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Posted: **Mon Nov 09, 2015 3:26 am**

You do realize that when it comes to naval ships it is almost like comparing apples and oranges right?

Heavy cruisers were dimensionally as large as a Battleship but lacked the tonnage. Same goes for light cruisers.

Now, the ships are smaller because of mission requirements and different technology used going from a a all gun ship to a missile ship. Not only that ships today are space restricted than weight restricted. Ironically too.

Aircraft carriers are incredibly expensive. Which is why only the US has alot of them. The mini flat tops the US has are comparable to the carriers in some navies.

Now you could point out that this could be an example of the advancing of technology. I can point point out that there was a 2000 meter Battleship in the 2330's using the same logic.

But what we have seen in the Primeverse we have only one example of a ship bigger than the Enterprise and that was the Excelsior. That was OK since the E-B was a Excelsior so we can rightly assume the E-A retired with Kirk.

The point is there hasn't been an example like that.

Posted: **Mon Nov 09, 2015 12:00 pm**

McAvoy wrote:You do realize that when it comes to naval ships it is almost like comparing apples and oranges right?

Heavy cruisers were dimensionally as large as a Battleship but lacked the tonnage. Same goes for light cruisers.

I think you are mistaken about that. The Alaska class cruisers were the largest cruisers ever built - some even called them Battleruisers since they were designed specifically to kill other cruisers. Their dimensions :

Length: 808 ft 6 in (246.43 m)
Beam: 91 ft 9.375 in (28.0 m)
Draft: 31 ft 9.25 in (9.68 m)

Compared to the Iowas :

Length: 887 ft 3 in (270.43 m)
Beam: 108 ft 2 in (32.97 m)
Draft: 37 ft 2 in (11.33 m)

Nearly 10% shorter, 15% narrower, and 15% shallower draft. So very roughly 65% of the volume.

For the slightly more typical cruiser types, the Des-Moines (and I say slightly since outside the Alaskas, the Des Moines were still the largest cruiser types ever built), it's :

Length: 717 ft (219 m)
Beam: 77 ft (23 m)
Draft: 26 ft (7.9 m)

Nearly 20% shorter, 30% narrower, 30% less draft than an Iowa. So, very roughly, half the volume or less.

As for light cruisers, look at the Atlanta class :

Length: 541 ft 0 in (164.90 m)
Beam: 52 ft 10 in (16.10 m)
Draft: 20 ft 6 in (6.25 m)

Almost 30% shorter than an Iowa, less than half the beam, just over half the draft. They're far smaller than either a battleship or a heavy cruiser.

Now, the ships are smaller because of mission requirements and different technology used going from a a all gun ship to a missile ship. Not only that ships today are space restricted than weight restricted. Ironically too.

Ships of a given type are generally larger now - today's Destroyers are larger than the preceding generation destroyers, which are larger than those that came before, and so on. Cruisers have shrunk - largely because nobody builds real cruisers anymore, most modern cruisers are based on Destroyer hulls. But I agree with the point that the size depends on the systems they want to get in there; they don't make ships bigger for fun, or because advancing technology has given them the ability to make bigger ships - a point I made myself earlier. Same applies to making them smaller, of ourse.

This is exatly why I say the Kelvin is larger because it's a different type of ship, fitted with different systems for different missions.

Aircraft carriers are incredibly expensive. Which is why only the US has alot of them. The mini flat tops the US has are comparable to the carriers in some navies.

Now you could point out that this could be an example of the advancing of technology. I can point point out that there was a 2000 meter Battleship in the 2330's using the same logic.

But what we have seen in the Primeverse we have only one example of a ship bigger than the Enterprise and that was the Excelsior. That was OK since the E-B was a Excelsior so we can rightly assume the E-A retired with Kirk.

The point is there hasn't been an example like that.

But as I pointed out, we have seen very little of the ships of that era in the Prime verse. We've seen exactly one Starfleet ship class from the TOS era, and then three (I think) from the pre-TOS era - and those all from more than a hundred years before TOS. We know nothing about what else might have been in service during TOS, let alone before TOS. We have so few pieces of that puzzle; until Trek XI presented us with a new piece in the form of the Kelvin. IMO the correct approach is to put that piece into the puzzle and see what it does to the pattern, not to declare that it doesn't fit what we've assumed the pattern to be and so it must not be part of the puzzle. You fit the conclusions to the facts, not the facts to your desired conclusion!

