posted
There's often some lack of judgement on Starfleet's part, too. If the brass had just taken Kirk and company and transplanted them onto a fully-crewed and functional ship and THEN sent them to Nimbus III, you can bet that they would not have been taken over by a laughing Vulcan and his dogs.
[rimshot]
My dream in fandom is to complete a CGI movie depicting my interpretation of the COMPLETE battle of Wolf 359, beginning to end. From the opening salvoes of the Saratoga and Melbourne (which I consider to have been an unmanned bomb, and there was indeed another one there), through the destruction of whatever ship Hanson was sitting on, to the final shot of escape pods warping away from a Borg cube that was happily munching on half-assimilated starships. Beauty.
Mark
[ January 09, 2006, 09:05 AM: Message edited by: Mark Nguyen ]
posted
I hope you'll use the old-style red photons as well, right? Hm, we never saw any ship fire torpedoes in "Emissary", did we? How stupid of them. Enterprise did in BoBW, were those red?
Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Kind of orange-ish. I figure what we saw in "Emissary" was just the very start of a running battle threough the system- only about 15(?) ships of 39 are clumped closely when Enterprise finds the debris field.... and a solar system (assuming it really is one) is a very large place.
As for the CGI wet-dream, I'd want a scene depicting the Cube branching off a vehicle (like a Sphere) and dispatching it back to the Collective (after it's loaded up with assiminlated starfleeters, of course). Mabye even assimilating a large ship (like a Nebula) and it zipping off all borg-ified.
I'd also want to see someone ram the cube at warp- it's a pretty obvious tactic when all else fails, and I'd like to know how the Borg had prepared for it.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I'm not so sure warp speed ramming is an obvious tactic. I mean, you're already breaking several natural laws at warp speed; why assume that F=MA comes through unscathed?
Registered: Mar 1999
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We have never seen anything run into something else during warp, maybe the weightless ship, in its warp bubble, would just stop against the object in question (as a speck of dust would) and then disintegrate.
Although if the warp bubble breaks 10 meters in front of the ship when crashing in warp, technically the ship should regain its weight while traveling those last ten meters to target. I'm gonna need a better stop watch, but it could work.
Registered: Aug 1999
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The Enterprise D hit a quantum filament at warp- they are said to have almost no mass, yet it caused a great deal of damage.
Registered: Dec 2005
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If you could time the ship's massive self-destruct to coincide with a kamakazie run at warp, it's be a very impressive weapon. No really ramming the target, but exiting a nanosecond prior to collision while the ship's antimatter detonates and whatever extra mass is translated as concussive physical force moving with insane velocity.
Registered: Aug 2002
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Assuming you can retain some of the momentum from warp (or at least the same you entered warp with initially) the computer could detonate the ship just before impact- making a kind of shaped blast toward the target with all the ship's debris acting like shrapnel.
Near lightspeed (or at least full-impulse speed) shrapnel.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Yeah, but it's not proper momentum, is it? We've seen what happens when a warp field collapses - the ship slows down to a 'normal' velocity. That can only happen if the ship's speed isn't really real. So there's no point in ramming at warp - indeed, the warp field might hinder such an action.
The most you could hope for by ramming is the effect of impulse speed x ship's mass + antimatter explosion (following containment breach as ship is destroyed by collision).
What we have seen on screen supports the idea that the warp field alters the ship's relationship with normal space, and any velocity is gained through use of conventional, non physics busting engines.
On the other hand, it has been hinted that the propulsive forces are created by having the warpfield in a state of flux, and moving a sort of warp current allon the field (I never realy like physics, but I hope you get the idea).
So, in order to guess what would happen when a ship whacks into something at warp, we need to know the exact mechanisim of the warp drive.
-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
Registered: Apr 2005
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TOS "Obsession" makes it sound like you can warp around when your impulse engines are under maintenance, so apparently the warp engine itself provides the speed and acceleration somehow.
And while the warp engine doesn't create anything as permanent as momentum, it still allows the ship to hit the target very, very fast. While such a projectile would deliver negligible destructive energies onto the Cube as such, it would probably still deliver a nasty tankful of antimatter deep within the Cube: the sheer speed would make it seep through the walls, there being no time for the matter and the antimatter to interact.
Or the matter and the matter, for that matter. Things at high realspace speeds become deadly bullets. But things at even higher speeds ought to become essentially transparent to each other.
posted
One thing we have seen, however, is ships going to warp during high impulse speed and then continuing in that speed and momentum as they exit warp, as if the warp bubble "saved" the acting momentum and let go of it when disappearing.
And another thing; ships seemingly can't ram eachother with warp bubbles in realspace, but they can ram eachother in warp, as the Borg Cube responsible for Voyager's survival did against the 8472-vessel. It seemed to carry all its weight and momentum in there.
Registered: Aug 1999
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I agree that momentum carried into warp is retained (the Odyssey exits warp with a full head of steam for example, but obviouls slows from FTL) and it explains whay we usually see ships zoom into warp from relativly stationary positions.
All that being said, a collision a full impulse is a wildlly destructive force (dominion war anyone?) so popping out of warp while retaining the momentum of full impulse (however fast that is- 25% of c?) would make for a very fast flying bomb with no real way to prepare or deflect it.
Unless the Borg's (long-forgotten) Subspace Field somehow keeps the cube slightly out of phase with our dimension (slightly phased into subspace mabye?).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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Have we ever seen a ship go into warp from a standstill?
Also, for some reason, certain Trekships have slowed down momentarily before entering warp, for example the Defiant fleeing the Vor'cha in WOTW and of course the Voyager title sequence.
In both these cases I suspect cinematography overruled logic. The creators deemed that the viewers need to see a moving ship entering warp, otherwise they would think it just vanished if it disappeared while standing still. Unless the nonmoving ship stretches away for warp, ZAP!-like. By the same logic, it would look cool if the ship halted slightly before entering warp sometimes, as if it was an athlete getting ready to jump.
I think Star Wars ships can enter hyperspace from a standstill. I seem to remember the SD Solo had attached himself to was standing still before zapping away, leaving the Falcon and Slave I in the garbage flow.
Registered: Aug 1999
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