Trek Space Combat Ranges

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Re: Trek Space Combat Ranges

Post by Aaron »

m52nickerson wrote:
Any way we look at things there will be problems. Some issues will have just as many problems no matter how we look at them. So it just turns out that there is not real truth floating out there. Everyone can analyzes Trek how they want. It is arguable if some methods are better then others.
Indeed.
I would hope that in a crew of close to 1000 you could find more competent officers to fill a bridge shift.
A good portion of those thousand are actually civvie specialists/contractors IIRC (I've heard the number 600 thrown around a lot for actual crew). So the options are limited on where they can get crew from. In fact that whole discussion was pretty much BS, a ship is designed for a certain number of crew and watches are designed to work with a certain number of crew.

But I agree, there were more then enough Junior Officers around to have a different face in the centre seat once and a while.
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Re: Trek Space Combat Ranges

Post by stitch626 »

What's SoD?
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Re: Trek Space Combat Ranges

Post by Coalition »

Cpl Kendall wrote: Edit: Let's use Jellico's four shifts as an example. He wants the ship on four because it's more efficient, yet no one bothers to ask where their going to get the extra men for another shift. So, do we believe that the ship had an extra full shifts worth of personnel floating around that was unused before? Do we believe that he's going to strip folks from the A, B and C shifts, thereby making all the shifts less efficient.
I would've loved to see something like this:

(Not sure exactly who said what in the episode, so I am guessing for Picard, but Jellicoe's response would have been interesting)

Picard: "We stayed at three shifts due to the lack of personnel on board."
Jellicoe: "We can stop at a nearby Starbase for three days, and I can double the crew on board. Do you know how many thousand applications the Academy Commandant gets from every graduating class from cadets who want to serve on the Enterprise? Do you know how many personnel would be willing to accept a rank reduction to serve on the Enterprise? We turn away 3/4 of the people who apply to Starfleet simply because we don't have the places to put them. A year on the Enterprise counts as much to a person's reputation as ten to twenty years on any other ship in Starfleet. If you need crew Captain, you could pick and choose your crew, and every one of them would be grateful for the chance to be considered, let alone accepted."
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Re: Trek Space Combat Ranges

Post by Aaron »

stitch626 wrote:What's SoD?
Suspension of Disbelief.
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Re: Trek Space Combat Ranges

Post by SomosFuga »

This ceased to be about trek space combat ranges long ago, however i have to say this:

I dont like a bit all the "the FX are wrong" line of thought, it is very dangerous. Clearly there might be mistakes in the visuals (and dialogues) but not such a big mistake like a ship that is supposed to be 100 000 km away from another one but looks as if they were at 10 km of separation (at most), that is just too much.

On the other hand ECM are not the best explanation neither, i like it better but i thought in the attacks against DS9, first by the klingon and later by the dominion, in both cases they are attaking a space station wich is basically a fixed position so they know where DS9 is and in that case, why did they get so close to it if they haven't to aim at a moving target? When they get near the station they granted the defenders the actual posibility of a defense. It is obvious they are very close to the station turning around like sharks. The easier explanation IMO in this particular case would be the effectiveness of weapons at long range, spetially aganist DS9 heavy shielding.
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Re: Trek Space Combat Ranges

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Captain Seafort wrote:And why shouldn't we? Flawed VFX introduces an additional entity, which should be rejected per the razor.
Like I said, it hits my common sense limit.
I would say that that goes the other way - he's specifically stating that the ships were that close together, and came up with an excuse to do it.
Yes, in that case, but later on they don't bother establishing the excuses they just go with the looks cool aspect without any reason for it.
Maybe not for having pretty VFX, but I certainly got much more of an "oh s**t" feeling from seeing the E-nil hanging at an odd angle with its lights out in BoT than anything in TNG+ Trek. Plus the quick cuts between the E-nil and its target added pace while still allowing the course of the battle to be followed (unlike the DS9 actions or the nBSG nonsense).
Yes, they created the tension in a different way back then. Better way, too, IMO.
With that one we've got canon proof that a few proficient hackers could wreak havoc with a Fed ship - Distant Origin.
Oh, I accept that people do hack the security. I just don't accept that their security is therefore poor. But it's a different argument.
I don't. Mike Wong does, and that's who I derive most of my GCS engineering arguments from. If a professional engineer says it ignores engineering principles, I'm willing to go along with that.
I'm not, since there's no such thing as a professional warp systems engineer on planet Earth right now.

