1. Did the Romulans have warp drive during the war? The Chronology says they didn't. But if this is true, how did they ever hope to win a war against a power (Earth) that did?

2. If we accept the fact that the Romulans didn�t have warp drive during the war, when did they get it? The Romulan ship in �Balance of Terror� didn�t seem to have warp drive but did have large outboard structures that look like warp nacelles. Is it possible that the Romulans didn�t have warp drive until they started using Klingon ships?

3. How did the Romulans get so far away from Vulcan after the Vulcan-Romulan Schism if they didn�t have warp drive? Supposedly, Vulcan is only about 10 light years from Earth. The Encyclopedia suggests that the diameter of the Federation is about 10,000 ly, and therefore, that the Romulan Neutral Zone might be as far as 5000 ly from Earth. If the Schism occurred about 2000 years earlier, the Romulans couldn�t have gotten that far without warp drive. One possibility is that the Romulans had warp drive 2000 years ago, settled the Romulan homeworlds and established the empire, then somehow �lost� the technology through civil war, a dark age, or disuse. The ST Dimensions website suggests that the Federation is only 1,000 ly in diameter, not the �official� 10,000 ly, which would make things easier to explain and might permit establishment of an empire at speeds less than light speed.

4. Where was the front line at the start of the War? Was it near the present Neutral Zone, which is only a few light years from the Romulan homeworlds, or was it closer to Earth? Were there other Romulan worlds between Earth and the present neutral zone that fell to Earth forces during the war?

5. Was Earth ever attacked during the war? DS9's "Homefront" suggests that it was, but the actual dialogue is not really clear about this. But how can Earth have been attacked if the Romulans didn't have warp drive? Maybe they bought or stole or developed it during the war, or hired mercenaries or agents to attack Earth for them?

6. Were the Earthlings good guys during the war? If the Romulans didn�t have warp drive but the Federation did, the Federation must have been the aggressors.

7. According to canon, Earth alone fought the Romulans. But what did the Vulcans and other known races (Tellarites, Andorians, et al) do during the war? Were they Earth�s allies, were they neutral, did they sell arms to the Romulans, did they try to make peace? In particular, what did the Vulcans, who are related to the Romulans, do during the war? Were they willing to stand by while the Earth stomped on Romulus and killed a few billion relatives? What were the Klingons up to? Could they, unknown to Earth, have been simultaneously fighting the Romulans?

8. Why was the Federation established? DC Fontana suggests it was to guard against Romulan aggression, but this doesn't make sense if Earth was the aggressor. Could the UFP been formed to prevent further aggression by Earth?

9. Can a ship traveling at warp speed be detected by a stationary observer before the ship gets there? For example, if I'm a Romulan sitting on some planet minding my own business, can I detect an Earth attack ship before it arrives and kills me? How about if some sort of warp "pressure wave" preceded the ship and could be sensed before the ship itself? Could the Romulans have subspace sensors (allowing near instaneous remote viewing) but did not have warp drive themselves?

10. Did the Romulans have subspace radio during the war? Supposedly the Earth didn't have subspace until sometime after 2168, but the treaty ending the war was supposedly negotiated by subspace radio. Also, how can you hold together an interstellar empire without either warp speed or subspace radio?

If anyone has an opinion about any of these problems I would be glad to hear it.

Anyway, these questions are pretty much all up for interpretation. But I might as well toss my ideas out there.

1.) While we do have statements that seem to indicate that the Romulans had no warp drive, it seems very hard to construct a scenerio in which they would provide a plausible threat to an FTL civilization. Hence, I'd have to say that they did have one. Now, it might have been vastly different from warp drives now. No ability to change course or take sensor readings while in flight...etc.

2.) That ship has to travel faster than light in order to cross the Neutral Zone and hit multiple targets on the other side. It's a case of the dialouge being at odds with what is actually seen. I lean towards FTL.

3.) Well, first of all, we don't know that Romulus is all that far away from Vulcan at all. In fact, if we assume that the primitive warp drives of the day were much slower than "modern" ones, the distances would have to be short. It seems to me that the Romulan Empire is quite close to Vulcan, and hence to Earth. On a side note, this, to my way of thinking, explains why the Federation was willing to give up cloaking technology for a treaty with the Empire. The Romulans are a threat because of their proximity.

7.) If I recall correctly, "Balance of Terror" specifically mentioned "Earth and her allies". It has been my impression, and I believe the fandom interpretation in general, that the Romulans were at war with a sort of strategic military alliance made up of Earth, Vulcan, Andor, Tellar, etc. It was out of this alliance that the Federation was born.

