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I doubt they moniter the entire system in real time. And if the minelayer were like a small shuttle, or cloaked then the enemy would probably dismiss it as a recon mission. If such a system could be made to work like that, it could result in tons of delightfully decietful tactics.

Now talking about the DS9 minefield, isn't the cloak a bit much? These things are self-replicating, so even if destroyed there are always going to be more...from what it seemed to suggest on screen, so even if they tried to shoot them down one-by-one it wouldn't work. Cloaking technology doesn't always work against the Dominion either, which makes it useless. It was even brought up during the brain-storming scene. Why did no one go "isn't the cloak a bit much?"

Source?

Favor the bold
Dukat: Once we deactivate ALL the mines.

you are attempting to claim that the figure of 20-30 mines per target refers to bugs. I am pointing out that your thinking is fallacious. You can't take out a fleet if you only taget their smaller ships, just as you can't take out an armoured division with AP mines.

Why not.
90 mines BC. 20-30 per ship. Bug is a ship. Most of the fleet are bugs.

Tank to a Jeep not a pearson.

As has been pointed out above, replicators are incapable of elemental transmutation. You need to put in refined materials if you want to get refined materials out.

Read what you write. Transmutation means turning one element into another I agree that in not posible.. Can't produce complex organic compaunds. But why can't they use unrefined materials. Why can't they take aluminum oxide and turn it into aluminum. Or any other simple compaund.

What subspace field? Starships have them, stations can generate them, with a few modifications. Mines, with the interior dedicated to warhead, detonator and cloak, can't.

How small is the smallest subspace generator. We don't know.

So, how exactly do you get the mines into the system? By ship - a ship that can be detected, and its activities likely to be deduced. You'd be better off launching a conventional hit-and-run raid while you're there rather than mess around with mines.

Klingons had no problems operating cloaked ships behind enemy lines.
Send a ship drop a mine let it replicate itself for a few days than send them on its way to a target.

It is a suprise. You have numbers, do alot of damage, and can use your fleet to do something else. And after initial attack the mines remain and can be used again and again. Where a fleet can be destroyed.

Cloaking the mines isn't necessary; the Dominion knows the mines are there and couldn't avoid the mines if they tried to break through even if they were visible. Plus, as I said, running the cloaks continuously drains the mines' power.

mlsnoopy wrote:Favor the bold
Dukat: Once we deactivate ALL the mines.

Hmm. It's probably best to chalk that up to Dukat being cautious, or as a property of the network as a whole. The concept of a single mine being able to recreate the entire field is ludicrous - it it has nowhere near enough mass, and the stray hydrogen floating around in space is nowhere near dense enough to compensate for thet.

Why not.
90 mines BC. 20-30 per ship. Bug is a ship. Most of the fleet are bugs.

Tank to a Jeep not a pearson.

Yes a bug is a ship. So is a battlecruiser

In any event, the exact quote is:

O'BRIEN
We'll program them to swarm
detonate. Twenty or thirty mines
for each ship.

Since they needed to be able to take out anything that came through the wormhole, that figure of 20 or 30 per ship must refer to battlecruisers.

Read what you write. Transmutation means turning one element into another I agree that in not posible.. Can't produce complex organic compaunds. But why can't they use unrefined materials. Why can't they take aluminum oxide and turn it into aluminum. Or any other simple compaund.

You agreed yourself that they can't turn one compound into another, but then you talk about turning a compound into a pure element. Make you mind up. Also, how exactly are you going to get aluminium oxide from a vacuum? Asteroids are mainly nickle-iron, so where are you going to get all the fancy material of the week that the Feds build stuff out of - duranium (likely another term for DU), tritanium (an isotope of titanium maybe?), etc. Not to mention the antimatter for the warheads, which would have to be stored in the mines from the outset given how energy-intensive it is to create.

How small is the smallest subspace generator. We don't know.

We don't, but why would a volume-critical mine have a subspace generator if it's not going anywhere?

