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I posted this around a week ago on SB working up some thoughts on Nemesis. Forgot about the new Trek forum over here, so I'm reposting this. Even though I have a fealing that most of this has been gone over already

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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I haven't seen the movie yet so I can't comment on detail, but a couple of notes:

1) Yes, the Argo is obviously not designed as a military vehicle. Unfortunately, it is a Starfleet ground vehicle, which just means that we have yet ANOTHER example of Starfleet's inexcusable neglect of ground forces.

2) Ablative armour is armour which ablates, ie- partially vapourizes to carry away heat. I don't know why you assume that it will make the ship more resistance to physical impacts. If there is an obvious difference between the apparent strengths, I would chalk it up to structural design; Romulans have atrocious structural design skills, as evidenced by the shape of their ships.

Darth Wong wrote:2) Ablative armour is armour which ablates, ie- partially vapourizes to carry away heat. I don't know why you assume that it will make the ship more resistance to physical impacts. If there is an obvious difference between the apparent strengths, I would chalk it up to structural design; Romulans have atrocious structural design skills, as evidenced by the shape of their ships.

I had wondered what exactly Ablative armor did. Regardless of it being the armor or not, it heavily indicates that the Federation builds stronger hulls then any other major power.

Darth Wong wrote:1) Yes, the Argo is obviously not designed as a military vehicle. Unfortunately, it is a Starfleet ground vehicle, which just means that we have yet ANOTHER example of Starfleet's inexcusable neglect of ground forces.

It is only an example of neglect if you assume this vehicle is designed and intended for ground combat. As Chris pointed out, this is clearly not the case. The Argo is a better example of an exploration vehicle, not a armed battlefield vehicle. As such, there is no example of inexcusable neglect for ground forces shown in Nemesis.

Darth Wong wrote:I haven't seen the movie yet so I can't comment on detail, but a couple of notes:

1) Yes, the Argo is obviously not designed as a military vehicle. Unfortunately, it is a Starfleet ground vehicle, which just means that we have yet ANOTHER example of Starfleet's inexcusable neglect of ground forces.

Conceaded. I was just making a comment on the design of the Argo not being one of military purpose. However I hesitate to say that it say anything one way or the other about Starfleet ground forces as it does not have anything realy to do with them. If it WAS something that was being passed off as Starfleets heavy ground attack vehicle, then by all means its relevent, but its not realy on the same topic...

2) Ablative armour is armour which ablates, ie- partially vapourizes to carry away heat. I don't know why you assume that it will make the ship more resistance to physical impacts. If there is an obvious difference between the apparent strengths, I would chalk it up to structural design; Romulans have atrocious structural design skills, as evidenced by the shape of their ships.

Good point, the reason I brought up the ablative armour was that it has at times provided moderate protection against physical impacts, such as when the Defiant was pounded by those Breen missiles with no shields and the comment was made along the lines of 'the ablative armour is starting to buckle' after being pounded for a time.

Alyeska wrote:It is only an example of neglect if you assume this vehicle is designed and intended for ground combat. As Chris pointed out, this is clearly not the case. The Argo is a better example of an exploration vehicle, not a armed battlefield vehicle. As such, there is no example of inexcusable neglect for ground forces shown in Nemesis.

I think you're missing the point: the fact that they never designed a vehicle for ground combat is the neglect.

Darth Wong wrote:

Alyeska wrote:It is only an example of neglect if you assume this vehicle is designed and intended for ground combat. As Chris pointed out, this is clearly not the case. The Argo is a better example of an exploration vehicle, not a armed battlefield vehicle. As such, there is no example of inexcusable neglect for ground forces shown in Nemesis.

I think you're missing the point: the fact that they never designed a vehicle for ground combat is the neglect.

We have heard of both Romulan and Klingon have tank like vehicles. Your making the assumption that because we haven't seen any dedicated combat vehicles that the Federation absolutely has no combat vehicles. We do not have enough evidence to make claims that they do or don't have said vehicles.

