Tech stuff:
Starships
1. Either a first flight Galaxy class starship like the E-D is hundreds of times weaker then the Soverign class is or some events in TNG have to be looked at closley. In 'Tin Man', a De'Dereidax class warbird which is quite clearly going to be far less powerful then the Scimitar is able to drop 80% of the E-D's shields with around 6 bursts from its forward disruptor cannon. Its not illogical to assume the disruptors fired in Nemesis are the same type and yeild, if not even more powerful. Yet the E-D took dozens of them over some time to its shields.
The most logical soloution I can think of is the one I've always throught of the 'Tin Man' situation. The warbird which straffed the E-D was desperatly trying to get to Tin-Man first, to the point that it was a one way trip, grossly abbusing the warp engines to the point where the ship would have arrived then been useless. Having already fried the warp coils, my belief is that they simply overloaded the disruptors to get a maximum power volley at the E-D in their pass over it. They did not press the attack when they had the advantage which leads me to belive that they had thrown their best punch to slow down the Enterprise while they made first contact then had nothing left to press any attack. And even moreso, if a Galaxy class starship can be defeated in a single volley of fire from a De'Deridax class, the UFP should have been destroyed by the RSE loooong ago.
However its clear the E-E can take a hell of a beating. The Scimitar pounded the E-E with heavy fire from quite some time. It got in the first surprise shots at its warp drive and possibly its shield/weapons systems, disableing the former and doing unknown damage to the later. The two then fought on and off for some time in the engagement with the E-E constenly manouvering to present fresh shields to the warbird as the others drained. When the shields buckled, the hull bore the brunt of the force rather well. The disruptors only punched reletivly minor hulls in the surface of the ship and its hard to tell, but the impacts suggest the hull was able to ablate most of the power of the weapons strikes before they breached the hull, possibly lending support to the idea of ablative armour on the Soverign class. The ship also appeared to take a direct hit to the warp core which would have caused the E-D to happily go into itty bitty peices.
2. The Scimitar is an impresive ship. Preaty bloody manouverable for a ship of its size it was weaving in and out of the fight just as well as the Enterprise was, a ship thats far smaller. Its deisign isn't exactly 'solid' for a captial ship, however thats explained to a large degree due to the fact that the entire ship is a massive weapon, the ship appears to have simply been built around that fact. It has far more weapons then the E-E does and when it went all out, was perfectly capable of disabeling both warbirds with a volley of a few seconds. Its cloaking device was a next generation model, screened against tachyon detection waves the E-E used to find it as well as anti proton sensor sweeps (though they have been useless since season 3 of DS9). The cloak was also in multiple sections (possibly even multiple cloaking devices) and could have parts selectivly lowered. It also could take a beating. There was no real hull damage to the ship until after both warbirds had been disabled and he started to pick on the E-E again. Then Troi used her Teep abilities to pinpoint their location at which point the E-E broke out the Quantum torpedoes and blasted the Scimitar. The first couple impacted the shields then the next (and phaser blasts) blew rather nice holes in the top of the ship. Its clear the combined fire of the 3 ships had finaly drained the shields (at least in that arc) to the point where a final volley could break through. Prior to that and after taking a massive pounding, there had not realy been any hull damage to the ship.
3. The Valdor class did not appear to be in the same leauge as the Enterprise or Scimitar class. When the E-E got the alpha strike from the Scimitar the facing shield arc took it for a time (longer then Either warbird survived) then collapsed. And this was after a long and VERY hard pounding from the Scimitar. Its firepower however appeared to be impresive in terms of the number of shots it put out. While not the same as the Scimitar, it was reletivly close. As such, I'd define it as a Cruiser to the Battleship Scimitar. Carrying similar (if not QUITE as heavy) weapons but far less protection. It would also appear to be far faster then the De'Deridax class. That class was said to be slower then a Galaxy class. The E-E however is IIRC far faster then the Galaxy class. And was screaming at Maximum warp for the UFP with the Scimitar in hot pursuit. Yet the Senator on the ground was able to catch up with the two of them when they already had a head start of some time. So it looks like they are fast ships with heavy firepower, but limited defensive abilites compared to the major power battleships.
The Argo
The Argo is an intersting idea, one that I think many people have taken and run off the wrong way with. People appear to declare it to be a military creation then delight in running around and declaring its many defencies as a military creation which almost makes one think it ISN'T a dedicated combat Vehicle.
Which is exactly what I think.
Consider. Its clearly NOT deisgned for combat. It has minimal armour. No active defences like a shield. Its only weapon is a retractable phaser cannon designed to discourage pursuit. Any fool with a heavy enough phaser could probably kill the dang thing. Further, they issued exactly one to the Enterprise E. It makes utterly no sense as a military equipment. The E-E does not carry ground troops for invasions. Nor if it did would it just carry ONE vehicle, but almost certinaly dozens of the things. The fact that Starfleet issued a single vehicle to the Enterpise and the design of it points to an offroad transport for away teams. Instead of being limited to foot, transporters or shuttlecraft, they have the option of driving, which in many cases will greatly improve their abilities as an away team. As shown in Nemesis. Transporters are not recomended. Flying around in a shuttle is not exactly low key. Granted neither is the Argo, but its far less of a risk.