Klingons had no problems operating cloaked ships behind enemy lines.

It was pointed out when they were designing the mines that the Dominion could detect cloaked ships, and the only way to prevent them doing the same with the mines was to make them tiny - only a metre across.

Send a ship drop a mine let it replicate itself for a few days than send them on its way to a target.

As I've pointed out, the self-replication doesn't work in the manner you apparently believe it does.

Captain Seafort wrote: You agreed yourself that they can't turn one compound into another, but then you talk about turning a compound into a pure element. Make your mind up.

I'm not really taking a stance, but what you've just said is absurd and one of the most irrational things I've heard in a long time. He clearly said that changing from element to a different element isn't possible. Not from compound to compound - you've completely changed what he said. Changing compounds into separate elements is easy - we can do it today with no problems. They clearly can't convert between atoms - but that has not taken place. They have just separated out molecules into atoms.
Similarly, they could put aluminium and oxygen together to make aluminium oxide. You've just made some crap up and pretended he said it.

mlsnoopy wrote:Read what you write. Transmutation means turning one element into another I agree that in not posible.. Can't produce complex organic compaunds. But why can't they use unrefined materials. Why can't they take aluminum oxide and turn it into aluminum. Or any other simple compaund.

Bit about compounds bolded.

Yes, we can separate out elements from compounds. Trek can certainly do it as well, since they're a lot more advanced than us. What I'm disputing is whether relicators are capable of doing so, and all the evidence of replicators being unable to produce simple compounds suggests that they can't. Plus there's the idiocy of suggesting that an oxide could be formed in a vacuum.

You have bolded what he said, but that is not what you said he said. You said he said just 'compounds'. Not chemically complex organic compounds. Viruses, innoculations, etc, are all chemically complex, and in some cases (such as blood) are organic. Aluminium and aluminium oxide are not chemically complex or organic, and trying to pretend that he is saying aluminium oxide is chemically complex or organic is absurd and seems intentionally highly misleading on your part.

When have replicators been shown to be unable to produce simple compounds, as opposed to complex organic ones (such as viruses, Worf's blood etc)? I'd think it's much more likely that all the elements are stored (probably under pressure to reduce volume), and when things are required, some can be combined and then mixed (to make anything that doesn't have complex/organic components). To suggest that every single compound (I'd assume of which there are millions, albeit I'm not a chemist) is stored on a ship is highly illogical.

replicators being unable to produce simple compounds suggests

GCode of Honor: The E-D needs to obtain a vaccine to a disease from the Ligonians. They can't replicate it.

The Child: The E-D needs to transport samples of a plague to a reaserch facility. It can't be scanned and replicated.

The Enemy: Worf was asked to donate blood for a Romulan because the replicator couldn't produce their blood.

Give me an example. Whenever we heard that something can't be replicated was a complex organic molecule.

Plus there's the idiocy of suggesting that an oxide could be formed in a vacuum

It was an example. And oxides are in space.

Hmm. It's probably best to chalk that up to Dukat being cautious, or as a property of the network as a whole. The concept of a single mine being able to recreate the entire field is ludicrous - it it has nowhere near enough mass, and the stray hydrogen floating around in space is nowhere near dense enough to compensate for thet.

All is all. One mine remains it is not all. So one mine remains it can reastablish the field using the debri field left from other mains and ships destroyed.
We are inside a belt we don't know what the densety of hydrogen is. And if one mine can reastablish the field then it can't use antimatter and we must search for a diffren power source.

O'BRIEN
We'll program them to swarm
detonate. Twenty or thirty mines
for each ship.

Yes minimum. 20-30 for a ship. The minimum amaunt nedeed to destroy the smallest ship. Bigger ships 20-30*2, or 20-30 *3, or 20-30*4

Asteroids are mainly nickle-iron, so where are you going to get all the fancy material of the week that the Feds build stuff out of - duranium (likely another term for DU), tritanium (an isotope of titanium maybe?), etc. Not to mention the antimatter for the warheads, which would have to be stored in the mines from the outset given how energy-intensive it is to create.