Alyeska wrote:We have heard of both Romulan and Klingon have tank like vehicles. Your making the assumption that because we haven't seen any dedicated combat vehicles that the Federation absolutely has no combat vehicles. We do not have enough evidence to make claims that they do or don't have said vehicles.

Don't pull this "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" shit. We've seen lots of Starfleet ground actions, and we've never seen a military vehicle in any one of them. As for these tank-like vehicles for the Romulans and Klingons, we didn't see them either. After seeing what passes for air support and recon vehicles in the Federation military, I have little confidence that the Klingon military will be any more impressive. The only one we haven't seen on the ground is the Romulans; maybe they really do have a proper ground army, which would explain why they figured on taking the entire planet Vulcan with just 2000 men.

But I digress; we are starting to hijack this thread away from the subject of Nemesis.

Darth Wong wrote:

Alyeska wrote:We have heard of both Romulan and Klingon have tank like vehicles. Your making the assumption that because we haven't seen any dedicated combat vehicles that the Federation absolutely has no combat vehicles. We do not have enough evidence to make claims that they do or don't have said vehicles.

Don't pull this "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" shit. We've seen lots of Starfleet ground actions, and we've never seen a military vehicle in any one of them. As for these tank-like vehicles for the Romulans and Klingons, we didn't see them either. After seeing what passes for air support and recon vehicles in the Federation military, I have little confidence that the Klingon military will be any more impressive. The only one we haven't seen on the ground is the Romulans; maybe they really do have a proper ground army, which would explain why they figured on taking the entire planet Vulcan with just 2000 men.

But I digress; we are starting to hijack this thread away from the subject of Nemesis.

Thing is I am not claiming said vehicles exist. I am stating the Argo has no value of proof about Federation ground fighting capabilities. There was no intended ground combat scenario in the movie, thus their is no evidence about Federation ground combat scenes.

You are correct, this is an issue for another thread because it does not involve Nemesis, rather it involves DS9 and quotes from Voyager.

Darth Wong wrote:

Alyeska wrote:We have heard of both Romulan and Klingon have tank like vehicles. Your making the assumption that because we haven't seen any dedicated combat vehicles that the Federation absolutely has no combat vehicles. We do not have enough evidence to make claims that they do or don't have said vehicles.

Don't pull this "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" shit. We've seen lots of Starfleet ground actions, and we've never seen a military vehicle in any one of them. As for these tank-like vehicles for the Romulans and Klingons, we didn't see them either. After seeing what passes for air support and recon vehicles in the Federation military, I have little confidence that the Klingon military will be any more impressive. The only one we haven't seen on the ground is the Romulans; maybe they really do have a proper ground army, which would explain why they figured on taking the entire planet Vulcan with just 2000 men.

But I digress; we are starting to hijack this thread away from the subject of Nemesis.

You want to split this into another topic if you want to talk about it?

Maybe if someone is really interested we can create a new thread. These posts can stay here.

Good writeup, Chris.

Pretty good write-up, Chris. I just wanted to ask a few questions, and point out a humorous little bit about RS Anderson's potential response to the Argo.

Chris O'Farrell wrote: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.

If DarkStar was a Warsie: Since the Argo has only EVER been used canonically as a vehicle of war, it must represent the epitomy of ST ground technology, and be the ultimate war-machine of the UFP. The fact that it was a new design, and that it was assigned to one of the UFP's most elite starships makes that even more sad.

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.

I would agree with most of your statements, but I cannot accept the idea that the E-E's shields were depleted by any other cause. The simple fact of the matter is that we saw the Scimitar pound on the E-E's shields without significant effect for a considerable amount of time. For the Scimitar to have depleted the E-E's forward shields by such a huge percentage so quickly would have been inconsistent with the rest of the movie. I would also point out that the E-E's forward shields MUST have been at a greater percentage than 40%, because just before the incident in question, Data reported that their aft shields were down to just 40%, and Picard compensated by ordering the ship to keep its bow towards the Scimitar, so as to protect the aft part of the ship. There would have been no reason for him to do that if the forward shields were below 40%. I would also point out that the script

http://www.bureau42.com/dl/files/nemesisscript.html

has this to say about the collision in question:

John Logan wrote:Then the Scimitar unleashes a devastating volley… all her forward disruptor banks fire at once--

They literally cut one of the Romulan ships in half --a huge EXPLOSION --debris SHOOTS across space and SLAMS VIOLENTLY off the Enterprise's forward shields--!

