Canon Database goes over 1000 entries!

[Darth Wong]

I've been slowly adding to the Canon Database. There have been recent additions for the ROTJ novelization, DS9, and the (sadly) canon novel "Mosaic" for Voyager, with more to come. As a result, the Canon Database just surpassed 1000 entries. Yay!

[Connor MacLeod]

Why is it I find you saying "yay" so utterly disturbing?

[Howedar]

Mosaic just gets better and better.

[SPOOFE]

Mr. Wong, your pursuit and passion for excellence in your endeavors with this hobby are truly admirable. I will take this occasion to get obliteratingly smashed in your honor. This Jack 'n Coke's for you!

One quick question... if I recall correctly, StarTrek.com says that only parts of Mosaic are considered canon, for character backstory. Has this been taken into account, or just ignored as irrelevent? Just wonderin'.

[Darth Wong]

Mr. Wong, your pursuit and passion for excellence in your endeavors with this hobby are truly admirable. I will take this occasion to get obliteratingly smashed in your honor. This Jack 'n Coke's for you!

One quick question... if I recall correctly, StarTrek.com says that only parts of Mosaic are considered canon, for character backstory. Has this been taken into account, or just ignored as irrelevent? Just wonderin'.

Actually, unless it has changed, the quote is:

There are a couple of exceptions to this rule: the Jeri Taylor penned novels "Mosaic" and "Pathways." Many of the events in these two novels feature background details of the main Star Trek: Voyager characters.

Nowhere does it say that any portion of either novel is non-canon.

[SPOOFE]

Yup, you're correct. Faulty memory. The point is retracted, governor! Though the liquor, if you please, is still goin' down the hatch...

[NecronLord]

Reading that, I have to wonder what Roddenberry would say to Federation Gender Stereotyping... [Spock]I believe my response would be 'This series has gone to hell.' If I were Roddenberry captain...[/Spock]

[Jon]

The Canon Database is an awesome resource, thanks! Spent many an hour reading through it, nodding and laughing at the idiocracy of just about everything in Trek.

[Gandalf]

Are you seeking submissions?

I've found some neat stuff in the AOTC novel that might be nice in there.

[Sarevok]

I have all the TNG and DS9 scripts. Ask me if you need anything.

[Vympel]

Are you seeking submissions?

I've found some neat stuff in the AOTC novel that might be nice in there.

I pre-empted you by about a day, I sent Mike my analysis yesterday. But send yours too, I skipped over some stuff that may have been relevant (mainly cultural stuff).

[Gandalf]

Are you seeking submissions?

I've found some neat stuff in the AOTC novel that might be nice in there.

I pre-empted you by about a day, I sent Mike my analysis yesterday. But send yours too, I skipped over some stuff that may have been relevant (mainly cultural stuff).

Will do.

[Vympel]

I'm currently working on the TESB novelization, btw

[Gandalf]

I'm currently working on the TESB novelization, btw

Where can one find that in Sydney?

I've been looking since the beginning of time.

[Robert Walper]

Are you seeking submissions?

I've found some neat stuff in the AOTC novel that might be nice in there.

Was it just me, or did anyone else hear a loud sucking noise?

I'm just kidding.

[Ghost Rider]

Coolness

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

Computers and Androids: Voyager's vaunted "bio-neural gel-packs" cannot handle navi-computer duties for supralight travel as well as the intuition of a human pilot.

To be fair, picking the best course is also described as a manual process in Star Wars EU, and people have varying skill in it (take the presence of astronav scores). It would also be hard to imagine the purpose of the "astrogation" skill in the RPG system if everything about hyperspace navigation can be handled optimally by a navicomputer.

[Darth Wong]

Computers and Androids: Voyager's vaunted "bio-neural gel-packs" cannot handle navi-computer duties for supralight travel as well as the intuition of a human pilot.

To be fair, picking the best course is also described as a manual process in Star Wars EU, and people have varying skill in it (take the presence of astronav scores). It would also be hard to imagine the purpose of the "astrogation" skill in the RPG system if everything about hyperspace navigation can be handled optimally by a navicomputer.

If your pilot has poor astrogation skills in the RPG (whose rules I admit unfamiliarity with), does he slam into a planet upon attempting to exit hyperspace in orbit around it? If not, then it's not the same thing.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

If your pilot has poor astrogation skills in the RPG (whose rules I admit unfamiliarity with), does he slam into a planet upon attempting to exit hyperspace in orbit around it? If not, then it's not the same thing.

Honestly, I learnt a bit about the RPG so I can read roughly what the authors think of each character, and what they think approximate training levels. Also, I want to understand what they were on when they wrote some of the battles. That's all. I never actually played the RPG, so I'm no real expert on it either.

At least you won't slam into the planet. Even if you deliberately plotted a jump right into a planet or object, the fail-safe should revert you in time to avoid disaster - though there's a chance you'd break your hyperdrive in the emergency reversion.

