Most useless ship I've ever seen

[Blackstar the Chakat]

Agreed, that outpost held out for some time on its own. Why didn't they have any weapons?

They probably did, but weren't sufficient to fight the heavy assault.

[Deepcrush]

How heavy would they have to be? Ent-0 used phasers and that BoP didn't seem to have any shields. Why wouldn't an outpost have weapons to match a starship?

[Blackstar the Chakat]

How heavy would they have to be? Ent-0 used phasers and that BoP didn't seem to have any shields. Why wouldn't an outpost have weapons to match a starship?

It old and there wasn't any need to upgrade as the Romulans hadn't made an aggressive move in over a century?

[Deepcrush]

I think I had brought that up before. But still they should have been able to hand out some hurt.

[Blackstar the Chakat]

I think I had brought that up before. But still they should have been able to hand out some hurt.

They probably did, but didn't do enough hurt.

[Deepcrush]

It did none, the BoP was undamaged when Enterprise came around.

[Blackstar the Chakat]

It did none, the BoP was undamaged when Enterprise came around.

Maybe they never got the shields down. I've never seen the episode so I don't know what the rate of fire of the 'plasma torpedo' was, but to be used as a viable ship-to-ship weapon it would have to be relatively fast, maybe too fast for an outdated outpost to do noticeable damage.

[Captain Seafort]

Plus there's the problem of having to see the thing before you can hit it. The E-nil was able to track the BoP on motion sensors - the outposts may not have picked up on that trick. The E-nil was also able to manouevre to engage, whereas against the outposts the BoP would have been able to dip in and out of range, only attacking when it was ready to.

[Deepcrush]

True enough. All those poor outposts, raped by plasma...

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Weren't these old outposts buried deep within asteroids, and didn't Spock mention some superstrong material which the plasma turned into something as tough as paperboard (which he crumpled in his hand in the briefing room)? These seem to be very old methods of shielding the installations (which were very old after all), so if they had shields they would have been adaptions not originally intended for these platforms, and also any shields would have to encompass the entire asteroid, reducing their effectiveness.

[Mark]

And there are the other problems of defending a a stationary target against a moving one. It just seems to me, that what Starfleet and the Federation did, was build some outposts along a hostile border, and leave them to grow outdated, because the Romulans minded their own business for a while. So that when the Romulans were ready to test the waters again, they came up against Starfleet surplus. What sense does that make? That would be like saying "Gee, we haven't had any trouble lately from N. Korea, so let's leave our boys on the DMZ with M-1 rifles, and they same equipment they had before."

And going back to the airtram, their just seem to me to be WAY to many other options to work with than the equivelent of a flying city bus. It's not very quick, nor convienent, nor practicle. Figure, by the time of TMP, they have made another advance in transporter tech. Instead of using a "wireless" signal to transport people in and out of a complex, you have a "hardline" for security purposes. Several "hardwired" transporters that would ONLY get you from point a to point b inside the restricted zone. And how often to mass numbers of people come and go even from a secured and restricted area? Staggered shift changes are the norm. It just seems like it was done for no other reason than as a cool special effects backdrop sceen.

[Bryan Moore]

How about the Oberth? I LOVE the ship, absolutely love it. I love the concept behind it. But do we ever see one that DOESN'T get destroyed or is involved in a major malfunction? The writers always make it look like crap.

[Teaos]

Thats because its supposed to float around studying things. Its not designed to be put into the situations we see it in.

[Tsukiyumi]

Thats because its supposed to float around studying things. Its not designed to be put into the situations we see it in.

Sort of like the Alvin getting caught up in a submarine battle. Not a good place to be, though it at least has the possibility of diving deep to escape...

[Nutso]

How about the Oberth? I LOVE the ship, absolutely love it. I love the concept behind it.

You and me both, brother.

But do we ever see one that DOESN'T get destroyed or is involved in a major malfunction? The writers always make it look like crap.

At least the Oberth doesn't have a warp core breach from a computer virus, like a certain top of the line ship class.