This appears to indicate that the collision was indeed involved with the forward shields, which also makes sense given the way that the movie was shot. It could be that the forward shields are designed to protect the ship from anything moving from the bow towards the stern of the ship, or it could just be an FX glitch, in which case your analysis would be correct.

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.

This is more or less irrelevent. We know that the Scimitar was trying to pull away, and that the relative speed of the E-E was probably significantly decreased by that factor. More important, though, is that I think your reasoning is incorrect. We heard that their phaser banks had been depleted to 4%, but to say that that was representative of the ship's total power situation is to ignore what comes later. Picard asks them what would happen if they threw all power to their phasers, Picard asks what would happen if they put all their phaser banks into a single strike. This seems to indicate that the phaser banks were damaged, but not the main power grid. I agree with you that the E-E's performance was far lower than it was in the early stages of the fight, and that the ship's impulse engines must have been severely damaged, but I don't think that your reasoning shows this properly. Call it a nitpick if you will, but it seems that the power was not the problem so much as the damage that the ship had taken during the fight.

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.

What about the time when Jem Hadar ships effortlessly tore through fresh Klingon vessels in DS9's "Tears of the Prophets?" During that episode, the presumably shielded Klingon vessels were torn straight open, without their shields even reacting to the impacts--exactly like the collision in "Nemesis."

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.

Your reasoning is incorrect, in this part of the evaluation. I would say that the quantum torpedo damage to the hull (if it is as extensive as you say) is a result of "seepage" through the shields. This has been observed on several occasions during combat, when ships with their shields up still suffered damage to their hulls. More important, however, is the allegation that the Scimitar's forward shields were out. When Picard asks what would happen if they concentrated all of their remaining phaser strikes on the Scimitar, Geordi responds that the Scimitar's shields are still at seventy percent, and that it would make no difference. If the forward shields had indeed been down, we would have expected them to use the phasers in an effort to damage their enemy's ship, as they rammed the same section of the Scimitar that they would have otherwise been firing on. This indicates that the phasers were not of great enough firepower to punch through whatever forward shielding there was (and I would contend that the forward shields were still at 70%, which is why Geordi read those off), but that the ramming attack they eventually used was sufficient to punch through the shields.

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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Again, I agree with most of what you said in the final section. I think that the E-E is armored, and if anything it CERTAINLY has greater armor than the Scimitar. The only thing I disagree with is your assertion that the run was anything but a suicide run. Had Picard thought that it was anything except a suicide run, he should have ordered the ship to begin a self-destruct sequence BEFORE he ordered it into the ramming attack, at least to minimize the time his enemy had to do anything about it.[/quote]

Master of Ossus wrote:Pretty good write-up, Chris. I just wanted to ask a few questions, and point out a humorous little bit about RS Anderson's potential response to the Argo.

Hey I'm all for Anderson humor

If DarkStar was a Warsie: Since the Argo has only EVER been used canonically as a vehicle of war, it must represent the epitomy of ST ground technology, and be the ultimate war-machine of the UFP. The fact that it was a new design, and that it was assigned to one of the UFP's most elite starships makes that even more sad.

Yeah that sounds about right.

I would agree with most of your statements, but I cannot accept the idea that the E-E's shields were depleted by any other cause. The simple fact of the matter is that we saw the Scimitar pound on the E-E's shields without significant effect for a considerable amount of time. For the Scimitar to have depleted the E-E's forward shields by such a huge percentage so quickly would have been inconsistent with the rest of the movie. I would also point out that the E-E's forward shields MUST have been at a greater percentage than 40%, because just before the incident in question, Data reported that their aft shields were down to just 40%, and Picard compensated by ordering the ship to keep its bow towards the Scimitar, so as to protect the aft part of the ship.