The subspace radio thing is harder to figure out. I explain it thusly: Primitive subspace radios did exist, but they required huge facilities to run and maintain, and were only marginally faster than light. Hence, Earth and Romulus could communicate via subspace, but a starship could not.

I hope this helps. I'm trying to work this out too, in the hopes that one day I can get around to my Federation Constitution project.

------------------
"One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Floor". George Carlin

Here is what I already discussed with you, maybe a few more arguments:

Theory: The Romulans didn't have warp drive in the Earth-Romulan War

Contra:
A) This would mean that Earth forces first attacked outposts in the Romulus/Romii(Remus) star system, or the planets themselves. They would have no reason to do so, unless Earth followed an aggressive doctrine. I don't like this idea.
B) The theory that the Romulans first had warp drive when they left Vulcan and then abandoned it, sounds a bit too complicated. Why should they lose this key technology, while their civilization must have been thriving for most of the time?
C) If the NZ is very close to Romulus, then its size must have changed from TOS to TNG. TOS doesn't explicitly mention planets in the NZ, but TNG does several times. Why should the Federation abandon part of their territory?
D) Moreover, who should have hindered Earth to occupy all star systems around Romulus after the war in 2161? There would have been no chance to establish a Romulan Empire, if Earth/the Federation already holds all the key planets.
E) If Earth was attacked during the war, it was most likely done by the Romulan space forces and not by someone else. Moreover, the war must have been fought mostly in ship-against-ship battles, for either side didn't know anything about the other side.
F) While superluminal sensors and subspace radio may exist without warp drive, it is unlikely that the Romulans did have both above subspace technologies, but no warp drive. The Federation seems to have developed subspace radio much later (the Horizon still had a light speed radio beacon), while the Ferengi obviously didn't have FTL sensing capability in the 2330's (Picard Maneuver).
G) I wonder why all the other founder planets of the UFP, most of all the Vulcans, should join with an aggressor, unless they have been allies already during the war.

Pro:
A) The NZ seems to be rather close to the planet Romulus. It is not excluded that it's in the same star system.
B) The fact that the Romulans kept calm until 2161 can be easily explained by the fact they just couldn't come close to the NZ that - for some reason - was drawn in favor of them.
C) The revelation that Vulcans are related to Romulans seems to be surprising in BoT. Maybe the Romulans are unknown outside their star system, for they don't have the technology to leave it.

1) I remember reading a possible story by a fan in which an Earth spaceship crossed inside Romulan territory for peace talks or something. However, the Romulans probably panicked (xenophobia and all) and killed the crew and reverse-enginereed the warp drive to equip there own ships. Hence they did not have it before the war but quickly catched up. It might explain why they lost, since their own warp drive would still have been primitive due to lack of understanding.

2) It probably had warp drive since those definitely look like warp nacelles and it couldn't have crossed the neutral zone without it.

3) I'd probably go with a small Federation (1000 ly) and the fact that maybe they had primitave warp technology but during the settlement on their new worlds, they probably used all the technology they had to survive and build a suitable colony.

4) Probably close to the Romulan Homeworlds since without warp drive, they couldn't have had a vast empire at the time. When they did get it, they must have moved quickly toward Earth, hence the reference in "Homefront".

5) I don't think the Romulans would have mounted a full scale assault on Earth. They probably came quite close and caused heavy damage to a few cities or to orbital installations before being destroyed or pushed back.

6) I prefer to think that Humans weren't the agressors. Please see 1).

7) I think an alliance of all "reasonable" races in almost certain. As for the Vulcans, in "Balance of Terror", they did not know the Romulans were the exiled ones. So, there probably were no real face-to-face contact during the war, hence more a war in space.

8) Like I said, it was the Romulans who started the war out of fear so the Federation was probably founded to guard against further Romulans xenophobia.

9) If they (both Earth and Romulans) didn't have subspace radio, I'm pretty sure they didn't have subspace sensors as well.

10) Like Sol System said, they probably had a few big subspace communication arrays with huge antennas and the like, meaning Earth planets probably had subspace radio but starship had not.

Hope that helps. Nice work on your Starfeet Museum page. It's really great but I just have a comment to make. You seem to include elements that have never been canon like Starfleet Marines, combat suits and the like. It expands the Star Trek Universe, but it loses some authenticity. Great work nevertheless. I really admire your work. Keep adding to it. That's an order!