Further, the vehicle looks like it has been designed for simplicity. A first for Starfleet. Instead of any kind of antigrav technology or what not, it uses simple but effective ATV style wheeles. Contrery to what people have been claiming about its supension being amazingly weak or fragile, Picard was constently pushing it into VERY hard driving without the slightest concern. You'd probably be more careful if was prone to breaking appart on you. That last dive into the shuttle without hesitation realy puts paid to any idea that the Argo can't take it.
The phaser cannon is very hard to quantify in terms of power or yeild. Worf did NOT appear to be trying to blow everything in site up. Each hit he made was an explosive hit designed to simply tip over the stop the pursuing jeep. His shots always hit the ground around the jeeps, throwing them up and over when close enough, he never aimed high enough to actualy hit a jeep. This would appear to be consistent with them trying not to FUBAR the local population anymore then they already had by blowing them all sky high, though exactly how much worse it could get is not that clear.
The Agro does appear to have its own built in sensor array. When Data picked up the slave circut control for the Argo shuttle, you can see a topigraphical map of the area next to it, with the clasic 'scan' line moving over it. Its also possible that this is a repeat display of a tricorder sensor array (though given the size of a Tricorder an the size of the Argo, you'd expect to be able to easily fit sensors equal or supperior to it inside). Its also possible it was an uplink to the E-E, but I don't think its likely given the lack of contact between the ship and planet.
Though I do wonder if there perhaps was some low level shield operating around the Argo. The gunners in the enemy jeeps didn't hit any of the three characters once. When they were stading outside of it, at long range they came bloody close to blasting them all. Yet at point blank range, gunners to the front and rear were utterly unable to harm Picard, Data or Worf or shoot up anything inside the Argo itself.
I was going to go into detail over the new phaser rifle subtype seen in the episode but Alyeska has preaty much covered all of that. So I'll skip that.
I'm going to go over some of the more..shall we say, 'argued' aspects of the movie.
Firstly: The Valdor wing impact on the Enterprise-E
The claim that has been thrown around is that the impact of a part of the Valdors starboard wing on the E-E's shields was sufficent to bring the forward shield arc down to 10%. There are two problems with this.
Firstly if you do intend to take the position of the collision causing the shield drop, we don't have an idea of the shield strength prior to the collision. It could be 12% and be a 2% drop, it could be 80% and be an 68% drop. Without a starting point, its impossible to judge the shield strength. All you can do is take the collision, judge power from it and apply it as a low end power for the shields.
However more realisticly I dispute that the impact caused the forward shields to drop to 10%. I have a couple of low quality pictures here:
The first two images show the actual impacts of the said wing, the wing snaping and the smaller hit then bouncing down to slam into the port warp nacelle. The last two pictures are the shield grid status window on Datas console a second later when he makes the comment on the forward shields.
The fourth picture rather clearly shows the problem. The impact point of the Valdor wing is very clearly well into the port shield arc, NOT the forward shield arc which has dimmed down to represent the damaged shields. The damage to the forward shields was caused by something else. In all probability, they had simply taken a pounding from weapons fire upto that point and finaly came down to that level from a weapons hit from the Scimitar, currently ahead of the E-E.
Enterpise Collision with the Scimitar
This is probably the most argued section of the film for a number of reasons. There are three parts to address. Firstly the speed of the collision. Second the shield interaction. Third, the collision damage to both ships.
1. Speed.
We have seen many times in ST ships moving a hell of a lot faster then either the E-E or Scimitar did when they crashed into each other. Heck, there were plenty of shots in Nemesis itself of both ships being able to move and accelerate far faster then the final lumbering slam into the Scimitar. We know the power levels on the Enterprise were extreemly low at that point. The warp core may have been offline in fact during the engagement, we know for sure it took a direct hit in the first salvo from the Scimitar and I dobut it was not ment to shut it down given Shinzons command to take out the warp engines. Just prior to the ramming, it was commented that phasers were only at 4% power. Which truely speaks of the power problems. In Insurection with the warp core itself ejected, they were more then able power both shields and phasers. The former took at least four or five photon impacts and lost only 30% power and the phasers had more then enough power to punch right through the command ships shields and blow their engiens and life support systems out. *Only* with impulse engines.