You know you just sorta contradicted yourself? First you asserted that the E-E was pounded on without effect for some time, yet at least the aft shields of the ship had taken significant damage to have droped over half their power off. Its clear the shields and the Enterprise itself had been taken a reletivly significant pounding. Just before Shinzon paused to taunt Picard with his holograph, we know the Ventral shields had almost collapsed.

When you get down to it, its very hard to establish what caused the damage to the forward shields. The script claims it was the wing (at least the draft script that did have quite a few differences from the movie) that slamed into the forward shields. However onscreen its shown rather plainly that the impact point of the wing was very distinctly within the port shield arc. Either the display is wrong, which I find extreemly hard to belive with no evidence, or some other damage dropped the shields on the forward arc. Also, the nacelle hit at the least is clearly WELL within the port shields, yet despite being a sizable fraction of debris itself, the shield grid on that side was a solid layer, not a thin one showing shield failure.

All I can say is with confidence, the wing didn't cause the forward shield drop in power. What did, I don't have a clue. Its possible simple shield draining since the call on the aft shield took its toll, the Scimitar DID hit the forward shields many times after that, its possible they simply finaly went down to that level of power.

There would have been no reason for him to do that if the forward shields were below 40%. I would also point out that the script

http://www.bureau42.com/dl/files/nemesisscript.html

has this to say about the collision in question:

John Logan wrote:Then the Scimitar unleashes a devastating volley… all her forward disruptor banks fire at once--

They literally cut one of the Romulan ships in half --a huge EXPLOSION --debris SHOOTS across space and SLAMS VIOLENTLY off the Enterprise's forward shields--!

At that point in time yes, however the engagement HAD gone on for some time past that point, it might simply be standard draining. The script also (which I generaly treat as only slightly less canon then the episode/movie in question) is not the final script but a draft script which did have quite a few changes to the movie. And to not put too finer point on it, the wing did not impact the forward shields unless the display was wrong.

Its reletive cause and effect logic that attempts to draw lines of concurence where none exist. Exactly like the infamous bridge domes situation in ROTJ. There we have people saying that because event A (A-Wings blow dome) moves to dialouge B (officer shouting the shields are down) it equates to clear proof of the dome being a shield generator, depsite any evidence to the contrery (Note I DO think they are shield generators, but sure as hell not from ROTJ, just the zillions of offical sources that refrence them as such). Same thing here. Because event A (wing slaming into shields) leads to dialouge B (Data shouting forward shields at 10%), a line is instantly drawn to say that the wing impacted on the forward shields and was the cause of the power drain. Even though Data does not explicitly say the wing and onscreen canon explictly shows the wing impacted on a totaly different shield arc.

Simply put, it can't match up so it gets disgarded in favour of what canon showed us: The wing impacted on a different shield arc and some unknown method drained the forward shields, probably simply weapons fire over time with a last bit finaly pushing it into critical.

At least IMO.

This is more or less irrelevent. We know that the Scimitar was trying to pull away, and that the relative speed of the E-E was probably significantly decreased by that factor.

It was actualy trying to sidestep the oncomming Enterprise...and the fact it moved so amazingly slow appears to point to engine damage of some kind to her as well (or the film being played in super slow motion or something).

More important, though, is that I think your reasoning is incorrect. We heard that their phaser banks had been depleted to 4%, but to say that that was representative of the ship's total power situation is to ignore what comes later. Picard asks them what would happen if they threw all power to their phasers, Picard asks what would happen if they put all their phaser banks into a single strike. This seems to indicate that the phaser banks were damaged, but not the main power grid.

I realy don't think so personaly. The phaser strips were operational. Even if one strip is working, its been shown you can tie the energy into it and let it all lose. I didn't see any visable damage to the phaser strips. Data said:

"We have expanded our supply of photon torpedoes. Phaser banks are down to four percent sir."