We're talking about fictional science which follows arbitrary rules here. A present day engineer cannot possibly say anything substantive about how the systems are designed.
They're theories that, while certainly meriting investigation, don't stand up to said investigation. If weapons power decreased with range then why was the Phoenix just as effective in The Wounded as the two GCSes were in SoA? If it was targeting problems full stop, then why do they only seem to turn up in battle? ECM explains this.
We don't know what the Phoenix was up against in The Wounded. It's described as a Cardassian warship, but we never see it and it's never established as a Galor so it isn't a valid comparison.

I'd buy the ECM explanation if it had ever once been mentioned. It surely would be mentioned, if it was a real explanation. It's just not.
Fair enough. It is nonetheless a common tactic of cloaked ships (rather than striking from extreme range), otherwise they'd have been scratching their heads rather than immediately thing "cloaked ship".
And it remains true that the only reason they didn't attack from waited until even tens of thousands of km in this particular case was to cut reaction times with a close in attack.
Hardly.
Yes, exactly.
We know that there are many different not-so-high-energy phenomena that disrupt sensors, many of which can be generated artificiality. We know that ships are capable of hitting targets from extremely long range, but almost never do so in combat. Therefore there is something unusual about ship-to-ship combat, and interference of some kind generated by the opposing ships seems the most probable difference - ergo ECM, either deliberate or accidental as a result of the ships' other combat related operations (shields, weapons fire, maybe even their own sensors).
And again, simply declaring it the answer does not make it the answer. Most especially given that they never mention ECM being an issue in battles, never mention using it or being subjected to it.

It's a possible answer, certainly. But that's all it is.
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Re: Trek Space Combat Ranges

Post by Mikey »

m52nickerson wrote:Some topics will just have no definite answers.
Again, "I reject the available evidence by saying that there is no answer."
m52nickerson wrote:Plus as stated there is good reason to be skeptical of any visuals.
No there isn't. There is good reason to be skeptical of some visuals; any is an unsupported extrapolation.
m52nickerson wrote:No I'm saying that if you are basing something on nothing but visual evidence you can't be sure it is correct.
If you have nothing but visual evidence, then that's what you go by.
m52nickerson wrote:I'm saying that visuals do not hold up against any type of intense analysis.
Some visuals do not. As has been deomstrated many times on this forum, some dialogue doesn't as well. By your logic, that would mean rejecting any dialogue as evidence. Of course, you don't because you like dialogue evidence and not visual evidence.
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Re: Trek Space Combat Ranges

Post by m52nickerson »

Mikey wrote: Again, "I reject the available evidence by saying that there is no answer."
I reject the available evidence because there is a good chance that it is flawed. If it is the only evidence we can't know if it is flawed or not.
No there isn't. There is good reason to be skeptical of some visuals; any is an unsupported extrapolation.
If you want to believe that the visuals are accurate, you can. I just will not because as I've stated, they are not meant to be, so many of them have problems.
If you have nothing but visual evidence, then that's what you go by.
....and what you get is inaccurate at best.
Some visuals do not. As has been deomstrated many times on this forum, some dialogue doesn't as well. By your logic, that would mean rejecting any dialogue as evidence. Of course, you don't because you like dialogue evidence and not visual evidence.
Of course some dialogue does not hold up. I'm not saying that dialogue is perfect. Not am I saying we should totally ignore every visual. I'm saying that anytime you have just a single piece of evidence we should be skeptical of it. When visuals and dialogue do not match then we should go with dialogue.
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Re: Trek Space Combat Ranges

Post by Mikey »

m52nickerson wrote:I reject the available evidence because there is a good chance that it is flawed.
Herein lies the crux of the disagreement. I'd say that this statement is incorrect, and that more accurate would be to say that "there is a chance that it is flawed." To say "a good chance" would be, as I've pointed out, an unfounded extrapolation. Following from this, the rejection of all visuals as "innaccurate evidence" is just as logical (or nonsensical) as the rejection of all dialogue because of the similar possibility of it being flawed as evidence.
m52nickerson wrote:....and what you get is inaccurate at best.
Not necessarily. You may believe that all you can obtain is an inaccurate conclusion, because of your stated belief that all visual evidence is innately incorrect. The conclusion can only be claimed to be inaccurate when the supporting evidence is demonstrated to be inaccurate.
m52nickerson wrote:When visuals and dialogue do not match then we should go with dialogue.
No. By its nature, dialogue is only meant to convey a character's opinion, claim, or comment.
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Re: Trek Space Combat Ranges

