The Federation

posted on February 15th, 2009, 10:17 pm

Well, I suppose if you really wanted to make the Steamrunner a non artillery... you could have it launch an absurd number of torpedoes at medium range or something as a special. It would be a cruiser with "artillery-like" abilities  ... it just wouldn't outrange anything 

posted on February 16th, 2009, 7:35 pm

i see 2 ways:
-make it buildable  - maybe a few changes in abilities-  then so federation gets a relaiable artilery beside excelsior
-or make it a combat fregate

posted on February 17th, 2009, 1:06 am

To me this just seems like the people who wrote the article tried to find some kind of explanation for voyager carrying tricobalt devices... As far as I understand subspace weapons are banned because they can damage subspace. Allowing some because they are "predictable" would be like allowing predictable biological weapons when biological weapons in general are banned - it doesn't make any sense.

Also, as far as I remember, no tricobalt weapons were seen in the dominion war, although many attacks on starbases and planetary targets were shown...

The absence (or at least lack of mentioning) of subspace weapons during the dominion war also raises questions.
As i understand the Son'a were either part of/allied to the dominion and from ST Insurrection  we know the Son'a have subspace weapons in their arsenal.

Currently the Norway class is in FO while this is not a combat-focused design, yet the Steamrunner which is focused on combat is only available through a warp-in

Subspace weapons are banned because they are unpredicatable, Tricobalt is not unpredictable.

posted on February 17th, 2009, 3:18 am

Subspace weapons, if memory serves, are banned not due to unpredictability, but due to damage to subspace.

Like how there's an entire swath of the Alpha Quadrant where unless it's the most dire of emergencies, you're not supposed to go above Warp 5, because the subspace barrier is so badly damaged.

Honestly, my theory is that Voyager had a Tricobalt torpedo because they captured it from the Maquis ship.  At least, I hope so.

[Tyler]

posted on February 17th, 2009, 3:34 am

Last edited by Tyler on February 17th, 2009, 9:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

Pretty much any Tech can damage subspace, like Weapons. Photons can play hell with the barriers of both time and space yet they are not illegal.

I am all in favor of the unpredictability concept. We will not know for sure why they wer banned unless the writers of Trek say so, so the discussion will never get anywhere.

Back to the Steamrunner, I don't remember ever seeing one fire a single Torpedo. In either First Contact or the Series, the closest was a Norway that could be easily mistaken for a Steamrunner at the angle it showed up at.

posted on February 19th, 2009, 9:59 am

Photon torpedos gain their power by annihilating antimatter with matter, according to memory-alpha. That's a most usual reaction in our real usiverse too. So, what should a photon torpedo do to subspace??? (I don't think you're talking about photons as the particles sun emitts for warming our planet)

I appreciate to make both, the akira and the steamrunner, real torpedo-machines and invent an additional artillary-ship if intrepid wasn't enough. Differences between Akira and Steamrunner would have to be worked out cleary to avoud any redundancy.

I'd like to see a Prometheus too, and in they were made experimental support ships, that would't harm balancing IMO

posted on February 19th, 2009, 1:32 pm

I'd like to see a Prometheus too, and in they were made experimental support ships, that would't harm balancing IMO

Making them a support ship is actually a very good idea that would prevent it from becoming a classical super battleship. What if, just as an idea, the combined ship wasn't all that strong, maybe a bit stronger than an akira, and only the MVAM could make it really powerful. Obviously, this would lead to people always having all their prometheus seperated, so maybe the MVAM could be limited to a few seconds. (so that, just like in the show, it would seperate, attack for a few seconds and then rejoin again)

posted on February 19th, 2009, 1:40 pm

Subspace weapons are banned, but if I'm right Quantum torpedos are a subspace weapon too. 

It uses Zeropoint Energy like a ZPM in Stargate...

posted on February 19th, 2009, 2:17 pm

Dude, Zero Point Energy is quantum oscillation in real space. I could fill you in with it's basis in quantum physics, but that would be overkill.

posted on February 19th, 2009, 11:51 pm

If I'm allowed to, i'd like to cite memory-alpha again: "The quantum warhead relies on rapid energy extraction from zero-point vacuum. This is established from an 11-dimensional space-time membrane, twisted into a Genus-1 topology string, housed inside the ultraclean vacuum of a 1.38 meter-long teardrop shaped zero-point field reaction chamber. The detonation of a photon torpedo warhead, enriched with fluoronetic vapor, inside the torpedo powers a continuum distortion emitter. It expands the membrane and pinches it out of the background vacuum. The membrane forms into subatomic particles accompanied by a high-explosive energy release."

Both of you are quite right in some points: Zero Point Energy is quantum oscillation in real space, thus has nothing to do with subspace. On the Other hand, is the quantum-torpedo is somehow a string-theory-torpedo and if subspace was a shift of realspace in any freaky dimension, god knows what might happen.

In my opinion any discussion of a Q-torpedo is unrewarding, because it's physical rubbish. Same goes with Stargate's ZPM.

posted on February 19th, 2009, 11:58 pm

Back to the latest topic: What about giving the Steamrunner a passive or special ability, which increases the speed of the vessel temporarly to rush into a battle, and afterwards to unload ~10 photons at once. That would give us a steamrunner, that does not carry any long range torpedos, butbehaves like an artillary ship.

posted on February 20th, 2009, 12:27 am

Sigh. I think it's fine how it is. I mean, why not just let the borg target 10 ships at once and be even more powerful?

posted on February 21st, 2009, 10:06 pm

At Star Trek Nemesis the Sovereing-class don´t have an shield-blister...
There is a shield-fence....

Would be nice if this could be added in Fleet Ops.... 

posted on February 21st, 2009, 10:10 pm

I say have 2 versions of the Steamrunner; 1 with a single basic Phaser and a Tricobalt special similar to the Intrepid's, and another with standard Phasers and Photons. Both as Warp-In and you could get either.

posted on February 21st, 2009, 10:34 pm

@ Dark Painkiller: the "fence" is on todo I believe