Posted: **Tue Nov 10, 2015 12:15 am**

Compare the Alaska to a North Carolina. Or worse, the South Dakota.

Atlanta class is a overgrown Destroyer.

Posted: **Tue Nov 10, 2015 10:50 am**

Graham Kennedy wrote:
Atekimogus wrote:Because it looks and feels similar...but is still completely different.
What does, the Narada?

No..the whole universe including ships and their capabilies (like the more star warsian hyperspace-jump instead of classical warp travel, the way transporters work etc. etc. )

Graham Kennedy wrote: Thinking about it, the appearance of the Narada is way more of an oddity than the Kelvin is. We've never seen anything Romulan that is remotely similar to the Narada. Course we've never seen a Romulan civilian ship that I know of. I guess the design makes some degree of sense, if you imagine all those spikes opening up to wrap around an asteroid and tear it apart for processing.

If you're talking about the look inside the ships, uniforms, etc - well, it was 20 years or so before TOS, after all, and a different kind of ship. And that's the minimum for how old the Kelvin is - for all we know the thing was already thirty years old at that point, so it's a design that dates back fifty years before TOS. Or more.

Look at how radical a style jump happened in the TMP refit of the Enterprise; in 18 months they redesigned and rebuilt the ship so radically that it looks... well, similar but still completely different, to borrow your words. The difference beween the Kelvin and the TOS E-nil isn't much larger than the difference between the E-nil and E-refit. Nor is the jump in uniform styles that big - they completely and totally redesigned those from TOS to TMP, and then did it again just a few years later for Wrath of Khan, too. Starfleet seems to rather like radical uniform design changes every now and then.

We know the Connies are classed by Starfleet as Heavy Cruisers (and by the Klingons as Battlecruisers). Personally, I took the Kelvin to be more like an Amphibious transport equivalent. That's speculation of course, but consider the basics of a present day Amphib :

Amphibs are big ships; typically anything up to 2-4 times the volume of a Cruiser.

They will have a large hangar and/or docking well; some way to launch troops. The Kelvin has an entire Engineering hull that seems to be at least largely a great big shuttle bay with lots of shuttles in it. (I count 19 on screen at once in the evacution; one of them is referred to as "Shuttle 37").

Amphibs often carry large numbers of people as compared to cruisers, since they carry troops. The Kelvin had eight hundred people on board, almost double the crew of a TOS Connie.

An Amphib has a lot of space for troops. In Starfleet ships the accomodations are in the saucer, and a lot of the Kelvin's large size comes from a very large diameter saucer.

Amphibs typically lack large/powerful weapons, instead having a significant number of small less powerful self defence weapons. This might (I stress, might) fit the Kelvin, which seems to have a lot of those little pulse cannon, some of the red phaser cannon, but no apparent torpedoes.

Amphibs are often slow. A one nacelle ship like the Kelvin might well be slower than the other ships we see with two or three nacelles.

Now an amphibious assault ship might be a little "military" for Starfleet. But remember this is pre-TOS, and the TOS starfleet itself was rather more military than the TNG iteration, so that isn't necessarily a problem. Plus, if you read up on Naval matters a little you find that amphibious ships are often considered desirable because they have a good deal of civilian uses; they're great platforms for disaster relief since they can carry relief workers, carry and distribute cargo to isolated communities, even produce large amounts of food. They're also great for rescuing a bunch of your civilians who get caught up in some bananna republic when an unfriendly bunch take power; lots of capability to transport civilians to the ship in large numbers and feed and house them for the trip home. They would also be the perfect ships to found a new colony world for the same reasons. We know Trek ships help found colonies sometimes, or perform routine "mainanence" on colonies.

Doesn't it sound just like the kind of thing that a "peacekeeping" force (which Pike described Starfleet as) might want to have?

