and not only that, but during Red Alert, all crew would be at Battle Stations.

I think that it is stupid that 3 bridges would have been required, we have the tech and computer power for multiple vector/front assaults NOW, with one command center. Hell, the new US fighter aircraft WORK TOGETHER to designate and eliminate threats and targets. Ever heard of the radio? everything from subspace to laser communications could be used to explain how the three sections "talked"

Furthermore, military strategy almost always have provisions for multiple front attacks, it is quite simply harder to hold off a divided attack, same firepower or not.

Saying all this, I fully believe that it is possible in the Starfleet canon for this to be possible, but I think that it still wouldn't be the best thing for the game,  unless it was a warpin that was high off, low def, as a counterpart to the descent. As for the folk that think that the Experimental button should only be for descent clones with different shapes and names, I will say that it is called the experimental warpin, not the descent warpin. If it messes your strategy, pick a new one. Wars are fluid and changing, or else we would still be standing in lines to take musket balls.

Whew 

posted on January 23rd, 2011, 12:49 pm

1 ship, 2 tests of the ability.

on 1 day, same parameters, if it was gonna fail in one of those battles it would most likely fail in the other. and the same for succeed.

I'm going with Memory Alpha, which mentions both auto and manual options.

im gonna say thats an error, ive watched every episode of tng (and generations) and every time he wants the ship split into two he asks the crew, not the computer. if the crew have to push buttons, its not automated.

Evidence is weak? 1 ship attacked an enemy and crippled it in seconds, which shows the ability is capable of doing what is intended. It also worked a second time

all voyager evidence is weak. the stuff they come up with in voyager, even if you ignore threshold, is hard to swallow. you have to take voyager with a pinch of salt. unless you want to acknowledge that voyager's computer is several orders of magnitude better than the ent Ds?

again working once (or even twice if you continue to separate the examples) doesnt allow you to extrapolate and say that it had to be a success. i will keep saying this until you listen, extrapolating from 2 values is a mistake. if u are on a train in scotland and see 1 black horse from the window, would you say all scottish horses are black? its perfectly reasonable that mvam was a failure, its reasonable its a success, its up to the writers to decide. its not a "cop out" to say its not a success. i thought it was stupid in the first place, but we already discussed that earlier.

On a side note, the phasers at warp isn't an issue; that's a Constitution Refit-exclusive flaw.

yes it is, its a big inconsistency in many episodes. we know for a fact that the tmp ent cant fire them at warp. nothing else was made clear. sometimes at warp they ignore the phasers and go straight for torps. sometimes they dont. it was never made clear. im pointing out that this example of phasers at warp adds to the fray of mixed evidence.

I wasn't rebutting them as there's nothing to rebutt. Latches unhock, engines fire-up, seperation complete. No difference, no matter how complex the ship splitting up happens to be.

if you werent rebutting them, they all stand. ive already pointed out how they are separate. you cant seriously say you believe that a combat separation would have the same hardware as a non combat separation. for example 3 separate warp capable ships would need a way for the warp systems to interact, while the galaxy didnt need anything connecting the warp drives of the two bits, since only the back half had a warp drive.

The ship is designed to seperate for a different reason, the seperation happens the same way. What the ship does after has nothing to do with the seperation, neither does what the ship is designed for.

thats not true, you cant expect the two systems to work the same way, the purpose they are designed for of course matters, you dont build something THEN invent the purpose. u build it FOR its purpose. the purpose of a ship will influence the design, arguably more than any other consideration. mvam may look like saucer sep but its different in purpose and use, which means its almost certainly different in design.

You'd need seriously bad luck to get a ship that randomly seperates considering how many back-ups and procedures Starfleet (supposedly) has on everything. Along with all the back-ups of the bock-ups.

who said randomly sepping?

The seperation isn't and different, only the attack added to the end and the auto-reintergration. All of which a Galaxy could handle.

ive already addressed, this: different purpose, different use, different design. galaxy being able to sep doesnt mean mvam is a success.

Canon says otherwise, where saucer seperation was used in tactics a copule of times. Pre-Wolf 359 Borg encounter in particular comes to mind.

saucer sep was used as a combat tactic ONCE in a very situational moment, when the ent D went after the cube. and that was just for distraction of a large target, not for combat effectiveness. the fact that in the whole dominion war, every single galaxy was seen whole blows the idea that saucer sep is good as a combat tactic straight outta the water. its good as a giant escape pod though.

Having a command centre with 2 heavily-armed 'battle drones' is useful for damaging multiple shields, getting more weapons than the combined ship can use at the same time to one shield or getting multiple targets at once.

this came up earlier:

damaging multiple shields: 9 times out of 10 in canon there is 1 shield, 1 shield strength, not multiple shields. the norm is that it doesnt matter which direction you attack from.
revealing hidden weapons: starfleet designers arent stupid enough to hide phasers in places where they are only available when you sep. if each ship has 2 phasers, then its just as good to fire 6 from the whole, than 2 from each.
mutliple targets: 1 ship can do that too. 3 small ships are cheaper and can do it.