Now 'phaser banks are down to four percent sir' does not sound like a statement saying that the actual arrays were damaged', it sounds like a statement of how much power they could spit out (4% of normal) not that there were only 4% of phaser banks still operational (which would be the only other option). Picard asked if concentrating all their phasers in a concentrated pattern would do anything. We know that phaser fire WAS able to hurt the scimitar only a minuite ago, even if you only have a small area to fire upon, if you can call upon full power they sure as heck would do damage to the enemy. The dismismal makes sense saying that a 4% phaser won't do diddily to the shields on the Scimitar, not in saying that only part of the ships phasers is still working realy. Combine in with that the fact that in order to accelerate at a VERY slow speed (I've seen starships on thrusters accelerate faster) and Troi had to draw the power from Life support to even get that much, I think its just saying that the ship simply had nothing left to give in terms of power supply.

I agree with you that the E-E's performance was far lower than it was in the early stages of the fight, and that the ship's impulse engines must have been severely damaged, but I don't think that your reasoning shows this properly. Call it a nitpick if you will, but it seems that the power was not the problem so much as the damage that the ship had taken during the fight.

Except at no point in the fight up until the final ram did the Enterprise have a problem with manouvering or acceleration or even firing back at the Scimitar. Yet then they suddenly do, don't have shields, power for more then a single transporter beam. Then after the E-E is shaken lose, Picard gives troi and order to get as far away as possible from the Scimitar. Yet the E does not move in the slighest, even though the impulse engines were well aft of the areas damaged by the ramming which to me indicates they had thrown every last joule of power into the acceleration, then had zip except for enogh power to keep life support running.

What about the time when Jem Hadar ships effortlessly tore through fresh Klingon vessels in DS9's "Tears of the Prophets?" During that episode, the presumably shielded Klingon vessels were torn straight open, without their shields even reacting to the impacts--exactly like the collision in "Nemesis."

Actualy I thought I had mentioned that. My bad. The Klingons in TOTP are somewhat at odds with the other incidents (for example the BOPs that slam into the JH attack ships blow up instantly where the Defiant gleefuly rammed right through a JH ship at much higher speed without taking a scratch or concerning the crew inside afterwards). JH Attack Ships are not exactly weak when it comes to taking physical abuse. The Attack ship in 'The Ship' happily went screaming through a planets atmosphere at high speed to slam into the surface without major structual damage, the same one later happily streaked through ANOTHER atmosphere (uncontroled) to land in some ocean, still relativly intact from what I saw of it. In terms of KE transfered, you have the saucer in Generations hit by the warp core shockwave and thrown violently to one side, yet the shields held. Or ST9 with the E-E's core throwing the entire ship accross the screen but not collapsing the shields to my knoweldge. I may be mistaken, but the impacts of the JH ships on Klingon ships would impart a hell of a lot less KE then something thats able to throw a 700 meter long ship a klick thataway in a second.

It may be simply that Klingon hull are increadably weak compared to the other major powers or that they were simply surprised and unprepared withouht the chance to activate relevent countermeasures like SIF fields or the like. Recall what Martok said? "The JH have managed to disable or destroy 15 of my ships". All the ships we saw were rather clearly destroyed totaly and the JH were unlikly to use any less force then they did on other ships, yet some ships were not blown away, just disabled which may mean they were able to take the impacts when they realised the strategy.

Granted I'm just hypthosising here, but the Klingons in TOTP are not exactly consistent with other times UFP ships have taken the same or more without blowing into itty bitty peices.

Your reasoning is incorrect, in this part of the evaluation. I would say that the quantum torpedo damage to the hull (if it is as extensive as you say) is a result of "seepage" through the shields. This has been observed on several occasions during combat, when ships with their shields up still suffered damage to their hulls.

Actualy I would dispute that. Shield seapage was more or less non existent in this movie. The E-E only took damage to its systems or hull when the shields actualy collapsed (appart from the standard exploding consoles and what not), not before. The Scimitar didn't appear to take damage to its systems when being pounded by everyone until the E-E got to it and salvoed the Q-Torps at it.

More important, however, is the allegation that the Scimitar's forward shields were out. When Picard asks what would happen if they concentrated all of their remaining phaser strikes on the Scimitar, Geordi responds that the Scimitar's shields are still at seventy percent, and that it would make no difference. If the forward shields had indeed been down, we would have expected them to use the phasers in an effort to damage their enemy's ship, as they rammed the same section of the Scimitar that they would have otherwise been firing on.