It just makes absolutely perfect sense to me. And the complaints about how it's bigger than a Connie suddenly look like somebody complaining that there's something deeply wrong with the fact that the Ticonderoga class is smaller than the Anchorage class. How can this possibly be?!?! The Anchorage must come from a parallel universe where up is down and cats live with dogs!

I didn't say that it DOESN'T make sense and that there are no sensible explanations for everything we see. Or.......or we just assume they jumped back in time into a parallel universe were everything is just a bit different.

It's simple, it's elegant and it doesn't need any explanation whatsoever...hence I just prefer it.

Graham Kennedy wrote:
Atekimogus wrote:It also preserves the prime-timeline virtually undamaged for use in the upcoming new Star Trek series
Meh, I don't think it will make any real difference. From the POV of the future of the prime timeline, the only change is that Spock is gone, and Romulus is gone. Spock... well, it's not like he's gonna be making any more guest appearances. Romulus? Just have a line about how the Romulans spent the last decade struggling to recover from the loss of Romulus and their capital world is now a different world. The sum total of that change is that you use a different word for the planet instead of "Romulus". Big whoop.

Or hell, USE the change. Are the Romulans weaker now? Will the Klingons or Cardassians try to take advantage? Will the Federation step in and actually try to help the Romulans? If they do, could it lead to a Romulan/Federation alliance? Would that alienate the Klingons? Would the Romulans betray the Federation? There's a dozen ways you could take that story!

Well..it should make a difference. If they jumped back into the prime-timeline....wouldn't they pretty much change and alter everything that comes after in that timeline effectively erasing everthing from the point of emergence? But then we have a time-paradox since if they change anything in the past...Spock will never jump back in the first place and the headache begins.

Again...far easier to assume they didn't jump back into the prime-timeline....doesn't cause any paradoxes, nobody cares about the abrahms-timeline because we don't know what would have happened THERE if the narada/spock didn't jump into it.....far more elegant and simple solution all around imho.

Posted: **Tue Nov 10, 2015 11:14 am**

McAvoy wrote:Compare the Alaska to a North Carolina. Or worse, the South Dakota.

Sure thing. The Alaska :

Length: 808 ft 6 in (246.43 m) overall[4]
Beam: 91 ft 9.375 in (28.0 m)[4]
Draft: 31 ft 9.25 in (9.68 m) (maximum)

North Carolina :

Length: 728 ft 8.625 in (222.113 m) overall
Beam: 108 ft 3.875 in (33.017 m) maximum
Draft: 35 ft 6 in (10.820 m) maximum

So the Alaskas are 11% longer, 15% narrower, and 11% shallower, for a volume of about 16% smaller than the North Carolina.

South Dakota :

Length: 680 ft (210 m)
Beam: 108.2 ft (33.0 m)
Draft: 36.3 ft (11.1 m)

Alaskas are 17% longer, 15% nrrower, and 13% smaller draft, for a volume about 14% smaller than the South Dakota.

So, the largest cruisers ever built in history - so large that they aren't meant as proper cruisers at all, but rather are "cruiser killers" - are still significantly smaller than both battleships you listed.

Atlanta class is a overgrown Destroyer.

Well yes. Pretty much what a light cruiser is. But the fact remains, you won't find any example of a light cruiser that is the same size as a heavy cruiser, let alone a battleship.

Posted: **Tue Nov 10, 2015 11:37 am**

Atekimogus wrote:
Graham Kennedy wrote:
Atekimogus wrote:Because it looks and feels similar...but is still completely different.
What does, the Narada?
No..the whole universe including ships and their capabilies (like the more star warsian hyperspace-jump instead of classical warp travel, the way transporters work etc. etc. )

Ah. That stuff doesn't bother me all that much. In TOS there was no warp entry effect at all. Then the TMP effect is significantly different from anything we see in TNG, DS9, Voyager, etc - for that matter, different from the effect we see in Wrath of Khan and the other TOS movies. And what we see in JJ's Trek isn't actually all that different to the TNG effect; the ship stretches out and leaps off into the distance. It just does it a bit faster.

Same with transporter effects. These have been different in virtually every iteration of the transporter we've ever seen.

