Trek 09 Starfleet weapons, organization, etc. [Spoilers]

[Worlds Spanner]

I don't imagine that this thread will go far, we simple didn't see enough of this new Starfleet to know a lot or to run any numbers. We know the ships are bigger, it seems warp is faster. Personally, I think Starfleet seems vaguely more like a military organization, which is a good thing.

I don't know if there were more enlisted men than there used to be, but I appreciated how bustling most areas of the ships were. I especially noticed it during the opening, when the Kelvin's bridge was full of people talking all at once. Like, you know, on a ship during a crisis. Also when Kirk and McCoy were first aboard the Enterprise in engineering and there were people everywhere.

There are a few weapons that I'm really curious about, and would appreciate speculation on.

During the fight with the Kelvin, in addition to phasers the Kelvin fires something else, which appeared as long white flashes. Any ideas what those were? Some other directed energy weapon? Physical rounds of some sort? IIRC, we don't see them again on the Enterprise. Later on, Kirk claimed that the Kelvin had had "advanced weaponry," and it seems odd that 20 some years later the Flagship would not have been equipped with the same. Perhaps the phasers were the advanced weaponry and this thing was something being taken out of service?

The other thing I noticed is that later when the Enterprise was going into combat they ordered phasers and torpedoes ready, and there was a scene of crewmen loading what looked like shells into something. They were way smaller than photon torpedoes, so either torpedoes are different now or they were some other weapons system entirely.

Oh, and I liked watching Kirk Sr. on the bridge operating the ship singlehandedly. They did a great job of getting physicality back into the interfaces (moving away from the TNG-and-later flat surfaces) without looking too cheesy. It also jumped out at me when Pike was operating the shuttle.

Anyone notice anything else?

[Loner]

On the torpedoes; here in L.A., the local KCAL station ran a story Friday afternoon on the movie. They had a short interview with a guy who said he worked on the film and that he created the torpedoes being loaded in one scene. So take that as you will.

[Samuel]

Captains can maroon crewmen for mutiny. Vulcan is a double planet, but its partner isn't very habitable (the Vulcans didn't colonize it). Also odd is that there is only 10,000 left when Tuvok was from one of Vulcan's moons (presumably the double planet as Vulcan has none).

The ship seemed a little too packed- if there isn't enough room to get through, that is bad. Of course, this is probably due to cadets jamming the halls. Also saving the Federation gets you cleared of any accusation of cheating

Most obvious improvement is point defense lasers on the hull. I think everyone noticed and appreciated those.

[Junghalli]

Earth still seems to have distinctly aenemic local defenses. Nero seemed to be able to get into Earth orbit and extend his chain of doom into the atmosphere without apparently coming under a withering barrage of fire.

[Formless]

One thing I noticed were that the phasers used by Kirk and Spock when they boarded the Romulan ship had the front part of the emitter physically flip around when switching between stun and kill. I guess the two are a binary function now, rather than a dial-a-gun format of the past. Also, they now fire in short bursts, and seem to impact like bullets on metallic surfaces.

However, still no trigger guards.

[Formless]

Earth still seems to have distinctly aenemic local defenses. Nero seemed to be able to get into Earth orbit and extend his chain of doom into the atmosphere without apparently coming under a withering barrage of fire.

Ditto for Vulcan. Why exactly did the Romulans need to extend their drilling machine on a long, vulnerable tether that can be shot at when they could just house the thing within the ship where it could have all the benefits of the ships shields, armor, repair crew, and radiators?

[Samuel]

Earth still seems to have distinctly aenemic local defenses. Nero seemed to be able to get into Earth orbit and extend his chain of doom into the atmosphere without apparently coming under a withering barrage of fire.

Ditto for Vulcan. Why exactly did the Romulans need to extend their drilling machine on a long, vulnerable tether that can be shot at when they could just house the thing within the ship where it could have all the benefits of the ships shields, armor, repair crew, and radiators?

The atmosphere makes the beam disperse slightly?

[Formless]

Earth still seems to have distinctly aenemic local defenses. Nero seemed to be able to get into Earth orbit and extend his chain of doom into the atmosphere without apparently coming under a withering barrage of fire.

Ditto for Vulcan. Why exactly did the Romulans need to extend their drilling machine on a long, vulnerable tether that can be shot at when they could just house the thing within the ship where it could have all the benefits of the ships shields, armor, repair crew, and radiators?

The atmosphere makes the beam disperse slightly?

... and why is dispersal, a cause of inefficiency in beam type weapons/tools, an advantage here?

[Stark]

Are you stupid? He's suggesting lowering it through the atmosphere reduces this effect, he's not saying it's an advantage that this happens since they're going to lengths to avoid it.