The Phaers were only AT 4%. The Scimitars hull had taken direct Quantum torpedo and full power phaser strikes only causing reletivly minimal damage (bar disableing the cloaking device). A 4% phaser beam would do nothing to harm it. And its clear SOME parts of the shields had been down for the Enterprise to harm the Scimitar, some shield arcs would be at some levels some at other levels. A 70% shield level all around the ship would not let any damage befall the ship. We know there are six different arcs. Its almost certian they would be at different shield strengths. All I am saying is that its quite possible the forward arc (which recently from the E-E had clearly taken the brunt of weapons fire) was collapsed or very near so, while the other arcs were still reletivly good in terms of shield power. And everyone knew the E-E was helpless, given his call to Picard.

This indicates that the phasers were not of great enough firepower to punch through whatever forward shielding there was (and I would contend that the forward shields were still at 70%, which is why Geordi read those off), but that the ramming attack they eventually used was sufficient to punch through the shields.

I find it unlikly. Less powerful ships then the Scimitar had taken a heck of a lot more KE to their shields and kept them intact. For example, the E-E here:

http://members.optushome.com.au/rogueone/ee1.avi

Was covering just a little distance and there was no call of shield failure or collapsing (later their shields were shown to be up, though it was at least 20 minuites later to be fair) or any indication of problems with them. And of course the E-D in generations:

http://members.optushome.com.au/rogueone/ed1.avi

If the Scimitar is as said to be a crapload more powerful then the E-E and she can easily take Kinetic energy of that level, you'd expect the E-E to simply bounce right off the Scimitar. Either Federation ships shields are magicly more effective at handeling being pushed around or the shields simply were not up on that arc. Given the UTTER lack of any shield interaction, not even a sign of the shields attempting to impare the passge of the E-E, then collapsing in failure, I'd say the shields simply were not there. I simply can't belive that the shields would not offer ANY visable resistence to the Scimitar. When PIcard let Ro and that Maquis ship through the E-D's aft shields in Pre-Emptive Strike, even when it just touched the shields, they very clearly lit up the aft shield arc of the ship. Yet there is no shield flicker at all. Which makes me belive the shields were not there. I'm simply trying to rationalise the weak impact/no shield deflection, lack of shield effect at all and other instances where weaker UFP ships have survived comprable forces upon them.

Again, I agree with most of what you said in the final section. I think that the E-E is armored, and if anything it CERTAINLY has greater armor than the Scimitar. The only thing I disagree with is your assertion that the run was anything but a suicide run. Had Picard thought that it was anything except a suicide run, he should have ordered the ship to begin a self-destruct sequence BEFORE he ordered it into the ramming attack, at least to minimize the time his enemy had to do anything about it.

[/quote]

Err unless I misundersood you, that makes no sense. If it WAS a suicide run, he would have ordered the self destruct activated prior to impact, so the E-E would be timed to slam into the Scimitar, dig into it then blow up. Holding off the self destruct until AFTER he has managed to pull away from you makes very little sense if his intention had always been to take Shinzon with him with the ram in a suicide attack. However activating it after makes sense in the context of him having thrown his best punch, failing and falling back on his last resort to take him out before he gets to EArth.

closet sci-fi fan wrote:

Chris O'Farrell wrote: Actualy I would dispute that. Shield seapage was more or less non existent in this movie. The E-E only took damage to its systems or hull when the shields actualy collapsed (appart from the standard exploding consoles and what not), not before.

How would you explain the warp drive getting knocked out while the shields were up?

Looks like he just pounded the shields down with disruptor fire then hit the nacelle and core with two carefuly aimed bursts. You see him spraying Disruptors against the E-E's dorsal shields, then while they are blasting away he orders the engines and defences disabled. Then the two shots that blast the core and nacelle.