I didn't say that it DOESN'T make sense and that there are no sensible explanations for everything we see. Or.......or we just assume they jumped back in time into a parallel universe were everything is just a bit different.

It's simple, it's elegant and it doesn't need any explanation whatsoever...hence I just prefer it.

It's not how they explain it in the movie, though.

Well..it should make a difference. If they jumped back into the prime-timeline....wouldn't they pretty much change and alter everything that comes after in that timeline effectively erasing everthing from the point of emergence? But then we have a time-paradox since if they change anything in the past...Spock will never jump back in the first place and the headache begins.

Not sure what you mean. Who is going to jump back into the Prime timeline?

Trek has dealt with time travel in different ways, but the model the JJ films appear to be using is parallel timelines existing simulaneously. So the prime timeline is still there; Nero going back didn't erase the timeline we know, it just made a new and different version of the future that exists alongside the Prime one - much as the "Mirror" universe does. So if we go back and look at the Prime universe it won't look any different at all.

And this explanation does have the advanage of not being merely my guess - it's explicitly what they say has happened in the movie.

Spock : "You are assuming that Nero knows how events are predicted to unfold. To the contrary, Nero's very presence has altered the flow of history, beginning with the attack on the USS Kelvin, culminating in the events of today, thereby creating an entire new chain of incidents that cannot be anticipated by either party."
Uhura : "An alternate reality?"
Spock : "Precisely. Whatever our lives might have been, if the time continuum was disrupted, our destinies have changed. Mr. Sulu, plot a course to the Laurentian system warp factor three."

It's right there in the canon, as clear as you could have asked for.

Posted: **Tue Nov 10, 2015 6:28 pm**

Graham Kennedy wrote:Trek has dealt with time travel in different ways, but the model the JJ films appear to be using is parallel timelines existing simulaneously. So the prime timeline is still there; Nero going back didn't erase the timeline we know, it just made a new and different version of the future that exists alongside the Prime one - much as the "Mirror" universe does. So if we go back and look at the Prime universe it won't look any different at all.

There's pretty solid evidence that that's what's been happening in every previous instance of time travel, Sela's existence being the most striking.

And this explanation does have the advanage of not being merely my guess - it's explicitly what they say has happened in the movie.

Spock : "You are assuming that Nero knows how events are predicted to unfold. To the contrary, Nero's very presence has altered the flow of history, beginning with the attack on the USS Kelvin, culminating in the events of today, thereby creating an entire new chain of incidents that cannot be anticipated by either party."
Uhura : "An alternate reality?"
Spock : "Precisely. Whatever our lives might have been, if the time continuum was disrupted, our destinies have changed. Mr. Sulu, plot a course to the Laurentian system warp factor three."

It's right there in the canon, as clear as you could have asked for.

Nobody's disputed the fact that Nero's arrival changed the timeline, the question is one of whether it was already different to the Prime timeline before he arrived. If someone jumped back in time and stopped Oswald killing Kennedy, they wouldn't start wittering on about the Kennedy's role in sinking the Akagi at the Battle of the Coral Sea, because that was obviously before any changes happened.

Posted: **Tue Nov 10, 2015 7:32 pm**

Captain Seafort wrote:Nobody's disputed the fact that Nero's arrival changed the timeline, the question is one of whether it was already different to the Prime timeline before he arrived. If someone jumped back in time and stopped Oswald killing Kennedy, they wouldn't start wittering on about the Kennedy's role in sinking the Akagi at the Battle of the Coral Sea, because that was obviously before any changes happened.

I repeat again what the writers delivered to us : BEGINNING with the attack on the USS Kelvin.

They clearly intended this to be the Prime universe to that point. If we're allowed to just make up that it wasn't out of whole cloth, then you could as easily claim the reverse; it was TOS that wasn't part of the Prime universe. Whenever TNG referred to the past, it was referring to the JJ Abrams past. Why not, after all?

Posted: **Tue Nov 10, 2015 8:47 pm**

Graham Kennedy wrote:I repeat again what the writers delivered to us : BEGINNING with the attack on the USS Kelvin.

As far as Spock was concerned, this was exactly the case. He knew that Nero was from the future and he knew that the Narada's first appearance was the attack on the Kelvin. He did not have the evidence we have of the existing significant differences in the between the Primeverse and the Abramsverse.