Doesn't make much sense since it's used to destroy planets, but hey.

[Formless]

Are you stupid? He's suggesting lowering it through the atmosphere reduces this effect, he's not saying it's an advantage that this happens since they're going to lengths to avoid it.

Doesn't make much sense since it's used to destroy planets, but hey.

If that is what he meant, he didn't make that clear.

[Stark]

You ARE stupid. You said 'why would they do this silly thing' and he said 'atmospheric distortion' and you said 'omg whut how does that make it BETTER'. His point was clearly that lowering it into the atmosphere was a possible advantage due to possible atmospheric dispersion (not that even he thinks this makes sense, as the question mark demonstrates). There is no way that 'they lower it into the atmosphere due to atmospheric dispersal' = 'lol this makes it better'.

[FSTargetDrone]

One thing I noticed were that the phasers used by Kirk and Spock when they boarded the Romulan ship had the front part of the emitter physically flip around when switching between stun and kill. I guess the two are a binary function now, rather than a dial-a-gun format of the past. Also, they now fire in short bursts, and seem to impact like bullets on metallic surfaces.

However, still no trigger guards.

I think there was discussion about the flippy barrels in an older thread, and at least we know now that the person using the phaser doesn't actually have to manually rotate the barrel 180 degrees.

[Formless]

You ARE stupid. You said 'why would they do this silly thing' and he said 'atmospheric distortion' and you said 'omg whut how does that make it BETTER'. His point was clearly that lowering it into the atmosphere was a possible advantage due to possible atmospheric dispersion (not that even he thinks this makes sense, as the question mark demonstrates). There is no way that 'they lower it into the atmosphere due to atmospheric dispersal' = 'lol this makes it better'.

What he didn't make clear, you moron, was that he thought doing this would REDUCE dispersion. It should, true, but that's not what I thought he implied. My mistake.

[General Zod]

Earth still seems to have distinctly aenemic local defenses. Nero seemed to be able to get into Earth orbit and extend his chain of doom into the atmosphere without apparently coming under a withering barrage of fire.

Ditto for Vulcan. Why exactly did the Romulans need to extend their drilling machine on a long, vulnerable tether that can be shot at when they could just house the thing within the ship where it could have all the benefits of the ships shields, armor, repair crew, and radiators?

Maybe it didn't properly work unless it was extended all the way? Keep in mind this was a mining ship, so the drill wasn't meant to be used as a weapon. A heavily modified mining ship, but still a mining ship.

[Ford Prefect]

Later on, Kirk claimed that the Kelvin had had "advanced weaponry,"

I'm fairly sure he's referring to the Narada and its particular brand of missiles when he says 'that ship was equipped with advanced weaponry'. In fact, I'm fairly sure he follows it up with a line to the effect of 'and was never seen nor heard of again'.

Earth still seems to have distinctly aenemic local defenses. Nero seemed to be able to get into Earth orbit and extend his chain of doom into the atmosphere without apparently coming under a withering barrage of fire.

You keep on hitting up on this, but the earth-moon system is gigantic and Nero isn't even there for any length of time. I have no conception of how long the sequence actually lasts, but it can't be more than twenty minutes. I'd have preferred it if something had attacked the Narada, but it's not like any government reacts to an unannounced attack inside its own borders in less than five minutes.

[Junghalli]

You keep on hitting up on this, but the earth-moon system is gigantic and Nero isn't even there for any length of time. I have no conception of how long the sequence actually lasts, but it can't be more than twenty minutes. I'd have preferred it if something had attacked the Narada, but it's not like any government reacts to an unannounced attack inside its own borders in less than five minutes.

He was in a pretty low orbit of Earth. If he could get that close to the planet he could have dropped a bunch of rocks onto densely populated urban areas at dozens of km/s, or slammed his own ship into the planet at comparable speed if he was feeling suicidal. To effectively protect the planet's surface a defense grid would need to be able to rapidly engage anything that came that close.

[Stark]

You keep on hitting up on this, but the earth-moon system is gigantic and Nero isn't even there for any length of time. I have no conception of how long the sequence actually lasts, but it can't be more than twenty minutes. I'd have preferred it if something had attacked the Narada, but it's not like any government reacts to an unannounced attack inside its own borders in less than five minutes.

I haven't seen the movie, but is the 'defence grid' even shown to be anything like what nerds think when they hear the term (ie giant guns and rocket satellites and megaspacecannon and fighterbays in orbit etc) or is it just... NORAD, an early warning system, or whatever? I mean, are they just doing the whole 'Mars Defence Perimeter' thing again, when a 'perimeter' is just a line?