I wonder in fact if this might be proof of the E-E being equiped with the regenerative shielding technology the Promethesus testbeded. They apparently bring down the dorsal shields and take out the core and nacelle. Then 20 secodns later the dorsal shield is back up, takes a pounding for around a minuite, then its collapsing again. Riker bluntly tells Geordi to get the shields back on line, to which he says he is already on it. Prior to the Promethesus, once your shields were done, thats it, game over. Then, just before the Troi psi thing, the Scimitar makes a run over the dorsal shields and collapses them. A minuite later when the ventral shields collapse from the Scimitar blasting at full power, we see Datas shield display. While the ventral shields line does not exist and the space simply flashes red, the dorsal shield line is ALREADY back at nominal strength.

It might be the reason the E-E stayed alive so long and the manouvering tactics they used. Engage, if a shield arc drains, manouver to present a fresh arc while the depleated arc recharges , then you can swing back to present that arc if you need to.

I'll have to watch more carefuly when it comes out over here.

Chris O'Farrell wrote:

I agree with you that the E-E's performance was far lower than it was in the early stages of the fight, and that the ship's impulse engines must have been severely damaged, but I don't think that your reasoning shows this properly. Call it a nitpick if you will, but it seems that the power was not the problem so much as the damage that the ship had taken during the fight.

Except at no point in the fight up until the final ram did the Enterprise have a problem with manouvering or acceleration or even firing back at the Scimitar. Yet then they suddenly do, don't have shields, power for more then a single transporter beam. Then after the E-E is shaken lose, Picard gives troi and order to get as far away as possible from the Scimitar. Yet the E does not move in the slighest, even though the impulse engines were well aft of the areas damaged by the ramming which to me indicates they had thrown every last joule of power into the acceleration, then had zip except for enogh power to keep life support running.

The E-E took substantial damage between its final maneuver and the point where Skippy wanted to have a stare-down contest, including having its viewscreen blown off. We also never heard of any power problems (if that is what they were) before that time.

What about the time when Jem Hadar ships effortlessly tore through fresh Klingon vessels in DS9's "Tears of the Prophets?" During that episode, the presumably shielded Klingon vessels were torn straight open, without their shields even reacting to the impacts--exactly like the collision in "Nemesis."

Actualy I thought I had mentioned that. My bad. The Klingons in TOTP are somewhat at odds with the other incidents (for example the BOPs that slam into the JH attack ships blow up instantly where the Defiant gleefuly rammed right through a JH ship at much higher speed without taking a scratch or concerning the crew inside afterwards). JH Attack Ships are not exactly weak when it comes to taking physical abuse. The Attack ship in 'The Ship' happily went screaming through a planets atmosphere at high speed to slam into the surface without major structual damage, the same one later happily streaked through ANOTHER atmosphere (uncontroled) to land in some ocean, still relativly intact from what I saw of it. In terms of KE transfered, you have the saucer in Generations hit by the warp core shockwave and thrown violently to one side, yet the shields held. Or ST9 with the E-E's core throwing the entire ship accross the screen but not collapsing the shields to my knoweldge. I may be mistaken, but the impacts of the JH ships on Klingon ships would impart a hell of a lot less KE then something thats able to throw a 700 meter long ship a klick thataway in a second.

It may be simply that Klingon hull are increadably weak compared to the other major powers or that they were simply surprised and unprepared withouht the chance to activate relevent countermeasures like SIF fields or the like. Recall what Martok said? "The JH have managed to disable or destroy 15 of my ships". All the ships we saw were rather clearly destroyed totaly and the JH were unlikly to use any less force then they did on other ships, yet some ships were not blown away, just disabled which may mean they were able to take the impacts when they realised the strategy.

Klingon hulls seem to be quite strong, hence Kira's statement in DS9 "Sons of Mogh." "What could blow a hole the size of a house in a Vor'Cha class cruiser?" Of course, the answer was a cloaked mine.

Your reasoning is incorrect, in this part of the evaluation. I would say that the quantum torpedo damage to the hull (if it is as extensive as you say) is a result of "seepage" through the shields. This has been observed on several occasions during combat, when ships with their shields up still suffered damage to their hulls.