Nickle and iron are good for a hull, you don't need fancy material.
And from the beginning I claimed that the warhead must be something else than antimatter, parhaps a 1Mt fusion bomb.

It was pointed out when they were designing the mines that the Dominion could detect cloaked ships, and the only way to prevent them doing the same with the mines was to make them tiny - only a metre across.

Stationery target. Remember all that small attacks that Martok lead agains Cardasia using cloaked ships. And was very sucesful. And even if a ship is detected it can drop one mine and get out of there. The mine can't be detected.

As I've pointed out, the self-replication doesn't work in the manner you apparently believe it does.

Each mine has a patern that describes the posision of each mine in a field.
If a mine is missing use matter that you can find and replicate a mine in the missing space.

Is that the way they work. Looks alot like a computer program.

They needed to lay down the entire minefield becuse their is no local material avalible like an asteroid field.

Write a diffrent program.
Use matter from an asteroidefield replicate 10000 mines and move to location x and search for enemy signals.

mlsnoopy wrote:GCode of Honor: The E-D needs to obtain a vaccine to a disease from the Ligonians. They can't replicate it.

The Child: The E-D needs to transport samples of a plague to a reaserch facility. It can't be scanned and replicated.

The Enemy: Worf was asked to donate blood for a Romulan because the replicator couldn't produce their blood.

Give me an example. Whenever we heard that something can't be replicated was a complex organic molecule.

Rainwater. Fancy rainwater that the replicators were unable to reproduce. 'Fraid I can't remember the episode name, but it involved Guinan discussing the water in question with Troi.

All is all. One mine remains it is not all. So one mine remains it can reastablish the field using the debri field left from other mains and ships destroyed.

And when did I dispute the fact that he was refering to all the mines? I reiterate that one mine simply does not have the mass to recreate a field of thousands or tens of thousands.

We are inside a belt we don't know what the densety of hydrogen is. And if one mine can reastablish the field then it can't use antimatter and we must search for a diffren power source.

What have you been smoking? It's space you fool - if there was anything like enough mass to recreate a minefield of the density we saw then we'd be able to see it.

O'BRIEN
We'll program them to swarm
detonate. Twenty or thirty mines
for each ship.

Yes minimum. 20-30 for a ship. The minimum amaunt nedeed to destroy the smallest ship. Bigger ships 20-30*2, or 20-30 *3, or 20-30*4

Prove it. They needed to stop all Jem'Hadar ships. Therefore logic dictates that O'Brien was talking about the number of mines needed to kill a single ship. To claim that he was talking about the bugs when there were battlecruisers to deal with is stupid.

Nickle and iron are good for a hull, you don't need fancy material.

No, but the Feds don't use iron - they use duranium and tritanium, elements that we've never even heard of, let alone found in asteroids.

And from the beginning I claimed that the warhead must be something else than antimatter, parhaps a 1Mt fusion bomb.

Give one example of the Federation using a thermonuclear weapon in the TNG era.

Stationery target. Remember all that small attacks that Martok lead agains Cardasia using cloaked ships. And was very sucesful. And even if a ship is detected it can drop one mine and get out of there. The mine can't be detected.

You mean the raid almost two years later, after the alliance had been fighting the Dominion long enough to gain a much better knowledge about their capabilities? It was specifically stated in "Call to Arms" that the mines needed to be the size they were to avoid detection.

Each mine has a patern that describes the posision of each mine in a field.
If a mine is missing use matter that you can find and replicate a mine in the missing space.

Is that the way they work. Looks alot like a computer program.

We recieved no information whatsoever from the series regarding the mechanism of the self-replication. The DS9 TM speculates that each mine contains a matter reserve that is used as a source for new mines - not the surrounding space. Matter is transfered from across the entire network using a bucket-brigade system. Note that this does not suggest that the mines have true transporter capability - it's a lot easier to transport from one transporter to another (eg "Realm of Fear") than to beam from a remote location to a transporter.

