Scimitar vs. Sovereign

[Teaos]

That the number is simply wrong is the most logical explaination.

Uh, no.

The simplist explanation is that they just didnt fire them all.

[mlsnoopy]

From an in-universe perspective, I find the simpest sollution is simply that Geordi was mistaken when he called out the ship's armaments

Or that the ship can't power all of its weapons when cloaked. We know that cloaks take massive amounts of power to operate. That ships can't use their shields and weapons when cloaked.

[Sionnach Glic]

Uh, no.

The simplist explanation is that they just didnt fire them all

SHINZON: "Fire all disruptor banks!"

Or that the ship can't power all of its weapons when cloaked. We know that cloaks take massive amounts of power to operate. That ships can't use their shields and weapons when cloaked.

I adressed this just a few posts back.

[Sonic Glitch]

From an in-universe perspective, I find the simpest sollution is simply that Geordi was mistaken when he called out the ship's armaments. Either due to interference from the Scimitar itself, or through a simple mistake on his own behalf.

We can just claim that it's possible Shinzon was running some sort of reverse sensor mask. Instead of hiding things, he was projecting them. Seems like an accurate bit of posturing for someone in his position.

[Reliant121]

It would match his psyche, or at least Romulan Psyche.

[Sionnach Glic]

Aye, I mentioned the possibility that the guns were fakes a while back. It seems the sort of thing I can imagine the Romulans doing.

[mlsnoopy]

I adressed this just a few posts back.

Didn't notice.

Then what's the point of all the extra guns in the first place?

You have more firepower at your disposal. Would that work against the most powerfull ship that the fed has at it disposal. Maybe but when we think that the E-E fired all of its PT and that Pt usualy hit their targets decloaking wouldn't be a good idea.

The whole point of the ship is to fight while its cloak is active.

Isn't the whole point that it can bring the super weapon undetected behind enemy lines and destroy key targets.
When the two warbirds joined the battle they did score quite a few hits.

If it's unable to use 47 of the guns built onto it while cloaked, then there's little point in having those guns in the first place.

But what if you run into a small fleet of less powerfull ships. Than you can decloake and put out more damage.

They just add extra mass that must be cloaked, and add extra complexity to the ship's design.

Everything is complexity against the usefullness.

[Mikey]

And interestingly enough, nobody has yet said, "You know, you're right - I'll change my mind."

Do you want to destory the universe...?

It has crossed my mind...

[m52nickerson]

So, the # disruptors is wrong, or the visual affects are wrong, or the disrutors are placed in very close set groups which makes it appear that the blasts are coming from only a few points.

There's simply no way that 52 disruptors could be crammed so tightly together like that without it being noticeable. That the number is simply wrong is the most logical explaination.

From an in-universe perspective, I find the simpest sollution is simply that Geordi was mistaken when he called out the ship's armaments. Either due to interference from the Scimitar itself, or through a simple mistake on his own behalf.

So your saying that 52 disruptors the size of the ones on a bird of pray could not fit in to the Scimitar? I think they could easy.
The entry for the Negh'var has 20 disruptors, the Dominion Battle Ship has 40 Polaron beams and both of these ships weapons are probably stronger, and larger individually then the disruptors on the Scimitar.

I don't see Geordi misreading that number and not checking it again to be sure, especially with the number so high. The # of torpedo tubes was also very high.

I could have been some sort of sensor mask, but there is no indication of that. Plus when Picard and Data were making their escape they seemed to know were the Shuttle bay was and that they would find ships in it. Yes, Data could have found it while wondering around, but how much time did he have?

Smaller disruptors place in tightly packed firing groups make the most sense. It explains why we see shots coming from only a few different spots on the Scimitar. It may help explain how the ship had the energy for the weapons, cloak, and shield. (If you go with 5 of so smaller disruptors use less power then a single large disruptor) It explains how the individual disruptor hits did not do a whole lot of damage to the Enterprises shields. All in all it ties up a lot of the disagreements.