[Zed Snardbody]

I think we have B5 to thank for this. The Earth Defense Grid in that was an orbital grid of heavy satellites with super particle cannons and a metric, mind you metric, fuck ton of missiles.

[Ford Prefect]

He was in a pretty low orbit of Earth. If he could get that close to the planet he could have dropped a bunch of rocks onto densely populated urban areas at dozens of km/s, or slammed his own ship into the planet at comparable speed if he was feeling suicidal. To effectively protect the planet's surface a defense grid would need to be able to rapidly engage anything that came that close.

Dude, he came out of warp right on top of the planet, after having acquired all the requisite codes to get into the system. As Stark suggests, the defense grid may actually be a series of early warning sensors for detecting incoming ships at warp, not a series of orbital guns or whatever. You have no idea what the defense grid is, so expecting some sort of superfast attack on a dude who came out of absolutely nowhere without any prior warning and who is present in the sky for twenty minutes or less is probably pushing it.

[Stark]

I think the same thing. While I haven't seen this movie, it seems whenever someone says 'defence grid' or 'perimeter' or 'line on map', nerds always leap to 'massive array of gun batteries ready and waiting to pew pew uselessly'. In ST it's particularly daft, since they've got ships in defence areas and allocated to different worlds, and it sounds like those ships were drawn away (on purpose) and avoiding the 'defence grid' meant there was no time to vector reinforcements or interception.

I mean, Megatron can slip past their early warning systems in their own shuttle with this just allowing surprise and no concentration of force, instead of some ultimate spacegun missiles defence nuclear silo.

[Bounty]

The defences weren't shown, but they were enough for Nero to go through a lot of trouble to get the codes to bypass them. So not shown, but from context it's heavily implied they're formidable. Or at least enough of a nuisance for a fleet-killing ship to warrant bypassing.

The Kelvin's "blue streaks" were torpedoes. They were the same weapon seen firing from the Enterprise's neck and they're physical torpedoes like in TMP+. You can see cadets load charges into warheads while the Enterprise is heading for Earth.

The '10.000' survivors figure is ambiguous, since Spock seems to refer only to the people who survived the actual attack; maybe that's just the Vulcans who got away on ships? It seems awfully low considering the amount of diplomats/scientists/expats you'd expect to be off-world at any given time.

He was in a pretty low orbit of Earth. If he could get that close to the planet he could have dropped a bunch of rocks onto densely populated urban areas at dozens of km/s, or slammed his own ship into the planet at comparable speed if he was feeling suicidal. To effectively protect the planet's surface a defense grid would need to be able to rapidly engage anything that came that close.

A defence system he had the passcodes to. Even if they recognized him for what he was as soon as he entered the system, that still gives him pretty much total surprise.

While I haven't seen this movie

Obviously.

Nero doesn't 'draw away' anyone. He captures Pike and tortures him for the codes to "Earth's defences"; he's got zero reason to do this if there aren't any physical defences outside of the fleet... which he blew up an hour earlier.

[Stark]

So you admit the 'defence grid' is basically unknown? Thanks.

[Ford Prefect]

The idea that Earth is actually strapped for defences is actually thematically appropriate, too. Pike refers to Starfleet as a peacekeeping and humanitarian organisation, which obviously goes flying about doing good deeds for people the galaxy over. Does this sound like a group which is especially concerned with their own defence, as opposed to the defence of others? They're open-minded good guys who accept all manner of alien races, so acting like paranoid nutcases with a bazillion guns in the sky is perhaps prudent, but completely out of character.

PS. bounty and stark please keep in mind that you both actually have the same position here

[tezunegari]

The Narada might be a mining ship turned fleet-killer but the drill itself is quite vulnerable.

Kirk and Sulu did damage it enough to either activate failsafes or force the crew of the Narada to deactivate it. At least that is how I saw it.
And they did it with infantry rifles.
Later Spock did destroy the drill using a prototype ship which I doubt had more than the bare minimum of defense weaponry. It was supposed to be a stellar research vessel if I remember correctly.

Nero wanted to destroy every single planet of the federation to get revenge.
So getting the codes for any defense - killer satellites, fighter jocks or any kind of ships held in reserve - would be a good idea if you want to use a vulnerable weapon that must not or can not move while active. (That is if the red matter has to be deployed in a planetary core to ensure its complete destruction)

[Ford Prefect]

Later Spock did destroy the drill using a prototype ship which I doubt had more than the bare minimum of defense weaponry. It was supposed to be a stellar research vessel if I remember correctly.

It's described by Spock as 'their fastest ship', nothing more, nothing less.