posted
Masao, land battleships? Battleships even in the 1800's where easily over a thousand tons. If they were on the ground they would causing massive track impressions probably around a couple of meters deep. If they were hovercraft then they would need massive engines to power them. If they were to go high they would cause a whole shit load of trouble on the ground. With a battleship plane, that's not possible.
Back to the topic, if ships were going at super sonic or hyper-sonic speeds the fight scenes we see we would definately not see. On a race track, you can follow the cars ok right? Imagine that going 10-30 times faster than that. Will you be able to follow them? No. Lasers go at the speed of light, so if phaser are basically advanced lasers then all we would see is a laser show. That's boring.
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posted
That's actually one of the few problems I have with Trek space battles besides the noise. You can TRACK phaser fire.
When you turn on a light in a room, or a laser pointer during a presentation, can you actually track the light from the time it leaves the source to when ir hits the wall? No. In Star Trek, the laws of physics are broken and you can.
If you were to actually fire a phaser, you wouldn't see the shot charging and then lancing off at the enemy. Impact would be instantaneous! You'd see a sudden beam of light connect the phaser bank with the target and then disappear.
I do agree that some space battles are too slow. Who says that in "close" (and by close, I mean in AU's or ly's) quarters space battles you can't put up the impulse engines to .85 c? They're certainly capable enough.
The reason I don't believe in battles at warp speeds is the fact that meneuverability is apparently nonexistant while a ship is at warp. (Faster than light, no left or right, et al). Also, you can't engage the warp drive while near a gravity well because it would wreak havoc on the local space-time continuum, as I think someone already pointed out. (Although they continually try and disprove this by having shuttles engage warp [or try to] while in orbit and whatever).
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posted
I referred to land and air leviathans to show that our thinking is often limited by our experience. Dreadnoughts and armoured cruisers were the most powerful weapons at the turn of the century. Visionaries of that time believed that warfare on land and in the air would similary involve gigantic armoured vehicles mounting many small guns. They were wrong, of course. There were technical limitations, as Matrix mentions, and the importance of small-engined tanks and aircraft were not forseen. In the same way our thinking about future combat is constrained by our past experience. We transfer our favorite paradigm for combat, dogfights between jets flying from aircraft carriers, to space and end up with Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica. I'm not saying that any other paradigm we come up with is not similarly biased, but accurately applying what we do know is likely to give more realistic results.
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posted
Battleships migh not be a good option for a modern battle. but they can withstand more gamage than any modern ship a float or not a float.
Do we know actual range of phasers?
When you look into the sky when a plane flies over you, can you see it clearly enough to make out what make it is? For the low-flying yes, but the really high-flying ones, no. Tjose planes are only a few miles high too. Multiply that by 100 times and a object twice as large. Would you be able to a see a phaser battle bewteen the two? No.
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posted
aside from space combat which i think is developed for eye candy so i don't mind
what really annoys me is how trek portrays ground combat....now throwing together a bunch of guys with rifles hows is that any more improved than our current fighting by marines?
quote:You'd see a sudden beam of light connect the phaser bank with the target and then disappear
Wrong, you wouldn't even see a beam. A flashlight's or laser pointer's beam is only visible if there is fog or smoke. In space, there is nothing that could scatter the light beam and divert some photons into your eye. You could only see an explosion on the target, not knowing what caused it. Quite frankly, I'm happier with multi-colored slow phaser beams making noise than with invisible ships firing invisible weapons at each other.
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posted
Oh, that's true! Thanks. Of course, we all know this stuff is for dramatic effect. If it weren't done, we'd all be bored out of our minds and arguing the other direction.
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posted
That's life, if something that did happen didn't happen we would argue for that. But when it does happen we argue that shouldn't happen.
I don't mind that Trek does it, after all we aren't alone. Battlestar, Star Wars, etc all do it. Star wars has an 'excuse', they say its for visual reference for the pilots. In Trek, our excuse is so GOD can watch.
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posted
About phaser fire, what Davok said would be true IF phasers are electromagnetic radiation. Phasers could be plasma or some other type of matter, and therefore would not be expected to behave the same as EM radiation.
By and large, Star Trek is far behind conventional sci-fi when it comes to concepts for space combat, we all accept that. I suppose we should just live with it and enjoy the other aspects of the show.(ie. 7 of 9 )
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posted
Actually, the malon artillery systems are projectile based, no visible trajectories. They behaved kind of like triple-A, with flak detonating around Voyager.
Remember "The Man With The Golden Gun"? Lee fucked up Bond's airplane with that harnessed sunlight cannon, in the beginning of the end. They were sensible enough not to make a shining beam that time, and it cost them less money too. They only had to insert the sound effect at the right place.
posted
I don't know if anyone watches "Andromeda," but one of the early episodes of the show had a long-range fight where they measured distances in light-seconds. And IMO it was pretty tense, too. Not on the level of "Wrath of Khan" tense, but still exciting.
posted
About "The Man with the Golden Gun": that was realistic, true, but I still like the Phasers as they are. I don't really have a problem with how they portray space battles in Trek.
As far as TOS is concerned, their "more realistic" look, i.e. less ships, etc. resulted from a lack of money, not interest in realism!
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I wonder if you guys ever played the game Independence War. Not only is this perhaps the most realistic simulation of space combat I have yet seen in a game, but it also turned out that you can have great fun doing it.
I consider the NSO-929 Dreadnaught class Corvette to be one of the greatest ships ever concieved in fiction or game.
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