If they were so crippled that they could not put more then a single 4% phaser beam out as a final shot, then their power levels must have been abysmaly low at that point. Troi had to take power from every remaining system including (to an extent) life support to power the engines on their forward run. And it only resulted in a very slow acceleration. The computer console did however claim that full impulse power was available. However I think full impulse isn't actualy a measured accleration standard to all ships. One ships full impulse has often shown in ST to be a heck of a lot slower then another ships full impulse. Even the same ships in different circemstances. Example. In Star Trek 3, the Enterprise and Excelesor when undocking from spacedock took something like a minuite or more to move from their slipways to the spacedoors at one quater impulse. Yet in Star Trek 6, when undocking from Spacedock, the Enterprise-A at one quater impulse moved from its birth to spacedoors in around SIX seconds, and was klicks away seconds later. The E-Refit took minuites to reach a fraction of that distance away from spacedock a full impulse power. And of course in The Motion picture, the E-Nill accelerated like a bat out of hell getting out of the system (to say nothing of the E-D's insane trip from Saturn to mars in BOBW)
As such, I think full impulse power or one quater impulse power or whatever smiply means the amount of power you have available to the engines. One quater that, one half that, all of it. In the E-E Scimitar fight, the ship didn't have ANY power left except for scraps to sustain life support and beam one person over to the Scimitar. And in Spacedock in ST3, the E-Refit had been rather solidly beaten up by Khan in the Mutura Nebula and the first encounter and had limited power.
At least that is the only possibility I can think of for it to mean Realisitcly, the speed of full impulse simply changes to be exactly what the plot wants it to be.
2. The shield interaction.
This is the fun part. Prior we have seen many examples of impacts between ships and shields resisting the impact. We saw earlier in the movie very clearly when the wing slamed into the shield and simply bounced off the shields. However when the E-E slowly hit the Scimitiar, no interaction at all was visable. Which is strange to say the least. Realisticly there should have been SOME kind of interaction. The only other times ramming against UFP ships has happened it has been in situations where the shields had collapsed (VOY Year of Hell part II, DS9 The Jem'Hadar) or a lighter craft simply bounced off them harmlessly (TNG The Hunted), was vaporised without any real effect (DS9 A Call to Arms) or an equal sized ship simply shattered on it (DS9 The Die Is Cast). Granted the shields in question are Romulan/Remen shields, not Federation shields. But its still rather curious.
My soloution is simple. While Geordi established the shields were around 70% on the Scimitar, we know for a fact that the shield arcs tend to have different values. I hyphosise that the forward shields on the Scimitar were simply at zero but the other five shield arcs made up for it. We know that at least part of its shields had collapsed before the ramming. We see when the E-E breaks out the Quantum torpedoes that it blows through the forward-ventral shields and hits the hull. Then when the Scimitar is chasing after her and cutting the shields for the boarding party to collapse, we see the E-E is focusing its fire on the forward shields at that time as well. We then don't realy see any of the battle as we cut to the phaser fight inside. But I think its at least possible to presume there was no shield interaction (not even to show the shield trying and collapsing) simply because the shields had collapsed at that point, at least on that arc. The E-E lacked any weapons to exploit it, so Shinzon had no reason to feal threatned by the Enterprise. Nor when he was confident Picard was going to beam over would he have an imediate reason to re-establish the shield grid. The Ramming also happened so fast that he simply tried to get the heck out of the way.
3. Collision damge to both ships. Here is where its interesting. The Enterprise is hardly designed for ramming. With little power, its Structual Integrity Field would be running at minimal power, if any power at all. Yet it impacts and preaty much bashs through the Scimitars hull with damage, but hardly massive deforming damage. On the other hand, the Scimitar which is probably made to stand against hostile impacts folded faster then me at Poker. The Saucer of the E-E simply cut right through it. Granted its impact point was hollow to a degree (the hanger deck) but it still dug deep into the hull with some hull breaches (though that area was ALREADY well sprinkled with breaches and integrity was stated to be criticaly low already.
I think that its possible the Enterprises hull is (as many have speculated and backdoor sources said) covered with ablative armour like the Defiant and Promethesus clases and it took the brunt of the impact with the Scimitar. The Scimitar however was not heavily armoured, relying on the duel shield layers rather then any heavy hull plating. In fact most Romulan ships appear to follow the same design. The Valdors took hits to their hull and they blew in half. The Enterprsie took multiple hits to the hull and appart from the first shots which took the E-E totaly by surprise with their shields down, the shots didn't realy comprimise the hull integrity of the ship one bit. The De'deradax class in the Battle Of Chintaka took hits from the OWP that didn't destroy it but did appear to at least disable it. A Militarised Galaxy class starship took similar hits and simply charged on firing back at the OWPs.
In the end, the collision did far more damage to the Scimitar to the Enterprise. I don't actualy think it was a suicide run for Picard, but a carefuly weighed idea bassed on the relative strengths of the two ships. When the Scimitar pulled back and left the E-E sitting there, it did rip open more of the saucer section, but comparing the two ships as they laid next to one another, the Scimitar REALY got the raw end of the ramming. To put it ssimply, Remen and Romulan construction does not appear to focus as much on the aspects of hull strength, not to the degree the UFP does (the Klingons also appear to forgo hull strength to a large degree, JH fighters ramming Vor'cha class cruisers ripped them in half even before internal explosions climed them yet a heavily damaged GCS taking a ram for a JH fighter in teh worst possible place, the JH fighter exploding and not simply smashing through like the Klingon ships, caused *reletivly* minimal hull damage...at least before the warp core or antimatter storage tanks or defelctor dish or whatever blew the ship sky high a few seconds later ).
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