------------------
-Doctor: We'll defend ourselves! They won't get what they're after!
-Aliens: Huh?
-Doctor: I mean, you won't get what you're after!
ECH to Hierarchy vessel in VOY "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor Spy"

-Seven: *Kissing the doctor* It was a platonic gesture. Don't espect me to pose for you.
-Doctor: *Embarassed* Understood.
Seven to the Doctor in VOY "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor Spy"

I'll give my answers to the questions. I'm sure I'll be repeating what people have already said, but it's easier not to try to filter out all that. Bear in mind, some of this is just my conjecture...

1. They must have had it. The idea that they didn't is from "Balance of Terror" when Scotty says that the Romulan ship has "impulse power only" (or something to that effect). Considering that the thing seemed to have warp nacelles, I think what this meant was that their warp drive was powered by a fusion reactor (like impulse drives). Therefore, they had warp; it just wasn't very good, since they didn't use a M/A reaction and couldn't generate enough power to get high warp speeds.

2. (see #1)

3. I see two possibilities here. One is that they had primitive warp drive when they left Vulcan. Once they settled on Romulus/Romii, wars and other struggles kept scientific advance to a minimum, so they still had approximately the same level of technology at the time of the Terro-Romulan War. The other possibility is that they didn't have warp drive when they left Vulcan and, due to war etc., they didn't develop it until just before the T-R War. This, of course, means the Romulan homeworlds would be rather close to Vulcan. A while back, I was trying to find a star that would meet the conditions for being Romulus, and I settled on 107 Piscium. It's in the right direction, about 24ly from Earth, and a little less than 18ly from Vulcan. It's also of the same spectral class as Vulcan. It would make sense that, when looking for a new home, the Romulans would look for a star similar to their old one.

4. I never really thought about this one...

5. I don't rercall the dialogue you mention from "Homefront". I'd be interested to know what they said.

6. Well, this is completely speculatory on my part, but here's the story I came up with. During an exploratory mission, an Earth ship comes across Romulus. They land and find a bunch of Vulcans (so they think). The leader of the landing party, in an attempt to show that they are friendly, flashes the Vulcan salute. The Romulans realizes they're dealing w/ allies of the Vulcans (w/ whom they are just concluding the war mentioned in Voyager's "Death Wish"), so they kill them and everyone on the ship. They manage to translate the information in the ship well enough to figure out where it came from and they go attack Earth.

7. Continuing from my previous answer... I thik the Vulcans are just finishing up their war w/ the Romulans, the one started by "Quinn", as mentioned in "Death Wish". Of course, the Romulans know who they're fighting, but the Vulcans never see the Romulans, so they don't realize that these are their long-lost cousins. Anyway, the Vulcans opt out of Earth's war w/ the Romulans (if you were just about to come to peace w/ someone, would you want to rile them up again by allying w/ their newest enemies?). I think the Andorians, being a self-described aggressive race probably lent a hand, but no doubt they were involved a few conflicts of their own at the time and couldn't do a whole lot to help Earth. The Tellarites... well, we don't really know enough about them to guess what they might do. I'm going to conjecture that they just sat back and watched, just to keep it a war mainly between Earth and Romulus.

8. Well, considering that Earth is the "capital" of the Federation, I think the formation of the UFP was probably the doing of the Terran leaders. They probably formed the alliance so that, if they ever got in another war, the other races would have to help them. Of course, they didn't tell anyone that that was their plan, so everyone thought that the UFP was formed for the greater good of all these groups. Eventually, this became the ideal behind the Federation. Sort of ironic, eh? :-)

9. Well, if you have subspace sensors, you can see a warp ship coming. If not, you won't see it 'til it gets there. Since they had warp drive (see above) and subspace "radio" (see below), I'd say they also had FTL sensors. And I know someone will argue against this w/ the Ferengi thing. Well, I don't think the Ferengi at Maxia Zeta didn't have FTL sensors. I think they just weren't operational. Perhaps they were knocked out earlier in the battle.

10. If the treaty was negotiated over subspace radio, they must have had subspace radio. Otherwise, they couldn't have negotiated the treaty over subspace radio. Simple. :-)

2: They probably just got a workable warp (one with a M/ARA) from the Klingons.

3: Oddly enough, Romulus and Earth are rather close together (along with Qo'noS and Cardassia, with Bajor right in the middle. Shadow of things to come? Maybe the Romulans, Klingons, Bajor, and what's left of Cardassia should join the Federation in the next movie, and move the capital to Bajor. Just a thought...), so bad warp drives would be good enough to fight a war with.