Crude automation is still automation, which is a step in the right direction. Nemesis showed an automated attack with the random '0-elevation' spread that Worf had the computer do. Starfleet can automate just fine, they just can't replace real crews. Oberths and Constitutions could operate with only about 5 people and the computer doing most of the work, though only an Oberth did that in proper service

i think the key here is that there are levels of automation. if full automation was possible for starfleet, they would probably do it.

A fallacy true, but strawmen can actually strike back with surprising efficiency... not that the creator intended for that.

they are strong vs humans as they sound good, despite being fallacious under the surface. vulcans would laugh at them. but against humans they are indeed useful. i usually use them as a way of mocking my opponent.

Agree to disagree? We're both too set in our views to agree, and this discussion has been around longer than we've known each other.

agreed , we are only arguing about preference of story writers to have mvam as a success or failure.

Your image link also doesn't work.

corrected. dunno why that happened.

for the record the prometheus class or that same ship itself has been seen in more then one star trek ep...
voyager Endgame....the ship is in the end of that ep... and also seen in enterprise occurring during the 26th century battle with the sphere builders. and the  USS Cerberus served as Admiral William Ross's personal flagship in a book.

yup, the record notes that. but in voyager its possible that ship was the uss prometheus itself. also it never mvam-ed so its possible mvam was a failure and they just never used it again, having a standard ship. the appearance of the prommie at the sphere builders battle was silly seeing as it is so far in the future. vfx slip if you ask me.

also in all star trek the crew or even a single crew member can control the ship with little more then voice commands provided that there is no damage or a complex task has to be preformed

i made the important bit red, full automation would mean complex tasks can be done too.

but day to day operation on a ship with systems running at 100 % im sure one crew mender could manage to run the ship for quite some time

actually in voyager, it was revealed that voyager (a pretty new ship, not a miranda, with an advanced computer capable of storing 47 billion teraquads of data while the ent D was in the kiloquads ) could only operate on its own for weeks. crew are needed day to day to operate it or its systems will fail. a runabout could presumably operate with a handful of people as its small and designed for such things.

It would have taken YEARS of research to make this possible. Therefore, Starfleet, in their wisdom, wouldn't have decided to build the damn thing without proof that it would at least be useful to some extent.

compare to the titanic, everyone had full confidence in it, it still sunk. starfleet arent beyond mistakes, they may have built a bad ship and not realised it. it took obrien a while to fix the mess the defiant was left in. that was nearly a failure of a ship.

The concept was proven with saucer sep, the technology developed from there, kinda like polaroid cameras became cell phone cameras.

you talk about proof of concept then give an example which aids me. galaxy saucer sep is to mvam as film camera (like in polaroids) is to digital camera (mobile phone camera as you put it). film and digital photography are very different. obviously film cameras inspired digital cameras, but the tech is different. just like saucer sep inspired mvam, but the tech is different. the success of film camera/saucer sep cant guarantee the success of digital camera/mvam.

[kainalu]

posted on January 23rd, 2011, 1:35 pm

Last edited by kainalu on January 23rd, 2011, 1:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I could spend a whole paragraph saying why the Titanic analogy don't make sense here, but NM. As for the camera, maybe so, but how about the reciprocating internal combustion engine? Nearly a failure in the beginning, but with advances, they are now very popular, but remain mechanically similar to their ancestors, with appropriate advances in, well, every area.

The MVAM IS close to the same technology, in the same way that today's engines are an evolutionary step above last generation's engines.

As for picking and choosing canon, and extrapolating what "happened" after the show ended, thats all just conjecture. Either you support ALL of canon, or ya don't. As we can tell, they continued to use it. After all, wouldn't it be a real pain to keep the same ship, but remove something like that from it? they would have to start over from the drawing board to pull that off. From what we can tell, it became a production ship, MVAM included, or it wouldn't have been in later episodes. Usually prototypes either go into production, get scrapped, or mothballed. Most governments don't build a prototype, say "Nah" and then continue driving around in the expensive toy they just scrapped, especially when it was indeed proven combat worthy at least one time.

posted on January 23rd, 2011, 2:33 pm

I could spend a whole paragraph saying why the Titanic analogy don't make sense here, but NM.

then you would write an entire paragraph that is incorrect. the analogy here is valid, you say that starfleet would have designed the prommie right. the makers of the titanic probably spent time designing it too. they still made a mistake, so can starfleet. that is the extent of the analogy here, that designers can make mistakes. and it is a perfectly valid point.

but how about the reciprocating internal combustion engine? Nearly a failure in the beginning, but with advances, they are now very popular, but remain mechanically similar to their ancestors, with appropriate advances in, well, every area.

now that is a an example of what you are thinking, although the galaxy/mvam fits more with the camera example than it does with this.

The MVAM IS close to the same technology, in the same way that today's engines are an evolutionary step above last generation's engines.

if u mean mvam is close to saucer sep, no, that is incorrect. all internal combustion engines are for the same purpose, they are expected to be used in the same way etc. galaxy saucer sep and mvam are cosmetically similar only.