Actualy I would dispute that. Shield seapage was more or less non existent in this movie. The E-E only took damage to its systems or hull when the shields actualy collapsed (appart from the standard exploding consoles and what not), not before. The Scimitar didn't appear to take damage to its systems when being pounded by everyone until the E-E got to it and salvoed the Q-Torps at it.

What about when the warp-core was disabled following a single volley, when the shields were already up?

More important, however, is the allegation that the Scimitar's forward shields were out. When Picard asks what would happen if they concentrated all of their remaining phaser strikes on the Scimitar, Geordi responds that the Scimitar's shields are still at seventy percent, and that it would make no difference. If the forward shields had indeed been down, we would have expected them to use the phasers in an effort to damage their enemy's ship, as they rammed the same section of the Scimitar that they would have otherwise been firing on.

The Phaers were only AT 4%. The Scimitars hull had taken direct Quantum torpedo and full power phaser strikes only causing reletivly minimal damage (bar disableing the cloaking device). A 4% phaser beam would do nothing to harm it. And its clear SOME parts of the shields had been down for the Enterprise to harm the Scimitar, some shield arcs would be at some levels some at other levels. A 70% shield level all around the ship would not let any damage befall the ship. We know there are six different arcs. Its almost certian they would be at different shield strengths. All I am saying is that its quite possible the forward arc (which recently from the E-E had clearly taken the brunt of weapons fire) was collapsed or very near so, while the other arcs were still reletivly good in terms of shield power. And everyone knew the E-E was helpless, given his call to Picard.

Textbook case of circular reasoning. Because the shields are strong enough to prevent a ship from being rammed, the shields must have been down for the ship to be rammed. I'm sure you see the flaw in your reasoning.

This indicates that the phasers were not of great enough firepower to punch through whatever forward shielding there was (and I would contend that the forward shields were still at 70%, which is why Geordi read those off), but that the ramming attack they eventually used was sufficient to punch through the shields.

I find it unlikly. Less powerful ships then the Scimitar had taken a heck of a lot more KE to their shields and kept them intact. For example, the E-E here:

http://members.optushome.com.au/rogueone/ee1.avi

Was covering just a little distance and there was no call of shield failure or collapsing (later their shields were shown to be up, though it was at least 20 minuites later to be fair) or any indication of problems with them. And of course the E-D in generations:

http://members.optushome.com.au/rogueone/ed1.avi

If the Scimitar is as said to be a crapload more powerful then the E-E and she can easily take Kinetic energy of that level, you'd expect the E-E to simply bounce right off the Scimitar. Either Federation ships shields are magicly more effective at handeling being pushed around or the shields simply were not up on that arc. Given the UTTER lack of any shield interaction, not even a sign of the shields attempting to impare the passge of the E-E, then collapsing in failure, I'd say the shields simply were not there. I simply can't belive that the shields would not offer ANY visable resistence to the Scimitar. When PIcard let Ro and that Maquis ship through the E-D's aft shields in Pre-Emptive Strike, even when it just touched the shields, they very clearly lit up the aft shield arc of the ship. Yet there is no shield flicker at all. Which makes me belive the shields were not there. I'm simply trying to rationalise the weak impact/no shield deflection, lack of shield effect at all and other instances where weaker UFP ships have survived comprable forces upon them.

More circular reasoning. Moreover, you ignore DS9 "Tears of the Prophets," when fully shielded Klingon ships were rammed by Jem'Hadar attack ships, and their shields did not react to the strike at all.

Darth Wong wrote:2) Ablative armour is armour which ablates, ie- partially vapourizes to carry away heat. I don't know why you assume that it will make the ship more resistance to physical impacts. If there is an obvious difference between the apparent strengths, I would chalk it up to structural design; Romulans have atrocious structural design skills, as evidenced by the shape of their ships.

Supposedly ablative can also chip when struck with a physical object such as bullets, carrying away some of the energy of the blow or whatever. In any case it means "armor that's more effective but gets used up":

My very bad, I totaly forgot about this thread. Its inconsiderate in the extreme to you MOO, to keep you waiting this long. Given that the thread has preaty much narrowed only to the ramming sceen and a disagreement on that. Consider this a placeholder for later tonight hopefuly and a response.