They clearly intended this to be the Prime universe to that point. If we're allowed to just make up that it wasn't out of whole cloth, then you could as easily claim the reverse; it was TOS that wasn't part of the Prime universe.

Author's intent is irrelevant - the differences between the two are observable.

Whenever TNG referred to the past, it was referring to the JJ Abrams past. Why not, after all?

Because Picard, an experienced officer with several decades of starship command under his belt was "in awe" of the size of the E-D, a ship no bigger than the neo-E.

Having said that, it's entirely possible that TOS and TNG take place in different universes, given that Kirk's Enterprise could cross hundreds of light years in hours and put good-sized holes in planets, while Voyager took months to cross the same distance, and struggled to destroy asteroids smaller than the ship.

Posted: **Tue Nov 10, 2015 10:55 pm**

Captain Seafort wrote:Author's intent is irrelevant - the differences between the two are observable.

I disagree. The differences between the two are irrelevant, and easy to explain. And ultimately the authors intent is really all that matters.

Because Picard, an experienced officer with several decades of starship command under his belt was "in awe" of the size of the E-D, a ship no bigger than the neo-E.

Already dealt with. Being in awe of the size of something does NOT indicate that it's the biggest example of that thing.

Having said that, it's entirely possible that TOS and TNG take place in different universes, given that Kirk's Enterprise could cross hundreds of light years in hours and put good-sized holes in planets, while Voyager took months to cross the same distance, and struggled to destroy asteroids smaller than the ship.

These re certainly things that need explanations; I doubt you'll convince many that that's the explanation, though.

Posted: **Tue Nov 10, 2015 11:17 pm**

Graham Kennedy wrote:I disagree. The differences between the two are irrelevant, and easy to explain.

How? You're not going to get HMS Warrior suddenly turning into something the size of a Yamato because something was attacked by a time-travelling Super Yamato in the 1830s.

And ultimately the authors intent is really all that matters.

Either we're talking about something in-universe, in which case authors' intent is irrelevant, or out-of-universe, in which case none of the ships are anything but lumps of plastic a few feet long or a collection of ones and zeros on a hard drive somewhere.

Already dealt with. Being in awe of the size of something does NOT indicate that it's the biggest example of that thing.

No, but when said size makes such an impression on senior officers of decades experience, it does indicate that they are at the upper end of the size range, and are something unusual, not the sort of thing that had been around for decades or centuries.

These re certainly things that need explanations; I doubt you'll convince many that that's the explanation, though.

The alternative is that the galaxy suffered a technological backwards step akin to the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

Posted: **Wed Nov 11, 2015 9:43 am**

Graham Kennedy wrote: Not sure what you mean. Who is going to jump back into the Prime timeline?

Trek has dealt with time travel in different ways, but the model the JJ films appear to be using is parallel timelines existing simulaneously. So the prime timeline is still there; Nero going back didn't erase the timeline we know, it just made a new and different version of the future that exists alongside the Prime one - much as the "Mirror" universe does. So if we go back and look at the Prime universe it won't look any different at all.

I mean that the events like Spock describes them create the classical "killing your own grandfather" time paradox. Narada/Spock arriving in the past and changing every event from there on will prevent Spock traveling back in time in the first place.

Just saying that this is not the case because the unaltered prime-timeline still exists somehow......idk...I find them jumping into a parallel universe FAR more elegant and likely. Keep those two appart as much as possible and you have literally NO EXPLAINING to do whatsoever.

Graham Kennedy wrote: And this explanation does have the advanage of not being merely my guess - it's explicitly what they say has happened in the movie.

Spock : "You are assuming that Nero knows how events are predicted to unfold. To the contrary, Nero's very presence has altered the flow of history, beginning with the attack on the USS Kelvin, culminating in the events of today, thereby creating an entire new chain of incidents that cannot be anticipated by either party."
Uhura : "An alternate reality?"
Spock : "Precisely. Whatever our lives might have been, if the time continuum was disrupted, our destinies have changed. Mr. Sulu, plot a course to the Laurentian system warp factor three."