They needed to lay down the entire minefield becuse their is no local material avalible like an asteroid field.

Write a diffrent program.
Use matter from an asteroidefield replicate 10000 mines and move to location x and search for enemy signals.

Prove that the mines are capable of beaming mass aboard from a remote source, rather than the simpler combination of their own reserves and busard collectors that the TM describes.

Fancy rainwater

Voyeger two full containers of water.

I reiterate that one mine simply does not have the mass to recreate a field of thousands or tens of thousands

Use the debriefield for matter that you need.

What have you been smoking? It's space you fool - if there was anything like enough mass to recreate a minefield of the density we saw then we'd be able to see it.

Belt implays that their is something their. And I belive that in the first episode of DS9 there were some shots of asteroids but 'm sure.

Prove it. They needed to stop all Jem'Hadar ships. Therefore logic dictates that O'Brien was talking about the number of mines needed to kill a single ship. To claim that he was talking about the bugs when there were battlecruisers to deal with is stupid.

Bug is a ship. You programm the mines to detonate in a group that is needed to destroy the smallest ship and the use more groups to destroy bigger ships.

No, but the Feds don't use iron - they use duranium and tritanium, elements that we've never even heard of, let alone found in asteroids.

But where are they found, if they are on planets than they are also on ateroids. They could use iron if anyhing else wouldn't be avalible. You can make hull from stell.

Give one example of the Federation using a thermonuclear weapon in the TNG era

Their is none. But given the fact that one mine is capable of restoring the field they are'n using antimatter. they must use some other form of explosion.

We recieved no information whatsoever from the series regarding the mechanism of the self-replication. The DS9 TM speculates that each mine contains a matter reserve that is used as a source for new mines - not the surrounding space. Matter is transfered from across the entire network using a bucket-brigade system. Note that this does not suggest that the mines have true transporter capability - it's a lot easier to transport from one transporter to another (eg "Realm of Fear") than to beam from a remote location to a transporter.

DS9 TM is not cannon. But again we ca quote Dukat:
"whenever we destroy a mine its neighbor replicates another one."

So each mine knows if it has a neighbor if it doesn't it replicates one. So each mine knows how the minefield should look like.

And given the fact that one mine can reastablish the minefield it must use the matter from outside not it's matter reserve.

Prove that the mines are capable of beaming mass aboard from a remote source, rather than the simpler combination of their own reserves and busard collectors that the TM describes

The fact that one mine was capable of rebuidin the minefield, means that it had to get the matter from an extrnal source. How it gets it is irelevent. It can use tractor beams, transportes, deflectors, moves to a matter source, ............

If the Dominion can reduce the minefield to one mine, then it should be able to completely destroy it; it would be rather odd to be unable to reduce it beyond one remaining mine.

The self-replicating minefield is the closest thing in Trek to a Von Neumann machine, but the biggest impediment to a Trek VNM is antimatter. Von Neumann machines with another power source would be highly disadvantaged against ships and bases powered by M/ARA cores. This is probably the (in universe) reason we don't see someone drop of a machine in an asteroid belt and let it replicate itself until it can attack.

What I always thought they did was blow up a ship then use the ships mass to make new mines. They could try and shoot blind and destroy the minefiled but so long as tey missed just a few the whole mine field could be up and running again pretty fast.

If I can just chime in with regards to replicating things; I'm pretty sure they said in one episode that they can't replicate organs.

Rochey wrote:If I can just chime in with regards to replicating things; I'm pretty sure they said in one episode that they can't replicate organs.

That's why Bashir took a sample of Odo, to find ways to replicate organs. Instead he found out Odo had the disease that was killing the Founders.

They wouldn't need to replicate new organs; even today scientists are working on how to grow new organs in the lab. Perhaps this is one odd way in which real life is more advanced than Trek! Although Geordi's VISOR did give him superior vision, it should have been possible for doctors to regrow the damaged or missing tissue (in a future extrapolated from current science).