[Tsukiyumi]

Just for the record, it was Worf who runs the tactical analysis. I find it less likely that he would be fooled or make a mistake.

[Sionnach Glic]

You have more firepower at your disposal

No, you don't. If you can't use those guns, then they have no effect on the ship's effectiveness in combat.

Would that work against the most powerfull ship that the fed has at it disposal. Maybe but when we think that the E-E fired all of its PT and that Pt usualy hit their targets decloaking wouldn't be a good idea.

I have absolutely no idea what you're trying to say here.

Isn't the whole point that it can bring the super weapon undetected behind enemy lines and destroy key targets.

Yes, the ship was designed primarily around the thelaron weapon. In addition, it was designed for combat. Hence why it was designed to allow it to stay cloaked while firing.

When the two warbirds joined the battle they did score quite a few hits.

So what?

But what if you run into a small fleet of less powerfull ships. Than you can decloake and put out more damage.

And then you risk taking more damage in return. It'd be far smarter simply to wait behind the cloak and pick them off one by one if necessary.

Everything is complexity against the usefullness.

Correct. And in this case they are not effective enough to justify their inclusion.

The only way those 47 other guns would be useful in a battle is if your power reserves were so low that you could no longer power the cloak. But if you don't have the power to run the cloak, and those 47 guns require the same amount of power as the cloak, then you won't be able to use those extra guns either. So they're still of no use.

So your saying that 52 disruptors the size of the ones on a bird of pray could not fit in to the Scimitar? I think they could easy.

The bolts from the disruptors are far larger than the bolts from a BoP's disruptors. They were easily several dozen metres.

The entry for the Negh'var has 20 disruptors, the Dominion Battle Ship has 40 Polaron beams and both of these ships weapons are probably stronger, and larger individually then the disruptors on the Scimitar.

Correct. The problem is not that I consider the Scimitar too small to mount so many weapons, my problem is that they were never once observed to be there at all.

I don't see Geordi misreading that number and not checking it again to be sure, especially with the number so high.

*shrug* He's human. Ergo, he can make mistakes. It wouldn't be the first time he's done so.

I could have been some sort of sensor mask, but there is no indication of that.

The fact that their sensors said 52 guns, while direct observation of the battle shows 5 would seem to point towards that being true.

The # of torpedo tubes was also very high.

Correct, and we didn't see a single torpedo in the battle at all. I personally work under the assumption that the cloak didn't extend to cloaking the torpedoe's exhaust, which would give their position away if it was trailing out of the tube.

Plus when Picard and Data were making their escape they seemed to know were the Shuttle bay was and that they would find ships in it. Yes, Data could have found it while wondering around, but how much time did he have?

Maybe I'm missing your point, but what does this have to do with the ship's armament, or the possibility of a sensor mask being active?
Do you mean that because Data knew where the shuttlebay was, they must have been able to get its location from the Enterprise's initial sensor scan, thus proving that no masking system was in place?

If so, then I don't agree with you.
Firstly, this possible sensor mask only has to make it seem like the ship has more guns than it really does. It doesn't need to prevent the E-E from detecting various parts of the ship itself. Indeed, doing so would naturaly make the crew of the E-E suspicious, making them less likely to believe the results of their scan. Ergo, the mask would probably have been designed not to block the E-E's scans.
Secondly, it's quite possible that Data could have found the location of the shuttlebay when he was on the Scimitar itself. As you yourself pointed out, he was onboard the ship with virtually unlimited access for an unknown amount of time. He could simpy have found a computer and gotten the location of the bay from there. Or maybe he could have just asked a passing crewman.

Smaller disruptors place in tightly packed firing groups make the most sense. It explains why we see shots coming from only a few different spots on the Scimitar. It may help explain how the ship had the energy for the weapons, cloak, and shield. (If you go with 5 of so smaller disruptors use less power then a single large disruptor) It explains how the individual disruptor hits did not do a whole lot of damage to the Enterprises shields. All in all it ties up a lot of the disagreements.