It's right there in the canon, as clear as you could have asked for.

While basically confirming the time paradox here........he simply might have been wrong, you know? How long did it take for Worf to figure out that he is in a slighlty paralllel universe and how many technobabble tests did they have to run to confirm it? Would they even be able to figure it out and confirm it with TOS like tech? Who knows?

You are thrown back in time.....would you be able to tell immediatly that you are NOT in your original universe anymore without the access to the scientifc power the flagship of the UFP (and god knows how many brave unmentioned scienceteams working tirelessly and unthanked for offscreen;)) is able to offer to you?

I propose to you that even Spock, after tinkering around with a black hole and getting thrown through time/space has little to no idea what is actually going on. And even if he firgured it out...it wouldn't change anything for him.

Posted: **Wed Nov 11, 2015 11:58 am**

Captain Seafort wrote:How? You're not going to get HMS Warrior suddenly turning into something the size of a Yamato because something was attacked by a time-travelling Super Yamato in the 1830s.

See above. I've posted more than ample explanations of why the "problems" are only problems in the eye of the beholder.

Either we're talking about something in-universe, in which case authors' intent is irrelevant, or out-of-universe, in which case none of the ships are anything but lumps of plastic a few feet long or a collection of ones and zeros on a hard drive somewhere.

Author's intent is the most important aspect either way, IMO, because that's what future work will be based on. Any books, films, or other work produced is going to make the assumption that Nero is the branching point from the Prime universe, because that's rather obviously what the people making the show intend - and it's explicitly what is stated in the canon.

Naturally anybody is free to disregard the canon and come up with creative reasons why it is wrong. I could easily assume that there's no USS Enterprise at all, even in-universe, because everybody just calls it that as a nickname and it's really called the USS AssFart. Nothing can prove me wrong, because I can just dismiss anything that contradicts me as another example of somebody using the nickname instead of the real name and claim that they all use the USS AssFart offscreen when we aren't looking. But in the end that would be a stupid thing to claim, because the people who make the show clearly mean it to be called the USS Enterprise, they're going to continue to produce work that calls it that, and that's all that really matters. My contention that it's not really true might be satisfying for me, but that's all it is.

Similarly, it's obviously intended that the branch point is Nero's arrival. They literally stuck a scene in the film to have the characters themselves explicitly exposit it at the audience. The only reason to suppose otherwise is that people really don't want to think of the Kelvin as being in the Prime universe for really rather trivial and easily explainable reasons.

Well, I don't say you can't. I just say there's no need or reason to.

No, but when said size makes such an impression on senior officers of decades experience, it does indicate that they are at the upper end of the size range, and are something unusual, not the sort of thing that had been around for decades or centuries.

No, it doesn't indicate that.

I met a guy who was six foot ten once. I've seen an awful lot of people in my life, but I was in awe of how tall he was. Is it reasonable to conclude that my reaction indicates that he was the tallest man in the world? Of course not. He wasn't even the tallest man I have ever seen. He was just really impressively tall.

The alternative is that the galaxy suffered a technological backwards step akin to the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

No, it isn't. Not even remotely.

Posted: **Wed Nov 11, 2015 3:25 pm**

Graham Kennedy wrote: Author's intent is the most important aspect either way, IMO, because that's what future work will be based on. Any books, films, or other work produced is going to make the assumption that Nero is the branching point from the Prime universe, because that's rather obviously what the people making the show intend - and it's explicitly what is stated in the canon.

Is it though? I doubt we will EVER know anything about the time PRIOR to the Naradas point of emergence.

And what was spoken in the film is - at least for me - not exactly a smoking gun indicating that they emerged in the prime-universe in the first place. If they emerge in the non-prime paralledl universe....for that universe everything will STILL be different than it would have been if not for the Narada, so it doesn't invalidate anything Spock says.

Posted: **Wed Nov 11, 2015 11:33 pm**

*shrug*

Like I say, it's always possible that any given episode, movie, even entire series, is actually set in some other universe. If that's the approach then anybody could declare anybody or anything in or out of Trek continuity; it would explain away every last thing in the whole of Star Trek - which is really just another way of saying it explains nothing at all.

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