As for picking and choosing canon, and extrapolating what "happened" after the show ended, thats all just conjecture.

exactly, so you must admit that it is plausible that mvam was a failure.

As we can tell, they continued to use it.

they used a promotheus type ship that was never named. for all we know it was the prommie itself in endgame. the appearance in enterprise i think is a vfx mistake. in endgame we never saw it mvam either.

After all, wouldn't it be a real pain to keep the same ship, but remove something like that from it? they would have to start over from the drawing board to pull that off.

nope it wouldnt be. say the issues with mvam only appear when mvam is used, so that if the prommie doesnt use mvam, there wont be problems. so basically use the prommie itself as a normal ship and dont build more. the prommie would be the only ship of its class then.

it would fit with the prommie being at endgame too, if the prommie wasnt a sucessful and reliable ship then it might hang around earth for defence purposes instead of going out doing important things.

From what we can tell, it became a production ship, MVAM included, or it wouldn't have been in later episodes.

that first bit in red is flawed logic. we have no evidence it became a production ship. we saw the proto, then 1 ship that could have been the prommie or not. thats not enough evidence to draw a conclusion that its a production ship. it was in 1 later episode, and 1 vfx cock up.

the second part of the logic in green that mvam is included is even worse, since we never saw the endgame prommie use mvam.

the third part that being in a later episode implies it was a production ship is flawed too, as we could have seen 100 appearances of the protoype and it wouldnt imply it was a production ship.

Usually prototypes either go into production, get scrapped, or mothballed.

the excelsior did none of them, the prototype transwarp failed, so they CHANGED the design, then put it into production. the excelsior itself stayed in service even though one of its main features failed. the same could easily happen to the prommie, they keep the ship in service and dont use mvam any more. they might have changed the design of the prommie to remove mvam and made more for all we know.

it was indeed proven combat worthy at least one time.

ive put in red the word proven here since it is grossly misused, 1 example of mvam working doesnt prove anything. again you are extrapolating from incredibly weak data.

here is an extrapolation with good evidence:
photon torps are good as a weapon, the evidence is that we have seen several species use them for centuries and many ships have been destroyed/damaged by them.

earlier i gave an exagerated example where a person on a train assumes all scottish horses are black because they saw a black horse in scotland.

posted on January 23rd, 2011, 3:09 pm

From what I know, the Prometheus in 'Endgame' was still marked with the original name and number, implying it's the original ship now in proper service. I don't know if the one from Enterprise also had the same markings or if more were built.

The 'Transwarp' was never implied to be a failure, nor anything similar to the Borg version. Transwarp is merely a name for travel that's 'faster-than-warp' and could quite easily have been a new Warp drive capable of going much faster. Starfleet ships did start going a lot faster shortly after the Excelsior came around.

posted on January 23rd, 2011, 3:16 pm

The 'Transwarp' was never implied to be a failure, nor anything similar to the Borg version. Transwarp is merely a name for travel that's 'faster-than-warp' and could quite easily have been a new Warp drive capable of going much faster. Starfleet ships did start going a lot faster shortly after the Excelsior came around.

it was implied, not directly though. the non canon source TNG tech manual apparently addresses it. the ma article on the uss excelsior mentions it in a side note.

its not hard to fill in the unmentioned blanks, the excelsior was supposed to have transwarp, scott sabotaged it, then it wasnt seen until star trek 6 when it operated at normal warp speeds and with a ncc rather than nx registry, hinting that it was no longer a prototype.

ma says it remained in spacedock for two years. presumably failing to reach transwarp speeds.

The Excelsior remained in spacedock until at least 2287, before subsequently being recommissioned for active service by the end of the decade. (Star Trek V: The Final Frontier; Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country)

posted on January 23rd, 2011, 3:25 pm

It could be viewed as it failing, though the large speed increase at the time could also imply it didn't. Since they didn't tell what happened to it or what the project actually was (they couldn't be imitating the Borg version; they hadn't met), it could go either way.

This one is a subject that works perfectly both ways, especially with MA's description of Transwarp simply being 'FTL travel that overcomes the normal limits'.

posted on January 23rd, 2011, 4:00 pm

i dont remember any large speed increases at that time. a klingon bop in st4 could do warp 9 easily.

posted on January 23rd, 2011, 4:10 pm

Warp factors don't change, the speed accociated with them do. Warp factors aren't set figures, they change accordingly as engine speeds increase; TNG Warp 9.98 is TOS Warp 18.56.

posted on January 23rd, 2011, 4:21 pm

Warp factors don't change, the speed accociated with them do. Warp factors aren't set figures, they change accordingly as engine speeds increase; TNG Warp 9.98 is TOS Warp 18.56.

oh, that whole load of rubbish. thats just down to bad writing.

the whole "recalibration of scales" is purely non canon, from stuff like the TNG tech manual and as such cant be used as evidence of anything. all we have are inconsistent warp factors and times for travel and occasional figures given from which we can only gain a conflicting nonsense about warp drive.

which leads back to the fact that there was no speed increase, since the source for the speed increase is non canon.