You could, however, could exit in the wrong area, or accidentally put yourself onto a collision course with an uncharted planet (presumably because your astrogation error caused you to deviate from the "swept" path), or wind up taking a longer or shorter time than you planned (which might be a problem if you were involved as a ship in a battlegroup - it won't be fun to have these mishaps cause ships to come out at different times - letting the enemy take them piecemeal).

If you are willing to take it slow, you can reduce the difficulty factor of even the hardest route into a nobrainer, at least in the RPG. I guess this represents the navicomputer's default choice of an ultra-conservative, idiot-proof route and speed.

And nothing in your quotation says that the wrong choice would cause the death of Voyager. I was thinking the computer would have a few pretty good choices, but have reached a roadblock in its AI evaluative function - "Say Human, do you want the 5% faster route or the 5% more fuel-efficient route)."
Or maybe that its default would be ultra-conservative and thus a human can approve a calculated risk. Not that some of its choices were plain unsafe!

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

By object, I meant something that produces a significant gravity field. One of the mishaps listed involve colliding with something large enough to cause severe damage, but small enough so it doesn't produce a gravity silhouette large enough to warn the failsafe.

And perhaps "suicidal" would be a better term where I put "unsafe".

[Darth Wong]

And nothing in your quotation says that the wrong choice would cause the death of Voyager. I was thinking the computer would have a few pretty good choices, but have reached a roadblock in its AI evaluative function - "Say Human, do you want the 5% faster route or the 5% more fuel-efficient route)."
Or maybe that its default would be ultra-conservative and thus a human can approve a calculated risk. Not that some of its choices were plain unsafe!

Incorrect.

Getting there would be easy; the hard part would be bringing the ship into orbit a microsecond before Voyager slammed into the planet at over a hundred times the speed of light.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

Getting there would be easy; the hard part would be bringing the ship into orbit a microsecond before Voyager slammed into the planet at over a hundred times the speed of light.

No fair! I thought initially it was somewhere in the other quote.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

Voyager leapt to warp. At this speed, the planet was only a few minutes away from the shell of gas and dust clouds surrounding the distant reaches of the star system. Getting there would be easy; the hard part would be bringing the ship into orbit a microsecond before Voyager slammed into the planet at over a hundred times the speed of light.

How is it possible to slam the ship into the planet anyway? From what I understand of Janeway's plan, she wants to use warp to blow past the Kazon surveillance, go past the planet's "midline", and then drop into orbit on the "backside" (the side that the Kazons presumably weren't watching). The straight line course of the ship should never have intersected or even come dangerously close to the planet (in fact, it'd probably be most advantageous for her to assume a geostationary orbit, since that would require no power to either maintain the orbit or to stay on the backside). So how is it possibly a mistiming could send the ship flying into the planet to begin with!

[Darth Wong]

Voyager leapt to warp. At this speed, the planet was only a few minutes away from the shell of gas and dust clouds surrounding the distant reaches of the star system. Getting there would be easy; the hard part would be bringing the ship into orbit a microsecond before Voyager slammed into the planet at over a hundred times the speed of light.

How is it possible to slam the ship into the planet anyway? From what I understand of Janeway's plan, she wants to use warp to blow past the Kazon surveillance, go past the planet's "midline", and then drop into orbit on the "backside" (the side that the Kazons presumably weren't watching). The straight line course of the ship should never have intersected or even come dangerously close to the planet (in fact, it'd probably be most advantageous for her to assume a geostationary orbit, since that would require no power to either maintain the orbit or to stay on the backside). So how is it possibly a mistiming could send the ship flying into the planet to begin with!

It's possible that they intended to fly straight toward the planet and then make a sublight course correction once they dropped out of warp. Otherwise she was just being stupid, or perhaps the gravitational field of the planet makes it difficult to accurately drop out of warp so this was a roundabout way of expressing fear that they would be thrown off-course.

[Master of Ossus]

Mike, you mention in your database this:

How can they have hull breaches if the shields are still at 57%? I know there's a history of ships taking damage before the shields collapse, but an outright hull breach is rather serious damage: more than we usually expect for this sort of thing.

Alyeska and I began forming a theory about this after our idle speculation discovered several instances of a ship suffering systems damage before the shields were knocked out, or even severely weakened. We suggested that ST shields operate in such a way that they can only redirect a certain amount of energy at a given time, and that the rest of it "bleeds through."

I would suggest that the ship's shield rating (ie. "Down to seventy-three percent!") is a measure of how well the shields are doing relative to their maximum effectiveness, and that repeatedly suffering hits drops the effectiveness of shielding.

It's not much of a theory, but having the ship damaged before the shields are remotely drained is by no means an isolated incident. It's happened in several episodes, as well.