posted
They would put their heads between their legs and kiss their butts goodbye.
-------------------- "It speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow, it's not all going to be over with a big splash and a bomb, that the human race is improving, that we have things to be proud of as humans." -Gene Roddenberry about Star Trek
Registered: May 1999
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posted
New drive systems of Voyager caliber would probably send everybody out trying to discover stuff the competitors haven't discovered yet. And everybody would soon run into trouble that way. In local warfare, the new drives wouldn't be all that significant, and wouldn't necessarily alter the balance of power - what would matter would be the new allies, enemies, resources and threats found in deep space thanks to the new drives.
Most of those new weapons wouldn't really matter. Everybody already has stuff that blows up enemy starships and planets in a matter of minutes - upgrading that to a matter of seconds wouldn't mean much. But the super-duper armor brought back by Voyager would give a major advantage to the side that got it first, since apparently one would now spend *hours* pounding at a mere shuttle with all the might of Negh'Var size warships, and still not make a noticeable dent.
I guess that even the Romulans would see that such an advantage has to be exploited fast and boldly, when it's still new and held by one party only. They'd equip as many of their ships as they could with the armor and then go on to conquer the universe before others could react. Starfleet would be in tiny pieces within a month if the Romulans got the armor. Everybody would be if the Klingons did. If (and when) the Feds were the only ones to have the armor, the rest of the galaxy could probably breathe more easily - the Feds would presumably only use it against the Borg.
If you've played "Command & Conquer: Red Alert", and are familiar with the "Iron Curtain" device, you know that a single invulnerable unit can destroy an army, even if the unit's firepower or maneuverability isn't all that good... A ship shielded with the Voyager stuff wouldn't just be less vulnerable than others, it would literally be invulnerable to the weapons we've seen the Alpha races wield so far.
Timo Saloniemi
[ January 09, 2002: Message edited by: Timo ]
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted
Since all of this tech was discovered in the Delta Quadrant (or in the future) and is pretty much limited to one ship, it's doubtful that the advanced tech will spread to other powers very quickly. It's all probably highly classified.
If other ppwers did discover that the Federation had all this uber weaponry and drive tech, they'd probably throw a screaming fit and the Federation would quickly make a treaty limiting its use aboard Starships.
posted
Well, if we're going to imagine things without any sort of context, I'd have to say that the Great Bird of the Galaxy will eat the Romulan and Klingon homeworlds as well, thus nullifying the problem.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
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EdipisReks
Ex-Member
posted
i wish the Great Bird of the Galaxy had eaten the homeplanet of who ever came up with the batman armor and the transphasic torpedoes... .oh, crap... that's OUR homeplanet!
posted
For every armor and shield, a weapon is developed to crack it, and the other way around too.
Prehaps the armor doesn't protect against Transphasic Torpedeos and can be brought down by the Galaxy-Class phaser cannon from AGT.
Prehaps the armor was developed in the closing days of the Dominon War... And by the time Adm Janeway pulled her stunt, everyone had it... Those Klingon ships might not have been equiped with the firepower to crack the armor, or prehaps thats why Janeway wanted that rift sealed. They DID have the weapons but it took time to power them up...
I don't think the Klingons would use the armor... and the Romulans might not either. Takes too long to deploy after droping the cloak. (This is assuming that they can't use both at the same time for some reason...)
-------------------- Like A Bat Out Of Hell...
Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I've had to address these very questions a while back, because I'm part of a group writing a Trek series that's set in the year 2401.
The Federation would certainly keep tight reign on the new tech after Voyager returned... but they'd also start using it for their own ships ASAP.
The situation would be similar to that of when the United States developed the atomic bomb... they held an enormous advantage for a few years, until the other countries caught up. The situation with the VGR armor and torpedoes is a bit different, because there's no "space race" to build things up with -- the Feds have the tech literally handed to them, while everyone else has to start from scratch.
I think that the transphasic torpedoes would be classified as superweapons, or something like that, given their enormous destructive power. But the Federation could also deploy them in limited numbers on their ships, just like today's US Navy has tactical nukes loaded on their submarines.
Of course, this wouldn't make the Federation any friends in the short term, as it completely upsets the balance of power in the Alpha Quadrant. I figure that there's going to be some interesting chaos in the intervening years...
One option would be to share the technology with some of the other governments... I'm not sure if the US did much technology sharing with the nukes, even with their allies Britain and France.
The question is, would any races be willing to fight the Federation to try to get control of them? And what would any of the races do if they actually managed to use the tech for themselves?
- The Klingons would have a hard time developing it, I think. They're not scientists. It'd take them a very long time to develop the armor for themselves, and stealing it from the Federation would be difficult.
- The Romulans are probably the biggest threat. They've been a fairly constant enemy of the Fed for the past 200 years -- though they became allies during the Dominion War, so that's a point in their favor.
- The Cardassians are probably in no position to do any tech development of their own, and their intelligence agency is probably completely destroyed. So no threat there.
I think that probably... PROBABLY... things could stay fairly cool if the Federation conducts itself fairly. There'll be some yelling and screaming from all sides, but as long as the Federation doesn't start bullying other races, there might not be a problem.
We really must "thank" Berman and Biller and Braga for their wonderful leaving-the-24th-century gifts...
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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quote: Imagine that Klinks now have transphasic torps, slipstream and subspace bombs
Hogan's going to have a heck of a time getting out of this one.
Registered: Mar 1999
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EdipisReks
Ex-Member
posted
that's funny, Sol System i bet the German's really want the good ol' colonel to go to the eastern front now that he has all that cool stuff my personal way of getting out of the whole problem of the voyager tech shit, and what voyager did to the borg is to pretend that voyager never fucking existed (this is easy for me, since UPN wasn't carrried in my area after about the fourth season). fucking voyager...
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my personal way of getting out of the whole problem of the voyager tech shit, and what voyager did to the borg is to pretend that voyager never fucking existed (this is easy for me, since UPN wasn't carrried in my area after about the fourth season). fucking voyager...
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