Post by m52nickerson »

Mikey wrote: Herein lies the crux of the disagreement. I'd say that this statement is incorrect, and that more accurate would be to say that "there is a chance that it is flawed." To say "a good chance" would be, as I've pointed out, an unfounded extrapolation. Following from this, the rejection of all visuals as "innaccurate evidence" is just as logical (or nonsensical) as the rejection of all dialogue because of the similar possibility of it being flawed as evidence.
Again I'm not calling to reject every visual. What I'm saying that they should all be looked at as possible flawed. I do think there is a good chance that many of the visuals are flawed because of how many we know are.
Not necessarily. You may believe that all you can obtain is an inaccurate conclusion, because of your stated belief that all visual evidence is innately incorrect. The conclusion can only be claimed to be inaccurate when the supporting evidence is demonstrated to be inaccurate.
If you want to take any visual as correct unless proven otherwise. Of course if the visual is the only evidence then there is not way to do that. I see the many errors in visuals as proof that they all should be seen as possibly flawed.
No. By its nature, dialogue is only meant to convey a character's opinion, claim, or comment.
Dialogue has one thing that visuals do not. Other characters to respond to and comment about dialogue. I can accept characters statement not being true when it is there opinion. When they are talking about facts on the other hand if they were to get something horribly wrong we would see an other character respond by correcting them or in surprise. Dialogue inherently has a level of self checking because it normally involves multiple charters or follows all the way through an episode or event.
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Re: Trek Space Combat Ranges

Post by Mikey »

m52nickerson wrote:What I'm saying that they should all be looked at as possible flawed. I do think there is a good chance that many of the visuals are flawed because of how many we know are.
The same principle can indeed be applied to dialogue.
m52nickerson wrote:I see the many errors in visuals as proof that they all should be seen as possibly flawed.
Everything in the universe should be viewed as "possibly flawed." The position you seem to be taking is that because some visuals have been flawed, they all are flawed. That's little different then saying, "I know a Jew who is thrifty - therefore, all Jews are miserly."
m52nickerson wrote:Dialogue has one thing that visuals do not. Other characters to respond to and comment about dialogue. I can accept characters statement not being true when it is there opinion. When they are talking about facts on the other hand if they were to get something horribly wrong we would see an other character respond by correcting them or in surprise. Dialogue inherently has a level of self checking because it normally involves multiple charters or follows all the way through an episode or event.
Yep. This however ignores the entire intent and function of dialogue. Dialogue is expressly used for the purpose of relating what the characters say - not for relating the facts of the milieu. Many times those things coincide, and a skillful writer will use the former to convey the latter; however, that's either coincidental or tangential to the purpose of dialogue.
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Re: Trek Space Combat Ranges

Post by m52nickerson »

Mikey wrote: The same principle can indeed be applied to dialogue.
Yes it can.
Everything in the universe should be viewed as "possibly flawed." The position you seem to be taking is that because some visuals have been flawed, they all are flawed. That's little different then saying, "I know a Jew who is thrifty - therefore, all Jews are miserly."
If evidence has the possibility to be flawed and is the only thing you have to go by you must then consider what ever results come from the evidence to also be possible flawed and therefor only a possible answer.
Yep. This however ignores the entire intent and function of dialogue. Dialogue is expressly used for the purpose of relating what the characters say - not for relating the facts of the milieu. Many times those things coincide, and a skillful writer will use the former to convey the latter; however, that's either coincidental or tangential to the purpose of dialogue.
Dialogue is very much used to convey facts. More so then FX that are made to look cool.
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Re: Trek Space Combat Ranges

Post by Mikey »

You're missing the point. Dialogue can be made to convey "facts," but its overarching purpose is to convey... well, I hate to say it, but... dialogue.
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Re: Trek Space Combat Ranges

Post by SomosFuga »

m52nickerson wrote:Dialogue is very much used to convey facts. More so then FX that are made to look cool.
And dialogue is made to sound cool.
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Re: Trek Space Combat Ranges

Post by stitch626 »

SomosFuga wrote:
m52nickerson wrote:Dialogue is very much used to convey facts. More so then FX that are made to look cool.
And dialogue is made to sound cool.
Seriously. All the 'science' talk we get is (usually) flawed, yet we still make generous use of SoD.
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