OT - How would sc-fi ships do in battle against each other?

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
ST has those giant deflector dishes to sweep junk out of the way when travelling real fast. Torpedoes can even be fired at FTL speeds, though energy weapons can't.

So they sweep stars and planets out of the way?

[gregebowman]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

quote:

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Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
ST has those giant deflector dishes to sweep junk out of the way when travelling real fast. Torpedoes can even be fired at FTL speeds, though energy weapons can't.

So they sweep stars and planets out of the way?

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No, but they get rid of all those micro-asteroids and other small stuff that would harm any of our current spacecraft. You still need to navigate around star and planets and other space objects, like black holes, but it seems to take quicker for a ST ship to plot a course than it would a SW ship, who has to wait for the computer to plot the hyperspace coordinates before a ship can go through.

[gregebowman]

Originally posted by dogscoff:
Greg- The Culture author is Iain M Banks. Imho you won't read better scifi anywhere. Go out and grab yourself a copy of any of his Culture novels (he has published other books as Iain Banks- without the 'M') - you can read them in any order.

Thanks. I plan on going to that bookstore today during lunch. I'll check to see if they have some of his books.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by gregebowman:
No, but they get rid of all those micro-asteroids and other small stuff that would harm any of our current spacecraft. You still need to navigate around star and planets and other space objects, like black holes, but it seems to take quicker for a ST ship to plot a course than it would a SW ship, who has to wait for the computer to plot the hyperspace coordinates before a ship can go through.

I have heard in a number of ST episodes in different series that ships traveling at warp speed don't actually interact with anything in "real space" and just pass right through them...

[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
I have heard in a number of ST episodes in different series that ships traveling at warp speed don't actually interact with anything in "real space" and just pass right through them...

That is what I have heard as well. Except for one minor detail; they cannot pass through the items in real space. They must still plot a course that would direct them around these objects. Just because they are in warp does not make them immune to running into things.

[Suicide Junkie]

There was one episode about some black ops phasing cloak thingy that allowed the ship to pass through regular matter...
The ship ended up stuck halfway inside some asteroid after an accident, and the Romulans were upset about the treaty violations implied by the existence of the ship as I recall.

[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
There was one episode about some black ops phasing cloak thingy that allowed the ship to pass through regular matter...
The ship ended up stuck halfway inside some asteroid after an accident, and the Romulans were upset about the treaty violations implied by the existence of the ship as I recall.

Yeah, that was a good episode. The Enterprise ended up having to use the cloak itself because the Romulans had closed the shaft that they used to get inside the asteroid.
The accident was that the crew had been killed for some reason and the cloak was still in effect, the ship just kept drifting until it was half way through a giant asteroid and then the cloak failed, trapping the ship inside.

The Federation never had a treaty with the Romulans regarding cloaking technology, correct? Wasn't it some other small race on a single planet that didn't want the Federation to use this technology for some reason so they made a treaty over it? I seem to recall an episode that mentioned it breifly, perhaps it was this very episode.

[ February 19, 2004, 16:56: Message edited by: Ragnarok ]