4: There's no way to know. If I were writing the story, I'd say that the Romulans attacked first, and nearly defeated Earth very quickly, but then Tellar, Andor, and Vulcan joined the war and just as quickly beat back the Romulan fleet to their homeworlds. The Romulans then surrendered, to protect Romulus and Remus (Romii?). But that's just me. Something just occured to me. Remember the anomalous "Romii" on the viewer in BoT? That may just have been a major star system, leaving Romulus and Remus as planets in another system.

5: I think they just got really close. Martok said in "The Changing Face of Evil" (IIRC) that not even the Klingons had tried to attack Earth directly.

6: I think that both sides probably thought the other was the agressor. An Earth ship enters Romulan space, the Romulans try to commandeer it, and the Earth ship fights back. The Rommies return fire, destroying the ship. All Earth knows is that one of their ships was destroyed, and all Romulus knows is that there is an unknown power now invading their space (good enough reason to start a war, given their mentality).

------------------
"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That "all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people . . ." To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."
- Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1791

2063: First contact between Earth and Vulcan. Despite great differences between the two species, they find themselves drawn together. Vulcan logic provides a much-needed calming influence on humanity's more self-destructive tendancies, while raw human energy accelerates the sleepy pace of Vulcan technology.

2063-mid 2100's: Inspired by the great success of the Earth/Vulcan alliance, Vulcans make contact with several more species, including the Andorians and the Tellarites. The area around Sector 001 experiences a "golden age".

Meanwhile, some light years distance, the Romulans begin to learn that Vulcan is forming a number of alliances in regions of space quite near to Romulus itself. Fearing that Vulcan is attempting to surround itself with an empire that will ultimately be used against them, as well as the alarming number of ships active in the area, the Romulans decide their best chance is to make a quick preemptive strike against Vulcan's new allies.

2156: Romulan ships attack targets throughout the area. Earth quickly responds, though the source of the attacks is initially unknown. Other worlds follow suit, eventually leading to the establishment of a military alliance. Vulcan turns down membership, stating that they will seek a logical and diplomatic resolution. Vulcan contributes large amounts of aid to the alliance, however.

The reason for Vulcan reluctance is unknown at the time, despite some wild claims that they are "in on it" somehow. Relations with Vulcan sour to the point that, while Vulcan will become a founding an influential member of the United Federation of Planets, no Vulcans will serve in Starfleet for some time.

The real reason, of course, is that the Vulcan government knew exactly who these aggressors were. They feared that if the knowledge of what the Romulans represented was known, it would not be long until their new allies turned on them as well.

2160: The Romulan War ends with a decisive alliance victory, destroying much of the Romulan fleet.

2161: The United Federation of Planets is founded.

On Romulus, a political decision of equal weight is made. Fearing that the new Federation intends to finish what the alliance started, the Romulans begin a program of expansion into the Beta Quadrant. The Romulan Star Empire begins to grow into the interstellar power it is today.

Masao: I wasn't critizising your work, I was merely making an observation since you said you tried to remain as close to canon as possible. I actually prefer to think that Starfleet as a kind of ground force other than our average Starfleet officers and better weapons than simple type 2 and 3 phasers (by the way, the "Insurrection bazooka", no matter how ugly, was a nice touch in that regard).

Just a little nitpicking before finishing ... You said the old starships had, for the most part, an ejectable warp core. Well, I certainly don't think the Constitution (and its refit) has one...

------------------
-Doctor: We'll defend ourselves! They won't get what they're after!
-Aliens: Huh?
-Doctor: I mean, you won't get what you're after!
ECH to Hierarchy vessel in VOY "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor Spy"

-Seven: *Kissing the doctor* It was a platonic gesture. Don't espect me to pose for you.
-Doctor: *Embarassed* Understood.
Seven to the Doctor in VOY "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor Spy"

After I got back at the topics forum, I saw that the number of posts had increased dramatically... I hate Microsoft with all my heart, but I'm beginning to hate Nescape 4.0 even more!!! It's full of bugs and it crashes every half hour. Die Netscape Navigator!!!

------------------
"One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Floor". George Carlin

------------------
-Doctor: We'll defend ourselves! They won't get what they're after!
-Aliens: Huh?
-Doctor: I mean, you won't get what you're after!
ECH to Hierarchy vessel in VOY "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor Spy"

-Seven: *Kissing the doctor* It was a platonic gesture. Don't espect me to pose for you.
-Doctor: *Embarassed* Understood.
Seven to the Doctor in VOY "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor Spy"