Info on the USS Kelvin

[Mark]

Just out of curiousity, what are you basing those numbers on?

[SuperSaiyaMan12]

Just out of curiousity, what are you basing those numbers on?

I gave a bit of an increase to its phaser terawatt coverage and added a single probe/photon torpedo tube. It seems kind of stupid, even for a survey vessel, not to have at least one of those to launch probes to check out a planet before surveying. Even the Oberth had it.

[Graham Kennedy]

No mention of torps being fired against the Narada (he even said "fire phasers" rather than "fire weapons"), no visual of torps being fired, no visible sign of a torpedo launcher on the ship. Seems pretty conclusive to me.

[Aaron]

No mention of torps being fired against the Narada (he even said "fire phasers" rather than "fire weapons"), no visual of torps being fired, no visible sign of a torpedo launcher on the ship. Seems pretty conclusive to me.

Indeed and it's not like you couldn't launch a probe out of the open shuttle bay or from a shuttle for that matter. But seeing as the Kelvin and the Big E both had large shuttle compliments they probably just used them in place of a probe.

[Sionnach Glic]

Aye, that'd work for me.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Out of curiosity, when WAS the first time we heard of a probe being launched? Did we ever see one in TOS?

[Tyyr]

There's always the possibility that using torpedo casings and torpedo launchers as probe casings/launchers simply wasn't always done. The Kelvin could have had probes and a launcher but have them be incompatible with torps.

[Sionnach Glic]

Out of curiosity, when WAS the first time we heard of a probe being launched? Did we ever see one in TOS?

I'm fairly sure we heard of one in TOS. Damned if I can be sure, though.

[SomosFuga]

Honestly, I like it this way. I like it a lot more than pretending that for the next 250 years the best we'll be able to do is lasers.

Fire weapons were first used at least 650 years ago and they are still state of the art. Plus we don't really have lasers as a real, practical weapon system; so is not hard to believe that lasers will still be state of the art within the next 250 years, probably along with several other systems.

[SomosFuga]

Did we see it preform in the Prime universe? No? Cant judge it.

Not canon but we saw the Narada tear apart a late 24 century klingon fleet in the comic book.

[Reliant121]

The problem is the relative progression of technology has jumped so quickly in the past 30-40 years, that it is leaps and bounds ahead of the past millenia. It took us nearly 400 years to go from constructing ships from wood to constructing them from metal. In the past 100 years we have gone through iron, aluminium, steel, fibreglass, plastic even for small ones. Technologically speaking it took us 300/400 years to develop from crossbows to flintlock fired weapons. It took is 100 years from the first practical automatic machine guns to weapons which can fire 3500 bullets per minute, shred an aircraft in seconds and track missiles going at several times the speed of sound. Technology advances so fast today that a phone is virtually obsolete via technology standards merely weeks after it is released, Computers are made redundant compared to their successor in a month. If that trend continues, where technology develops at a phenominal rate, we could have plasma based weaponry, or anti-matter based weaponry far sooner than you would expect.

[Aaron]

The problem with battlefield lasers isn't that they don't work, we could have chemical powered ones right now if you don't have a problem with massive amounts of dangerous and volatile chemicals sitting in your camp. IIRC the US has decided to wait until solid state lasers become more practical and we have a better method of powering them, so it's a safety issue rather then a technological one.

[SomosFuga]

The problem is the relative progression of technology has jumped so quickly in the past 30-40 years, that it is leaps and bounds ahead of the past millenia. It took us nearly 400 years to go from constructing ships from wood to constructing them from metal. In the past 100 years we have gone through iron, aluminium, steel, fibreglass, plastic even for small ones. Technologically speaking it took us 300/400 years to develop from crossbows to flintlock fired weapons. It took is 100 years from the first practical automatic machine guns to weapons which can fire 3500 bullets per minute, shred an aircraft in seconds and track missiles going at several times the speed of sound. Technology advances so fast today that a phone is virtually obsolete via technology standards merely weeks after it is released, Computers are made redundant compared to their successor in a month. If that trend continues, where technology develops at a phenominal rate, we could have plasma based weaponry, or anti-matter based weaponry far sooner than you would expect.

All true but still, it is pretty much the same tech just better. I think that as long as they can continue to improve fire weapons we won't see much real advance in other systems. On the other hand, how much can they improve the current fire weapons?

[SomosFuga]

The problem with battlefield lasers isn't that they don't work, we could have chemical powered ones right now if you don't have a problem with massive amounts of dangerous and volatile chemicals sitting in your camp. IIRC the US has decided to wait until solid state lasers become more practical and we have a better method of powering them, so it's a safety issue rather then a technological one.

That is a technological issue.

[Aaron]

That is a technological issue.

Someone claimed that lasers aren't a practical weapon right now, I'm saying they are provided you are willing to live with the trade offs.