That idea doesn't make that much sense when you take into account the sheer size of the bolts in question. I'm trying to find a good picture where I can illustrate the size of the bolts in question, but I'm struggling a bit. If those 52 guns were slammed together to give the appearance of 6 guns (we only saw five, but I'll assume there's another one on the ventral hull) then that would require aprox 8 guns clustered together. Even if we assume they're packed together so that the barrels are touching (ignoring the massive heating problems this would bring up) they should still be noticable when viewed. Study the following shot, taken from DITL's entry on the ship:


The shots from the two forward-firing disruptors that we can see appear to come from the two barrells mounted on the dorsal "wing" things that pop out of either side of the upper surface of the ship. This location is perfectly consistant with where we see the shots coming from during the "POV" shots from the Scimitar's bridge. Just by looking at that image, you can clearly see that it is not a cluster of weapons, but one.

[m52nickerson]

That idea doesn't make that much sense when you take into account the sheer size of the bolts in question. I'm trying to find a good picture where I can illustrate the size of the bolts in question, but I'm struggling a bit. If those 52 guns were slammed together to give the appearance of 6 guns (we only saw five, but I'll assume there's another one on the ventral hull) then that would require aprox 8 guns clustered together. Even if we assume they're packed together so that the barrels are touching (ignoring the massive heating problems this would bring up) they should still be noticable when viewed. Study the following shot, taken from DITL's entry on the ship:


The shots from the two forward-firing disruptors that we can see appear to come from the two barrells mounted on the dorsal "wing" things that pop out of either side of the upper surface of the ship. This location is perfectly consistant with where we see the shots coming from during the "POV" shots from the Scimitar's bridge. Just by looking at that image, you can clearly see that it is not a cluster of weapons, but one.

Those could be larger single disruptors. During the battle we see many bolts coming from the main body of the ship, these are were the clusters of disruptors could be coming from.

I had mentioned it before, but does anyone think that the number of disruptors could have included ones on the Scorpions?

[m52nickerson]

Ok, I went back to some concept art. I counted, and marked possible disruptors on the port side of the ship.



I counted 11 possible disruptor sits on the port, add the starboard and we have 22. If you add 2 more for the smaller wings on the ventral part of the ship that is 24. Then we have what 12? Thalaron Radiation emitters, if they were mistaken for disrutors that gives us 36 forward disruptors (24 real, 12 mistaken). Now if 16 more could be distributed around the ship we get to 52.



In this pic we can see what might be two very large disruptors right in the middle of the ships main body, that are flanked by two groups of 3 torpedo ports.

I doubt there will ever be consensus on this issue. There is just to much disconnect between the elements, model, script, effects.

[Sionnach Glic]

Those spikey bits could just as easily be sensor probes, docking apertures, scanner arrays, comms projectors, etc, etc, etc.
The point remains that those "guns" were never seen firing. Even when the Scimitar's two observed forward guns couldn't hit a target, they never switched to any of the others. Even when Shinzon explicitly said "fire all disruptor banks", they never used those weapons.

From that observation, logic would dictate that the simplest explaination is that they are not weapons at all.

[m52nickerson]

Those spikey bits could just as easily be sensor probes, docking apertures, scanner arrays, comms projectors, etc, etc, etc.
The point remains that those "guns" were never seen firing. Even when the Scimitar's two observed forward guns couldn't hit a target, they never switched to any of the others. Even when Shinzon explicitly said "fire all disruptor banks", they never used those weapons.

From that observation, logic would dictate that the simplest explaination is that they are not weapons at all.

Yes they could be.

The Remen tactical officer might not have followed orders. That is just as likely as Worf or Laforge misreading sensors. We also know that shots were fired while were watching events inside the ships.